<div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 24pt;"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: impact;">Yellow Brick Row  ~  Emerald City  ~  March 2014</span></span></div><br/><hr/><br/><div align="center">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/7/7c/Pedestrianised.png) (https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/2/25/SilverStorm01.jpg) (https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/0/09/YellowBrickRow01.jpg)</div><br/><hr/><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 10pt;"><br/><strong>Iona</strong> received a warmly grateful smile in response to her words - though there was more than a tinge of panic behind the facade of cheerful confidence.  "Thank you.  Thank you so much.  Damn it.  Where <em>did</em> I...?  Hold this for me."  She passed Iona her shoulder bag, using both hands to rummage inside.  "Most people just... well, <em>lose it</em>.  Ah!  Good."<br/><br/>Coming up with an epipen, she flashed another taut smile, then reclaimed her bag.  As she spoke, she ran her gaze over the casualty-littered surroundings, though her attention kept being jerked away to the impossible storms trapped within the husks of nearby buildings, and the threatening swirl of blue-white streaked dark cloud   "Knew I had a spare.  Are you any good with blood?  We've got wounds that need direct pressure.  If you can find clean clothes - perhaps something under the outer layers that've been covered in all this... <em>whatever</em> it is, then use those to help.  If you <em>can't</em> cope with blood, then raid the shops nearby for first aid kits.  If you're confident at checking for a pulse, focus on the people who aren't moving and are silent.  It's usually the quiet ones who're in the most immediate danger."<br/><br/>Forcing another smile, the woman nodded encouragingly.  "There're a couple of others helping already: give each other a hand if you need it.  And shout if you need me."<br/><br/>Then she turned away to deal with a woozily unsteady man with blood sheeted across his face and down his front, whom a grubbily battered-looking youth was struggling to detach from the dangerously unstable-looking lamp-post which he was attempting to lean on for support.<br/><br/><strong>Valerie</strong>, meanwhile, took a rather more dramatic approach to helping: the first two serious-looking casualties she spotted close together were grabbed - one hand clamping onto each - before she <em>forced</em> her power to not merely transport herself, but yank along two additional people.  Ripping several times her usual 'capacity' through space-time provided a rather shocking jolt to Valerie's system.  For a moment she was quite unaware of where she might have ended up... before she managed to force her thoughts to clear and her attention to focus.<br/><br/><em>That actually worked</em>!<br/><br/>The surge of adrenaline [i.e. spending a Hero Point to negate the level of Fatigue incurred by using Extra Effort] helped her to shrug off the fatigue that dragged gnawingly at every single part of her body and mind, allowing her to rapidly relay the rudiments of the situation to stunned staff - and members of the public - before she left her rescuees where they lay, and activated her power once more.<br/><br/>The return trip felt positively <em>easy</em> in contrast to the effort required to transport the wounded... which was both welcome, and a warning that repeating any such efforts might rapidly tax Valerie beyond her limits.  Fortunately, she spotted a familiar face, which promised the possibility of finding an approach that would be less likely to reduce the teleporter to exhaustion - or unconsciousness - in short order.  And, of course, finding <em>anything</em> familiar amidst the mayhem provided a thoroughly welcome touch of reassurance....<br/><br/>Perhaps emboldened by that, Valerie risked another trip to the hospital - feeling the impact on her body and mind from the effort of pushing her powers beyond their normal limits.  There, she was indeed confronted with a stunned young woman in an EMT's uniform and with a well-stuffed bag over her shoulder, who had been looking around as if in search of any new teleport-arrivals.  "You're a superheroine?  The last two you brought are being taken care of.  Ahh, yes.  I suppose.  I can... if you're sure?"  Screwing shut her eyes, she braced herself for whatever might be about to follow.<br/><br/>The knowledge that she was striving heroically to save lives bolstered Valerie beyond what she might otherwise have managed... but even so, she knew that overtaxing herself like this would only be possible once or twice more.<br/><br/>[Hero Point earned for successfully rescuing three people and getting an EMT on site far faster than would otherwise have been possible; Hero Point immediately spent to negate the impact of one of the two additional jumps with extra cargo.  Leaves Valerie <em>Fatigued</em>, and back on 0 Hero Points.]<br/><br/>Sharing certain similarities in her approach, <strong>Claire</strong> engaged in both highly-dramatic use of superpowers - in her case, grabbing available water to dump onto threatening fires, before snatching dangling survivors before their desperate grips loosened - and activity of a sort that merely-mundane human perceptions couldn't hope to track.  Whether those she aided would ever understand quite what happened might be open to question... but in some ways, the very fact of being imperceptible played into her hands.  There was a distinct tendency for the injured and the panicked to cluster around (or just shout at) anyone who seemed to have the slightest hint of authority or understanding of how to respond, but Claire was able to slip to and fro without being grabbed.<br/><br/>Testing out her 'mundane' super-senses proved to be decidedly painful: there was simply <em>so much</em> happening that it was hard for her to cope.  Her more esoteric assessments would result in a rather significant side-effect - namely, her quite literally lighting up.  Precisely what observers might make of that, while she herself remained invisible at the heart of the glow, she had never yet found out.  Still, it should be possible to slip into cover within one of the buildings and perform at least a <em>quick</em> check without anyone observing her....<br/><br/><strong>Amber</strong> was blessed with beyond-mundane physical capabilities, and - assisted by a dose of good luck in not being hit by anything large enough to hurt - this all presented a rare opportunity to actually make <em>use</em> of her gifts.  True, her 'extra' senses were under constant assault from the electrical storm and discharges, but at least she remained unhindered in any more tangible way, and was able to get stuck into helping.  The middle-aged woman she had tackled managed to stammer something that might have been intended as an expression of gratitude, before high-tailing it away.<br/><br/>That left Amber free to find more to do... and in short order, she was able to put her abnormal lifting capacity to use, clearing the kinds of hunks of rubble that might <em>look</em> manageable to a normal person but actually weighed hundreds of pounds apiece.  A few moments of strenuous effort were sufficient to free a terrified elderly gentleman from the rubble - only for him to gawp in stunned astonishment at - good grief.  A mostly-naked cat-girl?!?<br/><br/><strong>Hitomi</strong> might, perhaps, have been amused to learn that (following her agile kid-snaring and use of a table as cover) she was not the first person to respond to the crisis by deciding to remove her clothing.  Not that the invisible Claire or her <em>far </em>more obvious superpowered activities were easily noticed amidst all the chaos closer to hand.  Still, Mephistopholese had been granted with an opportunity to surprise people with a mostly-naked cat-girl - and duly did so.  Any security cameras that survived the electrical mayhem might well make for <em>interesting</em> viewing whatever portions of this disaster they managed to record... but any that succeeded in capturing Hitomi's hasty undressing and then revelation of her powers might be deemed particularly noteworthy.<br/><br/>Of course, gathering with other potential 'supers' would only add to any such intrigue... though such matters were probably not foremost in the young ladies' minds at that moment in time.<br/><br/><strong>Julia</strong> had not often had reason to regret the lack of opportunities to put her old skills and reactions to use... but she could be very glad she had them now.  Well, mostly.  In her case, the urge to undress was markedly less <em>helpful</em> than it had been when she routinely wore a super-costume beneath any 'normal' outfit... but casually controlled use of her super-strength and rapid assessment of injuries served her well, as did the ingrained assumption that 'normal' people would listen to her in a crisis.  In this case, at least, it held true even without a supersuit on show, with her stunned 'recruit' doing his best to comply with her instructions, while trying to both breathe somewhat normally and to banish the expression of slack-jawed astonishment that he wore.<br/><br/></span><hr/><div align="center"><br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Tagging</strong>:  <strong>Everyone</strong>    <strong>Setting Information</strong>: Found here (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=347842.msg16368096#msg16368096)    <strong>Taking Actions</strong>: See this post (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=347842.msg16368191#msg16368191)<br/><br/><strong>Hero Points</strong>: <strong>1 for most characters; 0 for Valerie</strong><br/><br/><strong>Condition</strong>: <strong>Valerie: Fatigued</strong></span></div><br/><hr/><br/><strong>Claire</strong> had just made it into cover and begun lighting up her chosen corner of a wrecked shop - hiding amidst a display of paintings of the Albian river and Mount Stanley - when the morning's succession of phenomena took another turn towards the impossible, the unsettling, and (probably) the worse.<br/><br/><strong>Amber</strong> was the first to notice, with her additional sense informing her that much of the electricity around her - which had been dissipating as the cloud itself thinned out - suddenly began moving <em>upwards</em>, gathering above the intersection.  Everyone could see that pockets of lightning-lit cloud still seemed to be trapped in a few buildings, but those were evidently losing vigour and cohesion... yet it seemed as if what remained airborne of <em>whatever-the-heck-it-was</em> that had erupted out of the truck-explosion was now doing something new.  Only those particles still adrift seemed to be affected: the coating on the ground (and people, and almost every visible surface) seemed to remain where it was - hopefully inert.  But what was still in the air rose <em>up</em>, with Amber able to sense that it was either being carried by or was bringing with it the inexplicable <em>lifting</em> of the electricity.<br/><br/>A swirl of blue-white light appeared over the cross-roads, up where the top of the whirlwind of smoke and electricity had been a short while before.  Fresh cries of alarm came from all around our heroines, as the light twisted into a fresh vortex - though this one seemed to be made wholly of that brilliant electrical light.  Then it abruptly began letting loose fierce discharges, hurling bolts downwards - seemingly at random, slamming into open walkway and buildings alike.  Each was accompanied by a searing crackle, but there was no thunderclap: whatever lay behind their creation, it was <em>not</em> some approximation of a conventional thunderhead.<br/><br/>To Amber, those felt <em>very</em> different.  Much, much, <em>much</em> less electrical than they ought to be.  There was electricity in them, but nowhere near enough to match the sort of energy levels that ought to be required to generate such lightning.  And these strikes seemed disinclined to fork, instead travelling from start to finish with barely any deviation.<br/><br/>For those of our heroines blessed with <strong>Danger Sense</strong>, there was a marked oddity: though this fresh display was certainly shocking and profoundly unsettling, it felt very oddly lacking in personal peril.  Perhaps it was merely that these bolts were not going to strike them, and thus there was no direct threat, but perhaps it was something more...?  Certainly, there was not a lot of time in which to assess it.<br/><br/><strong>Claire</strong>, meanwhile, was detecting things none of the other heroines could, even though she was - to start with - much less able to <em>see</em> her surroundings and employ her mundane senses to observe what was happening.  From her perspective, a couple of decidedly novel experiences were unfolding....<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">For Claire</div><div class="spoiler_body">In time with the startling flashes of light that accompanied each new bolt, Claire felt a powerful pulse of... something she had never felt before.  On impact (or 'completion', perhaps?) they seemed to <em>do something</em> - but what, she could not immediately say.  And in several cases, that 'something' somehow <em>lingered</em>... while in one case, the initial impact of the 'first type' of feeling was near-instantly replaced by another strange sensation.  Also utterly unfamiliar to her, it seemed to be quite distinct from the other <em>strange</em> sensations she had detected.<br/><br/>And there was a definite impression that she might only be managing to sense part of what was going on - strikes happening farther away, or simultaneously with those close by, might not be picked up by whatever weird senses she was presently employing.  As it it was, peeking outside started to reveal a little more, adding her merely-human sight to the information provided by her <em>altered</em> mind.<br/></div></div><br/><br/><strong>Valerie</strong> returned with her EMT passenger just in time to catch the new phase of strangeness at its very height.  The swirl of light twisted above the intersection, while brilliant flashes shot down from it towards the ground.  An odd glow might perhaps be glimpsed emanating from a building up ahead, but the strain on her body and that impossible new type of lightning were more likely to grab and hold her attention.<br/><br/>Then a whole <em>new</em> type of strangeness came to the fore, as events took their latest turn.<br/><br/>People, of course, had a wide array of responses to events.  Some were in shock.  Many were fleeing as fast as they could.  Some were shouting - instructions, for aid, in search of others, or in angry disbelief.  Others were tackling the rubble, or ducking into buildings to search for survivors - or perhaps even loot.  Some were aiding medical efforts.  A scatter all along the Row were on the phone to 911 operators, while a handful were taking pictures.  Near Claire, a pretty young woman with blonde hair down to her hips had apparently concluded that the most urgently important thing to do was to take off backpack and jacket, then start rummaging in her bag as if in search of something....<br/><br/>But nothing had yet compared to the sights that began to emerge into view above the casualties and the rubble.  With those strange bolts of near-silent lightning still flashing out and down from the vortex of light in the sky, <em>strangeness</em> reached fresh heights on Yellow Brick Row.<br/><br/>To <strong>Claire</strong>'s North, and quite close to <strong>Julia</strong>, a black-clad figure was <em>rising up into the air</em>.  It looked to be a long-haired young man dressed in the sort of black-with-buckles finery that might come from Hot Topic.  As he lifted up, he spread his arms, shouting out something - and ribbons of black and dark green formed out of the dust-filled air, sweeping around him to create a set of robes and leather boots that might have come from a Peter Jackson movie.  An elaborate staff formed in one hand, as he laughed in what seemed to be sheer delight.  Another shout was lost in the background din, before a swift, broad grin flashed amidst his (now tidy, and much more impressive) goatee beard, then his voice boomed out impossibly loudly, with background hints of reverb and special-effects 'crackle'.<br/><br/><div align="center">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/2/24/LordEtheric.jpg)<br/><br/><strong>"<span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">Lord Etheric has arisen!  Bow before him, peons!</span></span>"</strong></div><br/>Meanwhile, some distance to Claire's South - near <strong>Amber</strong>, <strong>Hitomi</strong>, and the reappeared <strong>Valerie</strong> - the first sign of a new phase of profound <em>oddness</em> was the sight of hunks of metal hurtling through the air: ripping clear of rubble, rising up from the ground, flying out of buildings - a stream of them flew into a broken shopfront.  One into which one of those most recent flashes of weird lightning had flung itself.<br/><br/>Then, rising up out of it came a woman: Caucasian and with a mane of blonde hair rippling in a breeze (that seemed to touch nothing else), but now wrapped in an armoured suit fashioned from the moulded shapes of the random pieces of wreckage that had just <em>zipped</em> into the ruin.  She held out a hand, and a broken-off Stop sign whipped up off the ground and slapped neatly into her palm.  Her eyes gleamed white, and her grin could best be described as <em>feral</em>....<br/><br/><div align="center">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/9/92/DeathMagnetic.png)</div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">For Claire</div><div class="spoiler_body">Those two flying people were each struck by one of those instances of the 'first' effect.  It seemed to hit the flying woman <em>especially</em> hard... but neither of the fliers is <em>presently</em> affected by it.  In their cases, it seems to have hit (like a tonne of bricks, for the blonde) and then... departed?  Finished its work?  It's impossible to tell.<br/><br/>The man - Lord Etheric, apparently - is the source / focus of the 'second' effect that Claire has sensed.  It constantly enfolds him... and intensifies every time that he changes something: a flare when his robes formed and his appearance changed; another when he amplified (and altered) his voice.<br/><br/>There are at least three other instances of the 'first' effect - farther away, but apparently on-going.  Unlike the fliers, whatever it's doing <em>hasn't stopped</em>.<br/><br/>And, in bad news, both those fliers seem to trigger a profoundly visceral unease in Claire.  She doesn't know why or how, but being remotely close to them doesn't feel at all safe.<br/></div></div><br/><br/>Though the trio of heroines farther South heard 'Lord Etheric' and can spot both him and the (nearer to them) flying blonde above the wreckage and the crowd, they have their own anomalies closer to hand.  To <em>their</em> South an outbreak of screaming announces that something new is terrifying those survivors who have not yet fled the scene.  For a second, nothing is visible... then <strong>Amber</strong>, <strong>Hitomi</strong>, and <strong>Valerie</strong> see an honest-to-weirdness <em>tentacle</em> swing into view, holding aloft a screaming man - eerily backlit by the continued strikes of blue-white lightning.<br/><br/>Following behind came the... <em>creature</em>... to which the tentacle was attached.  Wearing the remains of a tattered set of clothes, whoever it had formerly been had clearly undergone a rapid and horrifying transformation.  Both arms and both legs were now tentacles... and four more sprouted from his body.  Strange flanges deformed his neck, and what could be made out of his expression looked to be wildly manic.<br/><br/><div align="center">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/b/ba/Octaman.png)</div><br/>Still farther South, people fleeing the octopus-creature were scrambling into a detour, as a brilliant glow over-rode the lightning flashes and the dust-shrouded daylight.  A figure - human(oid), perhaps wearing long shorts and a baggy t-shirt? - was wreathed in a startlingly white glow as it walked slowly out into the middle of the pedestrian thoroughfare.<br/><br/><div align="center">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/f/f6/Lightshow.jpg)</div><br/>Away towards the other end of the disaster-struck portion of the Yellow Brick Row, <strong>Iona</strong> and <strong>Julia</strong> abruptly realised that they could hear growling - swiftly followed by the creation of a new focus of screaming, scrambling panic among the survivors.  With a loud <em>thump</em>, a bizarre creature sprang into view, landing loudly atop the wreckage of a cafe's tables and chairs.  <br/><br/><div align="center">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/2/23/Mongoose.png)</div><br/>It looked to be female, and it was clearly wearing the ruptured remnants of mundane street clothes - jeans and a purple top - but it now sported a tail, claws, extended ears, eyes with animalistic slits, and what could only be described as striped <em>fur</em>.  The fluffy tuft at the end of the tail was twitching dramatically to and fro, while the open mouth - maw? - emitted a constant stream of snarls and growls, accompanied by droplets of spittle.<br/><br/>Safe to say, the creature looked to be exceedingly <em>agitated</em>.  And even with the backdrop of 'Lord Etheric', this furry new arrival certainly looked to be more than a little threatening.<br/><br/><hr/><br/><strong>OOC</strong>: Things get even more weird!  How will our heroines cope?  ;D<br/><br/>In line with the instructions in the relevant post (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=347842.msg16368191#msg16368191), please provide me with plans for what your characters would like to do.  If you give me options, then I will be able to do more with it.  As in the example, feel free to provide "<em>if this occurs, then I'll try this approach... if this other thing happens, then I respond in this different way...</em>"<br/><br/>You have perhaps as much as <strong>one round</strong> in which to plan, shout warnings, and so on, before the NPCs start taking actions.  Don't presume that you can have lengthy conversations with each other, but a <em>rapid</em> exchange of a handful of words apiece is feasible... as is shouting a short message to bystanders, yelling questions at the new arrivals, and so on.  But keep anything like that brief, please.  Any speech that runs into multiple rounds might well get interrupted by exciting developments!<br/></div>