So, it turned out that Taylor's plan for them to be a group similar to New Wave (sans the mask-free policy) had an unexpected twist.
Namely, the fact that their neighbors were now joining their team. And one Clarence Birdseye that Annette had summoned a while ago.
So as a result, they were now having a meeting in their backyard… although it was more like a BBQ party at this point as Danny was grilling various meats for everyone to eat while Taylor brought out the lemonade.
"So yeah, I was just getting sick and tired of the gangs subtly brainwashing everyone into buying into this racial divide bullc--err, manure. Just because I'm asian doesn't mean I automatically want to join up with the ABB! Of course, I could've joined the Protectorate but I'm not so sure I like how they've been handling the situation in Brockton Bay. I want to make a REAL difference, ya know?" Mr. Yamamoto was saying.
Annette nodded politely. "I can understand that. Racial stereotyping can get pretty hurtful at times."
Mr. Yamamoto seemed to calm down, now that he had a chance to vent his frustrations over the fact that the ABB had actually come to the neighborhood in an attempt to recruit him.
"Thanks for listening, Mrs. Hebert. So what is it that you do exactly? I mean, I've heard you're a Trump but how does that work?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you… It's pretty weird." Annette chuckled slightly.
The man seemed to see that as a challenge. "Yeah? Try me."
"I pull an imaginary lever in my head, which rolls the imaginary dice for me. It then sends me something utterly random like a person, object or just places a random effect on everyone around me if it doesn't apply directly to me. Sometimes it's good luck, sometimes it's bad luck for me…" Annette tried to do her best to explain it, although by the look on Mr. Yamamoto's expression he didn't quite understand.
"She summoned me here." Clarence Birdseye offered up helpfully, "It was quite strange though. I just found myself here and I couldn't remember how I got here. And then afterwards, when things were calmer, I realized that I could remember my entire life and having died. So, I think Mrs Hebert summoned me from the afterlife and restored me back to my youth?"
"Wait, what?" The asian man looked baffled. Clarence went on to explain his situation to him….
Yeah… that was the weirdest part for Annette actually. She just found out that most of the people she summoned had actually been dead on their native Earth for a while, before she summoned them back alive? No way she was ever letting that out though… otherwise she'd have hundreds of hopeful people who wanted her to bring back their loved ones or something like that, when her power didn't work like that.
It did make her feel a little better though, knowing that she hadn't just randomly snatched people away from their lives that they were still in the process of living.
It certainly explained why Emily Bovell and some of the others had been so calm and not all that anxious to get back to their native Earths though. After all, what would happen if Annette was to find a way to send them all back? Would they just return back to being dead?
At any rate, most of them were content to go their own way and do their thing… such as voluntarily joining the PRT out of their free will. Save for Clarence here, who seemed to think that he should stick by Annette's side. He said something about possibly having been summoned here for a reason, and that since she was the one to bring him back to life it was only right that he work for her.
So yeah, he decided to join her team.
She looked over at the elderly white couple, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, who were telling Taylor about their plans to build a robot dog. They were pet-lovers, but couldn't in good conscience adopt another dog after their last one died a long time. They could barely take care of themselves, and adopting a service animal was way too expensive.
So it had made perfect sense for them to want to build themselves a robotic dog that could double as a service animal for them.
Outside of that, they seemed to have no interest in the superhero business at all. Instead, they seem more content to be the Hebert family's backers and background support.
This was a pretty pleasant meeting overall, but for some reason Annette found herself bored, and the itching in the back of her head was getting stronger. So she pulled the imaginary lever--
>Ding<
Roll 11--List of Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy politicians. An extensive, long list of politicians who were in the Italian democracy party.
Annette gains a Thinker power specializing in Liberal politics.
>Ding<
Roll 17-- Year 1311 in Scotland. Article is about everything that happened then.
Annette gains knowledge about everything that happened there then.
>Ding<
Roll 8--Green Beer Day. Green Beer Day (GBD) is a day-long party, where celebrants drink beer dyed green with artificial coloring or natural processes. The tradition started at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and was first celebrated in 1952.
Annette summons kegs of green beer that can be consumed and drunk for up to 8 hours before it disappears.
Everyone at the BBQ party grew silent as large kegs appeared out of nowhere, and they then looked at Annette.
She smiled sheepishly. "Um, I might have summoned some beer? They'll only last the entire day before they disappear though."
Mr. Yamamoto's eyes lit up at this. "Oh, I don't mind testing them out. It'd be a waste of perfectly good beer otherwise!"
Mr. Thompson chuckled. "Pour me a cup while you're at it too…"
Clarence then asked: "Huh. is the beer supposed to be green like that…?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--A day later, after school and after their jobs were over for the day--
Annette watched with fondness as she watched Danny and Taylor start using the fabber machine for the very first time to finally start making their armor.
She found it interesting though, how so many people who had gained what was basically the same power set could use it so differently.
Take her husband and child-- they decided that making something akin to a 3d printer-slash-blacksmith forge would be the best way to start off. This way, they'd have an easier time mass-producing their armor and the robots they were eventually planning to make.
It had been sweet, seeing how her husband and child bonded together over making the 3d printer-slash-forge together.
The Thompsons on the other hand, as they had told everyone earlier, was really only interested in making robotic pets and thus hadn't bothered with anything so fancy like a 3d printer.
Mr. Hideo Yamamoto was looking into something called "The Cyberworld" and artificial intelligences.
The rest of the neighbors… well, she honestly didn't know what they chose to prioritize as seeing it seemed that there was really a wide variety of ways one could do with the robotics tinker ability.
She was snapped out of her thoughts when Danny called her over.
"Honey, come on so that we can size you up for your new armor…" He said, and she walked over.
"Mom, stand on this red spot over here!" Taylor told her, and she did as she was told.
"Perfect. Now hold up your arms like this…" Danny said, as he did a T-pose.
Annette copied the pose, and at this a bright beam of red light swept all over her, and on the computer monitor nearby she could see a 3d-model of herself as it scanned her measurements.
"Perfect. Now it's my turn, then we'll do Taylor next." Danny said, as Annette walked away from the scanning area.
Now that they all had their 3d measurements stored away in the computer, it was time to pick what kind of armor they wanted to have.
Of course, Annette had to raise her eyebrows at some of the armor choices for women… like this one, the Alita Mark.1 armor. What was with highlighting where her boobs were with white-colored chest plates like that?? It was as if some male designer was worried that they wouldn't be able to tell that the person was a woman and thus had to highlight all the female attributes. Too bad, she actually liked the design otherwise.
She voiced this to her husband, and Danny looked slightly sheepish at this. "I didn't come up with it, Honey. The computer itself that's hooked up to the 3d fabber came up with those designs… although I don't know where it got those from."
For Taylor and Danny, the computer suggested both this female armor model and this one it called the Douglas Armor.
Taylor frowned slightly. "Why does it keep on suggesting armor that makes our legs and feet look so…. Big?"
"Is there a way for us to trim that down, so that it doesn't look so big? I doubt we all would be able to walk with that much weight on our feet and legs. Oh, and I'd like to change some colors on our armor pieces… maybe remove the white parts so that it doesn't highlight our breasts so much..." Annette replied.
Danny nodded. "Of course, that was one of the reasons why I suggested that we do a 3d fabber in the first place. So that we could adjust things to our relative strength and build. I think the reason why those legs and arms were so big was that they were originally meant to be for a humanoid robot. Robots would be able to walk normally like that, but any human wouldn't be able to."
The three of them crowded the monitor as Danny worked his magic, making the armor more human-like in size and body shape. He also added goggles to both Taylor and Annette's design that did a great job of changing their facial shape. He took Annette's suggestion in mind about the white part of the female armor, and altered it so that the white parts now matched the rest of the armor colors and blended in more instead of standing out so much.
"Perfect. Now time to talk about colors… What would you ladies like? I assume that Taylor wouldn't want a pink wig as part of her disguise?" He asked.
Taylor snorted. "Not really. I mean, nothing wrong with pink but it just seems a tad too…. Girly? And how could anybody take me seriously when I become an adult still wearing that pink wig? Maybe I could just go with my normal hair."
"We need to separate your civilian and hero personas as much as possible… so having a different hair color is a pretty good idea when one thinks about it. I'd use a blonde wig myself, but I'm kinda worried that people would draw the comparison to New Wave too much ...." Annette said, as she realized that the New Wave family were almost all blondes themselves.
This led them to have a minor debate on the merits of wearing wigs or just going without. Or even just using helmets to do away with the issue entirely.
In the end, helmets won out because Danny pointed out that it was more important that everyone be safe instead of being fashionable. Plus, hair was a thing that could easily be grabbed and used against them, so …
So the hairdos were erased and replaced with helmets that had built-in goggles. The pinks in Annette's outfit were replaced with a light orange color, which completed the reds and blacks in the rest of her outfit. Taylor's outfit stayed mostly the same save for changing the purple bodysuit underneath into a black one to match Annette's. The white area around the chest of course was changed, being more covered up by the orange armor.
Danny liked the Douglas armor as it was, but decided to alter the colors on it anyway so that it would be mostly a brownish-orange color in appearance with red highlights. Just so that the three of them would look more like a cape family instead of three random capes that happened to be working together.
With the designs completed, he hit the 3d printing function so that it'd get to work on producing the armor.
"There we go. We should have brand-new costumes ready to wear by the next day…" Danny couldn't help but sound self-satisfied as he said that.
Taylor bounced excitedly at this, with a huge grin on her face.
"So, what cape names are you going by. I've already decided on Kismet.." Annette wondered.
Danny grinned. "Well, I decided to follow your naming convention and call myself something Luck-related as well. So I did some searching online, and came up with Hermes. Apparently, that Greek god was also the god of luck…Who knew?"
"And I'm Karma! I decided it sounded good…" Taylor spoke up. She then giggled, "Imagine all the jokes I could do about the gangs getting their Karmic payment for all the bad stuff they did!"
Annette was about to say something when they got interrupted by Clarence who poked his head through the door at the top of the basement stairs and called out: "You've run out of milk and some meat… I was making a grilled sandwich and had some milk. My apologies! If you give me some money I'll go out and restock the fridge for you?"
Danny got up at this. He called back, "I'll go with you! I might as well as show you the layout of the city while we're at it."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After they were done testing out their new armored outfits, they were ready to register as new independent heroes with the PRT.
The only problem was, she was now banned from ever setting foot on any of the PRT-slash-Protectorate buildings. So that meant that they had to meet elsewhere, like on the boardwalk.
Annette couldn't feel but feel very self-conscious in her new costume as she walked alongside her husband and child, who were also dressed up in their costumes.
Everyone on the boardwalk was staring at them, and some even took out their phones to snap a few pictures.
To ease her anxiety, she started pulling on her power to see what she'd get…
>Ding<
Roll 28--Drama therapy. the use of theater techniques to facilitate personal growth and promote mental health.
Annette is now a certified Drama Therapist, with all of the skills that comes with it. She not only knows several coping skills, but she now can teach those coping skills to others.
>Ding<
Roll 9--Medical prescription.
For 9 hours, Annette now can go to any store and get any prescription she wants for free.
>Ding<
Roll 23--Therapeutic relationship. The therapeutic relationship (also therapeutic alliance, the helping alliance, or the working alliance) refers to the relationship between a healthcare professional and a client (or patient). It is the means by which a therapist and a client hope to engage with each other, and effect beneficial change in the client.
Annette is now ten times more effective in helping others though therapy.
She narrowed her eyes. Those rolls seemed awfully connected to each other in some way… it was almost like her power was telling her to take a chill pill…?
If she hadn't known by now that her power seemed to like trolling her, she'd really be very offended by the implications.
But at least those abilities granted to herself did seem useful....she didn't mind at all being able to help people though therapy.
Her group met with both Armsmaster and a black man called Thomas Calvert in front of what appeared to be a cafe. There was a white PRT van next to them, with the back doors open.
The man was lighter in his skin tone than most black people living here typically were to the point that Annette almost assumed that he was simply a white person with a tan, until she came closer and noted his African-American features.
Thomas Calvert then smiled pleasantly at both her and Danny, and said, "I'm pleased to meet you two. As I told you over the phone, my name is Thomas Calvert, the new Deputy Director of the PRT. And I take it that you've already filled out the paperwork I sent you?"
Danny simply nodded, and handed over a folder full of the paperwork that he and Annette had already filled out at home, complete with details about their cape names and the like.
He grinned. "Excellent. That does speed up things considerably. Now all we have to do is the follow-up interview where we ask you what your plans are as an independent, and take your pictures…"
Danny… no, Hermes… she really should only think of them as their cape persona when they were all in uniform, then raised his eyebrows.
Hermes then said, "I didn't think we were this important enough for the Deputy Director to come out of his way to come here and interview us personally."
Thomas chuckled slightly. "Indeed. Normally I wouldn't even be doing this, but your wife over there caused a little bit of chaos at the Protectorate headquarters from which we're still recovering from. We're still waiting on our new hires to be vetted and brought over here… but until that happens we're very…. Short-staffed. So for now, I'm totally doing the work of four to five people right now until our staffing needs are met. As is Armsmaster here."
Armsmaster just simply stared at Kismet very pointedly as Thomas told them what was going on with the PRT situation.
Kismet blushed slightly at this… she hadn't meant for any of that to happen at all.
She felt her left hand being squeezed slightly, and looked down to see her daughter Karma holding her hand in what seemed like a supportive gesture.
Karma looked up at her and smiled.
She smiled back.
Thomas Calvert then sat back down at the cafe table he had been at before, and said, "While we're here you might as well as order something…. My treat."
With that, he called over a waitress.
It seemed that after they were seen with Armsmaster and some of the PRT officials at that cafe, some of the public were more reassured by their presence, and were bold enough to come right up to them in order to ask them questions while they were on one of their public partols.
Naturally, the most common question they got asked about was who they were, and if they were a family of capes, etc.
It was then that everyone in her family realized that while they had come up with good individual cape names, they hadn't thought to come up with a good cape group name. Whoops.
And they couldn't keep on saying things like: "Yes, we're a family of capes. We're like New Wave, only without the mask-free policy."
And between the three of them, the group names they could think of ended up sounding too silly when said out loud, or too villainous… And they couldn't think of anything that could easily symbolize Annette's power of randomness AND the robotics speciality that they had.
As she mulled over the question of what to call themselves as a group, she pulled on the imaginary lever.
>Ding<
Roll 23--Lao name. Article detailing the way Laotians name themselves for cultural and religious reasons.
Annette gains permanent knowledge of this.
Hmm, interesting… It almost seemed like her power was trying to help her here, but it'd be weird to call themselves something Laotian. Plus, it might be a good way to piss off the ABB and there was no way she was doing that.
It would be better to move on from this topic and think of how she could help the community at large.
>Ding<
Roll 19--In-depth-systemics. In-depth systemics is a context independent professional work approach and an extension of the field of systemic therapy and counseling approaches.
Annette now can help drug users and alcoholics kick the habit though the use of therapy.
Well, It looked like Annette could easily get a job as a therapist if she was ever interested in doing it now. Between this and her drama therapy ability it'd be a cakewalk.
>Ding<
Roll 8--Egregore. an occult concept representing a "thoughtform" or "collective group mind", an autonomous psychic entity made up of, and influencing, the thoughts of a group of people. The symbiotic relationship between an egregore and its group has been compared to the more recent, non-occult concepts of the corporation (as a legal entity) and the meme.
For the next 8 hours, Annette, her family and her allies all share a psychic connection in which they can telepathically communicate with each other. Via this connection, Annette now can tweak and influence the thoughts of her collective group as she pleases.
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<< We? Buying property?>> Danny wondered.
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"Right, moving on… let's take this conversation elsewhere..." Hermes said out loud, as he noticed that the three of them had been just standing there staring off into space the moment they embellished a psychic link with each other. And it had been long enough that some people around them were starting to give them strange looks.
Kismet grabbed Karma's hand and the three of them walked alongside the boardwalk again, mostly there to be seen than they were to stop any criminals.
They wanted to fly the flag, so to speak, and let any possible criminals know that Brockton Bay had a new family of crime-fighters.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--the next morning--
Annette yawned loudly as she was in the process of making pancake batter.
The psychic link had finally worn off, but not before it was time for everyone's bedtime. By the time it wore off, it was so late at night and everyone had been so exhausted that they just fell asleep right away.
She was kind of glad that effect wasn't permanent, if they all had to deal with constantly hearing each other's thoughts and feelings all the time. It was extremely distracting, more so when one was doing things like driving or even trying to sleep.
Thankfully, the others hadn't been too annoyed with her despite how inconvenient it was at times. It seemed to give Mr. Yamamoto some ideas for some cyberspace interface he was working on, and Clarence went over to the Thompsons' house when they were feeling poorly. And had even been helpful enough to help them along in building that robot dog they were working on.
She poured the batter into the sizzling hot iron pan, and winched slightly when a small speck of the bubbling butter flew off the pan and onto her hand, burning her there.
>Ding!<
Roll 18-- Acid Egg. The terms acid egg and montejus (or monte-jus) are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to a device with no moving parts formerly used instead of a pump in order to transfer difficult liquids.The principle is that a strong vessel containing the liquid is pressurized with gas or steam, forcing the liquid into a pipe (usually vertical upwards) thereby causing flow. When the liquid has been transferred, the pressure is released and more liquid is put in via gravity. It is thus cyclic in operation.
Effect: any liquid that gets filtered through this object becomes highly refined and pure.
Annette instinctively held her hand to her mouth where the hot butter had burned her, and muttered to herself, "I hate it when that happens."
She then turned to look behind her at what appeared to be the weirdest looking spherical keg-like machine part ever, at least to her eyes. She hadn't seen anything like this before.. But here was the problem-- It looked heavy as hell and she doubted that Danny would be able to move this thing on her own.
And, what the hell were they gonna do with it?
She sighed loudly. Well, whatever… she could deal with it later. First, she had pancakes to make.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Turned out that she needn't have worried about the… acid egg thing. Which by the way, was a really weird name for a piece of machinery. Clarence's eyes lit up the moment he saw it, and he seemed to know what it was used for.
It was completely perfect for his needs, he said, and more so once he found the perfect headquarters for their cape group. He was planning to build some things inside there, and having a montejus aka Acid Egg was one of the parts he needed for that.
So he was pretty giddy when Annette simply shrugged her shoulders and said he could have it as seeing she didn't have any uses for it currently.
She didn't know how the hell he planned to carry that thing out of here though. But as long as it was no longer her problem she didn't care.
But for now, it was time for her to go back to work.
Which meant taking the bus again, as seeing her car had been so totaled that it couldn't even be fixed, according to the mechanic. And they couldn't afford to buy another car just yet. Joy.
She hated taking the bus, as seeing it always had a odd musty smell alongside the smell of other passengers… but it was a necessary evil, so to speak.
So here she was, riding the bus down to Brockton University.
She was looking out the bus windows at the city scenery, when Squealer's vehicle passed by the bus. Without realizing it, her hands tightly gripped into her Bus chair's rests. She found herself breathing heavily…
Oh yeah. Squealer had been responsible for her trigger, hadn't she? Ramming her car off the road and then leaving her there to be trapped…
Annette hadn't still forgiven Squealer for that, and she wasn't sure she wanted to.
The bus pulled up to a red light, and stopped there. It appeared that Squealer was actually obeying the traffic laws for once, and was next to the bus waiting for the red light to turn green.
She scowled slightly. That bitch really should be in jail, where she belonged. She then wondered if she could pull something, see if her power could inconvenience Squealer in some way…
She then prayed to her power, asking it to give Squealer some Karmic payback without outing Annette as a parahuman…
>Ding<
Roll 29--Microcar. Article on small and tiny cars.
Effect: Normally, this would just summon a vehicle. But because Annette asked RNGJesus so nicely and the fact it seemed to be in a good mood, It instead permanently turned Squealer's vehicle into a Microcar. And one that cannot be destroyed or altered in any way at all. Every time Squealer tries to change or alter it in any way, it will revert back to its original look and size.
Annette couldn't help but let out a hysterical laugh when she saw that Squealer's massive armored car had suddenly turned into a bright red car so small, that it might as well have been a clown car. And from here she could hear Squealer cussing up a storm as she tried to find out what the hell happened.
And. it appeared as if she had been carrying a lot of items inside her car, which were now making everything even more cramped inside there for her.
Annette giggled again, and silently gave her power a big "thank you!"
God, what a way to cheer herself up for the rest of the day. She was sure she wouldn't stop giggling for the rest of the day every time she thought of Squealer stuck in that tiny red car."Well, what do you think?" Clarence Birdseye cheerfully said as he gave us the tour of what was an seemingly abandoned warehouse near the shoreline in the docks.
"It seems that the company who owns it has been looking to get rid of this property for a long time, but they never had any takers until now. If we play our cards right, we'll be able to get this land for very cheap…" The 25-year-old man was saying, as he gestured at things around himself.
"I'm still unsure over why we should do this in the first place. Most of those warehouses were effectively abandoned in the eyes of the law a long time ago so we'd be able to legally squat in one without having to buy out the property." Danny pointed out.
"Ah, but that also runs the risk of other gangs coming in and just taking over the warehouse for themselves. If we don't own anything, then we can't even legally drive them out then? So if we buy out the property, then we have the laws on our side. We can have the law come in and tell them that they're trespassing. And, land ownership over a warehouse like this one also nets us other benefits as well..." Clarence replied.
"You do have a point… but wouldn't buying this under our own names out us as capes?" Annette asked.
"Ah, instead of doing that we could buy that under our cape group name. I've been brushing up on parahuman laws as well as the normal property laws in this world… and it turns out that we can do that." Clarence Birdseye answered.
As Clarence and Danny started to debate the pros and cons of legally owning land like this one, Annette felt the itch again.
She absentmindedly pulled at it as she wandered around looking at the insides of this warehouse.
>Ding<
Roll 3--Universal destination of goods. An idea in Catholic theology, by which the Catholic Church professes that the goods of creation are destined for humankind as a whole, but also recognizes the individual right to private property. In addition, political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good.
For three hours, Annette has divine ownership of the entire block she's standing in. Everyone who steps into this land will simply know right away that everything here was divinely mandated by the Catholic God, that everything belongs to her.
Huh? That was… interesting? Too bad that only lasted three hours, it would've been interesting to see everyone's reactions as they realized that everything here was given to her by God.
>Ding<
Roll 4-- Counter-mapping. Counter-mapping refers to efforts to map "against dominant power structures, to further seemingly progressive goals". This refers to contesting any corporate or government use of the land as others had already laid claim to it, securing that the resources of the land is not stolen from under their noses.
Annette now can legally seize any land she desires, but only for four hours.
Annette rolled her eyes. Okay, that one was just useless. Besides she had no intention to play the role of a conquering warlord.
>Ding<
Roll 11-- Piping Plover. A type of sea bird in North America and Canada. A small sand-colored, sparrow-sized shorebird that nests and feeds along coastal sand and gravel beaches in North America. The adult has yellow-orange-red legs, a black band across the forehead from eye to eye, and a black stripe running along the breast line. This chest band is usually thicker in males during the breeding season, and it is the only reliable way to tell the sexes apart. The bird is difficult to see when it is standing still, as it blends well with open, sandy beach habitats. It typically runs in short spurts and stops.
Summons a small flock of normal, healthy Plovers.
Annette jerked backwards as the birds made a loud pee-werp-ing noise confusedly, as they found themselves in a strange place instead of the familiar candian shorelines where they usually lived.
That was when she realized that both Clarence and Danny were staring at her.
Feigning a nonchalant attitude, Annette just stared back. "yes?"
"How long does that… uh, Divine ownership thing last?" Clarence wondered.
"Only three hours."
The man seemed disappointed in that. "Ah, too bad. Would've been nice to legally get this land for free… see if you can get anything like that again, but permanently?"
Annette thought about telling the man that it didn't quite work like that, and that if she tried to force it too much her powers tended to become really contrary and give her what she didn't want at all.
But instead, she just nodded and kept on pulling.
>Ding<
Roll 9-- Pinge. the name given in German-speaking Europe to a wedge-, ditch- or funnel-shaped depression in the terrain caused by mining activity.This depression or sink-hole is frequently caused by the collapse of old underground mine workings that are close to the Earth's surface.
Effect: causes a sinkhole under the building. Sinkhole will disappear after nine hours, leaving behind a level ground.
Everyone screamed as the ground started collapsing, and they all ran out of there followed by flying panicked birds.
Afterwards Danny, Annette and Clarence just stared at the building from a fair distance away as it started crumbling and collapsing down into what appeared to be a large sinkhole.
"Uh… that effect is only going to last nine hours?" Annette offered up weakly.
Clarence just sighed. "I hope that doesn't affect the price negotiations later on…"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--At the Hebert house--
Good news, it didn't. In fact the shell company who had kept that property for so long was extremely eager to get rid of what they saw as worthless land that they were willing to sell it for only 500 dollars. In any other city, property on the shoreline would've gone up to at least 9,000 to 11,000 dollars, which is what Danny had been worried about. Even with the other members pitching in their money, nobody would've been able to afford that.
But 500 dollars for all rights and ownership to that piece of land? Eh, no problem, that was easily affordable when everyone pitched in for equal shares to that land.
Now the only problem was to think of a good name for their cape group, that they could put down on paperwork…
"The Mavericks?" Mr.Thompson suggested.
"Already taken by another cape group in Texas," Danny sighed as he checked the internet.
"The Gizmo Crew, then?" Mr. Thompson then said.
"Hold on… sorry, there's already a Canadian tinker who goes by Gizmo…" Danny sounded apologetic at this.
"God Darn it, why are all the good names already taken?" the old man grumbled loudly.
"Heroes of Tomorrow, HOT for short!" Clarence put out there.
"The Assemblage?" Taylor threw that out there.
"Tech-fire! That sounds cool right?" Mr. Yamamoto said.
Annette pondered this issue as she wracked her brain for anything that sounded good.
>Ding<
Roll 24--Distributed generation. Also distributed energy, on-site generation (OSG) or district/decentralized energy is electrical generation and storage performed by a variety of small, grid-connected or distribution system connected devices referred to as distributed energy resources (DER).
Everyone in this house now gains the knowledge to create non-tinkertech generators of all types, everything from Solar power to waste-to-energy technology.
Everyone was so focused on the subject of trying to pick a good name for their collective group that they hadn't noticed that they had gained new knowledge all of a sudden.
Danny then perked up. "Juggernauts! That's not a group name that's been taken already far as I know."
Everyone murmured thoughtfully at that.
"Hmm… I like it. Anybody else?" Mr. Yamamoto said.
"I like it too!" Taylor replied.
Mrs.Thompson frowned. "But won't that make people think that we're a group of brutes? I don't want people coming after us thinking that we can take any hard blow. I'd prefer Tech-Fire over that..."
"She does have a point. The name should be reflective of who we are as a group, and that name makes us sound like we're going out to smash up stuff." Annette agreed.
"But aren't we going to do that anyway? We seem to have a serious gang problem after all, and we should be out there busting heads and teaching those hooligans some life lessons." Clarence said.
Annette sighed. He wasn't wrong but… how to put the PR problem forth so that the others would understand the problem better? She fidgeted slightly and--
>Ding<
Roll 18--Bionics. Biologically inspired engineering is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology.
Effect: everyone in the neighborhood now can improve on their existing robotics skill and have the robots move more fluidly as if they were actually human. They also now can make normal prosthetic limbs, and other things such as an artificial human heart for those who need it.
That time, everyone noticed the Roll's effect on them.
Mr. Yamamoto then grinned. "Dunno, at this rate with the way Annette's shoving all this knowledge into our heads we might end up being unstoppable forces of nature… So Juggernauts as a name seem pretty apt to me."
"How about… Automata?" Annette threw out there. "It does indicate that we're a group of Tinkers, and won't make people think that we're out to destroy everything or that we're unstoppable brutes."
Everyone mulled that over, as Danny checked the internet on his phone again and confirmed that it wasn't taken by any other group.
"I vote for Automata." Mrs. Thompson replied brightly.
Clarence nodded thoughtfully. "It'd certainly roll off the tongue easier than Juggernauts do as a company name. We might have an easier time marketing ourselves with that name. Alright, I vote for it too..."
In the end, everyone voted between Juggernauts and Automata, but Automata won out due to the fact that Danny switched his vote despite having come up with the Juggernauts suggestion initially.
Everyone smiled at this, having felt better for coming to a group agreement like this.
Annette then looked at Hideo Yamamoto and said, "Tech-fire does sound like a good cape name though… why don't you take it for yourself?"
Mr. Yamamoto smiled. "You think so?"
Annette nodded at this and--
>Ding<
Roll 15-- Angel Investor. also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor. An individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors usually give support to start-ups at the initial moments (where risks of the start-ups failing are relatively high) and when most investors are not prepared to back.
Effect: Annette and her allies get 1,000 dollars each to help them start up their new company.
Silence overcame them all as they all stared at the small mound of money that had just appeared on the table they had been sitting at.
Finally Taylor said in an awed voice: "Wow, that's a lot of money!"
"Please tell me this isn't going away in a few hours…" Clarence asked.
Annette shook her head. "Nope, it's one of my permanent rolls… apparently our power wants us to use this money to set up our company building quickly?"
At this, everyone at the table started whooping with joy. So much stuff they could get with this kind of money!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And so that was how Annette, her husband Danny and Mr. Yamamoto wound up at the mall in the electronics department.
"This man's starting up a company… so I think we need four to five computers for the new office…" Mr. Yamamoto said as he gestured at Danny, apparently playing up the part of the nerdy IT technician as a part of a weird and unnecessary cover.
Clarence was going back to check on their property to see how much of it they would need to tear down and rebuild into a proper office building.
Annette was looking around the massive electronics store, and noticed a young blonde girl looking at new phone cases with her younger brown-haired friend. Or was she the blonde's sister? The two girls didn't look anything alike but one never knew. But for some reason Annette couldn't help but feel like she should know them somehow.
"Oh, look at this one, Ames! Don't you think that one would go with everything you wear?" the blonde was gesturing wildly at a phone case that she apparently thought was "cute".
"It's okay, I guess.." the girl known as 'Ames' didn't seem too terribly impressed by it.
"The most important thing about fashion? Accessorizing! Without the right accessories, the outfit won't just pull itself together. How are you going to get yourself a boyfriend? I want you to have somebody just like I have Dean!" The blonde girl started ranting about the importance of having a phone case that went with every outfit you had.
Annette quickly lost interest in this, and turned her attention back to Danny and Mr. Yamamoto, who were debating with the sales clerk about the merits of going with a simple computer set up or a more fancy computer equipment for their office needs.
"This bundle also comes with built-in anti-viruses and online security, which is a must for any company office… The last thing you want is for hackers to make off with all your sensitive information." The sales clerk was saying.
This incredibly titillating conversation was interrupted by a loud gunshot. Everyone jerked in both surprise and shock, as they all turned to see where it came from.
A group of men in masks had rushed in, and yelled: "This is a holdup! Collect all the electronics you can and hand them over to us!"
Well, crap.Mr. Yamamoto, Danny and Annette all tensed up slightly as the six robbers came into the building.
Technically, the adults here save for the salesperson were all capes but they couldn't do anything that would out themselves as capes right away. They didn't even have any masks on themselves!
So they dropped down to the floor alongside the frightened sales clerk and decided to play along until they saw an opening to do something.
Annette thought back to all those self-defense classes that she had taken as a young girl, and the fighting lessons that she had learned from Lustrum and the other capes in her role as a henchwoman during college.
It had been a very long while, so she was most likely very rusty in combat, but she pretty much hoped that it would be like riding a bicycle. That is, one never forgot how to do it.
But to her Annette's surprise, the blonde who had been with her friend promptly floated upwards into the air with a mildly glowing yellow aura. The girl stared at the would-be robbers cockily, as if daring them to come after her.
'What the fuck are you doing, going around without a mask?' Annette thought at first, before she realized where she had seen that young girl from. That was Victoria Dallon, of the New Wave group. She had only triggered like a few months ago, during a basketball game. Then she had publicly debuted as Glory Girl.
Apparently, the young lady was an Alexandria package. Could fly, was bulletproof, and so on forth. So that meant that Victoria, no, Glory Girl, could easily take on those regular muggers and win.
Annette relaxed slightly at this. This meant that she wouldn't need to do anything at all… she could just sit back and let the open cape do the job for her.
"Shit, it's one of the New wave bitches!" one of the robbers said, as Glory Girl came flying at them.
Glory Girl managed to knock out two of them but not before the rest of them started shooting at her with automatic weapons.
Her yellow aura flickered slightly as it caught the bullets before disappearing, just in time for another round of bullets to pierce her supposedly impermeable skin.
It would've been kind of comical the way almost everyone had the same shocked expression on their faces, from Glory Girl herself to the robbers to everyone else, if it wasn't for the fact that Glory Girl was now critically injured.
"I… I got Glory girl? I thought she was supposed to be bulletproof?" one of the robbers said, sounding somewhat dazed.
Large gaping holes peppered her body, and blood was gushing out of her chest and mouth. Glory Girl gaped wordlessly at her wounds as she fell to the floor with a loud thudding noise.
"Vicky!!" the brown-haired girl screamed hysterically, as she ran over not even caring about the fact that the robbers were standing there.
"Shit." Annette muttered under her breath as she pulled something hoping to get something that'd help…
>Ding<
Roll 2-- Choreography. The art or practice of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself. A choreographer is one who creates choreographies by practicing the art of choreography, a process known as choreographing. Choreography is used in a variety of fields, including ballet, opera, musical theater, cheerleading, cinematography, gymnastics, fashion shows, ice skating, marching band, show choir, theatre, synchronized swimming, cardistry, video game production, and animated art.
For up to two hours, Annette knows a few various dance moves.
"Shit, grab as much as you can, guys! I'll keep watch over the people here and make sure they don't decide to play hero!" the robber who had dealt the near-fatal blow with his gun yelled, and the rest of the robbers ran around grabbing as much as phones and other electronics as they could find into large shopping carts.
>Ding<
Roll 22--Health risk assessment.
Effect: Annette and all other non-hostiles, (by that I mean personal enemies of Annette's group), in the area now gain a thinker power that can tell whenever a person is at risk of dying from an unhealthy lifestyle or from something else.
Annette wanted to scream out loud in frustration. Her power was so cooperative lately… Why wasn't it doing anything to help the situation??
"No, don't die!" the young brown-haired girl was crying hysterically as she held Victoria Dallon's bleeding body to her own.
…..
[Destination?]
…..
[Agreement]
…..
Annette found herself blacking out for a second and then jerked herself back to wakefulness and pulled on her power again.
>Ding<
Roll 16--Healing.
Effect: Annette and everyone else in the store (save for Amy) now gains a small offshoot of Amy Dallon's shard, seeing that she triggered just now. Although they won't have the full extent of Amy's full bio tinker ability where she grows plants and the like, they all now can heal others from moderate injuries and restore them back to full health. Like Amy, they cannot heal themselves, however.
Annette blinked. Finally, something useful… But it seemed that Amy Dallon was already in the middle of healing her sister now. As it appeared that the wounds seemed to be closing up on their own.
The two robbers that had been knocked out by Glory Girl were finally waking up, as the other three were frantically piling on as much electronic equipment as they could into the carts that they could push without it getting too heavy. The last one who had shot Glory Girl, were still standing around keeping an tense eye on us to make sure we didn't make a move against them.
She pulled again, hoping to get something that would stop the robbers from getting away.
>Ding<
Roll 14--Mixed martial arts clothing.
Summons a normal set of sportswear clothing meant for mixed martial art combat. It's just a normal one, although very unusually sturdy.
She cursed again when some pieces of blue shorts and a top floated downwards out of nowhere. Amazingly enough, the robber keeping an eye out didn't even notice that?
At this point, the robbers were helping the two who had recovered from being knocked unconscious back on their feet and all six of them were getting away.
Times like this, she hated feeling so helpless and being unable to do anything. She knew that she had been trying to force her power to be useful this time, but why did it have to act so contrary now of all times??
As the robbers finally left the store with all of the loot that they had amassed, the sales clerk got up and he rushed towards the nearest phone to call the cops.
~~~~~
~~~
~~
An hour later, they were all driving back home in Danny's pickup truck.
Every one of them had given their witness statements to both the cops and the PRT officials and afterwards they were brooding heavily over the fact that they couldn't do anything at all.
Annette was sitting in the middle of the truck while Danny drove them home, and she was leaning against Danny's shoulder. Mr. Yamamoto was sitting on the far right, with the windows cracked a little open to let in some fresh air.
"Man, it sucked." Hideo finally spoke up. "I know we were just starting out and that we didn't have our armor and weapons with us, but I hated the fact that we couldn't do anything. I didn't feel like I was a superhero at all… instead, I felt like a damn coward!"
Annette nodded. "I know…I feel the same way. And that poor girl triggered because we couldn't do anything at all. I kept on thinking that I could have taken on all six of them if I really wanted to..."
She sighed, and rested her head on the headdress of the truck's seat.
They were all silent for the rest of the ride back to their neighborhood.
They hadn't even gotten the computers they had hoped to get, neither. Maybe another time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It wasn't very long before the others found out about what happened, and the entire incident seemed to lit a fire under the entire group, as they started working on finishing their robots and weapons.
They wanted to be able to go on the offense as fast as possible, and not have a repeat of what happened with Mr.Yamamoto and Danny at the store.
The Thompsons were the first to finish up their robot dog, and they named it Rusty. Apparently, they had modeled it after the last husky dog they had albeit the robot dog was larger than a normal husky dog. It could morph into different modes, such as a hover-board, a submarine mode and a bike mode. It also had a catapult feature on it's back for some reason?
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/005/257/629/large/comfort-love-and-adam-withers-solo-004-rush.jpg?1489683917
Danny and Taylor were still trying to figure out a portable weapon that humans could carry on hand without being outed as an parahuman tinker, and give it various settings so that it wouldn't be so lethal. Ideally, he wanted something like an highly advanced version of a taser gun. Something easy to carry and could be explained away as a normal person having it on hand for self-defense.
Unfortunately, most of the weapons were designed to be built into the large gauntlets that the future robots would wear alongside the oversized boots that held built-in rocket launchers in them that enabled the said robots to jump long distances. In other words, they were weapons for robots to use, not for human use.
Hideo Yamamoto on the other hand, revealed to us the artificial intelligences he was working on…. Which he dubbed "Rock.exe" and "Roll.exe", much to everyone's chagrin.
A Rock'n'roll pun? Really? On Hideo's tablet, the AIs took on the appearance of a pair of young asian twins, a boy and a girl. Well, mostly asian as seeing the girl decided to have bright blonde hair and green eyes for some reason.
He told everyone that the AIs were still in their baby learning stages, but once they were ready they'd be able to do so much good as AIs that could patrol the networks and destroy any viruses they came across.
Clarence on the other hand, only had drafted up some blueprints for some armor that he said would allow him to shoot out a freezing stream that froze everything in his path instantly. He cited the reason that he was still saving up his money and resources first to get themselves a base first.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Speaking of which, Clarence kept on dragging Annette out to the property that they all had brought for some reason. He was just encouraging her to do whatever she wanted with her powers here, and told her that she could take this chance to exercise her body into top-shape fighting form as well.
Annette suspected that Clarence had some ulterior motives for doing so, Maybe even hoping that she would come up with a result that would benefit him or the land itself, but the man refused to explain for fear of "jinxing things".
Oh well, whatever… She wasn't going to complain about having a space where she could let loose for now, without worrying too much about accidentally doing things to the people around herself.
She was also practicing all the combat moves that she had learned in the past as a Lustrum follower, and found herself heavily out of breath. That was it, she needed to get back in shape again before she was combat-ready.
She couldn't believe that she had entertained the thought that she could take on six robbers with automatic weapons when she was this out of shape. Sure, she would've had Danny and Hideo backing her up, but they were squishy human beings and she doubted that Hideo had any combat experience.
She knew that Danny could throw down when he needed to though. But a decade of being parents had made them both overly cautious and out of shape. In hindsight, she really should have insisted that she and Danny keep themselves in shape… but it wasn't like she could've known that something like this would happen.
>ding<
Roll 1--Vamos a la playa (Righeira song). 80's Spanish song that translates to "Let's go to the beach".
Effect: For one hour, the entire property will be transformed into a spanish beachy paradise.
The dirty hard ground turned to sand, and there was a spanish song playing somewhere in the background.
Annette ignored that, and kept on going through the motions as she punched and kicked at the air. She was hoping that though sheer force of will, that she'd magically get back in shape quickly enough to return back to being the badass she used to be in her college days.
She kept on doing this until she ran out of steam, and found herself lying on the ground gasping for breath.
Nearby Clarence just ignored her and kept on working on his blueprints of what looked to be the future base he hoped to build here.
Annette exhaled loudly and--
>ding<
Roll 28--Joseph Gaither Pratt. An American psychologist who specialized in the field of parapsychology. Among his research interests were extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, mediumship and poltergeists.
Effect: Annette summons a man who now can communicate with people's powers, and part of his power set is that he now can give shards therapy and help them with whatever issues they may have. He can even open up a psychic connection between the hosts and the shards, so that hosts themselves may ascertain what's wrong with their own powers should they malfunction. He can also sense whenever somebody is a parahuman, but only if he is looking at them directly.
She sighed loudly. Great, another person she had to deal with right now.
She got up from the ground and greeted her latest summon. "Hey, there. What's your name?"
============================================================
A/N: So yeah, this was my take on Amy Dallon's canon trigger event, where Glory girl, who was only starting out, didn't know yet about how her shield could break down after a hard enough hit and got shot for her troubles.
You see, I was hoping for a roll that would give me funny results, or something powerful enough that could derail canon and have Amy trigger with a completely different and weird power-set. Or even better, give Annette something she could use to fight the robbers with, preventing Amy from triggering at all.
But, because Annette got some shitty rolls she actually ended up getting killed in my first draft of this chapter. All because she thought she could take on six robbers armed with automatic weapons. So, I was forced to rewrite it in a way that she wouldn't fight back against the robbers and instead be a helpless bystander who witnessed Amy Dallon's trigger event.
Of course, I could've just fudged things and discarded those rolls for better ones…. But that'd be cheating and going against my own rules. That would take out the fun of writing fanfic like this one...
But hey, on the bright side? She and two of her team-members got bud offshoots of Amy Dallon's shard, even though they're a little bit limited. Of course this also means that the robbers, Vicky Dallon AND the sales clerk got one too… but I'll take what I can get. This way, Vicky and Amy can be healing buddies together!
This chapter will also serve to remind the Automata Group that they were basically treating having powers as a game all along, and that there are real life consequences to just sitting back and doing nothing. This will motivate them to take the idea of being a superhero far more seriously, and thus driving them to take action when they were mostly passive before.
And hey, looks like we summoned a person who got Taylor's Alt-power from Mauling Snarks...