RP Who Runs The World?

[Katpride]

Griffonage wasn’t really sure what to call the creature that was currently responsible for shutting down the boardwalk. It was hard to put words to. From her perch - atop one of the trendy clothing shops that seemed to spread, mold-like, over every halfway respectable boardwalk and well past the still-assembling police barricade - she could see that the creature seemed to be covered in some kind of vivid green goo, and that it was about the size of a person, perhaps on the taller side, and that it was not a bear.

She wasn’t sure who had first called it a bear, but whoever they were, they were probably even more confused than she was. And she was pretty confused. But even so, although Griffonage had never seen a bear outside of the zoo, she was definitely, 100% sure that bears did not ooze green goo. And it was oozing, pretty continuously from what she could tell, because despite the slimy trail it left in its wake the shroud of slime around it never seemed to lessen in volume. At least it was slow, she thought, watching as it made its way past a storefront and around a standing sign.

Or, uh, scratch that. It didn’t go around the sign. It went through the sign, schlorping the whole thing into itself. There was a brief flash of light within the creature, and when it continued moving the sign was nowhere to be found.

“Huh.” Alright, that was kind of cool. But she should still probably stop the thing before it made its way to… wherever it was going. Maybe she could corral it, and then hand it over to the police. If they had some kind of containment cell that was capable of holding a weird slime monster, that was. That seemed like the sort of thing that the police should have, right?

Right. But first, she had to do the corralling. Getting to her feet, Griffonage took out her slingshot, shaking one of her water balloons to activate the chemicals within. Carefully, she lined up her shot, then released the band, rocketing the balloon out to splatter at the indistinct feet of the creature. There. That should-

A lot of things happened, when her balloon hit the creature. First, there was an explosion of foam, swallowing up the legs of the slime monster in one big burst. Second, the slime monster, for the first time in the several minutes she’d spent observing it, stopped moving forward. And, see, these things would totally be a victory in her book, if the third thing hadn’t been the creature snapping its head around to stare directly at her, vivid pink eyes glowing against the green of what she was rapidly realizing was not, in fact, a covering of goo, but the creature’s whole green slime body.

Griffonage was already backpedaling when the creature’s arm snapped out, pointing at her, and the sign from earlier made a dramatic reappearance in the form of being ejected with considerable speed in her direction.

“Eep!” Throwing herself against the roof was definitely better than being brained by an advertisement, so that’s exactly what she did, landing forearms-first on the wavy metal roofing. Chancing a glance at the creature showed that it was absorbing the foam she’d thrown at it, now, and already dragging its arm down to point at her new position.

Welp. This might not have been her best plan.

 

[illirica]

"Are you ready for this?"

Truthfully, Tavy Piper wasn't sure. There were a lot of things that could go wrong, and there was almost certain to be something that went wrong. No matter how good the plan was, or how much effort had gone into preparation, something would always happen to get things off of the script, and then she'd have to wing it - on her own.

Of course, that wasn't the answer that she needed to give right now, because right now they were definitely still on script, and the next line was one she knew by heart; she'd practiced it over and over, until it was perfect: "Yes, mom."

She'd delivered it with the expected degree of confidence: enough, but not too much, because overconfidence was almost as bad as a lack of confidence. Strong, but thoughtful. Still, it didn't work quite how she expected it to be, because the next line wasn't Good or even As I expected, it was: "Are you sure?"

Tavy scrambled to find a good response for that on the script, but fortunately her momentary lapse was seen as waiting and not failing, because the explanation came only a moment later: "This is an important project for me, Octavia, so if you don't think you can do it, you need to tell me so that I can find someone else who will be able to succeed. I want to help you succeed as well, but I can't risk my career for a mistake. You know that would set us both back, so I need you to be sure."

Oh, of course. They were on that script. At least Tavy knew what to say in response to that one. She straightened her shoulders, relaxing her arms to make the tension leave them, and gave a nod - one, single but firm. "I'm ready, Mom. I've practiced and I've prepared. I'm sure I can do it. I know you could find someone else, but I also know you think I'm the best candidate. I don't want to disappoint you."

Just because it was true doesn't mean it was going to be easy. Her mom's company - Superlative Solutions - had gone out of their way to bring Tavy on as an intern, which was a huge honor when she was still only fifteen. The company focused on all sorts of things, but the project Tavy was assigned to had to do with superpowers and what to do about things like that. The company wanted to bring in people with potential and help them develop their skills in a working environment, but so many of the young people with powers kept them hidden. It was a world of aliases and never knowing quite who people were, and if the company couldn't find then, then the company couldn't help them reach their potential.

That was why the company had started the project Tavy was on, designed to work on exactly that issue from the other side of things. Teenage superheroes didn't often trust strange adults - and usually there were very good reasons for that - but someone like them would be much easier to befriend. That was what the project manager said, anyway. That was why Tavy's job was to find other teen heroes, then find out who they were - who they really were - and then pass along the information to the company, so that Superlative Solutions could make sure everyone was properly prepared and placed in a position where they could do the most good.

Tavy's answer had passed the script along to the next section, the one where her mom placed a hand on her shoulder and looked her up and down. Or, at least, down. There wasn't much up involved. Tavy had once held out hope that she would grow a few more inches, but apparently her grandma's Chinese genes were not going to allow it.

"Are you sure about this... outfit?"

Tavy nodded. She was very sure about the outfit. It wasn't much of an outfit, but that was one of the biggest points. She was a teenage superhero, and if her job was to get other teenage superheroes to trust her, then she couldn't be walking around looking like she had the backing of an entire company. She needed to look like her outfit was something that she'd put together from what was in her closet and what she could find at the thrift shop. The pants were nicer than thrift-shop pants, but presentability was important, and plenty of teens had a pair of good black slacks, even if they only wore them for orchestra concerts. The boots were definitely thrift shop material, black but slightly scuffed, but from Tavy's perspective that just made it easier to get to the steel in the toes, which might be important. The mask was wrought iron and looked like it had once been part of a fancy fence, before she had co-opted it to hide her face. And the shirt...

"Are you sure you want to wear that shirt?"

"I like this shirt." The shirt was Tavy's favorite part of the outfit. It was a bright red qipao, with little tiny sprigs of cherry blossom flowers embroidered in black and gold. It was her favorite shirt, and it wasn't like she could wear it to school without the other kids calling her weird. "Grandma gave me this shirt."

Maybe there was a little bit of a challenge there. Tavy got along with her grandma a lot better than her mom did. It was probably a mother/daughter thing, unless it was a child-of-immigrant thing. Tavy, very specifically, did not go there. Her mom mostly tried to ignore her own heritage, but at least she didn't mind Tavy picking it up. The shirt, though, that was non-negotiable.

Tavy switched the script over to the cheerful smile variant, because sometimes that worked. "It's okay, mom. It's the sort of thing that'll fit in. It looks like I picked it to stand out, which is exactly what everyone else is going to be doing." She'd paid attention to the presentations. That had been important. "I know I can do this."

"Of course you can." That was what was expected, after all. Still, even if it was an expectation, it still had the same sound as praise, so Octavia brightened a little bit, feeling more prepared than she had a minute before.

That Was Then...

...This Is Now

The green goo monster was proceeding along the street when Transformer arrived on the scene. She wasn't the first one there - that honor went to a girl in a brightly paint-spattered outfit. Transformer was glad she was here - the Paint Hero was one of the ones that Superlative Solutions had their eye on. She had appeared a few times before, though without leaving any clue to her identity other than hints that she was probably somewhere around Transformer's own age - an ideal candidate for the program.

Transformer had been specifically directed not to be the first one there, but it also wouldn't be good if she was the last one to arrive. She had to time things carefully, so that she could help without attracting too much attention. The goo monster approached a stop sign, passing through it as expected, and-

-there went the stop sign.

Transformer waited for half a moment for it to reappear like it was supposed to, maybe hurled into a building or something, but... no. It had just eaten the stop sign. Or... absorbed it, or glooped it or... something. But there wasn't a stop sign, and Transformer had definitely been counting on there being a stop sign there.

Stop signs were metal, after all. The thing wasn't supposed to be able to just absorb metal. That was going to be a big problem. That was definitely going off script. She'd just have to... wing it.

Okay. She could do this. The Paint Hero was quicker on the draw, throwing some of her balloons of goop (not goo, the p was important here) at the creature, which... didn't stop, but definitely noticed.

Oh, there was the stop sign. It clanged on the metal roof, and thankfully did not impale the Paint Hero, because that definitely would have changed the script. So, the next line was going to be making sure the goo monster didn't throw those balloons back. Maybe the Paint Hero was immune, but Transformer couldn't take that risk, and also, she wasn't supposed to know much about them.

Not that she actually did, it was just that she probably knew more than was expected.

"Look out!" It was not a good opening line, because the Paint Hero was already looking out, but it wasn't supposed to be a good line, because Transformer was supposed to be new at this. That part was easy, because all of Transformer's experience so far had been under controlled conditions in practice, not out here where the script was always going off in different directions. But Look out didn't really mean look out, here, it just meant hey, I'm here too - an announcement that someone else was also on the scene, even if that someone else was Transformer, who no one knew about.

That was fine. This area had been chosen specifically for the stop signs and the metal roofs on the buildings. Transformer jumped up, catching the edge of the roof with her fingertips, making the contact she needed to start the whole thing rippling, warping, bringing up a section of it between the Paint Hero and the goo monster so that - hopefully - whatever it threw at her would splatter on the shield and not on the superhero. Transformer pulled a bit of the roof downward towards her as well, enough to make sort of a crude ladder - it was more like a pole with some lumpy bits that worked as steps - but it meant she could get on the roof too, where she'd be surrounded by metal and next to someone who, hopefully, could follow a script.

 

[UmbraSight]

Sometimes you just happen to be in the right place at the right time when you’re needed! Why Chio had been down on the Boardwalk to do a bit of shopping, and maybe a little snacking. There was a place halfway down the beach that always smelled delightfully garlicky, she had no idea what food was actually served there but it smelled good whenever she passed it so it had to be something good! Before she could properly scope the place out however, there came a rush of people sprinting past escaping some sort of confusion up the street, which is usually a bad sign. Did stampedes ever happen because of a good reason?

That certainly didn’t matter.

Instead of continuing to worry about the differing causes of stampedes, because who wanted to think about that anyway, Chio jogged her way back up the boardwalk against the flow of the crowd. Doing this until the crowd began to thin rather helpfully got her to the sight of a mass of… gelatin? goo? glorp? Was glorp more of a sound or… and a helpfully placed clothing store! That was certainly also in the right place at the right time so Chio ducked her way inside, giving a cheerful wave to the lady cowering behind the counter as she jogged her way to the back of the shop.

“You should go out the back!” Chio called over her shoulder as she ducked between the racks of the summer’s latest fashion. That red top she just passed would be so cute, maybe the place would still be open once she dealt with the goo! With a hum Chio passed through into the changing room and ducked into the first stall, removing a tightly folded puck of cloth from her pocket.

The outfit itself was complicated, the base just a frilly dress she had happened to be wearing when she had tripped a man who had snatched a purse with a tug of fabric as he passed. She had added some embellishments since then, a patch of embroidered cloth along her side, a long ribbon around her waist as others coiled themselves around her arms and legs. Honestly it would have been a real pain to put on in a hurry if the outfit didn’t do most of the work all on its own sliding into place and smoothing its own wrinkles out. It wouldn’t do at all to be a wrinkly hero would it? That seemed all unherolike!

Entwine bounced her way out of the changing room, sliding her little mask into place on her nose. A final finishing touch to bring the whole ensemble together! The lady behind the counter was not behind the counter anymore as Entwine returned to the front door of the store and slid neatly outside. The goo seemed to be focused on a pair who were up on the roof, which was more awareness than Entwine ever thought that goo would have! She thought it just liked to ooze around, but this one seemed to be pointing which was probably nothing good. And if something doesn’t seem good then she should certainly do something about it!

Ribbon unwound itself from around her left arm, spinning around Entwine and hanging lazily in the air. The girl flicked her wrist and the ribbon snapped forward towards the extended… arm? Foot? Pseudopodia? Was that last one a real word? The ribbon hooked its way around the whatever it was the goo was pointing and with a twitch of her fingers Entwine tried to pull it off aim.

 

[HighVoltage]

Erin was not having a good day.

She’d been running on empty when she returned to the garage last night, in both senses of the word, and knew that it would most likely be a rough morning. She had been stockpiled up on luck earlier that night, heading home and looking forward to a solid night’s rest. Unfortunately, her luck had changed on the train back home. Someone had gotten on a few stops after her who had been completely tapped out, and Erin couldn’t help but discretely give him a little from her stockpile. It was pretty easy, she didn’t even have to move from her seat. Then she noticed another person who was looking pretty low, and another, and another. By the time she’d reached her stop Erin had given pretty much all her luck away. Knowing the immensity of the crash that was coming, she’d decided to just suck it up, have a quick dinner, and then pass out.

A solid ten hours of sleep later and Erin blearily opened her eyes to an angry sun and angry voices. Not angry at her, although that wasn’t uncommon when she woke up somewhere new, but just angry in general. Trying to figure out her surroundings after waking up was like the world’s shittiest game of Geoguessr. She dimly took in the red brick that made up most of the buildings in her immediate vicinity. Combine that with the generally disgruntled vibe of the people and Erin figured she was probably in Boston, or Massachusetts at the very least. Well, that plus the fact that she could see the pink and orange of at least three Dunkin’ Donuts without leaving the alley that her powers had seen fit to tuck her into.

Getting back had been a pain. Siphoning enough luck to jump to the next major city was annoying on its own, but daisy-chaining that across the entire country was fucking annoying. Plus, she had time zones to deal with! Her hair was a mess, she was still in yesterday’s clothes, and she still had to curl her hair and do her makeup. She was already running the principal’s goodwill fund dry, and Erin had been informed that one more unexcused absence or “significant tardiness” would result in a meeting between the truant officer and her parents.

Obviously that would cause a lot more problems than it would solve, so she needed to get back like, an hour ago. Or ideally not have woken up in an alley neck-deep in Red Sox country. Luckily she wasn’t wearing any of her Dodger gear or she’d probably have been shanked before she even woke up. Regardless, Erin made the trip back in a little under half an hour, which wasn’t quite as fast as she was hoping. She began racing around as soon as she got back to the garage, scarfing down a yogurt for breakfast as she made sure all her makeup supplies were ready. It wasn’t until she checked the weather report that she realized what she’d forgotten.

There was no school today. It was the weekend.

Once Erin had overcome the shame of panicking about school on one of her precious days off (and gotten an additional three hours of sleep with no teleporting) she’d had to figure out what to do with it. Homework was out of the question, that was a Sunday problem. With such a nice day, she decided it might be nice to go out to the boardwalk. Erin had plenty of quarters tucked away (seriously, she was a loose change magnet), and what better way to spend a nice day like this than hunched over in the dark with your face a foot away from a screen?

At first, she’d thought the loud noises were just people exclaiming at how good she was doing in DDR. Erin wasn’t the kind of freak who could play doubles by herself, but she thought she was pretty good at singles. It wasn’t until the song stopped that she realized she did not, in fact, have an adoring audience, and instead those were concerned people sounds that usually meant something was up. A quick peek outside the arcade aaaaaand yep something bad was happening. Of course, things could never be easy on her day off.

Luckily, the sudden emptiness of the arcade meant there was nobody else in the bathroom as Erin immediately turned on the sink, wetting her hands and running them through her hair. Bye bye curls, it was nice knowing you. A vigorous scrub with some makeup wipes and all that beautiful makeup was safely in the trash. She quickly finished changing and tucked her backpack somewhere safe, adjusting the glasses on her face as Fortuna took a step out of the arcade and appeared further down the boardwalk, right at the edge of the swarm of onlookers. It was easy enough to skim a little luck off the top until her reserves were downright bursting. Gods she’d forgotten how good it felt to be running hot.

Teleporting back past the barricade, Fortuna stopped by a few stalls to grab some things that caught her eye. Hey, the police were busy keeping people away from whatever the hell it was, so they wouldn’t notice a few missing trinkets. Oooh, sweet bat. She was definitely taking that, even if it was only for a little bit. Having collected her payment for heroic services rendered, Fortuna teleported onto the roof of one of the buildings, looking around for whatever may have caused the scene. A loud clang drew her attention, and she saw a handful of other figures. Seems like everyone else had arrived while she’d been busy gathering supplies. Fashionably late, that was her.

She took a closer look at the other girls in the moment she had. One was lying flat on the roof, absolutely rocking some tie-dyed pants. The other was in a bright red top (oh dear, hopefully red shirt rules didn’t exist for heroes) and climbing to said roof, and then the third as all frills and ribbons. Damn, she felt a little underdressed. But it was fine, because the thing that had caused all the panic was in view.

Wait that was it?

She’d expected like, a monster or something, not a guy covered in green slime. Or, was it made of slime? Whatever it was or was not made of, Fortuna stepped off the roof and reappeared a little ways behind the emerald figure, standing just to the side of his slimy wake. She eyed it warily, wondering at how badly it could stain. Brandishing a bat in one hand, Fortuna reached into her bag and pulled out one of her pilfered prizes: one of those fugly spherical stuffed animals that was too stiff and small to be comfortably cuddled and had those big plastic eyes that just stared into your soul.

“Hey guys!” Fortuna called out cheerily. “Sorry I'm late. What's up?” This hopefully also drew Mr. Goo’s attention as she tossed the ill-fated stuffie in the air, gripped her bat with practiced ease, and channeled just a bit of luck into her swing, making contact and sending that ugly little bastard rocketing toward that thing’s head.

 

[Katpride]

Freezing was probably the worst evolutionary development, ever. Griffonage gave it zero stars, because while it was maybe kind of helpful to stare at the goo monster, mind whirling as she tried to calculate how fast it was able to launch things, it would’ve been much, much more helpful to get her butt in gear and get out of the way of its pointed finger. Was it a finger? Did this thing even have-

Move, Griff! Shaking out of her science-daze, the paint heroine planted her hands on the roof, ready to scramble out of the way of the incoming foam barrage.

A voice caught her attention just as she got a foot under herself, and Griffonage immediately glanced over. (Which was kind of dumb, yeah, but on the off chance that it was another, more talkative goo monster or an endangered civilian then she needed to know, darn it!)

Luckily, the voice did not belong to a goo monster, but to a girl wearing a dark mask. That was all that Griff caught before her attention was drawn away by a loud clang right in her ear. She flinched, but instead of earning a few bruises for her distraction she could see that there was now a slightly dented wall between her and the monster. A… really… familiar-looking wall… hang on, that was the roof! It was all bendy-twisty, now, though, curving up like some kind of skate ramp for birds. Wow. That was super cool!

“Thank you!” she called to the girl, taking her time to get into a proper kneel behind her new shield. There were a few more clangs, with corresponding crackle-pops as the foam burst into bits on impact, and then a curious kind of splat that had Griffonage peeking over the barricade against her better judgement, a new balloon at the ready in her slingshot.

Well, good news: the goo creature was no longer pointing at her. Uncertainly aligned news: this was because the creature seemed to be missing that hand, now. It seemed kind of perturbed (maybe? It was hard to read emotions on a relatively formless blob) by this development, holding the stump of its arm up for inspection. The goo that used to be its hand was splattered on the ground at its feet, along with some slimed strips of fabric. Her lovingly synthesized foam-splosion was, notably, no longer occupying that space.

Even as she watched, the creature tilted its head to the side, and the slime of its arm started to bubble, splitting and twisting in a way that implied really interesting things about its molecular structure. Before it could do whatever it was doing, though, it took a unicorn to the face.

And then it, uh, didn’t have a face. Or a head.

“Uh, nice shot?” Griffonage said after a moment, getting to her feet. Was it… dead? It was still standing, though, despite the new puddle of goo on the ground and the distinct lack of a head. Maybe it was… sleeeeeping? No, that sounded wrong the second she thought it.

As though eager to disprove her hypothesis, the creature twitched, raising its arms again. Griffonage twitched, too, raising her slingshot and firing the balloon in a hair-trigger instinct she didn’t know she had. If she’d thought about it for more than a second she would’ve remembered what had happened the last time someone tried to fire at this thing, but, well, it wasn’t her smartest moment, okay?

“Oh, shoot, watch out!” The balloon hit the goo-body of the goo-monster, and passed right through it, barely slowing as it flew towards Fortuna along with another spray of slime. Almost at the same time, the creature was taking a step forward, reconnecting with the slime it had lost from its hand. When it did, there was that flash of light again, and the thing started pulling the ribbon into itself, glowing with a sustained light where the ribbon met its body.

There was something missing, though. Because there was no way that was all of the- okay, yep, there was the rest of her foam. With one arm pointed up at the roof, and one pointed down at the girl in the very pretty dress, the creature was laying down a covering fire of little bits of foam as it took measured steps towards its head-splatter.

Griffonage ducked back behind the roof-ramp-shield, one hand pressed to her masked face in acute embarrassment. Okay, no more foam! She was putting the slingshot away! She’d just have to come up with something else to hit the slime monster with.

 

[UmbraSight]

“Ooop,” Entwine said as the ribbon sliced far easier through the goo than she had expected. Which why hadn’t she expected this, a goo man would probably be a jiggly as jam wouldn’t it? Well, not that she wanted to spread this thing on toast but it was the principle of the thing! Wait, that didn’t make any sense — Entwine hopped backwards as the blob on the top of the goo exploded into even more goo. Did this thing’s skin work like an amoeba’s cell membrane where you had to keep poking holes in it until it failed?

Getting distracted by bio 101 thoughts while standing next to an angry pile of goo was likely a bad idea given that it reached out and gooped over her ribbons before she could tug them back. She did teeter forward as the ribbons were pulled by the goo, her left arm held out in front of her and her fingers flexing as she tried to pull herself free. Entwine also released a rather surprised little squeak as the goo pointed a new goo arm at her, shotgunning a flurry of foam in her direction.

She raised her right arm, two new lines of ribbon unfurling themselves and spinning in an attempt to intercept as much of the foam as it could before it could reach her.





“Hey! That’s so rude!” Entwine called out to the blob of goo.