Psychopomp [Worm]

Casey woke to pain. The dull ache of old injury faded into irrelevance compared to the sharp pain of something (handcuffs?) digging into his wrists. An itch suffused his body, an urge to do something, he just didn't know what. Last he knew, he'd been with friends. And then... the siren. It came back to him in a rush. Leviathan. Rushing to a shelter but... he hadn't made it, he didn't think? Or had he? But no.

He hadn't.

One of his friends had reacted first.

"I've got to get to my family!" Chris said. His eyes were wide and frantic but Casey saw something else there, too. Resolve, maybe? Or perhaps a simple acceptance. He hadn't felt it then, he couldn't, but if he met him again?

The rest of the group started to the nearest shelter. They hadn't made it in time and... images came to his mind, but he suppressed it. Now wasn't the time. Now he needed to figure out what had happened. And figure out what that infernal itch was!

He opened his eyes and almost wished he hadn't. The room was windowless, a water heater nestled into a corner, and a dinginess to it that suggested a basement. He wasn't alone. Two others, both young women, were in the room alongside him. They didn't look much better than he felt. It also made him realize something.

Casey had a small frame for a teenage boy. For a girl his age, though? His 5'4 was about right. He also kept his hair long, and it had a bit of natural curl to it. More than once, his girl friends (not to be confused with girlfriends) had expressed jealousy about that. Had he been mistaken for a girl? It wouldn't have been the first time.

An immense shadow in the distance, three eyes with an ominous green glow, a wave of water approaching in the distance. Others, like him, not able to reach a shelter in time. In that moment he saw. And then he forgot, like all the rest, except he remembers that he forgot. Forgot what? He didn't know.

Briefly, he is reminded again. And then it is gone again. And then Casey noticed. He could feel someone above him, like a pressure behind his eyes, a sense of something. He is reminded of a slip and slide, playing with his friends, laughing and enjoying themselves. Of a skating rink, of slipping on ice, of an escalator. He doesn't know why he feels these things. He just does.

He still felt the itch. When he had felt the... thing, somewhere above him, the itch had grown. Stronger and stronger, a desire to do something, something to scratch that itch.

The capes died. Before the sea incarnate, before Leviathan, resistance seemed meaningless. He did not yet know that this would be a 'good day.' That only one in four capes fell, Brockton Bay spared, an early warning allowing most people to get to the shelters, had spared the worst. He only knew the futility. And the pleasure. A cape died, and he felt it, something entering into him. A surge of pleasure, involuntary, and the itch briefly fades.

Oh shit, Casey realized. He was a cape. And he had one way to scratch that itch. He didn't have to kill them himself, no. He just had to be near them. How near? He didn't know. But near. But he also realized somethinge else. He could do something. Create a tool, after a fashion, and enable his escape. He had the requisite materials. After all, hadn't he collected it, on the battlefield? The only questions were, what did he have, and what did he make?

[] PACKAGE SHAPER (Gain ten motes. Gain the KEYWORDS: STRIKER, BRUTE, CHANGER, TRUMP, REGEN, CRAFT, FIRE, FLESH, CONTROL. Gain: An End to Misery)
[] PACKAGE INSIGHT (Gain ten motes. Gain the KEYWORDS: THINKER, MASTER, STRANGER, INSIGHT, PREDICTION, FUTURE, PAST, PRESENT, STRATEGY. Gain: A Severed Connection)
[] PACKAGE FRAGILE (Gain ten motes. Gain the KEYWORDS: BRUTE, SHAKER, MOVER, AURA, SHIELD, BLASTER, FLIGHT, FEAR, AWE. Gain: A Horror Show)

Casey Ward (Protean)

Age 18

Motes: 0 (25)

Casey didn't understand what he was doing. He just knew he had a spot, at the back of his mind, that had collected... something. He couldn't put it into words, not precisely, but he could get a general idea. With each of the things that he touched, he felt something. A sense of what they were, not as little packets of information, but in sensation.

He counted nine of them. He reached towards the first.

The feeling of flesh against flesh, transmitting commands, granting of gifts, shaping of flesh.
My Victor/my Victoria!
The second felt simpler. Solid, immovable, strong. And on he went, down the list. He reached for the ones that felt the most useful to his current situation.

First, the one that felt strong. He needed to break these cuffs somehow, and then manage to escape from wherever he was. He didn't want to fight but he could still feel that thing above him. If it came to a fight... well, being strong seemed like a good thing to Casey. After that he tossed in something else, something that felt shifty to him, like molding clay in art class. Now it wasn't even him making the decisions, something inside him knew what it wanted, and he gave control to his power.

A dash of something that felt fundamental, more real than the rest. Some chicken soup. And lastly... barbecue? Why did his power thinks these things would help, or whatever they represented, and was he wrong to just give control like that?

And then he understood the power.

Casey's muscles swelled and then streamlined again, did so again, and then again. The end result was explosive power several fold greater than before, significantly greater endurance, and a fairly rapid regenerative factor. More than that, his blood had been replaced by some sort of substance that ignited upon exiting his body. This would normally be a problem for him, but his own physiology would not be burnt by... most things. He didn't want to stand in the sun or something, but he wouldn't hurt himself. He had some limited control of this, though he wouldn't have much of it, nor of the fire is spread unless he... added something?

And lastly, his body would adapt to resist anything that struck him. Especially other powers.

Yeah, he thought to himself. I can work with this.

The handcuffs binding him were fairly easy to break. They had dug into his skin and he was bleeding on them. With a flex of will, the blood traveled along the cuff and down the chain. They wouldn't melt, not really, but it didn't take long for the cuffs to lose much of their strength. He simply pulled his hands apart and with a loud crack the cuffs broke from him. He still had the bracelets--digging uncomfortably into his skin--but he could figure that out later.

Now he needed to escape... and hopefully help his other two prisoners. Both of them were still unconscious, he noted. Did his power wake him up before them, maybe?

It doesn't matter, he decided. He can call the police and PRT after his escape. Besides, his new power seemed almost designed to cause collateral damage. Any injury had a chance of hurting not only his attacker, but anyone else in the area too. And that's before he thought about the possible fires.

The basement room he had been stashed in was small. Just enough room for a water heater, a pair of laundry machines, and apparently prisoners. The staircase only took a few steps to reach and he started up it. It was a rickety old thing, with rotting wood, and he briefly wondered how a step hadn't broken when they brought him down.

Casey opens the door prepared to face down whatever kidnappers he finds. He... is not especially impressed with their readiness.

You seem to have caught them in the middle of a party, of sorts. Men and women alike are in various states of intoxication, inebriation, and unclothed status. One man seems to be the center of it all, garbed in a shitty cape with a half-mask covering the top of his face. You don't really recognize him, he's probably one of the local small timers. Brockton Bay had a shit ton of them, after all. What's more important is the itch.

It fills you.

What do you do?

[] He's a Brute. Be a Brute. Wade into them, let their attacks do nothing, and handle this cape. Casey doesn't know his power but if he hasn't heard of him, it can't be that dangerous, can it? Casey is confident this is the only other cape present.
-[] Kill the cape. It might get the PRT on Casey's ass, but he thinks it can be spun as self-defense. After all, this cape was clearly up to some deeply not okay shit.
-[] Spare him. Casey isn't sure if he can bring himself to kill, and the attention it will bring. Besides, he understand he can satiate his power in other ways, even if the payoff isn't as guaranteed.

[] ...they aren't really paying attention to him. Just slip out and call the PRT and police. They'll handle things from there.