Psychopomp [Worm]

Casey thought about it for a long minute. This shithead had picked him from the battlefield, likely while the fight was going on. Whoever he was, he clearly hadn't contributed much to the defense of the city, and he'd used the opportunity to... yeah. He didn't know if it was the relentless itch driving him, the need to claim more for himself, or if maybe he'd always had some part of him willing to do this.

This cape was going to die tonight.

Casey strode forward, small drips of blood falling from where the cuffs still dig into his wrists. His flesh regenerated and broke on the steel again and again, the strange ichor his blood had become eating away at the cuff. He expected it would fall apart on its own soon enough.

The fuckers didn't even do this right. Who cuffs a person that tight? Unless they're into it, I guess, he mused.

The first person to see him is a younger man, perhaps a year or two older than Casey, and in other circumstances he might try his luck. These are not those circumstances. Casey grabs the young man and lifts him over his head. One of the women finally notices him and simply stares for a moment. Casey muses that it must be the sight, his diminutive form lifting a man that is nearly six feet tall.

He throws the man into the group and wades in. Few of the group actually attempt anything, at least those of them sober enough to notice what's happening. He bodily throws them around, and when one large man pulls a knife, Casey simply lets it enter him. The stabber screams in pain as some of the strange ichor splashes onto him and ignites a small fire. Casey grabs him and rips the shirt from the stabber's body, smothering the flame before it can spread.

The stab itself had already healed, the flesh around it shifting oh so slightly to be more resistant to future stabbings. It isn't much, but it's something, and Casey is thankful for it. Before the morale of the group can break, there's a shout.

"The FUCK do you fucknuggets think you're doing? Let me handle this cockswallower," the unknown cape yelled. The man holds his hands up and a glowing gradient appears on the ground, going from purple to blue. Those on the blue side found themselves pulled gently to the end of it, whereas those on the purple were pulled with more force, putting them to the back of the crowd.

"Now watch while I teach this cumgargler what happens to trash that messes with the MERCHANTS!" the cape screams again. His teeth are badly darkened and jagged.

Layers of purple and blue appear, his fist accelerated by it. Casey tries to react, but the cape's attack is too quick to dodge.

The first thing I'm doing is actually learn how to fight, Casey thought to himself.
The fist catches him in the chest and the unknown cape looks triumphant... only for Casey to stand unmoved.

"Fuck you!" the unknown shouts. He tries the same attack again, to the same result. Casey finally takes action and strikes the cape across the face.

There is a crack of flesh meeting flesh followed by the crack of bone breaking. The other cape is on the ground, blood trickling from his mouth. He tries to say something but his jaw isn't moving quite right. Casey steps forward, finally deciding to end things.

He thinks he should feel something, here. Some sort of regret, or even a hot blooded rage, perhaps even a sense of satisfaction. He doesn't, except for a small bit of excitement. He had a power, a strong power he thought, and he was going to give it a chance to feed.
Adam was going to get out this shitty city, away from it all. He was tired of being looked down on. It was like a puzzle...
It won't be long before the police and PRT show up. Casey has a pretty ironclad reason for his actions, and the fact it was during a "trigger event" means he won't face legal consequences. Still, he has to decide if he wants to stick around or not.

[] Stick around. The police and PRT will be aware you are a parahuman, and that Casey killed Skidmark. He will be pressured into joining the Protectorate (once they realize he's actually eighteen), and he may choose to join or not. He will not face legal consequences due to a combination of extenuating circumstances and a desire to keep a potentially powerful cape on the side of angels.

[] Leave. Casey is confident the police will quickly free the hostages and get them appropriate medical treatment. He, on the other hand, has no desire to stick around and have his identity blown. The police and PRT will definitely be looking for him, though, and a body on the ground without a statement from him might give the PRT more room to "aggressively" recruit him.

[][POWER] Utilize PSYCHOPOMP to create, modify, or break apart powers.
-[] Add a KEYWORD to [existing power]
-[] Add motes to [existing power]
-[] Break apart [existing power] and reclaim all motes and keywords (requires at least eight hours of rest).

POWER PANEL
CURRENT MOTES 5

eta: I'm going to be out of town tomorrow so have an extra long vote period, I'll start writing Tuesday morning

Casey scans the room he's in. He only has a bit of time before the police shows up, and he'd rather keep his face hidden. He expected that the local PRT and Protectorate would still be able to find him, at least if they put the effort in. The group he'd busted up likely got a good look at his face, at least if they were sober enough to really recognize him, and beyond that the PRT kept a group of Thinkers on call he was pretty sure. So if they really wanted to know, they'd know. Still, getting some sort of face covering sent a message and expectation of privacy, so it seemed like a good idea.

The very first thing Casey considered was the dead cape's mask. He quickly dismissed the idea. The thing was dirty and stained, not just with the cape's blood but substances he didn't especially want to think about. A quick scan of the living room didn't reveal other possibilities... some grimy looking towels and a throw blanket that could be used in a pinch, he supposed? Moving onto the kitchen ended up pointless. Nothing but junk food and rats.

The bedroom ended up more rewarding. Not only did Casey find a pack of shitty domino masks, presumably for future recruitment into whatever gang "the Merchants" were, but he also found a small stash of money and pills. He left the pills in place, not sure if he actually trusted anything this group sold, but he took several hundred dollars from the stash of cash. He made sure to leave most of it, though. No reason to raise suspicions by leaving a looted house.

Around the time he finished and had the mask firmly in place, Casey saw the flashing of lights outside a window.

Game face time, he thought to himself.

A loud banging comes from the door.

"PRT open up!" shouts an officer. Before Casey even has the chance to open the door, it is burst open by a portable battering ram. A group of armed PRT troopers stomp into the room, foam sprayers at ready. Casey can't really blame them. Going into potentially dangerous situations, with capes of all things? He'd have a genuinely non-lethal weapon ready to go too.

Before the troopers can say anything, Casey drops to his knees and raises his arms.

Not exactly how I planned on spending my night, he thought to himself. A part of him urgently wished he'd had the chance to experiment with his power, maybe engineer some sort of mover ability to escape if the PRT are less forgiving of a dead ganger cape than he expected.

"Suspect is in custody and cooperative," the trooper announced. He kept the foam sprayer aimed at Casey's body mass, though.

"I sure am," Casey says.

A moment later, Armsmaster walks in. He takes a quick look around the room, pausing firstly on the dead cape, and then on Casey. At a motion, the trooper lowers his foam sprayer and clears out of the room. Armsmaster stares for a long minute and finally speaks.

"Do you want me to remove those cuffs?" he asks. He has a certain gentleness in his voice. Something about it seemed practiced rather than natural, to Casey, but he isn't sure he'd be able to differentiate real from fake anyway. He hadn't always been the best judge of character.

Casey just nods his head in response and Armsmaster slowly approaches. He drops down with a fluidity not expected from the power armor the Tinker wears, and he pulls out some sort of tool from his belt. It's only a second and the cuffs--really more bracelets--fall away.

"You can stand now. Take a seat, even. I want to know what happened here," Armsmaster says.

"Yeah, so, the last thing I remember are the sirens. Then I woke up in that fucker's basement," Casey told the local Protectorate leader. "He had me cuffed, with two other women. They're both passed out last I knew."

At that, Armsmaster presses speaks into his wrist for a minute and two troopers head to the basement.

"Anyway, I realized I was bleeding, but it wasn't blood. My blood weakened the chain of the cuffs enough for me to break it, and then I came up here. I guess... I knew that I needed to get out, that I needed to get help for the other two below. So I..." Casey trailed off.

"You lost control," Armsmaster said. "It happens. No one's going to be sad Skidmark bit it. The whole thing seems like a classic case of self-defense combined with a trigger event. But it can't happen again. If you join the Wards, you can learn to use your powers responsibly."

"I'm an adult," Casey said. "Legally, I mean. I'm just short."

Armsmaster nods at this.

"Well, the Protectorate then. We can help you learn to properly control your powers so something like this doesn't happen again. And you can make a difference, too. You said that you wanted to help the other women downstairs, yeah? Well, you can do that with us. And, while Skidmark's gang wasn't exactly full of heavy hitters, he did have two or three other bottom feeders working with him. And they were expanding, recruiting heavily after Leviathan. I think he wanted to fill the void from the Empire's collapse," Armsmaster continued trying to sell Casey on the Protectorate.

"Wait, the Empire collapsed?" Casey asked. "Like, not that I'm sad to see them go. Nazis don't really like people like me, but it's just shocking."

"Mmm, yes. Kaiser died in the fighting, as did Othala. A lot has changed since Leviathan, we're still seeing how everything shakes out. Another reason to join with us. Lots of new triggers lately, we really need people. You don't have to choose now, just let us know, okay?"

Casey leaves Skidmark's home? Base? Lair? He didn't really know what it was, really, beyond the place he'd woken up. Along the way to his home, he decides to experiment.

He reaches to that place in his mind, that place his power resides. As he touches it, he gets a sense of what his power gained. And he smiles. He can work with this. He gently combines two of the ideas in his head, a sense of speed and of movement into one whole. And he feeds it just the tiniest bit of power--a single mote, he thinks he'll call it.

A switch appears somewhere in his mind, a way to tense his muscles just so in order to activate the power. He starts going more quickly. Not as if he's running. Frankly, the change is small, but ever present. Each step comes faster than the one before it. How long will it take to reach maximum speed? Does it even have a maximum speed? What if he stops?

He pauses in place and then starts again. Whatever speed he accumulated had fallen away, and had to resume again. He added more motes, one by one, to determine the limits of his new power.

It seems like each mote increases the how rapidly his speed builds. The faster he goes the harder it is to stop, the more space he needs to stop. He wonders if, perhaps, the other thing he received from Skidmark would allow him to control this better? But it might just make it worse, too. He can't really know until he tries.

He adds the last portion to the power. Now he finds himself able to maintain a speed, not needing to constantly accelerate. He even needs less room to slow down and stop.

An extremely useful power, Casey decides.

By the time he gets home, night has fallen on the city. His home is the same as ever. A small apartment in a not great part of the city, but well away from Nazi territory. He had started renting it in the last few months, with a small stipend from his parents, just so long as they didn't need to see him. He had been looking for a job the last few weeks, knowing that he would be graduating soon and whatever support he received would be drying up. The several hundred dollars he found at Skidmark's would help him, he knew, but he also needed to make a game plan.

He had a strong power and he wanted to use it. The only question is: how?

[] Lay low for a bit. Killing Skidmark satiated PSYCHOPOMP for a time, so use this time to get a feel for what's happening on the ground, after Leviathan's death. Maybe look into getting that job? Or see about finishing off high school, though with the state of Brockton Bay after Leviathan...
[] Hunt a cape or capes. The only question is which?
-[] Armsmaster mentioned the Merchants, a small-time gang that how grown in prominence sinve Leviathan hit the city. Track down the cape membership and claim them for PSYCHOPOMP.
-[] The local band of neo-Nazis have lost their leader, that doesn't mean Casey can't go after whatever remnants exist. Target them and claim them for PSYCHOPOMP.
-[] Oni-Lee is the only surviving member of the Azn Bad Boys. Oni-Lee hasn't been seen since Bakuda and Lung were actually put away. Track down whatever hole he's hidden himself in, claim him for PSYCHOPOMP.
[] The local Protectorate offered a chance for a ride-along, to see how they operate. Take them up on the offer. Establish contact with the local heroes.

[][POWER] Utilize PSYCHOPOMP to create, modify, or break apart powers.
-[] Add a KEYWORD to [existing power]
-[] Add motes to [existing power]
-[] Break apart [existing power] and reclaim all motes and keywords (requires at least eight hours of rest).

POWER PANEL
CURRENT MOTES 0

Lastly, what should Casey's cape name be?

[][NAME] Write-in.