[x] Your first mission
The year is 2006. In thirteen hours you will be boarding a jet bound for Honolulu. But for now, you dash across the New York city rooftops, in costume for the very first time. You skid to a stop just before tumbling off the edge of the building and spread your arms wide, taking a moment to drink in the familiar, jagged skyline.
"Why Honolulu?" Plumage asks. She stands beside you, dressed in one of her many costumes – this one yellow and frilly, with an elaborate headpiece designed to mimic peacock feathers.
"It was supposed to be safer." You line up a shot with your grapple, hundreds of hours of practice coalescing into instinct that lets you guide the recoil rather than the other way around. The dark-tipped line sinks into a nearby building and you leap out into the air, swinging down to another rooftop closer to the ground. Plumage is there waiting for you. "Bigger Cavalry presence," you continue, reeling in your line. "Other kids...kids like me, mostly, children of Cavalry heroes trying to get into the life. Blackbird and Augur thought it would be best that I had other people around me the first time I went out."
"I sort of thought that's what Blackbird was for," Plumage said, scratching her head.
"So did I."
The silences stretches, on and on and on, well past the point of being awkward. For a moment you are back in the central cooling unit, pipes hedging you in, oppressive. The geiger counter clicks rapidly, warning you to turn back, and reluctantly, you take its advice. The further into JEFFERSON you've dived the hotter it's gotten, and you can feel sweat sliding down your skin within the diving suit. The pipes are uncomfortably hot to the touch, but you are forced to use them to maneuver through the ever tightening corridors.
"But...you're in New York," Plumage says finally.
"I didn't want my first mission to be in Honolulu," you say. The sun has vanished over the horizon and night is in full swing. Deep shadows blanket every nook and cranny of the city. The Family's city. Your city. "So, the night before, I snuck out."
"You got past Augur?" Plumage says, her voice thick with skepticism. "Sometimes I don't think I can pick my nose without her knowing."
You smile, just a fraction. "She likes to say that she let me go. That she knew how important it was to me. But...honestly, I just don't think she expected it." You take a deep breath, and though it's stale recycled air that fills your lungs, you can practically taste New York – the barest hint of fresh air choked with smog, cigarettes, and urban decay. "This was pretty much the first time I didn't do exactly what she told me to do."
"So are you just out on patrol?" Plumage asks, looking around. "Or do you have a target?"
You point across the street, towards a pair of massive, Tyrant-9 era apartment complexes. When the fascist meta-dictator had taken control of the country in 1949, he had moved the seat of government to his hometown of New York – and brought a massive influx of laborers with him, grist for the ever expanding industrial quarter. The brutalist apartment high rises were a legacy of that influx, dotting the city at irregular intervals with no concern for what was around – or even underneath – them.
Underneath them is where you direct Plumage's attention, to a dingy brick building that sits uncomfortably in the overlapping shadows of its mammoth neighbors. Two windows look out onto the street, each filled with rusted iron bars – more for effect than any practical purpose, particularly in a world where a good chunk of people can snap iron as easily as toothpicks – but it gets the point across. Its single door is similarly barred. A neon sign flickers above the doorway, struggling listlessly against the encroaching night – PAWN.
"A string of burglaries in the area," you say, when Plumage looks back to you. "Out here, in the Spits? Nothing that unusual. But I was interested because there was a common denominator. Consistent reports of the culprit. Young. Expressing meta-powers. It wasn't hard to notice a pattern in the crimes, so I mapped out easy sources of cash and valuables in the area and came here."
"And you found him?" Plumage asks. "That's impressive."
"I found her," you correct her. "And it was luck more than anything I did." The modesty comes easy, but you can't quite keep the self-satisfied smile out of your voice. "There." You point again, drawing Plumage's eye towards a dark figure moving down the street. She steps into a streetlight and is suddenly illuminated – a girl, about as old as you are now. Ratty brown hair curls out from under a rattier brown beanie. Her face is obscured by a cheap Halloween mask – a clown, though you know from reports it's different every time – and the rest of her is practically swallowed by an oversized green jacket from some army surplus. She approaches the door quickly, without hesitation. She's done this too many times now to let nerves slow her down.
Call it intuition, call it forewarning, call it good old fashioned luck – whoever is behind the counter that night locks the door. The girl tries the handle once, twice, then steps back and raises her hands, clasping them together as if praying.
When she begins to pull them apart, the space between them is filled with a thick green ooze with the consistency of watery gelatin. Some of it drips from the rest, splattering the sidewalk, but after a moment it seems to solidify. Within seconds the ooze has swelled to the size of a basketball, and when the girl extends her arm, it takes off like a cannonball, punching a hole through the door and door frame alike.
Plumage wrinkles her nose. "That stuff's kinda gross."
"She's still active, you know," you say, glancing over at her. "Viscous. You should really know her."
"I told you, I cleared out my memory for this mission," Plumage says. "I'll have everything back once we get to the surface again, now don't get distracted."
You sigh. "Well, right about now I'm feeling pretty good about myself," you admit, turning your attention back to the pawn shop. You don't hesitate a moment before leaping from the building, using the grapple to swing easily down to street level. You hit the ground at a run, reeling in your line, and -
[] Charge inside
Gain the move
Punch Everyone
[] Get walloped
Gain the move
Never Give Up, Never Surrender
When you take a powerful blow from someone with far greater power that you, use this move instead of the basic one. Roll +Savior. On a hit, you stand strong and choose one. On a 7-9, mark a condition. On a miss, you go down hard but leave your opponent off balance and vulnerable.
You get an opportunity or opening against your attacker
You rally from the hit, and it inspires the team; +1 Team
You keep your attacker's attention
{} Note that the Never Give Up, Never Surrender Move has some caveats. Because Wyatt has no powers, a lot of people qualify as having "far greater power" – but this move was meant for a more Superman/flying brick type. So it's not going to trigger
every time you get hit by a meta. But I will try to be fairly generous with it.
