DragonRage

"I believe your friends back home would call our world a 'fantasy realm'," Ana states, sweeping up the pistol pieces and showing Wyvis how to avoid doing that again, "And you already know more about shooting a gun than those mall cops Vishkar hired. All muscle, no skill. But how do you plan to pass as a guard? Did you get an ID card somehow? Even if you have the uniform, without proper identification you won't pass. But if you have the card and the uniform, I can alter it to match you rather than the original owner. It won't stand up to close scrutiny, but it should work for a while."

"You talk like you think anyone knows the answer to questions like that. You want Razia or Iona or something for big, philosophical pronouncements. I'm just a fecking task mage who picked the wrong place to get bodied and woke up with wings and a compulsion to righteousness. Or self-righteousness. Not sure how much a difference there is. Whatever the answer, I don't get a choice anymore. All I know for certain is that a cause is only lost if no one will champion it. For better or worse, this one is mine until I get dead again. Free will's a real head-twister; it brings out the highest and lowest in you mortals. I'm not sure I miss having it. But it does mean that whether you sink to the depths or rise above the rest, there's no excuses. You choose your path, for harmony or for suffering. And in my experience, whether I get involved or not, you'll reap what you sow one day. Heh. Look at me, talking like a real Archangel. Maybe in a couple centuries, assuming I don't get my fool butt killed doing something heroic and stupid, people will stick my sigil all over their holy vestments and armor, and pray to me for safety and protection. Keep my rambles of wisdom in a little proverb book or something. Or I'll go batty dealing with people like you and turn into a loan shark. That's what Ravnican angels do when they Fall, you know. Better fate than what most Fallen can look forward to at least."

"If I ever get as jaded as you, I hope someone puts me out of my misery," Lexiel mutters in Visrii's general direction, "Everybody wants justice, save the foolish and depraved. But few have the courage and strength of arms to get it. Oi, bouncer. Harley. Quinn. Davidson. Oh, and tell riddle guy that I'm going to set his pants on fire if I see him again. If I wanted pointless, cryptic nonsense I'd hang out with Jace."

Isobel and LOTUS Isobel fails to find anything interesting in the storefronts. Even when she has LOTUS pop a lock for a quick peek inside, the buildings appear truly empty. However, she does notice a Vishkar helicopter airlift a large crate onto the roof of Vishkar tower. About ten minutes later, a series of strobes from the top floor leave Isobel and LOTUS assaulted by the lingering smell of purple. Isobel is slightly disturbed by this, because she's never had light cause her to smell something before. LOTUS is very disturbed by this, as he doesn't even have an olfactory sensor. Wyvis "Ah. One of the newcomers, then. I am Ana Amari. I run the practice range when we're in between missions. Let's see what we can do with you, shall we?" Over the course of a few hours, Ana coaches Wyvis until she's satisfied he won't shoot himself in the foot, or a teammate in the back, because he doesn't know what he's doing. "I must admit I am surprised to see you here. Zarya gave the impression that all of you either thought you knew how to shoot already, or preferred to approach your firefights Reinhardt style. That is, with a melee weapon. So, what is the occasion?" Sachi, Kagari, and Hikari The three disguised magical girls' gun hand-off goes off without a hitch, not because nobody notices but because nobody cares. They are able to enter the Vishkar Tower tour group without incident, and are taken on a guided tour through the facility, packed with propaganda extolling Vishkar's charitable work and generosity in helping the beleaguered city of Rio de Janeiro get back on its feet. The girls notice that though the halls and room arrangement are rarely the same even when backtracking, the tour guide seems to have a current map on his smart glasses. However, about halfway through the tour, they enter a hallway that soon has the way they came blocked by a wall that appears out of nowhere. There is a door in front of the group. But, the door has an electronic lock with an old-school keypad. A yellow sticky note has been placed above the doorknob, with the sentence "Be sure to turn the knob widdershins before you enter The Konami Code, or the lock won't turn." The tour guide seems utterly baffled by this turn of events, and starts arguing quietly with somebody on his radio.

"I suppose we should head for this bar?" Lexiel suggests. She reapplies her disguise, and heads for the bar, pausing to slap an Azorius traffic ticket on the hood of every misparked vehicle she passes.

Alexandria attempts to analyze the blue stuff, and get three HL bottles of it if it turns out to be more eco. This stuff could be very useful, especially if it could be synthesized or made reusable.

Lexiel curiously examines the gun Visrii looted, and any others the officers might have dropped. She also checks their pockets for coins and other identifiable valuables. She also dismisses her remaining summons. "He's the one with the phone, so I'd say he's definitely Schmidt, Doctor."

"A flaming log?" Alexandria muses, "Chance of impediment: .03%."

The Lightkeeper of Emeria continues beating her assigned target. She shines her healing light on Visrii, restoring 10 HP. Lexiel debates summoning her best minion, but instead casts Comet Storm, striking Policemen B and C with meteorites for 6d4-2 damage each.

LOTUS finds a number of interesting and potentially worrisome pieces of information. First off, the entire building is constructed from Vishkar's hard-light technology. In addition to turning their trained architechs into nigh-unbeatable reality warpers while inside during the day, this also means that the floor plan is changed frequently, rooms and equipment created and destroyed as they are needed. The original architectural drawings are more annotation than original, as Symmetra and Genji have done their best to keep them updated. It's also covered in unused, sealed spaces, places marked as 'highly variable', and marked locations of sentry turrets. These obnoxious devices lock on to unauthorized persons and fire a low-powered laser at them, causing slight damage, as they broadcast an alarm throughout the entire facility. The turrets are easy to destroy, but breaking one also raises the alarm. Genji has been able to bypass them by using the air ducts and moving so fast the turrets' computers write him off as a camera malfuction. Unfortunately, unless you have the speed and flexibility of an elite cyborg ninja these routes won't work very well. However, on the positive side, LOTUS discovers that Vishkar Tower is not in fact connected to Rio de Janeiro's utilities grid. However, there is a water tower a few blocks away that doesn't seem to be connected to anything according to official city records. When Isobel takes a walk for a closer look, she notes that the tower looks old, weathered, and rusty, like it's been standing there since before the First Omnic Crisis. However, there are hardly any weeds growing through the cracked concrete base, and the gravel surrounding it supports few signs of life. If the tower was as old as it is meant to look, no matter how well maintained it was, there would be a lot more plants growing around here. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make this tower look inconspicuous, and if not for LOTUS' attention to detail and Isobel's experience, they would have gotten away with it. Once alerted to the possibility, Lucio is able to confirm that this is Vishkar's water source by locating the pipes with ultrasonic imaging. LOTUS also discovers that a suspicious number of storefronts near the tower are vacant and for rent, with no offers up, although he is unable to determine whether Vishkar is secretly using them for something or people simply don't want to set up businesses near the ruthless corporation's headquarters.

"Huh. He's a glass cannon. Literally. Let's throw some fuel on the fire," Bellona attempts to pick up a handful of the ashen ground with her telekinesis and throw it into Ansuz's eyes. "He's off balance! Now's our chance."

The Lightkeeper of Emeria shines her healing light on Lexiel, restoring 8 HP, and strikes the guy she ambushed for 1d6 + 6 damage. Lexiel fires another Lightning Helix at Policeman B, also healing herself.

Alexandria grabs her two ineffective assailants by the head, and knocks their skulls together, gently by her standards. "Go to sleep."

Alexandria taunts the Lurker with the most dangerous-looking weapon. "Hey, frog-face! What are you compensating for with that thing?" Even if it can't understand the language, the tone will get the point across.

Alexandria greets Jade, and asks him if he requires assistance with anything. She also counts the lurkers, and turns her scanners on them.

The Lightkeeper of Emeria shines her healing light on herself, restoring 6 HP. As she is stunned, she cannot attack further. Lexiel casts Dragon Fodder, summoning two goblins, and orders them to block for her. Whenever she is attacked, one of them will intercept the attack and retaliate for 1d2 + 3 (synergy/2) damage. As the goblins have 1 hit point apiece, this is likely to be the last thing they do.

Wyvis asks around, and is directed to the practice range, a room set aside for learning to use firearms. Its walls, he's told, are reinforced so that practicing with weapons won't cause damage, and somebody experienced is always on call as an instructor. Upon entering, he sees that class is apparently in session. There are twelve targets, but only six students in the room. Three of them are firing at targets with small guns, of the kind he recalls Kagari calling "pistols". Cowboy cosplay guy is chewing out a man and a woman for something. Wyvis doesn't understand all his slang, but the gist seems to be that one should not point a gun at anything they do not intend to shoot, even if it isn't loaded. The final student is having his aim corrected by an elderly woman wearing thick, padded grey armor and a blue cloak. She also has a patch over her right eye, and the biggest gun he's ever seen hanging from her back on a strap. She notices Wyvis immediately, directs the student she was with back to his target, and approaches him. "Another new student? Or are you just here to practice?"

Bellona grabs Gypsy in a telekinetic lift and pulls him out of the building and the line of fire.

Alexandria doesn't have any reason to think darkly colored boxes are suspicious, so she continues down the path.

Sachi notices that the Golden Duck takeout Chinese delivery guy seems to be able to get in without a fuss. More importantly, his bags full of food are allowed past without going through the metal detector.

I'm not going to comment on whether The Hive is balanced or not. It does seem to be a very cool character concept. However, I do have a few words of advice. You should specify that all these HP-spending moves require hit points equal to X% of your MHP. If you actually reduce your MHP without a way to get it back, you are going to run out very fast. Unless you want to permanently reduce MHP, in which case keep it all as is and know that you'll regularly cripple yourself. Or make sure the party healers know that they need to focus you so you can actually do things. The beehive's HP-increasing ability is a special quality. Armor values are always resistance bonuses (and should be labelled as such). It isn't ever specified what Banzai Swarm's level 1 does as written, only what it costs to activate. As a perk-backed action with a huge HP cost, it should be doing something pretty impressive, though. Attack Breed should probably have a quality that prohibits equipping by characters that aren't made of bees. Anything that isn't a synergy threshold ability, damage stat, or resistance bonus on an item is automatically a special quality, and should be listed as such. Invasive Species should be more specific and detailed in how exactly it works, probably.

"Fine. This is going to bite us in the ass, but I'm not going to fight him alone," Bellona hurls herself over the conjured wall with a magic-assisted leap. "Come on! If we're retreating, we might as well do it right."

"If we let this guy free to do whatever," Bellona does her best to hammer the point home, "He'll go after her. On top of whoever she's already fighting. They knew we were coming, probably. We can't afford to assume they didn't send somebody strong after both groups. This is the same mission as before. We can't give up just because it turned out to be tougher than stomping a bunch of lab techs and bureaucrats!"

"Retreat? Are you joking? That's suicide!" Bellona shouts back, "He's just as much a wizard as we are, and he has a mech too. If we give him time to prepare now that he knows what most of us can do he'll be unstoppable. We have to beat him here and now, when he hasn't tailored his magic and mech specifically to defeat us."

Assuming there's any fight left in him, the Lightkeeper of Emeria keeps hitting the guy she landed on. Her healing light stays on the poor guy who got beaten. Non-Legendary summons aren't independent enough to change their attack targets or switch to blocking without orders anyway. These guys look techy, so Lexiel prepares a Lightning Helix to zap the first one who tries to attack or call for help. The lightning should fry a radio, right? The healing will go to Visrii, as his armor doesn't look as sturdy as her mail. "It's not nearly as fun without four-to-one odds and an unarmed victim, is it? Keh, I've seen more honor from Dimir agents. Justice seems to be in short supply around here. Well, not anymore. Drop the spitball launchers, and I might be inclined to not strip you naked before I drop you off with the actual Arresters."