Doug said to Gregory, "Since the event they've been killing each other. Other than that... they're around somewhere I guess." *KB will drift away on the wind and 'become' weather eventually. That's how I'm going to lose her.*

(Only Sent to Raider:)

*The more I think about it, the more I'm concerned that one might not be enough. Any chance we can get our hands on a few more? Didn't the old USA have massive stockpiles? Or maybe you could find another in orbit?*

Ash can't help but snort in amusement at the idea that she, of all people, was the voice of restraint right now. The amusement quickly fades as she remembers the fate of the people at York though. If she'd stayed there, instead of going with these guys, maybe more could have escaped.

Or maybe you'd be right there with the rest of the aberrants.

She shivered and looked around.

"Can we get out of here?"

Per+Aware (8dice): 7, 9, 5, 3, 8, 4, 5, 10
3 successes
http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2142229/

Raider desperately needed more info. For him it was coming down to two possibilities, the moonies or an unknown but very knowledgeable and very powerful nova.

None of them had any idea that they were being watched. None of them but one. Adam held his power at the ready, spending less time watching the others or searching the ruins than he did slowly ensuring that he knew precisely where the watcher was. When the rifle cracked Adam spun and lobbed a glowing blob of energy out at the hidden target. The bullet struck Courier squarely but aside from the feeling of impact it failed to do anything to the nova. The orange energy sphere exploded and the shape of a man was tossed out of his hiding place at the edge of the forest. He tumbled through the air, his clothing already aflame, before hitting the ground in a tangle of limbs.

Courier felt the impact and wondered, *Was that an attack?*, and then Adam went nuclear and the sniper went flying.

In a flash Doug flew over to the injured man and started examining him. Doug yelled, "Anna, Raider, he might still be salvageable."

At the sound of the shot, Ash instinctively reached for her power. Light exploded from her skin and eyes, and coruscated through the air around her in a halo. Even so, she knew it would've been too late if he'd shot her, not Courier.

With blinding speed, she flickers over to where the sniper landed and lifts a hand to point ominously at him.

"Alright fella," she warns, "Sit still, keep your hands visible."

Anna quickly dashed to the direction she saw Doug flying and tapped on her healing powers which made the veins that patterned over her entire body glow in a dim green light.

Once she reached the wounded she knelt down next to him and poured her healing energies into him without hesitation.

Raider followed at a slower pace now studying the surroundings looking for other potential snipers. "Anna you can fix him, you are better at healing than me." It was true of course, but more than that, it allowed Raider to watch and be wary. He also shifted out of phase enough that material objects like bullets would not harm him.

Almost instinctively at the sound of the crack, Gregory raised his bodyshield. It was invisible, yet it's ripples could be seen pulsating along his body if they looked close enough.

That there was only one sniper meant little. Gregory was a survivor and he would make sure he lived. I there were more, he would be ready for them. He held the shield as the other ministered to the hurt man.

Anna got to the man quickly, owing to her long strides and great urgency. He was bruised and bleeding but not seriously injured. At Anna's touch the bleeding stopped and the wounds began to fade. The man's eyes fluttered open and he immediately struck out, striking Anna's hands away and scrambling to his feet in an attempt to flee, oblivious to the others. It was a simple matter for Doug to grab him in a vise like hold and prevent him from fleeing or flailing about. "Let me go you bastards!"

Doug briefly considered crushing the man's head like a grape but on the list of bad things to happen to him today the attack seemed minor.

Doug gave the man a light shake and asked him almost mildly, "Who are you?"

Anna withdrew her hand like a hurt child. She was clearly confused by the man's hostile reaction and made an awkward step backwards as if he could hurt her even more. She looked at Ashley and Doug and sat down the sadness still dominating her overall mood. Even if she did only help people they seemed to hate her.

The man twisted in Doug's grasp but was unable to get free. As he struggled they got a good look at him, his face and arms bore the scars of long heal burns, burns that had healed with nothing more than time. He was a garish mockery of the man he had once been, skin permanently reddened and rippled in waves of scar tissue. It didn't take much to realize that this man must have somehow survived the conflagration that destroyed Goodwood. "Why should I tell you? Just kill me if that is what you are going to do! Get it over with!"

Getting a little annoyed with all the flailing, Doug pulled the man down to the ground so he was flat on his back and said, "You shot me, remember? Why all the hostility? What happened here?"

"You're one of THEM! You all are! Aberrants! That's enough reason to try and kill you!" The man continued to struggle fitfully, a vain attempt to break free. "You come back here to gloat over the ashes? To revel in the destruction caused by your kind? The bones of good people lay in these ashes! Or maybe you heard that there was a cure here? Well here's your cure, death and fire and pain!"

Doug sighed and replied, "No, we came to see if John and his crew could help us. Someone is trying to destroy the world. Their most recent try was to overload all the novas, turn them all into abbies. That's what happened to Beth here, why she went nuts with fire. Their next try will be the same as their first, they'll drop another big ass rock on us."

Doug said seriously, "Novas stopped them last time, but we're probably the only ones left on the planet. The only ones who were off planet when the taint bomb went off."

{Persuader On}

Cure? CURE?! "What?!", exclaimed Anna suddenly. The barest hint of a cure brought her out of her reverie.

"You've got a cure? Where? Who?!", she came closer to the man shadowing over Doug and the stranger through her sheer size. Her amber eyes looked frantically for any hint that hinted at the man's words.

"Tell me you've got a cure!", she half pleaded half demanded.

"He doesn't have a cure," Ash says quietly to Anna. For her, looking at the man was eerie. It hadn't been so long that it would have been her there, shaking with fear and helpless raging wrath against beings that she couldn't hurt or stop...but that she wouldn't give up on trying to.

Holding onto the power, he seemed so small now. So slow. It made her feel sick at herself for feeling that way. She wanted to push it away, but the possible threat of more snipers convinced her to keep it on for now.

"We're not going to find any answers here. Maybe we can find one of the new novas, the ones that were human beings that changed when this happened. They might have clearer memories. Someone has to know what happened."

Like it or not though, Ash found herself starting to feel like it didn't matter. What happened, happened. More and more she felt like the better idea was working out how best to survive next. If that was even still possible.

Doug replied, "We need a non-nova. John is probably dead, but Raider's Dad might still be alive."

Doug turned back to the man and said, "Robert O'Reily. Is he still alive? Just so you know, one of us has the power to heal. We could clear up all these scars and the like."

{Persuader still on to convince him to trade and that we're sane}

He laughed scornfully, "There was never a cure, but that didn't stop people from learning about Johnny's gift. They kept coming and he kept trying to help them. He's dead because of you people. They're all dead because of your kind. Johnny said he could help them ... he said he had to try..." He stopped speaking and struggling, his eyes wide as he remembered something horrific.

Ash feels a prickle at the man's expression.

"What happened?" she asks thickly. "John's the one who cancelled out nova powers right? What happened when he pushed that too far?"

Raider just stood silent listening to the conversation. No point in interrupting, they were asking the right questions. Raider wanted to know what happened here after they left, and about his father.

{Lie Detector On}

Gregory remembered what it was like to be in Johnny's draining field. What made him feel so weak and powerless then, would now seem like a blessing. He looked at the scales that now covered his entire body and wondered what it would be like to look normal again. If there was not the ever present threat of abbie attack or angry men with guns, he might dorm. Maybe tonight. When it safe.

Gregory listened to the man and wondered if maybe Johnny caused what happened.

"Maybe Johnny couldn't store any more abbie taint stuff and he 'sploded." Gregory put in his 1/2 cent, sounding excited.

"I don know ... maybe lizard boy is right maybe not. Alls I know is that the other abbies, they said his juju stopped working. Some couldn't handle it and had to be put down. But after ... it was like somebody put gas on a fire. Suddenly they were all turning into monsters. We didn't have time to run, she just ... she looked at us and said, 'You are an infection that needs to be sterilized,' an then the whole town went up ..." Suddenly he pulls a knife and jams it into the flesh of Doug's forearm with suck force that the blade snaps off at the handle leaving steel protruding from Doug's arm like a growth. Without a word KB sent a fine lance of lightening shooting from her fingertip. There was a flash and a muted thunderclap like an engine backfiring. The man lay still, a circular hole, still smoking, burned though his forehead.

Even with her boosted reflexes, Ashley wasn't faster than lightning.

She whirled, tried to lunge at KB to throw her aim off. "No, wait!"

Too late.

"Damnit! We might have been onto something! He couldn't hurt us! Why did you do that?!"

Doug said to the smoking corpse, "'A' for effort. 'E' for effect. 'E' for smarts too."

Doug answered, "Because when your best friend gets into a fight, you get into a fight."

Doug flicked the knife head away. The blade had stopped at his skin, snapped, then was held in place by his strength field, presumably the same way large objects didn't collapse of their own weight. Doug saw blood, rubbed his finger in to to make sure it was his, and mentally corrected himself. The blade had stopped just under the skin. Doug said, "Hey, he made me bleed."

Doug said to the corpse, "OK, 'D' for effect."

Doug said, "Hey, Anna, could you take care of this for me please?"

"This wasn't a 'fight'," Ash corrects Doug. "He was no threat to you. When a six year old smacks a grown man, it's not a fight."

Doug acknowledged, "True, but when blood is shed, the reflex should be to jump in." *And this wasn't much of a loss.*

Doug added, "I've have done the same thing for her. For you too maybe."

Anna quietly placed one hand on Doug's wound and healed it absentmindedly. She wasn't sure what to think of this all... something went wrong, seriously wrong and she had trouble putting a finger on when everything went to hell.

She shook her head to nothing in particular and stood up and walked away a few steps aimlessly without much on her mind.

KB pirouetted away, "Because he tried to hurt my Doug. Because he was insolent. Because I wanted to, because I enjoyed it." She looked at the corpse as her expression was serene, she hadn't killed a man she had crushed an insect. He gaze turned toward Ash, her cold eyes, looking like nothing more than the deepest blue of a cloudless summer sky regarded her for a moment. Then she laughed, a capricious sound and twirled away into the air.

Doug watched Anna and then KB wander off and said, "I'm having real problems trying to think John was the cause of all this. His power just wasn't global. Even Beth's power wasn't global. I think John's power failed because of whatever happened globally. It was a result, not a cause."

Doug continued, "John's power failed when the event happened. Some of the novas went nuts, although some of them might have been abbies even before the event. They were put down. Beth got pissed and went all nuclear on the site."

"And the event happened 'fast'. They didn't have time to run."

"It's possible," Ash acknowledges, looking away. "We don't know the event is global yet, but we know it's pretty huge at the very least."

She looks at Raider.

"Any way you could verify? Like, teleport to the other side of the planet and see if it's like this there?"

Anna simply walked on without looking back. She wasn't particularly fast or determined, the direction she was walking to seemed absolutely random and her shoulders were visibly slummed forward. She didn't care anymore the world stopped making sense.

Doug sent to Anna, *Anna? You ok?*

Anna put her hands on her ears as if to shut out any voices.

*Leave me alone, Doug! KB has gone crazy and I'm losing my mind, too. I can't take this anymore. We're all doomed, we're aberrants, just like the man said.*

Now she was slowly picking up speed taking longer strides and falling into a slow jogging pace.

Raider didn't think Ash's statement was correct. Six year olds could do plenty of damage if they were determined to do it, they just had to be sneaky about getting in the first blow.

With some sympathy Doug asked, *Anna, where are you going to go? And no offense, but you're not going insane. Crazy people don't think they're crazy.*

*That guy? He was crazy. Crazy with grief, or hate, or something. You would have healed him for nothing. I would have traded healing for the information he gave us. But he didn't want that.*

*He knew I was bullet proof and he stabbed me anyway. He knew I could fly a lot quicker than he could run and he stabbed me anyway. He knew I was much, much stronger than him to. He wasn't trying to kill me, he was trying to make us kill him.*

*He wanted to die.*

*I'm sick of it, sick of it all! No one ever tells me the truth, not the whole truth. I'm tired of the killing and my vain attempts to heal them. I can't fix the most important thing, I can't be normal again and it's driving me insane. You and Raider and Ashley - you can all look normal if you want. But me and Gregory... poor Gregory...*

Her thoughts were getting a tangled mess of self-pity, frustration and true fear. Anna picked up speed as she ran. She wanted to run away from everything.

*Going off to die somewhere by yourself isn't going to help anyone Anna.*

Doug flew over next to Anna to keep pace with her. (Activate Hyper-Flight 2)

*And Raider and I can't look normal. I always have muscles, Raider always has hair. Gregory on the other hand can look baseline if he chooses to. It's just a matter of turning off your node. I know the theory but never saw the point of learning. Gregory and Ash don't know the theory but might be able to teach it.*

(OOC: Doug has taint 0 but always looks like a nova. Raider has aberrations).

Once again, Gregory was appauled by the violence in front of him. KB's outburst shocked him into acting againts her. He had to know why she did that to the man. Her explamnation did not make sense. He could get the truth from her: all it would take was some carefully phrased questions mixed with a little of his power.

((OOC: Activating Confessor on KB))

"KB. I need to ask, but isn't killing that man a going to hurt what we are trying to learn.?" Gregory was trying to get her to open up, even if she might not be willing to. "He was going to tell us who 'she' was. Without him we won't know who she was."

Gregory looked into her eyes with a sympathetic look. "Do you know who he was referring to?" If all went well, whe would explain her motives and if whe knew what had happened. he hoped her taint had not taken her. For that reason, he kept his Force field up. Her behavior was chaotic.

Ash watches Raider, then finally shakes her head sourly.

"Stony silence I guess means no. Okay, now I've managed to piss you off too. Now if I can alienate Greg and Anna, my fiendish plan to isolate myself from the few people left who'll have anything to do with me will be complete."

She looks around and realizes Anna's gone.

"...make that Greg."

Raider shakes his incorporeal head and becomes solid enough to speak more audibly, "You haven't pissed me off, but I'd prefer to wait till we finish this discussion before hopping to the other side of the world, and I was silent because it's hard to hold a conversation when you are not solid. Anything I say comes out very weak airy sounding."

*Stop lying to me! All you do is lie!*, Anna suddenly stopped and turned around to face Doug, her pain mixed with anger and frustration reflected in her amber eyes. She was slowly growing, getting bigger and bigger as she prepared herself to fight.



*Get out of my head!*
"Get out of my head!", she both screamed with her voice and in her mind.

"Well," Ash points out, "when someone asks you a question, a weak airy answer is better than silence, right? And I wasn't asking you to do it now. I was asking if you COULD do it. If it was possible, I mean."

She shakes her head, and seems about to say something when Anna's yelling outside can be heard.

"Shit."

The still glowing Ash runs out towards the sound of Anna's voice at enhanced speeds!

(Raising force field)

Doug assumed a defensive posture and said out loud, "I've never lied to you Anna. But it's easily proven."

Doug said more loudly, "Hey Gregory! Anna wants to see you dorm."


(OOC: Doug will reserve an action and if Anna starts to swing on him he'll fly back out of her range. If that's not possible he'll try to block.)

Anna was really angry and frustrated but most of all she was scared. She balled her fists combat ready but hesitated. She didn't like fighting, she always waited and remained passive in combat and even though she really wanted to hurt someone she was still reluctant to take action. Doug who was far more combat experienced could read this all in her eyes the conflict she was going through.

Anna kept growing, though until she was the size of a small tree. Her mass had increased too and she looked like she could crush Doug with a single blow. Her arms were shaking in held back anticipation - instead of punching him she screamed... screamed as loud as she could.

((OOC: Didn't realize KB had gone.))

Gregory was going to continue with his probe, but she had gone. He doubted that she even heard him. He shrugged his shoulders and saw everyone tear off after a giant woman in the distance. Anna..?

Gregory heard him, barely, and he ran towards the group heading in Anna's direction. Why would he want to dorm at a time like this. His force field would drop, and he could not hide. Yet in his mind, being vulnerable warred with looking human.