DIVISION (John)

John leaned back in the comfy seat, enjoying the view of a bustling downtown. He was deep in thought, occasionally sipping on a light cappuccino with extra sugar, an honest-to-god paper newspaper discarded on the table before him.

For about the dozenth time, he thought back to the altercation with Elemental Fury, and really wished he knew how to let things go.

At his age he was supposed to be the calm voice of reason and yet he'd mocked and provoked the obviously hot-blooded young man into escalating the conflict.

He could make excuses. He hadn't liked how Red had been talking to his people. He'd needed to let his team know they were allowed to stand up for themselves. The Furies needed to be taken down a peg. All true as far as they went, but what had really niggled John in the moment, was the suggestion that he was just a useless old man. That he was powerless. He thought he'd hidden the irritation well enough behind dismissive humour, but he'd still pushed the confrontation, turning his back on the riled hero had just been asking for him to lash out.

Even now though, amidst the kind of guilt, it still niggled. And the reason was that John wasn't sure there wasn't a grain of truth to it. Was teamwork, experience, and cunning really going to be enough to carry him through as Division? Against super-powered monsters like Ku and Dragon? He didn't want to be just a guiding voice, there only to deal with the mooks, and he didn't want to just wait and rely on Artisan to equip him up to the level of the others.

What it all meant was that he really needed to look at expanding his powerset beyond just adding more clones, and for the first time in his life, John wished he'd read more comic books as a kid.

He opened his character sheet, selected the outstanding CP, and began to browse the Power options.

Codename Division Real Name William Green Species Human Archetype Hive Origin Experiment (Military) Wealth $ 2,560 Level 5 [05%] +5 CP Health 220 / 220 Recovery Rate 0.17 per minute Strength 16 Intelligence 16 Agility 16 Acuity 16 Fortitude 17 Willpower 16 Stamina 57 / 57 Focus 57 / 57 Recovery Rate 0.17 per second Recovery Rate 0.16 per second Powers Talents Complications Duplication 2 (Clone, 4) Quick Learner Straight Arrow - Soldier Secret Identity

He didn't have enough CPs to really buy into a full new power, not yet anyway, but maybe if he really limited it? Then he could get his foot in the door and pay off the restrictions once he earned more CP. He knew he'd have to pay an inflated cost if he wanted his clones to have access to the power too, but with some of the options, it really might be worth it.

He stopped as he came to an intriguing option, looking it over, checking to see whether he could limit the effect enough to make it affordable. Honestly, it felt a little like cheating, like he'd chosen to buy eggs, but then found a way to temporarily turn them back into a chicken. He supposed the fact that it ran off of Focus would limit the duration to something reasonable, just under a minute, but still.

It took him over an hour to make the choice. When he was in the field decisions came quickly, but give him time to think and he always wanted to check the angles. In the end, he decided the hitting power it would afford him was just too good to ignore.

Purchase New Power?

Focal Surge

Type: Physical Augmentation

Limitations: Clone only (x4), self, contact, effect drain x2.

Cost: 5 cp

Confirm Yes / No

SHIFT (Michael)

Mr Weyland had left Michael in charge of supervising the workmen currently renovating the Underground, with strict instructions to maintain a purely human cover. Apparently Weyland knew his character was supposed to be working on his art and design degree, and had suggested using the opportunity to pad his portfolio, as well as siphon some of the bounty cash into his own bank account.

What Weyland probably didn't know, was that Michael wasn't just completing the degree in-character, his actual college had facilitated remote learning inside the game. A virtual teacher is a virtual teacher, after all. And despite actually enjoying art quite a bit, what he really wanted to do was design.

He sighed out loud, there was only so much wall painting a man could endure before getting deathly bored. Ok, Michael knew it was called secco, he was an art major after all, and usually he wouldn't be getting tired of painting quite so quickly, but Rev had insisted on classical, restrained, renaissance-style murals. He was doing what he could to liven them up, hiding fun little details amidst the baroque, florid pieces. A man checking his watch here, someone mooning out the window there, but even whimsy could only carry him so far.

Usually he would have just made a run for it, leaving the workmen to the plumbing, wiring and plastering, it wasn't like there was anything to steal in the old tavern, except maybe Artisan's laptop. Strange how he had two such distinct mental images of a single person, Mr Weyland was the funny little foreign guy who kept giving him stuff to do, and Artisan was the alien in the computer, building drones and zapping people.

Anyway, usually he would have long since blown off painting for the day, but Artisan had suggested he could help design team uniforms once he was finished, and that little carrot was a damn weight around his neck.

NAIAD (Rebecca)

Rebecca was really starting to get frustrated with her little brother. She'd seen him get invested in games before, usually he'd take part in a beta or work quality assurance or review for a game, then go hardcore for a few months before moving on. Now he'd signed up to play hero for six months and somehow managed to drag her along with him. Worse than that was how seriously he was taking things, not seriously, she was taking it seriously, he seemed to be taking it to... severe? unreasonable? irrational? definitely irrational... extremes.

Rebecca was swimming out in Lake St Clair as she did every day, sporting amidst the currents and shoals. She'd never been one for swimming before playing the game, but now she rarely got enough of it. She was beginning to think she'd be happy to just stay down here, away from the expectations and the drama.

When he'd talked her into signing up with him, her brother had told her she had to choose an elemental character to help support his team idea, so she had. Then it was 'why did you roll a support character?', "why did you limit your magic?" and 'why don't you want to fight people?'. A week later he'd replaced her on his team with a guy who threw water around like a fire hose, all power and no subtlety. Honestly the whole debacle seemed awefully disloyal and terribly short-sighted for someone trying to play a hero team leader.

Now he'd turned her into a spy, pushing her to scry on some air-head he wanted for his precious team. It was really starting to get old. She hated snooping on people, mainly she had to admit to herself, because she hated the idea of people snooping on her, but...

She blinked as she detected a definite sense of... glee? success? retribution?, it was strange to feel someone else so far out in the lake, and with such a strange melange of emotion. She went to swim away from whoever it was, Naiad was pretty weak physically and was currently wearing an illusion of a large fish, she really didn't want to get caught up in a net or harpooned. Did people still use harpoons? Then the water around her started to freeze, becoming hard and grasping as it crystallised, burning her lungs as she tried to breath it in.

She felt her illusion slip as the pain unravelled her control, and the hardening ice lifted her bodily out of the water. She blinked in the sunlight, nictitating away her third eyelid, and staring in shock at the young woman hovering above the water, dressed all in white and smiling like the cat who'd just caught the canary.

"Uh, hi?" she tried, smiling uncertainly back at the subject of her recent spying.