Mutants & Masterminds: The Indigo Children - [Prologue] Kitsune

[SalmonMax]

It had been a maddening two months for Tomoe, after her first ill-fated attempt to do a 'real' crime. And of course, she hadn't gotten away with hardly anything either, which made the whole thing even more embarrassing. After doing her soul-searching and deciding she really wasn't into the idea of robbing people 'just because,' she'd still been trapped in the house as her father and mother had taken an unusual amount of interest in her, and she'd never quite felt safe vanishing out of the house.

But tonight they'd gone out, and that meant the city belonged to Tomoe again.

She wasn't sure what she wanted to DO exactly when she left, so she left her options open. Acidwashed jeans and a bright pink, sleeveless blouse suitable for clubbing, and rolled up in her purse was her costume and mask, in case she felt like sticking 'Kitsune's nose into anything.

First, though, she wanted to have some fun. Tomoe was a creature of her senses, and downtown New York on a weekend evening always promised to tax them to their limits. Gaudy, sexy people in outfits ranging from obscene to obscure, but always colorful and always wild; painted by bright buzzing neon signs that vomited out light in colors that never existed in nature, and moving unconsciously to the rhythm of the music that thumped out of whichever club happened to be closest. Smells of cigs and bodies and alcohol.

It was glorious.

Tomoe managed to wiggle into the front of a line as a group went in, and a cute grin at the bouncer got her in as well. Lasers swung around her head, pulsing bands of green and blue swept around as the music crashed like surf. She had a drink, danced, and had another. At that point the guy she was dancing with got a bit grabby so she disengaged, got lost in the crowd and headed back out onto the street.

It was fun, but she knew what she really wanted.

A few minutes later Tomoe found herself on top of a four story low-rise apartment building, peeling out of her already-sweaty club clothes and pulling on the dull black padded bodysuit that was Kitsune's costume...in combination with the grinning, stylized 'Japanese fox' mask that she'd had made. She'd have given some observant night watcher an eyefull if she hasn't remembered to blank her image out.

Being in costume always made Tomoe feel a little silly, but yet oddly powerful too. That sense of anonymity. It was a little like the rush she got from posting on the Internet, only a lore more potent. Now she was truly free to do whatever she might want.

Under the mask, she grinned...and set forth into the dark twilight hours!

[jameson (ST)]

Kitsune aligned her limited Telekinetic powers, wrapped them around her legs like a second pair of pants. The power augmented her muscles and made her legs stronger, faster, and, to an extent, helped to absorb impact as well. The result was that Tomoe could run like the wind and leap from rooftop to rooftop, or at least as best she could given the width of the average alleyway and street. The club district gave way to theaters and then to restaurants and tenements. As she moved through the city the state of repair of things changed the neighborhood's became rundown, the eateries smaller and dirtier, there were bars over windows, metal reinforced doors instead of glass and wood, and everything else showed the general malaise of the decaying city.

The park came into view and in the dark it looked like the kinds of forests from a Grimm's Fairy Tale, dark and foreboding. The orange dots of trash cans set to fire with huddled bums or drug addicts huddled around them broke up the otherwise dark patch of land in the middle of the island. Tomoe stopped on the roof of a building across from the park and pondered her next move.

[SalmonMax]

"Another high-rent district," Tomoe lamented sarcastically to herself. She didn't usually come this far this way, but now that she'd seen those cans she found herself unexpectedly curious. Poor people were dangerous...she'd had that hammered into her from day one. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain by killing a well-to-do young girl like herself. Life meant nothing to them, so they wouldn't let threats to their lives dissuade them from attacking and stealing.

It was hard to see any of that from her vantage though. Maybe up close...

Tomoe scaled down the side of the building she had been standing on, cloaking herself in an envelope of psionic invisibility as she went to avoid drawing eyes to the spectacle.

From there she just walked along the streetside to the park and wound her way through, unseen and unremarked on like the passage of Ebeneezer Scrooge on one of his Christmas jaunts.

[jameson (ST)]

Tomoe bent light around her perfectly, or nearly so. The average person, maybe even the average computer, would have trouble seeing the occasional spot where the illusion failed. Within Tomoe could "see" normally, if one could call what she did sight. She'd tried to conceive of how one could bend light around them and yet still perceive outside the effect; the conundrum had been mind numbingly problematic and in the end she chalked it up to the same undefined psionic sense that allowed her to "see" in the first place. She wasn't taking light in, processing it to neural impulses and then interpreting that, instead she was bypassing the eye entirely and sensing the light directly with her mind. As such it didn't really need to pass through the veil.

If that was correct (and why not?) then she should be able to see through objects, at least so long as there was light to be seen. The inside of a refrigerator would still be dark, no help there, but the other room where somebody watched TV shouldn't pose a problem...

Kitsune was so lost in thought that she walked right into a hobo, bumping the man forward to stumble a step closer to the trashcan heater. "Hey, what the ..." he trailed off as he looked for whomever had shoved him.

"'swrong Chuck?"

"Eh, I, somebody ... some ... " the hobo, Chuck apparently, faltered, his features confused. He stunk of body odor and beer and cheap wine and other even less pleasant smells. Tomoe stepped back and away, her nose wrinkled from the smell.

"Yer, drunk, ya drunk!" The other bum spooned something out of the can he'd been holding near the fire with a piece of scrap metal. The man handled the can gingerly, the metal hot from the flame. As it turned in his half gloved hands Tomoe saw the label: Alpo.

[SalmonMax]

Disgust warred with pity, and Tomoe averted her eyes in a reflex that was very much an artifact of her Japanese upbringing. Even invisible, she didn't want to add to this man's shame by witnessing it. As she skittered away, she asked herself again what she was doing here. It wasn't often she had a 'night off' as it were. Then again, how did she want to spend it? Her previous idea had been a rather spectacular failure.

Robbing banks, then giving (most of) it to charity. It had seemed so foolproof at the time. People would love her for her daring and panache. They would love her for her honor in not killing or even really hurting anyone. They would love her for donating the money and being a real 'robin hood.' But it had all fallen apart. At least she hadn't gotten caught...but what now?

What would a real kitsune do? Tomoe asked herself abruptly. Something fun.

She glanced back at the men eating dog food at the flaming barrel. Under her white 'kitsune' mask, her lips curved into a broad grin.

---

In the firelight of the barrel, the two homeless men saw an old hunched over woman come shuffling forward out of the gloom. She wore a threadbare, stained old shawl over her shoulders, and a hood of some kind hid her features except for her rhuemy lips and gnarled chin.

"Evening," the woman rasped. "Let me stand by your fire for a spell and warm my old bones? There's a wish in it for you if you do."

(OOC - Just to be clear, Tomoe's invisible a few steps away, and the old woman is an illusion.)

[jameson (ST)]

The men narrowed their eyes and jealously clutched at their food and belongings. The "woman" merely waited for a reply and shortly one of them nodded, "Aye, if ya want ta." He soon went back to eating what was apparently a fine meal for him.

The other seemed to study the illusion and Tomoe worried that he had seen through the illusion but finally he simply extended his hands over the flames once more and resumed warming himself. "What's this about a wish? A little inside downstairs mebbe?"

[SalmonMax]

The old woman shuffled up to the fire and rubbed her gnarled hands one inside the other, then held them out to the fire. Her fingernails were long and yellowed, almost like claws. Her eyes caught the firelight inside her hood and seemed to glow like hot embers themselves.

"Don't be small-minded," the crone advised the hobos. "I mean a wish. A favor for a favor. You've done me a good turn, and now I'll do you one." She laughs a brittle cackle. "Though I'm long past my 'downstairs' being a good turn, lad!"

She points a twisted finger at the Alpo can. "What about a proper meal, eh? Just ask!"

[jameson (ST)]

"Haw!" the crusty bum laughed aloud. He looked at the illusion with skeptisism, "Yous gonna waggle yer fingers an' turn dis into a steak and taters?" He shook his head, "Yer crazhy, but less see ya try!" The other simply cackled drunkenly and reached out to cop a feel earning him a broken toothed smile from the illusion before it slapped his hand away while giving him a wink.

[SalmonMax]

"I didn't say there'd be finger waggling, but before the moon sets you'll have yourselves a fine meal!" the crone assures them. "Granted!"

She then whirls around, the poncho flaring up just enough to give a glimpse of what could be a tail like a fox's, only three of them? But before that can be confirmed, the old woman has scampered off into the gloom at unlikely speed.

Tomoe grinned invisibly and backed off as well, then flooded her legs with her power and set off at a pace that a horse would be proud to match...leaping over obstacles where she encountered them. There was a grocery store not too far off, and she hitched a ride in with a young woman shopper with a toddler in the cart. Tomoe had found that the infrared sensors some stores used to automatically open their doors didn't see her when she was invisible...so she had to creep in behind other people.

From there it was pretty easy. The 'field' that created the invisibility was too small for a cart, but she picked up one of the little hand baskets and it worked fine as long as she kept it tucked close. Items vanished from the shelves. A couple of roast chickens in plastic boxes from the deli, some cheese, some nonfat organic milk, a couple of baguettes... She had to stop herself when she realized she couldn't strengthen her arms to carry this stuff AND strengthen her legs to get it back quickly.

Several people in the park smelled the delicious scent of juicy, cooked chicken for no visible reason that night. Dogs barked and tugged on their leashes. Noses wrinkled. Mouths watered. Then it was gone again, as if stolen away by a capricious wind.

At the flaming can, the bums stood, eating their wretched meal and talking in low tones abou the oddity that had occurred there. Then one of them pointed and whispered, "Look."

The others turned to see, and there at the edge of the circle of firelight was a fox with bright orange fur and black legs and feet and inquisitive yellow eyes, and three tails that swished behind it. They all stared at each other for a moment, and then the smell hit them. As one they all whirled to see food stacked in a small pile on the sidewalk behind them. And if the sense of miracle was dampened somewhat by the store boxes and brand name wrappers, the food itself was no less tasty for it. Only one of the bums looked back to the fox, meaning to thank it perhaps, or confirm that it wasn't looking to attack them while they ate. Either way it was moot; the strange fox was gone.

Tomoe watched them a second longer, then turned and went on her way again. Her initial rush at what she'd done faded as she left the park. What good had that done? Oh, so a few homeless guys might talk about a magic fox in the park. In between ranting about the CIA mind control and being talked to by dogs. Who took that seriously?!

She slowed down as she entered the 'warehouse' district. Row after row of big square buildings holding cargos and secrets for import and export. Beyond was the harbor, and the ships on the sea.

With a sigh Tomoe skittered up a tall concrete wall to get a better view of the area. Her psychic vision could detect light much more efficiently than human eyeballs, and even in the dark of night she could see just fine if there were even a few lights around.

[SalmonMax]

Not surprisingly, there wasn't a lot to see. Here and there were a few late-night 'workers,' who were probably up to no good, come to think of it. Tomoe wasn't too interested in them though. She wasn't really the "shadowy avenger of the night" type.

Over by one of the warehouses was something that caught her eye, however. A pair of large luxury cars parked next to each other. Around them were large men with folded arms and menacing dispositions. In the middle a pair of smaller men in dapper suits. But what piqued her attention was the small boomerang-shaped antennae on the back of one of the cars. The left corner of it was bent downward in a very particular way. A very familiar way. As if, for example, a young girl had decided to hang off of it and see if it could hold her weight.

No...WAY, was all Tomoe could think for several full seconds. Then she was telekinetically sticking herself to the wall and climbing down it like 'spiderman' as fast as she could. She HAD to see this!

Is this what your meeting was tonight, oto-san? she wondered as she grabbed the light and made it skip her over, then crept near to see if this was really her father, and if so, what he was doing...

[jameson (ST)]

Clinging to the side of a warehouse, cloaked in twisted and refracted light Tomoe peered down at the cars below. The there were two cars parked in that unlikely alley. The first was a Mercedes from the early 1960s, not a spot of rust nor so much as a ding showed in its metallic gray body. The deeply tinted windows betrayed nothing of the inside and the exterior would have been bland had the car itself not been simply stunning.

Click to reveal.. (1962 Mercedes-Benz 220 se)

The second car was newer, not a sedan but a limo, with the typical limousine characteristics. A Lincoln from the late 1980s it was black, of course, with chrome accents, and a boomerang antenna (slightly bent), at the back. Though newer than the Mercedes this car was less immaculate, apart from the antenna, showing the kind of wear that a car that is used often displayed, the tires were dull dark gray and not glistening black, the chrome didn't carry the same shine, the paint was slightly duller, with a few spots in the body where minor bumps showed if you caught the light just so.

Click to reveal.. (1988 Lincoln Limousine)

The four men were a pair of professional chauffeurs and a pair of even more professional bodyguards. The driver of the Mercedes was older, in a classic chauffeur's uniform as opposed to his mirror who wore a black suit. The former's bodyguard looked like he ate Italian every night, and would enjoy using a bat or an axe, while the latter was wire thin and had an air of deadly precision about him that made the edges of his own black suit look almost sharp and deadly.

Kitsune recognized Isawa Kenshin, her father's driver. The man was as bland as white rice without salt, which explained why her father liked him so much, it was a close to a personal robot as he was likely to get. His bodyguard however was nothing even remotely close to bland. Tomoe had never seen the man before but given the scene as it was laid out the connection seemed obvious.

Of her father Satoru, she saw no sign. There was a tiny sliver of light emanating from the nearby warehouse door, given the evidence perhaps he was within...

[SalmonMax]

What the hell is he up to? Maybe that's not his car after all...I bet those things break all the time.

But she couldn't leave it alone. Now that she had even an inkling that strange things were afoot, that is. Tomoe creeped around towards the warehouse door, giving the goons and the drivers a wide berth.

Just a little more, and she'd be able to peek in through the door...

(OOC - Stealth check: 1d20+10 = 27)

(09:43:43) ChatBot: (SalmonMax) rolls 1d20 and gets 17.

[jameson (ST)]

Continues in [Prologue] Isaac and Tomoko