Death and Dying and Team Angst

I retired the Warshade for the most of the weekend, for a few different reasons. It's going to be hard to go back to it. I don't like it. I just don't. Maybe I'll get over it. Probably. Maybe.

I played Cass for part of the weekend. I didn't realize how much I missed it until the first time I hit Unstoppable and tanked an EB. I played Blaster-Fyre over the weekend, too, and I love the damage, but there's just something about running into a group and cutting them down one by one... at heart, I'm a scrapper, I guess. Who would have guessed? (That's sarcasm, folks.)

Cass is different to play, RP-wise, than Fyre. Yes, game-wise, too, but that's obvious. Cass was kidnapped as a child by the Circle of Thorns and trained by them to be a new type of warrior for them. There were others trained as she was, but they either didn't survive or simply disappeared. Later, she was given to Crey to work for them, as what amounts to an assassin. Cass hasn't been socialized. She doesn't have friends, hobbies, or any kind of a social or "normal" life. She's usually teamed with Scrapper-Vagz. She does not "play well with others" so she doesn't end up in big teams often, and when she does, she doesn't have a lot to say. No, she's not shy. She just doesn't care. Like E remarked, Cass is very rarely amused, entertained, or even interested. It's all a job to her, one she's done for as long as she's been alive. She works as a hero, for now, because it suits her needs. (Vague thoughts relating to Team 3.0: If we were to do villains, and say one of our heroes became a villain, Cass would be the most likely to "go rogue." Not because she's evil, just because it's pretty much all the same to her) She gets along with Vagz partly out of habit. She makes some border-line sarcastic comments and he simply laughs. He knows what to expect by now, I think. She trusts him explicitly because he's proven himself to her. If he said to jump off the bridge, she'd jump and trust that he had reasons and a plan. It can be a little difficult to play her, keeping that dead-pan tone and perfectly even temperament. Still, she can be a lot of fun and was a nice change from drama-bogged, hyper emotional (not to mention squishy) Fyre.

When we first joined up Team Angst last night, I logged in the Warshade. After thinking about it for two minutes, I switched back to Blaster-Fyre. Why? Yes, partly because I'm frustrated and annoyed with the Warshade. But, more importantly, because it fits Fyre's disposition right now. She's scared, threatened, and angry. Fire is her "natural element." It's part of what she is. She feels more comfortable like that, and she knows she's more powerful and dangerous that way. In the Malta mission the other night, Mason told her, (paraphrased) "Make me afraid of you," while he was trying to amp her up to fight Malta. Well, if that's what he wants, she can do that. Yes, she's still angry with him. Is she going to forgive him? Well... not after the rest of the night.

Scrapper-Vagz stayed with Mason, Frost, and Fyre for an Anti-Matter AV mission. It was the four of them against an AV. An AV's a little tough for four people. Fyre died three times. I used an awaken I had, Vagz gave me one, and I un-exemplared for the two seconds it took to use the self-rez in Fyre's epic powers. I'm sure it made her grumpy. Frost got stuck with one of those buggy auras that you can't lose until you zone out, and the character freaked. He's already spending half of his time fighting off radiation sickness, and then Anti-Matter hit him with a good one. Mason freaks because Frost is sick.

Now, I won't go into it, but I've had some Haz-Mat training, both in chemical and radiation. I know a bit. Enough that I've been twitching every time someone talks about contamination or decontamination. Radiation in Paragon is incredibly common, so I'm sure some procedures are different, especially when dealing with super-humans. But, I felt safe in contributing some information in the decontamination process, and tried to let the players and characters run with it from there. Any mistakes or misinformation, though, should be attributed to me, and I apologize for anything that wasn't clear or was unnecessary. (If E or Frost ever explode radiation all over the place, I'll be glad to break out some charts and we can figure out how big the evacuation area should be and in which direction we should place the green-zone staging area. ;) ))

Fyre has an extreme fear of hospitals, so unless she heard screaming or some other horrible ruckus over the comm, she was waiting outside. Would she have gone in if they needed help? Yes. Even if it was Mason that needed help. But she would have been... "unhappy" and "uncomfortable" only begin to describe it.

While she was waiting outside, E come stumbling down the stairs. She stops him and tentatively starts talking to him, asking him how he is. Mason notices and comes rushing over, practically running over top of Frost to get to E. It's obvious that E's sick. Fyre thinks at first that E has "escaped," and tries to establish if that's true, and from whom or what. Mason's having a panic attack and Fyre doesn't have the patience with him to settle him down, so tells him to shut up. Yes, she's been saying that a lot lately.

I'll skip most of the details, because E and Mason both covered them well. Let me say, though, that when E popped off his helmet, it was a pretty scary sight. Heck, it scared me, the player, much less Fyre. You can see what the player did with the "costume" when you take a closer look, but from a step back, and probably a bit of imagination once you see what the player was going for, it's scary as hell. My first impression was, "Oh my god, E's a flaming corpse." I can only imagine what Fyre saw.

E finally admits that he's dying. I suspected, because of conversations that E's player and I have had. (By the way, the fact that Star and her player figured this out already, especially given the amount of time the character has been with the team lately, floors me. I swear, she must be psychic) Fyre, though, is shocked. She goes into complete and utter denial. She's likely to stay there, too, until, and if, something shocks her out of it. Yes, as Mason, character and player, has pointed out, her first reaction is to throw money at it. It's the easiest course of action, but not the only one Fyre has thought of or plans to take. She's in denial of the "dying," but not that there's a serious problem. They touch on a magical cure, and though E vehemently opposes the idea, Fyre is not above forcing it on him for his own good. She mentions that she knows some people and she may be able to "cut a deal" of some kind. There are possibilities here, but I'll see what happens before I explore those. So, if those are the "denial" and "bargaining" stages of grief, Mason gives her the perfect outlet for the "anger" stage. (Um, five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. But you probably already knew that.)

Mason is having his own personal issues with E's revelation. Maybe he's going through his own stages. But he's hit "acceptance" at this point, and doesn't seem to want to let Fyre linger in the "denial." I really, really thought they were going to get into the "throwing punches" stage here. Fyre's not going to take the first swing, though. She doesn't hate Mason. I don't think. But she is really, really angry at him right now. He has a special knack for waiting just until she's forgiven him and trusts him again, and then hitting her wherever and however it hurts the most. Fyre is... fiery. Yeah, it's a stereotype, or whatever, but I wrote it in, and try to stick to it. She feels things strongly, maybe not for long in some cases. Right now, she's angry and hurt because of Mason. But she's completely devastated by E's news. I'm sure she spent most of the night crying in a corner somewhere. (No, she didn't show much sign of that while the team was together. She's angry enough at Mason that she's unwilling to show a "weakness," and she wouldn't want to upset E) Again, even though she's in denial of the actual "dying," it's impossible not to recognize that there is a serious problem. But if setting Mason on fire takes her mind off of E's plight... well, that's alright with her right now.

She's going to continue looking for a solution or a cure. We've seen that she doesn't always take completely legal routes, (hiring someone to hack into Longbow records, for example) and I expect that to at least continue if not grow. She's also going to treat E as if he's glass, both physically and emotionally.

So, is anyone in Team Angst going to even make it to 50? E is... very Not Well, Frost is maybe dying, and Fyre and Mason are going to kill each other. Of course, that's if Strym and Malta don't kill them first.