A battered black fedora changed it's wearer, Sam Nicholas, into a gruff and world weary detective. He is constantly disheveled in a stained trenchcoat and cheap suit. He spouts monologues that are complete cliches about dangerous dames and goons looking to outfit him with cement shoes or give him permanent lead poisoning. He isn't impervious to attacks, and is often roughed up and knocked out cold, but his injuries are always minor and he bounces back quickly, usually after a stiff shot of bourbon. He can scrap with best of them, throwing haymakers or blasting away with his .45, but he has a serious weakness for femme fatale type villains.
I also cosume my news online and I play games with my friends online (both console and boardgames). It means I still game with friends who are in Scotland while I am in London.
I think the internet enhances my life, I read about games and gaming, I download books that I read offline when I am commuting, I check the availability of trains and buses online while on the commute and stay in touch with my team as we work hybridly.
And now I'm having childhood nightmare flashbacks to Liddsville. Great.
Opera Knight
Wears a black silk opera hat (that's a collapsible top hat for those unfamiliar with the term), domino mask and tuxedo, carries a weighted walking stick (an OAF). His outfit is strangely resistant to damage, staining, and provides a bonus to slipping out of entangles as well as offering some minor resistant defense. A competent martial artist with a specialty in both stick-fighting and dealing out non-lethal damage (killing attacks are so gauche) and decent leaping and running speeds. High PRE, an excellent singing voice and impeccable manners. Has a couple of tricks up his sleeves in the form of a small sonic multipower ("This? Oh, I learned this from a lead tenor in Rome.") that includes a small NND, an AoE vocal communications jammer, and a temporary PRE boost. Flicking the brim of his hat also lets him use a few levels of Growth or Shrinking. Probably too many gimmicks to be really feasible in a world of mini-maxing, but at least he's got style.
Absolutely despises cloaks and capes ("I didn't wear this tux so I could cover it up.") and has never thrown a rose at anyone in his life ("That's absurd, do you think this is a cartoon or something?").
His civilian name is Anthony "Tony" Gibus (soft "g" there), and while he is a classical music fan he couldn't carry a tune with a wheelbarrow sans his hat. Similarly, he teaches self-defense courses as his day job, but his base martial arts skills are weak when not acting as Opera Knight. And yes, he has Instant Change, or whatever it's turned into since 4th.
Okay, look, the every other part you came up with was _great_, but I _implore_ you to pick another name! Call him The Inverted Triangle if you want, but not.... That other thing, please.
I know you're somewhere over in the British Isles, so that probably doesn't hit you the same way it might hit a guy from North America who is active with BACA, but Dude... Too close., way, way, _way_ too close....
Here's a short alternate history:
The character's name is Taino, the flag is that of Paid to Rico, and the additional bits to the flag are surrounding Island Nations that have allied with PR after this guy and a military coup restored the native Taino people to rule over the small nation and protect anyone who joined with them.
There. Quite possibly my shortest entry ever.
Thanks for keeping the tradition alive, Sir. Now sit right over there and let me show you how that works...
I appreciate the thought, but seriously guys: I only play for fun. See you guys know the superhero stuff; it's second nature to most of you. I _don't_ really know it, so- while this and "dumb criminal stories" are tied as my favorite threads, I use this game as more a writing prompt than a superhuman generator. You guys are keeping your hand in at whipping up characters off the cuff, and I am,just keeping my hand in at writing on the whole. Accordingly, my stuff runs long becauase I am fleshing out a moment, or a story, or a world, morw than just a character.
I know doe whatever reason, detail trips a lot of triggers, so I announce straight up that I play for fun, period, and as I play a bit outside the intent of the game, I disqualify myself immediately so as not to take anything away from shorter, punchier entries that focus on the point of the game.
Dont be hard on yourself! That was an _awesome_ image, and now that a winner has been selected, I want to take a minute to post the story it inspired in me:
The Finals.
Again.
Carrey Porter was used to getting this far. He started doing the fighting tournaments when he was eleven; he first got to the finals at age fourteen, and he had made it every year since. Most folks figured Carrey had a knack for World Fighters Showdown- and there was no denying that he did! Even though the game was almost two decades old now, he had been playing it since he was five, when his grandparents- thinking all videogames were for kids- had given him Frog Crossing and World Fighters Smackdown as gifts for his fifth birthday.
Of course, the old Game Box II had been passe for some years, but Showdown had really caught on, and it seemed that every console had a port of it; he even had the World Fighters Showdown VI on his VR setup. Pretty sweet, if a bit dizzying.
Ports, though, weren't enough. He worked all summer when he was 12 and saved every dollar to buy an old refurbished cabinet from that place behind the bowling alley. It wasn't the deluxe version; it bore the black side panels and white-on-white face that ran from the simple header to the floor, framing the screen-- bit it _was_ World Fighters Showdown III: The Next Generation. It was the first game with an expanded character roster, and he couldn't play it enough if his dreams of finally proving he was the best in the world were to be realized. Expanded roster or not, he stuck with his favorites: the Beast, hailing from the jungle of Africa, and Padre, the monk with the secret from rural Spain. Sure, he kept his skills up on the new characters, and was actually noted for his skill with Bedrohung, the cyborg from Germany.
But the original cast-- those were the characters in every edition of the game- well, except for 'Showdown IV, when the programmer who designed the Beast demanded a share of the profits, which the publishers avoided by dropping the Beast from the line up. Apparently they worked something out, though, because the Beast appeared in the next two sequels and eventually was downloadable for the console versions of IV ( "but not the VR version," Carrey often complained).
Still, Showdown IV introduced the Tag Team Tournament, which apparently just wasn't going to go away, and which required him to find someone else just as good- _almost_- as he was. Not _quite_ as good, because there could be only _one_ world champion. The winning team would face off against each other, and the world champion would be decided in a three-out-of-five three times endurance battle.
Ziggy had been Carrey's partner for the last six years. Ziggy was good- _extremely_ good!- but not quite as good as Carrey. Or maybe he was. Maybe Carrey could beat Ziggy not because Carrey had a knack for the game, but because he had a knack for the players. That was the thing people didn't really appreciate: the same way that a player with years of practice 'just knew' what a computer-controlled opponent was going to do next and could begin preparing even before the computer did it, the same seemed to apply for people, at least, it seemed that way to Carrey. He could bait an opponent without even thinking about it; once he played against someone a few times, he just got a feel for them.
At least, it had always seemed so, in every bar, every arcade, every bowling alley, every place that had a World Fighters Showdown machine and people to challenge him... right up until the same place every year: right up until the finals; right up until he got run over by the Park brothers, Chun and Seung or, as they were known in the circuit, the Korean Express. World Champions in Tag Team every year they entered (which, Carrey noted resentfully, was the same sixteen years in which he had been making it to the finals), and not just _good_, but good enough to be smug about it: they would take turns being World Fighters Showdown champion. One year, Seung would simply bow out at the start of the final elimination; the next year Chun would do the same.
It was maddening! It was as if beating everyone else was more important than being _the_ world champion. Sure, Ziggy was Carrey's best friend since second grade, but if they ever won the final Tag elimination, Ziggy was going to get the battle of his life!
And here the Park Brothers were, their giggling and insulting eyes laughing uproariously at him over perfectly polite smiles. Carrey and Ziggy extended their hands, as did their opponents, and everyone shook all the way around. The brothers each snorted their derision to both of their competitors. An official reset the game machine, and the match began.
Carrey had won the coin toss for him and Ziggy, and opted to let Ziggy go first, squaring off with Chun. An official-- dressed in this year's costume to make them stand out-- most years they picked a character from the game and dressed that way, but the fans had started doing the same thing, so they took different tack the last couple of years and dressed in open-faced morph-suits with black sides and flanks and a swath of white down from the head to the inside of the legs, with stylized representations of the Swift / Solid / Fierce strike strength buttons-- they looked like stylized cabinets from the re-issues ordered by low-budget places like bars and bowling alleys. Chun and Zig took their stools, the official confirmed they were ready, then reached into the slightly-modified for the event cabinet and restarted the system. He backed quickly away while the warm-ups and diagnostics ran across the screen. Soon the familiar "game over" screen came on, and the official reached forward and pressed both the Player Select buttons, then stepped out of the area, back behind the few dozen people who paid for spots right in the pit.
The match started. Carrey looked at the screen and just _knew_ what Ziggy was going to do: Chun began a feint and even as he started, Carrey knew that Ziggy was going to fall for it- it was almost as if he could _hear_ Ziggy in his own head: "he's jumping in! I can't believe a player _that_ skilled is going to open with a jump! He must be underestimating me! I can do a snatch and flip as he comes overhead, turn it into a suplex for fifteen percent damage and an almost guaranteed stun, and while he's stunned I can unleash my Flame Fandango move at maximum for another twenty percent damage and still leap away before he can recover-!"
"Don't! Don't do it, you idiot! It's a-"
It didn't matter that tournament rules prevented them from speaking; that each player succeeds or fails on his own merits. Carrey didn't even get to finish _thinking_ it before it all played out on the screen: Chun had indeed fainted; what looked like a leap instead arced forward and low into a tumble. Ziggy had been guarding high to charge his air grab maneuver, and didn't see it coming until it was too late. "At least keep up the button charge on the Fandango!" Carrey screamed in his head. He glanced at Ziggy's hands, and wonder of wonders, he _was_ keeping the mid-high punch button held down, even as Chun's fighter- Chun had chosen the Beast- crashed into him at low height, grabbed him and threw him in the air, moved straight into the thousand claw slash which Ziggy's character fell directly into, then moved to grab-
"Now!" Carrey screamed in his head. "Now! Now! Now! If I have taught you _anything-"
Ziggy released the punch button just as the final frame of the thousand claw slash flickered out, and as Chun's Beast reached for a second grab, the corner of the screen filled with flames and Chun's Beast, totally open, took full damage. Even before the Fandango finished, Ziggy went into an elbow dive-- "perfect!" Carrey was excited now; "but don't forget that he won't be stunned and his sweep is the longest in the-" and, as if he was hearing that lesson for the thousandth time, Ziggy initiated a swinging drop kick, an attack that would either force Chun to guard high or it would strike the Beast even as his sweep failed--
The next bit was unnerving. Chun turned _away from the screen_ and looked Carrey dead in the eyes. Even as he did so, he set up for an aerial uppercut, knocking Ziggy's fighter out of the air. All told, Ziggy's avatar had lost sixty-six percent of his damage meter, and his Rage Gauge was only half full.
Chun went directly into the Flying claw maneuver, certain to take Ziggy' s dazed character out with a claw-kick-sweep combo but then Ziggy released the two buttons he had been holding: high kick and low punch. If charged for a full ten seconds, with the swordsman Ziggy was using, the Special unleashed was devastating. Instantly, the swordsman began to disappear and reappear all over the screen, thirty times, with a rapier thrust at every momentary appearance.
If Ziggy had been playing anyone but the Park brothers, he would have won, no question. But Chun was no ordinary player- no one here was an ordinary player. Chun was one half of the Korean Express, the undefeatable team that travelled here to New Jersey every year, and every year left twenty-thousand dollars richer and with a handful of advertising sponsorships to boot.
Chun rolled his joystick in a low half-circle forward, setting up for one of the Beast's signature moves. Instantly the character on the screen leapt forward, prone on the ground, driving himself forward with powerful thrusts of his suddenly-bent-backwards legs. In an instant, he had slid across the screen, under Ziggy's attack, and at the precise moment the Teleporting Sword Slasher ended, the Beast's arms reached out and grabbed the swordsman by the ankles and yanked and twisted, pulling him flat onto his abdomen and face-- another twelve percent damage, but Chun quickly followed up with a prone grab and curled forward-- as the beast somersaulted forward in a roll, still holding the ankles of the fallen swordsman, he rolled all the way across the prone character, curling his opponent backwards in a modified "throw" maneuver called the Spine Breaker.
Chun completed the roll, and instantly fed in the commands for a modified throw maneuver called "the Throat Ripper." The Beast grabbed for the swordsman at the moment the frame glitch would cause the swordsman to appear prone and dazed, Ziggy did the impossible: he pulled off the inputs for an Ultimate during the single frame gap between recovering and the prone glitch caused by the Spine Breaker. Rather than prone, the character appeared standing in a deep forward lean, sword slicing forward in left-right arc: The Abdominal Slash, and after the pummeling he just endured, his Rage Gauge was full. Slash, slash, slash, slash, slash-- animated as a combo, it was technically a single attack- unblockable if your guard was down and you were within throw range. Ziggy's character should be prone, with "Beast Wins!" growing across the screen, but somehow he still had two percent of his damage gauge. Carrey knew it was useless: a slap would do two percent, but the damage Ziggy was dealing to Chun's avatar was unprecedented. Carrey was so shocked he couldn't even be impressed-- what was supposed to be an unvoiced congratulations was just gibberish in his head. Chun's eyes were wide in surprise-- if nothing else, this would be the first moment in history that either member of the Korean Express looked like he was contemplating losing.
Carrey's internal monologue spouted more gibberish, for some reason, angry-sounding gibberish in spite of how he felt about the turn of events. Chun turned and looked dead into Carrey's eyes even as his hands delivered the final blow to Ziggy's swordsman: three Venom Spit attacks: Medium, Low, High. Thanks to the swordsman's character graphics, he was guaranteed to hit one of the final two; his animation would not allow him to slip between the low and high the way most of the other characters could. Even if Ziggy tried to block-- well, any blocked Special Attack did two percent damage to the meter. It was more a matter of how Ziggy wanted to die at this point. "Nobly," most fans thought. "Stupidly" was Carrey's opinion: never give up; go down fighting. The pinky on Ziggy's joystick hand reached out and pressed and held the Player 2 button. The swordsman on the screen went into his Taunt routine: he extended an arm, sheathed his weapon, threw his head back and began an animated laugh. He got a full second and a half before the medium-high blob of venom splattered into his midsection, then he dropped to the ground and the familiar "The Beast Wins!" floated up from the center of the screen.
Chun's eyes directed pure hatred at Carrey. Unblinking, daring him to react. "Coaching is forbidden!" thought Carrey.
Wait--! No; no; he did _not_ coach. On top of that, he didn't _think_ it either! The gibberish-- "am I thinking in Chinese now? Has the stress gotten to me? Did I have a stroke at twenty-eight?!" poured through his head. The gibberish melted away, and he thought-- very loudly, he thought--
"How the Hell am I thinking on top of myself?!" Then his mind burned. "You will be punished!" Then it was all done. Everything was quiet in his head. It actually took a few minutes for the noise of the crowd-- the thousand or so people who had been watching the gigantic overhead monitors and were going berserk at the turn of events-- to come back to his consciousness. Shaken, he patted Ziggy on the shoulder, and squeezed it for a moment in an expression of appreciation for the incredible near-upset Ziggy had managed to pull off. There was a four-minute break between rounds. An official stepped forward, opened the cabinet, and paused the game. "That was incredible, Zig! How did you manage to pull this off?! I can't tell you how proud I am of you right now!"
"I reckon it was all the drilling the past few months, Carrey" Ziggy drawled. I swear, I was half panicked after I blew the opening, but then-- well, it all kind of came back; it was like I was just sitting back and watching my hands do whatever I was told-- everything came back. Kinda like a classroom test, you know when you get to that one thing and you can hear the teacher going over it in your head? It was like that, 'cept of course, it was you and not some kinda Showdown teacher." He looked thoughtful for a minute. "Naw, I reckon it was 'zactly the same, since you was kinda my Showdown teacher, so yeah-- it was like that. I wouldn't 'a thought of none of it, 'cept you'd already drilled into me, and I could hear it playing out in my head each time like we was playin' against each other."
"I don't care how it worked, Zig! That was _amazing_! We might actually have a chance! Look at the screen! Chun's at _twenty percent_! Twenty! Maybe 18! We have never had them below fifty percent left on the first man when we lost our starter! Dude, we've got a chance!" Even as he said it, he could feel.... _something_....
He turned to see the Korean Express staring at him, all four eyes (and one set of glasses) filled with hatred and an absolute hunger for revenge. An air horn sounded. Sixty seconds. Ziggy moved back and Carrey sat at the stool his teammate had blessed with incredible luck. Things were looking good. "Not for _you_!" he thought to himself with a heavy asian accent.
Ziggy assumed the position behind the stool Carrey had occupied so he could watch the rest of the match. Seung likewise stood behind Chun. An official stood between the players and confirmed their readiness to resume. Once assured, he unpaused the machine and familiar letters floated across the screen. "Round Two...... The Beast...... Versus..... Bedrohung!..... 3....2.....1......BEGIN!"
Chun was cagey-- extremely cautious, launching ranged special attacks one after the other, at different heights and different speeds. It was straight up unskilled cheese, but with at best one-third of his damage meter remaining, he was content to resort to the unskilled practice of spamming damage from a distance: even a blocked Special Attack did two percent, after all.
Carrey soaked up roughly ten percent of his damage bar before he had a plan of attack. He snarled at himself for his brief indecision. He couldn't believe he just floundered after Ziggy had won them the best lead into the Korean Express in the history of the tournament. What was _wrong_ with him?! His head cleared and he became painfully aware of the disappointment he was certain he would see in Ziggy's face if he glanced behind him. He initiated a rocket leap with the cyborg, which carried him easily over the spammed venom spit attacks.
Chun responded by having the Beast stand and Carrey was certain his opponent was charging a Thousand Slash attack to go off as soon as the airborne Bedrohung was in range, and - "of course! This is not just the best anti-aerialist attack Jimseung has, a forward-leaping character cannot block! All eleven hits will score twenty-eight percent damage!"
Who the Hell was Jimseung? What is wrong in my head?! He risked a furtive dart of the eyes to the left and saw Chun with his head turned directly towards him, toothy grin and a spider-to-the-fly look in his eyes. "I am!" He thought, but with that crazy Chinese accent. Holy crap! Th- Am I thinking with a Korean accent? Jimseung is Beast! Why do I -" Chun was still staring that creepy stare directly into his eyes. That meant he didn't notice when Bedrohung abruptly stopped his rocket thrust and launched an aerial Long Arm-- he turned to the screen just as he unleashed the Thousand Slash attack and his face fell.
From precisely this point- just premature of the apex of his leap, the Long Arm hit low-- ankles low. The cybernetic arm extended behind the rocket-propelled hand and the steel fist struck the Beast in the shins, well under the slash attack animation that Chun's avatar would be trapped in for another two full seconds. His gloating turn away from the screen cost him not just another twelve percent of his damage meter, but an automatic drop in throw priority-- the penalty for being knocked out of the Thousand Slash attack.
Rather than let the arm retract as Bedrohung began to drop to the ground, Carrey did a quick quarter-circle down and back then pushed forward with the Low Punch button and the Fierce power button, causing the cyborg to grab Beast and pull himself almost instantly toward his opponent. A quick quarter circle down and then backward with a long press and hold on the high kick button and the cyborg rolled his body feet-first, crashing into the Beast with his rocket boots in full blaze...
And doing twenty-eight percent damage. It was a risky move, as it telegraphed itself badly, and if (as it usually did) failed, it left Bedrohung open, off-balance, and in this case, directly next to his opponent: in range of anything he might care to offer up as a counter-attack. But in this case, with the Beast's throw priority temporarily lowered and the timing putting Carrey in just the right spot during the precious two frames when the Beast was ending his attack animation but unable to begin a defense or attack animation.... It had been _more_ than enough to KO Chun's Beast, and he himself had suffered only ten percent. He was going up against Seung's character with ninety percent of his damage bar intact and the flurry of uninterrupted Fierce-Level attacks had almost completely filled his Rage Gauge. He would have Ultimate Attacks available long before Seung possibly could. If only he could get as lucky as he did this round; if only he could get as solid a read on Seung's plan as he had on Chun' s... "No. Your luck is over here." He thought to himself- why the Hell am I thinking in Chinese?!" Only derisive laughter echoed through his mind. "I have never stressed this hard... I have never had this good a shot! My cheating will be punished! What the Hell? I know I'm not cheating! God; I can't stand the tension...."
Seung replaced his brother on the stool, but instead of psyching himself up, he spent the entire four-minute break staring daggers into Carrey's eyes. "Enjoy your last few minutes as a champion!" Carrey retorted, unable to think of anything better. "That was weak." He thought to himself. "Yes; it was" he agreed, with an accent.
Ziggy patted Carrey's shoulders hard. You got this!" He boosted. "Me and you, all the way, Carrey! The hometown boys!"
"Your companion is a fool" he thought to himself. "Ziggy? Dude, I love that guy! What's wrong with me?"
At that instant, Seung laughed and turned to the screen. The official confirmed that they were ready to play and unpaused the machine. Carrey barely noticed the words floating across the screen. He was getting a bit rattled at himself; his mind had been going to some strange places since this match had started.
At some point he was aware that Seung was using Ray, a street thug / hometown hero character from "East Coast, USA!" Odd choice; he wasn't a particularly popular character. Every sequel was precluded with rumors that Ray was being replaced by a 'better" character, yet he had been in every version of the game since the original. His specials weren't particularly... "Special," except for that wierd Delta Kick thing that chained perfectly with itself. The Shuffle Punch could be absolutely devastating-- if it ever actually hit someone. That thing didn't just telegraph, it called you before knocking on your door to deliver the telegraph. Carrey couldn't recall the last time even a nine-year-old had fallen for it.
Ray's big advantage was speed. His high-powered moves weren't any better than anyone else's, but catch an opponent in just the right frame before they touched the ground, and a skilled Ray player could walk him all the way back to the corner with a seemingly endless rapid-fire assault of light and medium-strength attacks that chained flawlessly up to the game's maximum thirty-two hit combo limit. The problem was that few people were fast enough and skilled enough to enter the repetitive sequences flawlessly. Even Carrey shied away from Ray when he had the choice. Sadly, he realized that Ray, more than any other character, suited the Korean Express's relentless, mechanical approach to the game. There was a good chance that he was going to lose thirty seconds in. Even a blocked flurry, comboed long enough, would easily charge the Rage Gauge. The trade off for Ray's weak and limited specials was God-level Ultimates.
"I suddenly don't like my odds." He thought. "They will get much worse, cheater!" He finished.
Okay, that crap had to _stop_. He was starting to think there was a whole extra person in his head. More laughter.
Fifteen seconds in and he hadn't found an opening. As expected, he was steadily blocking an onslaught of attempted long-chain combos, barely finding the cues for when to block low and back to mid- he admitted that it might just be pure luck; he wasn't convinced he actually _had_ seen all the cues. Maybe he was, after sixteen years, finally getting a read on Seung. Or maybe this was exactly how he himself would play Ray. Who knew? The important details here were that he was at ninety percent with a full Rage Gauge and Seung's Ray was completely untouched and-- aw, _crap_! Seung's Rage Gauge burst into flame.....
Aw, _crap_. Carrey was pressed hard against the right wall, miraculously shifting his block from mid to low and back at just the right times. That was going to fail eventually, though, and the instant Seung got an opening, an Ultimate was coming. Carrey was even sure he knew just one. The Omega Kick- basically the Delta Kick chained three times- wouldn't work this close in. Sure, the last kick would get him, but at this close range, the first two would strike too high to actually touch him.
It would be the Flaming Shuffle Punch. Every bit as humiliating to get tagged with, but with seriously-ramped-up damage and Ray bathed in fire the whole time for that extra gaudiness. It couldn't possibly miss: it was a modified uppercut that started at the ankles so it would connect with anyone who was close enough, and brother, the animations were on top of each other; you just couldn't get closer than that. The upper cut finished with Ray's fist extended well over his head before it looked back into the next cycle, and the sliding movement element that gave it the name and Carrey's avatar being already pinned to the wall at the edge of the screen meant that Seung's Ray would just juggle him for all four uppercuts in the Ultimate cycle. Easily sixty-five percent damage with there; possibly seventy. At best, he would come out of this with twenty-percent of his damage bar, dazed, and his Rage Gauge snuffed.
"Screw it!" Thought Carrey, face twisting with the mania of frustration. "I'm doing _something_!" He refused to go down without struggling through every painful inch of the fall. He had been charging both mid-height attacks and the Fierce button. Why not? They didn't take him out of the blocking stances after they were pressed, and they might be useful. The first two-thirds of the controller input left him in Block anyway. Go for it. Die swinging.
Carrey dropped the joystick to the straight down position, rolled a quarter-circle back and up to the hard back position, then dropped without rolling it back to down and repeated the quarter roll- entering the inputs so fast an observer couldn't actually tell what they where, but the slamming of the joystick could be heard twenty feet away. He continued on, dropping the controller for a third time to the straight down position, hoping, just _hoping_-
Seun screwed up. Was it a botched input? A failed button? Carrey would never know; he was busy. All he knew was the miracle he needed was playing out right before his eyes. Just as he dropped the joystick to the down position for the third time- the commit point at which a miracle happened. Instead of Seung taking him out with an Ultimate- he got the miracle. Seung... stopped. Not for long- maybe two frames. He stopped pressing buttons and held the joystick at neutral for just the briefest instant, a horrified look on his face even as he did it.
Carrey rolled the joystick down and forward in a quarter circle, releasing both mid-height attack buttons as he did so. Bedrohung- Menace; the German Super-Soldier cyborg, raised a forearm in a defensive position and the back of his jacket ripped open and four jet nozzles extended out beyond the tattered edges and ignited. Ultimate!
Ultimate Knee Kick, specifically. The cyborg flew forward, one knee forward, into Ray, grabbed him by the shoulders as his knee sank deeply into his animated opponent's abdomen, then flew nigh-instantly to the wall at the end of the arena three screens away, smashing Ray into it and crushing him with his knee. The moment the pair hit the wall, Bedrohung, hovering in front of Ray, shoulders still clasped in steel hands, began to pump his legs back and forth- left, right, left, right- driving his steel knees over and over into Ray's middle. Carrey spammed the Fierce button like a crazed woodpecker, rapid-fire presses in an attempt to extend the duration of the attack while the combo counter climbed.
Seung seemed to snap back to attention as the two characters flew across the screen and began waggling the stick furiously in an attempt to shorten the attack. Seung won the input battle and threw Carrey's Bedrohung, Carrey's zeal for a few more strikes had cost him the fifteen percent Finisher. Still, the first smash and eleven additional strikes- and as an Ultimate- had been ridiculously effective, and had left Ray's damage bar at forty_five or so percent. Carrey was overjoyed; it was rare to get the full twenty-second charge it took to bring the initial slam up to forty percent, plus two percent for each additional strike over four--
No time for gloating, though. Whatever had thrown Seung off his game had been shaken away, and even at these odds, either of the Park brothers was still an incredibly dangerous opponent. He thought for just a moment he saw the player to his left sweat. Was that glistening brow just his imagination?
What he had _not_ seen was Chun slowly move from behind his brother, slide gently around behind Ziggy, and come to stand just behind and to the right of Carrey. Ziggy hadn't bothered to enforce the protocol simply because at his height of six-three or so and Chun's height of five-five, Ziggy could still see the screen fine. It was unfortunate that Zig was so easy-going and so intent on the big screen over the game cabinet. Actually, Carrey noticed in his periphery, _everyone_ was watching the big screen well-above the cabinets. This was the most exciting Finals match in years, and no one wanted to miss the action.
That also meant that no one noticed what Carrey himself, and what Ziggy's ... generous proportions (Ziggy made no secret of his love of food- particularly confections- or his disdain for exercise) would likely have hidden from anyone who might just have happened to _not_ be watching the big screen.
Chun had initiated a Flaming Shuffle Punch. Not because he had any real hope of hitting Bedrohung at this distance, but because each blocked uppercut pushed Bedrohung back one-fifth of the screen, and he would have to stay blocked until the entire move was finished. As soon as the Ultimate started, he took his right hand from the buttons and carefully extended his arm toward Carrey. Simultaneously, Chun extended his left hand toward Carrey. "Burn, Cheater! Burn!" Carrey yelled at himself, confusing himself,enough that he nearly lost his concentration. Then both of the Park brothers extended an index finger and touched him at points halfway from his temples to his ears
And there was an audible snapping noise in Carrey's head. For the single, tiniest instant, he was locked inside his brain, out of communication or even input from the world outside of his mind, and for a split second, he was wracked with a spasm of pain not reflected by his unresponsive body.
And an instant later, he was God.
He understood _everything_. He understood that the Park brothers were both prions, that they could communicate telepathically, that they had been cheating for years by silently coaching one another during gameplay. He understood that they could also insert a small amount of confusion into an opponent if he was close enough- enough to throw off his game. They could read an opponent's mind and know his intentions even before he could put them into action, making it ridiculously easy to dodge, defend, counterattack. They could, by working together, inflict pain and even lock another Psion away from his abilities for a short period of time.
He also understood that _he_ was a Psion, though he had never been aware of it, and it was that unawareness that kept it from manifesting until now, in the company of two other psions. He also understood that they thought he had been coaching Ziggy telepathically, as they had been picking up some of what his anxiety had pushed toward Ziggy, though this was merely a result of their own abilities. Carrey had, just those few minutes ago, absolutely no idea who to make his thoughts appear in another person's mind. The Park Brothers had been crawling through his mind trying to assess his abilities and to distract him with confusion.
He understood that he had caused Seung to pause briefly, and that had made them decide to act. He understood that the stunt they just pulled was some kind of mind bar meant to lock him away from his abilities, and he understood how they had miscalculated.
He knew they had miscalculated because they believed that he was both aware of and in control of his abilities. What they had intended as a lock against his abilities was actually the psionic shock that awakened his defenses and brought to him a keen awareness and understanding of his abilities.
Mostly, though, he was aware of exactly how powerful he was, and how hilariously outclassed the Park Brothers were. They were cavemen with rollerskates amongst the more pedestrian cavemen. He was a diesel-driven locomotive, and their day was not going to go at all the way they expected it to.
He pushed back at Chun-- hard. He felt Chun's defenses snap like a brittle shaft of sun-dried straw. Chun clutched briefly at his head, staggered, and fell. Instantly, the official was next to him, cradling his head and slapping his face. He took a radio from his belt and called for assistance. Weirdly, no one thought this was strange. It was unusual, but not unheard of for some of the fans to simply faint under the tension-- particularly those that hadn't eaten for a day or two, too absorbed in the action to notice the passage of time.
"No; don't even think about it!" Carrey's mind sent back to Seung-- Carrey had sense a desire to leap to his brother's aid. This would have caused the officials to stop the game and declare a rematch. Carrey wasn't interested in anything but victory, here, in this moment. "He will live; I have done to him what you thought you could do to me. Try it again, and I promise you that he will not survive the trip out of here."
Seung lashed out in anger, attempting to drill deep into Carrey's pain centers-- "Stop that!" Carrey chided, delivering a psionic "slap" across Seung's psyche that caused him to reel physically. Carrey politely paused his character and waited for Seung to recover. "No; I do not want to win _that_ way" Carrey pushed the words into Seung's mind. "I want to take you down. All these years-- all these years you have been cheating, coaching, assisting, clouding my judgement and my actions! No; you _will_ suffer for that; I promise. But tonight, you win or lose based on your _skill_ versus whatever the Hell I feel like doing to you. Do you understand? One tiny tendril probes my mind, and I will leave you paralyzed, locked entirely in your head. " For a brief instant, Carrey paused his play again and ran electric agony through Seung's pain centers. "Or possibly _worse_. Now play!"
An official, confused by the faltering play on the big screen, stepped between them and paused the machine. "Are you okay to play?" he asked Seung. "Under the circumstances, we can call the game and set up a rematch if you wish to be with your brother."
Seung glanced past the concerned official and across to Carrey. Carrey sat motionless on the stool, but he made certain that Seung saw the room twisting and distorting around him-- reality itself was now his to play with. Seung watched as electricity sparked and raced up and down Carrey's body. He glanced at Seung with raging coals in his eyes and an abyss surrounding the small pit in which they sat. "I play!" Seung said hastily. "I play!"
The official started the unpause timer from ten seconds and stepped away.
"Excellent choice," Carrey cooed inside Seung's mind. "But first, let's make sure there's no more cheating, okay?" Seung felt an iron door slam shut in his head as if it were a physical blow. Gone. He could not feel the crowd; he could not feel his brother. He could not read the surface thoughts of the man seated next to him.
3.... 2... 1.... Begin!
Carrey became irritated. Then he became angry. Then he became _furious_. Seung--
wasn't very good. His play was average for one of the casuals at the bar in the middle of the week. It was just... average! How the Hell was this possible?! Carrey probed into Seung's mind. It wasn't a front; it wasn't fear. He just wasn't good. Apparently his brother wasn't any better. All this time-- All these years, they were world champions based entirely on _cheating_! On reading their opponent's minds-- not just knowing their opponent's next moves, but even knowing what particularly countermove their opponent might be most concerned about, and using that against them. Carrey, it turn out, really _was_ the best in the world! Robbed year after year by a pair of telepathic grifters!
It was incredibly hard to keep himself from lashing out, from releasing all this rage into the crowd around him. This wouldn't do; this would not do! He couldn't defeat a Seun who was playing so absolutely mediocre in the finals! He would not get any recognition beyond being the jerk who took advantage of a guy too distracted with worry over his brother's condition to play well. There was no glory in that!
There was only one thing to do. He had been robbed of the sensational feeling of finally defeating his rivals, but he would not be robbed of the glory of being champion, of having clawed his way to victory! He reached into Seung's mind and knocked Seung into the driver's seat. "Move over, you cheating turd! Let me show you how the game is played." For the next sixty seconds, Carrey played both characters, controlling Seung's character through the simple expedient of controlling Seung himself. He put on an incredible show of blocked combos and just-missed Specials and Ultimates and barely-dodged finishers, creating for the record what was probably the greatest, most skillful game ever to be captured. This would, for the record, go down as the greatest match ever played by Seung Park (which, Carrey had to admit to himself, did rankle a bit), but at the two-second mark on the countdown (one second was, after all, a bit cliche), Carrey's Bedrohung, down to a pixel's width of damage bar, would miraculously deliver a forty-five percent Ultimate to Seung's character-- a bit of overkill, being as how Seung's character had only fifteen percent of his own damage bar-- but it made for great theater. Besides, he thought to himself, in competition, there is no kill like overkill.
The crowd went nuts; the PA announced Carrey and Ziggy as the new world Tag-Team champions, and announced that the final match between himself and his partner Ziggy would begin in two hours.
"You can have it, Zig." Carrey thought, absolutely bitter with rage. All these years-- all these years, he had been the best-- and he didn't even have a chance to prove it properly thanks to those cheating little---
Then something went really, really sideways in his head. "No; there _is_ a way to at least get the vengeance I deserve!" He walked into the crowd, changing slowly as he moved through them until Carrey was gone and a large, powerfully-muscled man strode the path he began. He was completely naked. He walked up to an official hovering near the rear wall of the venue. "Yo-wah clothes," he commanded in a heavy Austrian accent. "Give them to me." Unable to stop himself, the official stripped and handed the morph suit to Carrey, who stripped and struggled into it. Then he turned and walked back into the crowd. Tired of the fight against the crush, he mentally nudged everyone he encountered to the left or right, out of his way. Tiring of that, he simply reached out with his mind and _threw_ them out of the way, parting them like Moses parted the Red Sea. The confused crowd watched in horror as what appeared to be an official strode through the gap, burst into a colorful flame, and began to reshape the room, causing it to sway crazily, the walls pulsing and undulating as if alive; gravity no longer made sense.
Carrey strode to the slumped, crying form of Seung Park, still on the stool in front of the arcade cabinet. "Are these tears of a bitter loss, or of the humiliation of being ridden like puppet?!" he demanded. Seung remained silent. "I have changed my mind," Carrey spoke into Seung's head. "You and your brother have earned my wrath, and so much more! Your brother will _not_ live to see tomorrow! Not after everything you have taken from me! But don't be afraid--" Carrey consoled. Suddenly, Seung flew straight up into the air as if he had been jerked by the chin. He stood, spinning slightly in front of the entire audience. "You," Carrey started again, "will not have to watch him die." Then Seung spun in two directions at once as if he were a wet rag being wrung out. There was a series of sickening snaps and pops cracking through the silent auditorium, then Seung's lifeless body fell to the ground in a broken pile.
The audience screamed and panicked and attempted to run anywhere-- everywhere-- all at once, but found they could not move a single muscle between them. "You will all be fine in a few minutes." Carrey barked into their heads. "You are merely in my way. Be glad that Head Games has no quarrel with you."
Then he walked out into a brand new life. Gotta make a quick stop at the clinic first, though. There was one last Park Brother he needed to see...
And Thanks, Rich, for taking up the torch for long posts.
He owes hundreds of people money. No one is going to get paid.
If my post didn't make it clear, you aren't missing much. I mentioned it out of completeness, not as an endorsement.
Mighty Protectors (Dee's latest version) is another incremental improvement on the formula. V&V's as important a part of my roleplaying past as Champions, although the two scratch different itches. If nothing else, you cannot make an excellent drinking game out of Hero system's character generation system, but you sure can with V&V.
As to OGL resistance, he was hardly the only one with misgivings back in the day. I don't know what his beef was, but many people were leery of it being a setup for a bait-and-switch ploy to hurt adoptees down the road - something that Hasbro did finally attempt to pull, albeit thankfully far too late to succeed. I also had many customers express concern that non-D&D systems would disappear in short order if d20 caught on and every publisher started using it. That was alarmist but not entirely absurd, and if you look at today's distributors and what they stock for retailers to order it almost feels like it's come to pass. If it weren't for DTRPG and online sales in general the whole TTRPG industry would be in dire straits indeed. - and the distribution failure started well before the pandemic, which only exacerbated pre-existing problems.
The bodiless head of "Tommy, Dennis' patient and friend" is going to haunt my nightmares. And is that a bow tie directly attached to his horribly fleshy stump of a torso? <Shudder>
What is this horror you have wrought upon the world, Dennis?
Yeah, yeah, I got a bit of that myself. But this being the Christmas season, she puts me very much in mind of Want, one of the two children looked after by the Ghost of Christmas Present. That said, I would not wish to see the doll based on Ignorance.
@Rich McGee, yup I agree the newest TRO should have Heat Sinks slotted. I think it’s bad that they didn’t even mention it in the newest TRO that they might have to be accounted for. I’m sure that someone must’ve looked at the Commando and asked why are his Heat Sinks listed on the record sheet but not in the description. Perhaps I missed it earlier in the intro rulebook but I only caught it the Construction Rules and also Fan made Record sheet Programs. Well at least my friends aren’t that much of sticklers that it won’t matter.
@Rich McGee, I don’t know how much of a tax grab it is. I think it is a major oversight that the TRO:3039 didn’t mention of adding in Heat Sinks. I only caught the rule when I went over the Construction Rules in the Introductory box set. Now the sheets that came with the box set has them filled in already. It’s not a big deal but someone dropped the ball. And I wonder because the TRO: 3039 has all the old records before the rule was changed that they didn’t want to change the sheets to save on production? They still should’ve noted it in the TRO.
Repair shop called; said parts wouldnt be in before next Friday, so I picked up.
Can't do much, as it was foinf into the shop because it won't charge. My daughter has the same phone, so we have worked out a deal where we swap batteries so I have the phone for emergency use.
For something like Frost Giant's Daughter I don't think I'd change anything mechanically, just spin the narrative description for a more dreamlike hallucinatory feel and make the aftermath leave the players wondering just how real it all was. Maybe injuries vanish at the end of things, but some element from the dream has come back with them to reality.
Similar for emulating the feel of the Moore stories, or some of Smith's eerier work. Jirel tended to encounter strange environments that could have mechanical effects but much of it could be purely narrative descriptions in game - and perhaps some weird maps. There's a fair number of puzzler situations (roughly equivalent to traps with inobvious ways to get around them) and deceptive villains (often with conflicting motivations and trying to recruit aid against one another) but those are part and parcel of many fantasy settings. Think getting the feel right is largely a matter of presentation, not unique mechanics.
If you really wanted to emphasize the "this ain't Kansas" aspect of otherworldly adventures, run the mundane stuff with FH as usual, and then when they're in a dreamland/otherworld/pocket dimension inside a sleeping wizard's mind/etc. switch to a different system altogether. There's tons of low-crunch light RPGs out there that feel less "real" than a simulationist high-crunch engine like Hero, and they'll feel "off" when you switch between the two such extremes - and because they're so low-crunch, the effort required to port your PCs to them and teach the "dream" rules (some of which fit on a single page for the really light ones) is minimal. Troika's a decent option, as is Into the Odd (both of which are seriously surreal to begin with), and the Powered By the Apocalypse engine has a lot of options to choose from. When the players get back to "reality" they go back to Hero, of course. The whole point would be to make the gameplay between real and otherworld feel different.
I'm not sure exactly when it was changed, but it's been quite a while - over a decade, at a rough guess. Probably a post-FASA change but I won't swear to it. The early editions gave every engine regardless of rating the ability "hide" all 10 weight-free sinks in the engine so they didn't take up crit slots, but now anything above or below a 250 rating can fit more (up to 12 for 300-rating engine) or less, although even with a huge engine you have to pay the weight cost for sinks beyond ten. Which is a little convoluted, but not terribly so by BT standards.
So you were doing it right once upon a time, and then the rules changed.
For something like Frost Giant's Daughter I don't think I'd change anything mechanically, just spin the narrative description for a more dreamlike hallucinatory feel and make the aftermath leave the players wondering just how real it all was. Maybe injuries vanish at the end of things, but some element from the dream has come back with them to reality.
Similar for emulating the feel of the Moore stories, or some of Smith's eerier work. Jirel tended to encounter strange environments that could have mechanical effects but much of it could be purely narrative descriptions in game - and perhaps some weird maps. There's a fair number of puzzler situations (roughly equivalent to traps with inobvious ways to get around them) and deceptive villains (often with conflicting motivations and trying to recruit aid against one another) but those are part and parcel of many fantasy settings. Think getting the feel right is largely a matter of presentation, not unique mechanics.
If you really wanted to emphasize the "this ain't Kansas" aspect of otherworldly adventures, run the mundane stuff with FH as usual, and then when they're in a dreamland/otherworld/pocket dimension inside a sleeping wizard's mind/etc. switch to a different system altogether. There's tons of low-crunch light RPGs out there that feel less "real" than a simulationist high-crunch engine like Hero, and they'll feel "off" when you switch between the two such extremes - and because they're so low-crunch, the effort required to port your PCs to them and teach the "dream" rules (some of which fit on a single page for the really light ones) is minimal. Troika's a decent option, as is Into the Odd (both of which are seriously surreal to begin with), and the Powered By the Apocalypse engine has a lot of options to choose from. When the players get back to "reality" they go back to Hero, of course. The whole point would be to make the gameplay between real and otherworld feel different.
It's worth reading Catherine Lucille Moore's Jirel of Joiry stories.
Contemporary with Howard, Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, (as in, the same issues of Weird Tales), the Jirel stories were mostly about her dealing with supernatural threats. Her actual butt kicking scenes were minimal, or happened before the proper stories began.
So to build her, you would include lots of Ego, OMCV, DMCV and so on. And, yes, she can ride at the head of her soldiers cutting her way through mooks in a perfectly Conan-ish manner.
Despite Margaret Brundage's covers, she wore perfectly functional armour too.
Have to like any super who rocks a hooded shoulder cape with style. Almost up there with the Big Red Cheese's one-shoulder half-cape look or Icon's cape of unmitigated awesomeness.
Amusing that Stormlord's yellow streak has managed to taint all the other weather manipulators since him. And at 11- no less. Man, that must be annoying. At least she doesn't seem to be psychopathic about proving it's wrong.
Y'know, it took me till now to realize that even with a twenty-year time skip while Mocker was indisposed, there's still some time dilation going on. Crisis was over forty years ago IRL, and man, do I feel old now.
Dropzone
Daria Bowsman is a former military brat who was raised on patriotic high ideals as she was carted in her childhood and early teens base to base, place to place, all over the world. She actually considered joining the military herself, mostly to follow the family legacy, even going as far as learning how to shoot guns when most other girls were more concerned with make up and Boy Bands. When her powers first surfaced, Daria was not alone. She teleported herself and several students by accident to the roof of the school, an incident that resulted in one panicked peer going off the ledge and breaking a leg. Daria had been outed as a 'filthy mutie'. The rancor stunned her! While it would be folly to say her life was free of discrimination, she had bought hook like and sinker the lessons her parents had told her about how everyone on base , regardless of beliefs, skin color, or creed, was an American just like her. Apparently, this acceptance ended with mutantcy. She saw the disgust in her father's eyes, and the fear in her mothers. And her parents said she would be going away where they could.. fix her, and make sure she didn't hurt anyone else. With visions of experimental labs or isolated cells... Daria vanished, reappeared a mile away, and kept on going.
That was several years ago. During which Daria traveled the world under her own power, and did what she had to do to survive. Some of her actions would have put her in the supervillain category, or even super mercenary, but it all felt so empty. Her idealism had been shattered, but the shards of it, the need to believe in something to have worth, lingered and cut. Then, at age twenty one, she ran into Kinematic. He had heard of a teleporting woman who worked as a smuggler among other things. He explained to her she was not alone though she had been mislead. There was no unity possible between the super powered and the norms; the latter would always fear the former. It was Us Vs Them. But the mundanes had a lot of advantages, numbers, tech, and more. He could use her help.
Where once there was Patriotism, now came ideas of Mutant Supremacy. Whether you hate the mundanes or not wasn't the point, Mutants were at war, a war they didn't ask for, but they had to finish as the victors. The only other options were slavery or genocide. Daria took on the code name Dropzone, recognizing that her chief use for the team would be as transport for the loyal. She can, after all, teleport quite a few people well over a mile at a time, or just herself with greater rapidity and reaction time. She's also learned tricks, like teleporting a bullet so it comes from a different direction or bypasses a barrier. She's even reversed the attacks of others at her back at the attackers. The fact she speaks three languages besides her own (to varying degrees of fluency) and understands some other cultures better also comes in useful. But she has no illusions; it's her powers that make her worthwhile. Oddly, her teleportation always makes targets feel as if they're falling even when they aren't. Yet another reason she took the name "Dropzone"
For my next set I am going to do something a bit.. different. I am going to modernize a classic villain team, and tell it as a story.
So I present to you:
The Return of the Crushers
Part 1
Date: Unknown
BZZZZ. BZZZZ. BZZZZPPP!
Emergency power system online. Diagnostics commencing.
Legs injured. Left arm unusable. Sonic Emitters off line. Memory accessed.
Unit Name: Mark R — Mocker?--- Yes!
Where is he?
Visual systems working, so he must be in darkness. Feeling around, he figured a man sized crate. Feels like wood. Right arm is still functional, can he free himself?
Five minutes later he was out of the box. Apparently he was in storage in some sort of warehouse. That looked abandoned. Investigating, he figured this was a warehouse holding momentos from an East Coast super hero team. Breaking into the office, he found a functioning computer and got it to function. 2021? His last memory was 1999, he was in battle and was knocked into a major power source that overloaded all his circuits and resulted in a shut down. He spent the next few hours to find out about history for the next 20 years. Now onto fixing himself.
Fortunately the warehouse had a decent engineering bay and he was able to effect basic repairs to his legs and left arm. Now time for upgrades.
His first idea was to find FIST and have him fix him up, but that would take money. Fortunately he had a few emergency staches that he could access.
Days later police had reports of a strange metallic man breaking into junk yards and old subway tunnels. In a few cases he left some gang members and homeless people beaten and in one case dead. And it appeared that nothing was stolen. Something was coming!
Frank Streeter sat at the work table in his workshop. Well his number three workshop. BUT, it was the only one that Mocker knew of. After hearing about the robberies and beatings, he surmised that Mocker needed some repairs, and was heading here for a fix up. So Frank sat and waited. Soon his outer perimeter alarm beeped. Checking the cameras, he wasn’t sure. He was preparing to flip the anti personnel switch, when he heard the work code they used to use.
So he opened up the last door.
“You look like sh*t!”
“Yeah!” Mocker replied. “I need fixing!”
“No duh!” said Frank. “Get up on the table and see what we need to do! WOW! This is gonna cost. You bring enough cash?”
Mocker tossed him a satchel. “All I could get on short notice! And I don’t want just fixing, but upgrading.”
Frank looked at the gems and jewels. “I am going to outsource some of this. Argent is not cheap!”
Mocker started, “Argent? Not Trade?”
“Trade!” Frank scoffed, “They tried to steal my suit. They are mixed up with that Corp that tried to steal it in the first place!” “So what upgrades?”
“Well we did upgrade the power level by 50%. Also your sonic defenses are improved!” Frank commented.
“What about these boot jets?” Mocker asked.
“They are NOT boot jets! They are redirection ports for your Sonic Emitter that allows you to maneuver in the air using your sonic abilities!” Frank yelled!
“Yeah, yeah, as long as they allow me to fly away from my enemies!” Mocker announced! “So I am bringing the band back together. You in?”
Frank mused a bit “Will we occasionally mess with that Corp that ruined my life?”
“Absolutely! I was thinking of starting with Mace. We could use another tech person!” commenter Mocker.
“Naw, he died five years ago!” Frank announced.
“Really? On the job?” Mocker inquired.
“Nope. Cancer!” Frank said.
“You send flowers?” Mocker asked curiously.
“Nope. Cash!” “But you may want to check one of his old work-warehouses in Toronto! I hear that someone has been using it, and it sure isn’t Mace!” Frank intoned.
“Toronto? Like Canada? What was he doing up there? Mocker asked incredulously.
“Believe it or not there’s an old folks home there for supers! Mace got in after his diagnosis. He was pretty happy. Anyway he still took some consulting work and the occasional fabrication job from me. So if someone is using his old lab, maybe we should get to know them?” surmised Frank .
“I’ll check it out. You get your suit up and running!” Mocker flew off into the night!
Frank went back to his main workshop, went to a panel and flipped a secret switch. A side door opened into a secret room containing a gleaming armored suit. “Hello FIST!”
Max used his contacts to follow the speedster, but he was hampered by not having any movement abilities. Finally in Chicago he was checking some leads when he heard about a super’s battle downtown.
“Maybe I’ll get lucky!” he thought.
So quickly donning his battle gear, he made his way downtown, just in time to see the speedster (or was it blaster?) zip by a cross street. Heading to the corner he saw his former client run by the hero called Shade and drop something at his feet as he zoomed by. This was followed by an explosion that sent shade flying across the street, but did little to really damage him.
“Dam!” Max thought, “all that will do is piss Shade off.” Shade was a heavy hitter and Max knew his future partner was going to lose if the fight went on too long.
Morningstar decided to intervene. He tosses a wire grenade at Shade’s feet, momentarily stopping him. “Shoot him now!” Morningstar yelled. Soon the speedster was firing into Shade, Knocking him off balance. Morningstar rushed in and swung at his opponent with a nasty uppercut that connected.
Soon he and the speedster had Shade on the ropes. When he got knocked into the river, they both decided to get as far away as possible (max getting a lift from his ally)
Later at a greasy spoon they talked.
“Name’s Mike btw. But you already knew that. So why you out of Toronto?”
“Well that workshop got raided and I got offered a job.”
“Really? Bashing or fabricating?” Mike asked
“A bit of both” Max answered, and explained what had happened with Mocker.
“Mocker… Mocker.. Yeah he was active about 20 years ago. Is he still around?” Max exclaimed.
“Well he is an android and doesn’t age. And he wants to get his gang up and running again. But most of them are retired, or dead. So he’s looking for replacements. That is where you come in. A speedster with a blaster, you are… different. But enough like his old team member Mercury Mercenary. So you in?” Max queried.
“Should’ve checked the weather report!” Frank complained as he drove through a southern storm. “I’ll never find a weather controller during a rainstorm!”
Frank slowed his van as he came to a red light, then the street in front of him lit up like a bad Christmas tree!
“What the @&^$!” As his eyes cleared he saw an armoured car getting battered by a series of lightning bolts. Eventually the truck came to a stop, and the back door was targeted by another series of blasts. When it was knocked off, then a second light burst, followed by a peel of thunder rolled across the street.
He noticed that the guards were unconscious and someone(?) was going through the contents. Eventually they must have found what they were looking for because one set disappeared in mid air.
Frank took a chance and ran out yelling for a meeting. After about a minute, and hearing sirens, he sped off himself. About an hour later,(after activating the colour change and new license plates on his van) he was driving out of the city. A sudden fog prompted him to slow down and a flash in front of it made him stop. A young lady walked out of the fog, “Not here. Two days. At Enrico’s Restaurant!” Then she disappeared and the fog lifted.
Frank looked up the place on his laptop. “Great, a dive bar! Couldn’t she have picked something less cliche!”
After knocking the door opened to a very fancy looking bar, very high class. There sitting at the bar was the lady, dressed to the nines. She looked at him a bit disapprovingly “You’re underdressed!”
“If you had given me some heads up, I would have brought my suit!’ Frank answered indignantly!
“Well you’re here. What are you drinking (Please don’t say White Russian)?” as she gestured towards the bar.
“Rum and Coke with a twist of lime.” Frank ordered, “So what is this place?”
“Think of it as an old style speakeasy, for supers!” the lady commented.
Frank immediately looked around for possible enemies. “Relax” she said, “This week is the Villains Week. Next week is for Heroes. It's sort of like the tailor from Spiderman, the one who worked on heroes and villains on alternate days of the week. Also this is considered neutral by both sides. Even Supers need to relax”
Frank sipped his drink and admitted the rum was top notch. “I’m impressed.”
“So talk,” she ordered. “Why seek me out?”
Frank explained, her eyes widening as he went along. “So let me get this straight, you thought I may have been the child of that cowardly jerk and inherited his powers, and were going to use that to try and get me to join?”
“Yeah. I take it by the way you talk about him, you met ole Stormy?” Frank mentioned.
“Once, and I kicked his but. But your offer sounds interesting. I could use some bigger scores, and a chance to get rid of the stigma that twit saddled me with.” At Frank’s raised eyebrow she explained “His rep as a coward has applied to many other weather workers. So a chance to be rid of it would be nice.”
Frank got up to leave “So you in?”
“Certainly. But where are you going, the night is young!” she asked huskily. Frank sat back down. “So what do I call you?”
“My handle is Storm King. But for tonight you can call me Gabiella!
Rich McGee got a reaction from Hermit in Create a Hero Theme Team!
Rich McGee got a reaction from Christopher R Taylor in Current State of Supers RPGs?
Rich McGee got a reaction from DentArthurDent in Toys!
Rich McGee got a reaction from Khymeria in Phantasmagoria
Rich McGee got a reaction from Ninja-Bear in A Thread For Random RPG Musings
Rich McGee got a reaction from assault in Phantasmagoria
Rich McGee got a reaction from Mr. R in My conversions (formerly Builds of 2018)
