csyphrett

Mr. Toynbee is the prankster of the group with his poison dart colored harlequin get up. While the others want to swim in somewhere and just steal things, he wants to do with a style and panache. Leaving clues and booby traps is the way he does this. His natural hopping and kicking ability also makes him a threat in hand to hand and on the dance floor. CES

Why do you have DT's avatar, Pariah? CES

I got a rock CES

Anything would be good. I'm stuck at home at the moment and I need the distraction CES

His department offered to escort for George Floyd's funeral. I think he's right. Trump should shut up. He can't really do anything as the president and his talking is just making people realize how much they hate the government which is not something the police need right now CES

Heck no. that gump deserved any beating he got. You see a thousand pissed off people, maybe you should keep driving. I know that's what i would do. CES

They railed him, turned his car over and then set it on fire. He's lucky to be alive. Conflicting reports on whether or not he was arrested or let go. Police hauled him out of there before someone got the idea to stab him with his own arrow. CES

Good luck. here in nc the rate kept climbing. At one point we were marking 50+ new cases a day CES

The villain team known as the Terrible Toads are the six most horrible amphibious thieves out there. Who are they? CES

What's going on Jim CES

Dr Edward Eckles is not really stalwart, but his ability to squeeze through small openings, live in water, blend in with his surroundings, natural smoke cloud, leaping and clinging abilities and four stretching arms has earned him the name Squidward. CES

Romulas doesn't have a grudge against the Golden Guardian per se. On the other hand, he hates Gold Star for his fanboying of the Federation. That has to be stopped no matter what. CES

Minneapolis. Sometime during the protest. Another reporter and cameraman was shot at with paintball guns on live television. I got the twitter link In the comments someone loaded the other reporter getting shot at with the paintball gun CES

police shot a reporter in the face and she lost an eye CES

Ray Stevens has always blamed the Golden Guardian for failing to save his sister, and rightfully so. He learned how to use weapons and to fight. And he has shot the Guardian enough to put him in the hospital, but never enough to kill him yet. Ray will not commit other crimes in pursuit of his vengeance, but everyone knows that The Sniper has it in for his enemy CES

Flight of the Rocket Man 3 Saxon arrived at his home a few hours later. He felt better after having a small meal, but he needed to fuel up if he wanted to really fly and check his top speed. He found some sandwich ingredients and bottled milk. He grabbed a plate and made himself a plate full of sandwiches. He drank the milk while he ate. He decided that he would fly to New York, or as far east as he could in one jump. He had no doubt that he could reach the Big Apple eventually, maybe faster than the prop planes in the air could. He didn’t need to fly that far to see how fast he was. He looked around the house until he found an atlas. He put that on the kitchen table. He checked his watch. It was still running fine. He grabbed a pair of goggles from a drawer and put them on. The buttons felt warm and alive. He was as ready as he would ever be. It was a good thing he was doing this in the dark so no one would recognize him. He didn’t want to wind up in the papers. He also didn’t want to explain to his boss about what he could do all of a sudden. Flanagan would want to test him to see if he could build more like him somehow. He didn’t plan to spend the rest of his life in a box being prodded. Saxon went out to his backyard. He looked up at the night sky. How high did he want to go? He decided it was better if he flew high enough to get a straight path east, but not high enough that he could die when his power ran out. He checked his watch. He pressed the buttons. The jets fired him into the air. He laughed as he roared through the night sky. He had decided on New York on a destination because that was the only place he knew. He doubted the arrow would point to some random point east. It needed his input, and he needed to know the place where he was going. He soared east, climbing to get through the mountain range that separated the state from Nevada. He didn’t know how fast he was going, but he figured it had to be hundreds of miles per hour. He figured if he hit something, it would turn him into a rotten tomato hitting a brick wall. He didn’t care. He looked behind him. His passage had swept snow up in a small cloud as he went by. He smiled. Some mountain goat probably wasn’t enjoying the sudden wind, but that was okay. He started down into Nevada. He checked the clock running backwards on his hand. He figured he still had a few minutes. He should look for a spot to land before his time ran out. He passed a few places without stopping. The test was to see how far he could go with the time he had. He needed a spot somewhere ahead of him. He looked at his hand and thought he was in the last thirty seconds of his flight. He saw a sign ahead. If he could reach that, he would know the approximate distance he could fly in one shot. The clock started running down and fading as he pulled up in a sliding hover just feet above the ground. He came to a running stop as his power ran out and he kept going. He ran the speed off and laughed as he checked his watch. He had been in the air ten minutes from the moment he pushed the button to his landing. He nodded. He looked at the sign on the side of the road. Last Stop, Nevada, no population. He looked around. He saw some buildings in the distance, including one that looked like a rundown saloon. He didn’t know where he was, but that didn’t matter. He had landed in a place he could find on a map when he got home. All he had to do was look at the distance, and the time in flight. That would tell him how fast he had been going. He might have been flying faster than a speeding bullet. How did he do more with his new ability other than flying around for the fun of it? He decided he needed to get home. Once there he could figure out how far he had flown, then he could think about testing for other abilities. He doubted any other thing he had been given by the meteor would be as great as flying, but there might be something there that could be useful. He waited by the sign for his cooling period to finish. He wondered why that was a function of the buttons. The only reason he could come up with was that the powers that be didn’t want the button pusher to be able to use his powers constantly. He doubted he would be able to ask them why. There might be some kind of strain inherent in the powers that he had no idea how to overcome. He did know that he had to eat if he wanted to not waste away while he was flying around. Maybe the power would kill its user if they hadn’t put that feature in. He didn’t have enough facts to be sure, but he was willing to use that as a guideline for future endeavors. Fly around, eat a big meal. He could deal with that as long as he wasn’t paying his salary out in food. He needed to find places that would serve big meals for a small amount of money if he wanted to keep flying. Did he want to keep flying? He decided that yes, he did want to keep flying. He loved the way he could push through the air like a bird. He couldn’t give that up now. He checked the palm of his hand. It was warm again. He activated the flight and headed west toward his home. He tried to call up every place he knew and mark them with arrows. His internal navigator switched arrows as soon as he thought of a different place than where he was going. So he could only call up one arrow at a time, and only for places where he had been. He looked behind him and thought of Last Stop as his destination. The arrow appeared over the Welcome sign. He nodded at figuring that out before turning his face and attention toward home. He still had a lot of unanswered questions, but he could work on that while he was trying to figure out what to do. He probably would never know why the meteor had come down upstate, or if it was a natural thing or manmade somehow. On the other hand, he could figure out what he could do with some careful testing, and keep it under wraps as much as possible. He wondered if he could reach the moon with what he had. He had to check the distance flown first. He could maybe leave the Earth’s atmosphere under his own power. He would still need air, and protection from the void. He didn’t know what that would entail, and he doubted his power would protect him from things floating in space. He definitely knew when it cut off he would be floating in the same direction he had been flying with no way to turn for the two minutes it took his power to recharge. What happened if gravity took over and pulled him down while he was still waiting for his power to kick on? He didn’t want to fry while trying to keep from falling to the Earth fast enough to turn him into a splotch. It was a thought. He should read up on it to see how far he could push himself. There had to be some astronomy books that would be useful for something like this. Maybe some of the engineers in the company could tell him what to expect if he did fly above the sky. He wondered what Flanagan would say about all this. He had fought off a takeover bid with the help of some purple knight guy. Would he fund another guy running around in a mask? Saxon doubted that. He smiled as his house came into sight. He landed in the backyard just as the jets cut off. He rubbed his hands together to keep them from shaking. He had no doubt in his mind he was incredibly fast in the air. He looked around before heading inside. He didn’t see anybody, but that didn’t mean much. He hoped his secret was safe from the neighborhood busybodies. He poured himself some whiskey from a bottle he had hidden in his pantry. He took a long sip from the glass as he tried to get his nerves under control. He scrounged up a notepad and pen and carried them to the table and put them beside the atlas. He sat down and closed his eyes. Was he faster than a speeding bullet? He wrote down the ten minute time, and the name Last Stop on the pad. He looked up Idaville and Last Stop. He used the legend on the maps and figured he had flown something like three hundred miles in that ten minutes. Last Stop was on the edge of the Utah border on the other side of the map. He wrote down sixty miles in an hour is a mile a minute as the first part of the equation. So at sixty miles an hour, ten minutes would be ten miles. He thought about it and wrote three hundred miles in ten minutes. He looked at the numbers and didn’t like what they said. It meant he was going about thirty miles a minute from his eyeball. That put his actual flight speed in the hundreds of miles an hour, faster than any plane in the air. He might be as fast the Mark was reported as being. But it didn’t translate into any kind of personal speed. He was a bullet to his destination, with a small ability to turn in flight. On the other hand, he could reach New York in about five or six hops of ten minutes plus the two minute cooldown. He could reach anywhere close to California in a matter of minutes. What good would it do him? He needed to think about the possible uses other than never being late for work again. Right now, he had only thought of it as a skill to reach other places. How could he use it to better himself without causing more trouble? He didn’t have an answer for that. He supposed he could volunteer for the Army Air Force to fly missions overseas. Someone would take his place at the company. Flanagan wouldn’t hold the spot for him. Maybe he would hold a spot. Everyone said Flanagan was a soft heart under a machine of steel. He had spoken with the man a couple of times. He seemed concerned with work more than any other boss Saxon had dealt with over the years. Saxon sat at his table and looked at the maps in front of him. Three hundred miles in ten minutes was incredible. He smiled at the thought. And he hadn’t felt the effects of friction on his skin while he flew. His body seemed immune. Maybe something about the flight protected him while he was in the air. It was another thing that he needed to figure out. Did friction work on him when he wasn’t flying? When he knew that, he would know if he could move through the air without worrying about how the air moved on his body. The goggles had been a big improvement. He hadn’t felt wind pressure on his eyes that much, but it had been there. Wearing the goggles stopped that cold. And they would work as a partial mask if someone saw him in the air and reported it. A man wearing goggles could be anybody. He decided he should eat another sandwich before going to bed. His stomach wouldn’t wake him up with demands if he did that. Saxon made himself another big sandwich. He ate it quickly, putting the plate in the sink to wash later. He put the atlas up on his way to his bedroom. He kicked off his shoes and lay on his bed. He thought about being able to fly. He had been looking at it as a strange gift. Could he be wrong? He decided he should wait until tomorrow before he tried to decide that. He still had a lot to learn before he could say either way.

Watched Wise Man's Grandson. Shin Walford is brought up by an adopted grandfather Merlin Walford as a prodigy wizard. When he reaches his majority, it is decided that he should go through magic school since he hasn't dealt with other people as peers. Naturally trouble starts as Shin starts training his classmates to help defend the kingdom. Favorite part is the entrance exam. The other potential trainees can barely light their target dummies. Shin blows his up and the wall behind it CES

Dr. Cavorite is the Legion's heavy lifter with his gravity controlling armor. He keeps the power source a secret since the government would want his harness of kelvarite that allows him to do things under the guise of an armored suit. CES

Flight of the Rocket Man 2 Saxon gathered his trashed gear into a pile. If he had a shovel, he could bury it. He shook his head. His shovel was miles to the south. He thought about flying down to his house, getting his shovel and flying back. Could he do that? How fast was he? Had he burned up his flying in the one trip to the car? He touched the palm of his hand. It felt warm again. He closed his eyes. Pushing all three squares, then the circle, allowed him to fly for a short amount of time. A clock appeared to let him know how much time he had left. As long as the clock ran, he could fly as high as he could breathe. The drawback seemed to be a period where he couldn’t use the power at all. What happened if he only pressed one button? He decided that he could test the power application later. He needed to deal with his wrecked stuff before a ranger came by to ask how his campsite was ruined. He didn’t have an explanation that didn’t sound crazy. And using the flight power to prove it would wreck his personal life as far as he could tell. Saxon looked around. He seemed to be alone. He could use the flight power to fly home and get his shovel. The cooldown period seemed to be only a few minutes. Even if he couldn’t fly down in one jump, it wouldn’t take all night to fly home and fly back. He decided to do it. He planned to fly high to get over obstacles and then come in for a landing right before the clock gave out. He didn’t know how much time he would have for that, but it shouldn’t be a problem as long as he kept his eye on things. When things cooled down, he could figure out how long flight time was with a stopwatch. He pressed the buttons on the palm of his hand. He lifted off the ground. He thought about his house. A red arrow appeared to point the way. He imagined that was because he couldn’t see the house from where he was. He leaped into the air and headed south. He wondered how fast he could go. He didn’t see any controls for speed in his head. He focused on the arrow and followed it. He passed cars heading south. He doubted any of them saw him in the air. He laughed as he left them behind. He needed to test how fast his cruising speed was. He figured it was faster than forty miles an hour but he wasn’t sure. Another arrow sprang up in the distance, hovering straight up in the air. That arrow marked where his house stood. He wondered how many arrows he could cause to appear at once. He decided to get his shovel and deal with one crisis at a time. When he had taken care of his gear and retrieved his car, he could think about testing the potential of his new skills. Trying to mark more than one destination while he was in flight was just asking for trouble. He could do after he was comfortable with the next few steps he was taking. He saw the roof of his house. No one looked like they were roaming the neighborhood. He landed next to the shed in his back yard and hovered to where he kept his shovel. He checked the clock on his hand. It seemed to be slowly fading out. He had flown home in the same amount of time it had taken him to fly to his car, and put out the fire in the park. How fast could he fly? And it was protecting him in flight. He realized that when he looked at his hands and didn’t see any windburn. He didn’t think that protection would extend to physical obstructions. He smiled. He touched down and realized he needed something else other than a shovel. He needed socks and shoes. He jogged to the door of his house and let himself in. He went to his bedroom and grabbed socks and tennis shoes. He pulled them on while waiting for his cooldown minutes to tick away. Could he fly to New York? How far east could he fly before his power gave out? He doubted it was going to go away for good. Could he fly to New York in one shot? Did he want to try? He had to take care of his wrecked camp before he could test his new ability more than he had already done. He stamped his feet inside his tennis shoes and went out to his shed. He could take the shovel up to the camp site, clean up, and leave the shovel in his car while he tested his power. He hoped he wasn’t using up a finite source of energy with this testing. Saxon grabbed the shovel and activated his power. A red arrow pointed him toward his camp to the north. He leaped along the indicated path. He soared through the air back to the park. He homed in on the arrow pointing toward the spot on the ground he had aimed for from Idaville. He descended to a hovering stop in the middle of the wrecked camp site. He went to work digging a hole in the ground. He stopped when he thought he had something deep enough. He used the shovel like a broom and swept everything he could into the pit. He pushed the dirt over his excavation. It didn’t look good to his eyes. He looked around and rolled a fallen tree over the pile. That looked a little better. He added some fallen limbs to the pile to completely cover the mound. If anyone found it, he doubted they would figure out what happened and who he was. He decided he would have one more test run before coming back and picking up his car. If he was tired, he could sleep in the car before driving it home. He couldn’t camp out now. Saxon had used up his power cleaning up his camp. He timed the recovery process. He had to wait two minutes before the flight power came back. If he flew somewhere, and there was problems, he would have two minutes before he could fly back out. If he wanted to fly somewhere overseas, he might have to spend a large amount of time in the water. And he didn’t know what his top speed was at this point. Flying home had been quick, but he had no way to judge if he had been moving really fast, or if his house was closer than he thought when he could ignore the road network between the mountain and Idaville. How did he want to test how fast he could go before he drove home for the night? He could fly to a random spot and see how long it took him to get there. Then he could take a look on a map to figure distance traveled. It wasn’t perfect, but it should give him some idea of how much ground he could cover before his flight wore out. The only problem he saw was winding up on a place that wasn’t on the map. He couldn’t figure the distance if he landed in unmarked territory. He decided that he should try his experiment from home. He needed to eat, and he should drive his car back before he got involved in any experimentation. He could pick a point on a map and set everything he needed up on his kitchen table. He looked around and gathered up the empty fire extinguisher and shovel before he activated his power and flew down to his car. He realized he had no way to cut the power off after floating to a stop beside the car. He stowed the gear and watched the clock for his flight to run out. Saxon got behind the wheel of his car when he thumped to the ground and started the engine. He pulled out of the lot and headed for home. He planned to stop at any truck stop on the way to get gas. He admitted he wasn’t that afraid of running out when he knew he could just fly home and get a gas can and fly back. It made being stuck not that much of a consideration. And the built in arrows would tell him where he left his car so he could easily find it. The only drawback was someone moving his car while he was gone. He wondered if he could transfer his power to his car. A flying car would be convenient. He dismissed the idea after some consideration. He didn’t know how the keys worked in the first place. He had no way of knowing how to lift his car, and what happened if he did a transfer but couldn’t transfer the power back. He drove on, considering ways to test things as he went. He needed to know what each button did. It was just luck that he had discovered the flying power first. Maybe each key was a component that he could use separately. Could he use the components together in different ways? He thought that he could use the buttons in different combinations, but the appearance of the clock meant that once activated he couldn’t go back to the well. Whatever he picked was what he had until the clock counted down. And he didn’t know if he could activate single keys at this point. He might only have the ability to fly and the navigation system that went with it. He put the thought away as he looked for a place to stop. He nodded when he saw an exit with some lights ahead. Someone was open. He could get gas there and finish the trip home. He smiled at the thought he was making the same trip in hours in what had taken minutes earlier. He must be really fast in the air. The place with the most lights on looked like a truck stop. He drove up to a spot beside a gas pump and cut the engine. He looked around as he got out. He and four trucks were the only ones there. His stomach growled to remind him of his exploding steaks. He needed food to recharge. He smiled. He should order something while he was pumping his gas. He walked inside the station and looked around. Part of it looked like a general store with bagged food and bottled drinks lining the shelves. The other part looked like a restaurant with a counter separating the public from the cooking area. A set of tables alternated with booths. He counted two others in the dining area with the waitress and cook. They must drive two of the trucks outside. Where were the other two drivers? Saxon decided it was none of his business. He was just there to get gas and food. Once he had done that, he could get back on the road and finish his drive. “How can I help you, hon?,” asked the waitress. She stood at the counter next to the register. An order pad sat next to the adding machine. “I need to fill up and grab a quick bite to eat,” said Saxon. “Could I have a burger and fries?” “Drink?,” asked the waitress. “Coffee is good,” said Saxon. “Go over to the register by the door to pay for your gas,” said the waitress. She leaned over the counter and pointed across the other part of the store. “Bill will take care of that for you.” “Thanks,” said Saxon. “Let me get my gas. I’ll be right back to get my food.” “No problem,” said the waitress. “We’ll get it done for you in a jiffy.” Saxon nodded. He crossed back over to the store part of the truck stop and looked around. He saw an old guy sweeping the floor with a dust mop and thought this must be Bill. “The lady said to come see you about paying for my gas,” said Saxon. “That’s right,” said Bill. “How much do you need?” “Could I have ten dollars worth?,” said Saxon. “That should get me back home.” “Sure,” said Bill. “Heading far?” Bill walked behind the counter and stood beside the register. He put in numbers for the payment of the gas. He took the ten and put it in the register. “I’m headed down to Idaville,” said Saxon. “That’s a ways,” said Bill. “I thought I was going camping up north, but my gear was wrecked,” said Saxon. “I’m headed home.” “Good luck with the rest of your weekend,” said Bill. He nodded as he slouched to where he had leaned his dust mop against a shelf. “Thanks,” said Saxon. He went out and pumped his gas. He drove the car into an empty slot in front of the building when he was done. He should be home in a couple of hours. He could check to see if he had some real food in his refrigerator when he got there. He doubted a burger and fries would be enough for the rest of the night. He thought he might still have a steak in his fridge. He wasn’t sure. He hoped he hadn’t brought them all to feed the bears. The waitress put his food on the counter after he took a stool. He smiled at the sight. He wondered if his flight needed to be fed. The energy for the jets had to come from somewhere. It was another question he would have to think about while he was testing his ability. He might need to eat more so he could fly more without burning up. He wolfed down his food. He sat back. Hunger still gnawed at him. He looked at the menu on the counter. They sold ice cream. Maybe he should get some of that. “Would you like anything else?,” asked the waitress. She picked up the empty plate. “Could I have two servings of ice cream,” said Saxon. Maybe that would calm his stomach down. “I’ll add it to your ticket,” said the waitress. She took the empty plate away. She returned with two large bowls of vanilla/chocolate mix ice cream and put that in front of him. “Thanks,” said Saxon. He dug into the ice cream. It felt good. This was what he needed to cool the fire in his stomach. He added that to the facts he knew about his new skill. He needed to eat more if he used it more than twice a day. He would have to guess at what the actual cost was to his system. He wondered what other things he would find out in the days ahead.

Eric Draper came across a sample of Radium X while working on a weather scanner. He used his new invention to become the hero Weatherman. CES

I think I need a geography pick to round out my draft. I think I am going to install volcanic shafts that will cut from the surface of one side of the thread to the opposite side. Naturally it's up to the user to determine if s/he is diving into an empty chute to carry them quickly through solid matter, or a vein of burning lava and magma. CES

People always get this wrong. Money isn't the root of all evil. Greed is CES

Watched Bloodshot. Guy is given a false memory of his wife's murder and nano machines to keep him from dying and triggered to kill designated targets. And then he gets loose. CES

The minister of the Berean Baptist Church had the masks order thrown out as a violation of the first amendment in a court. I was like half his church is going to die if they get one case of Covid CES

Walk the Wire by Baldacci. Amos Decker is back investigating a simple murder in North Dakota. Too bad the murder was the only thing simple about it CES