RocketLord

GM Ronin The man stepped aside, not wanting to get on Curtis' bad side. And everyone else seemed to follow suit as he spoke. A few looked at him, before deciding that they would rather not get into a fight with someone like Curtis. This was Nancy Street. They had heard about Ronin. Nobody wanted to start trouble around him. The pharmacist, a little old woman with thick round glasses, looked up at him. She sighed in relief. "Ye-yes. I think so." This was no modern pharmacy. No big, fancy computers. Everything done by hand, except for the printing. To demonstrate, she pulled a piece of medication fresh of the printer and showed it to Curtis. All it showed was an excerpt from Winnie the Pooh. "It's all like this. Just completely random! Look, I've even tried writing it with a pen!" She continued to show him, writing down the same information. It all looked fine, until seconds after she finished writing on the full page. The ink on the page seemed to flow together for a brief second, then it was suddenly just two words, in the center of the page. "Ha ha." The pharmacist wringed her hands. She was obviously stressed. "I don't know what's happening! I just want to get these people their medicine!" Doctor Thorne, Mister Strix, Lady Horus

Can I get a notice roll from all but Ronin? DC20. Information on what's happening if you make it in spoiler in IC.

GM The man looked Oswald in the eyes, through the emerald lenses. He eyed the green lightning as it danced in his hand, for but the briefest of moments. Standing back, he crossed his arms. Then he smiled once more. "It seems that you are a man of good taste and conviction, my friend." Then he leaned closer again, his voice falling to a hushed whisper. "I sense that you are not quite from around here, is that right? Do you have a cell phone? Any other way that you can be reached? Preferably something slight covert, if you understand my meaning. Nothing too public." There was something to this man, something not quite human, now that Oswald had been this close. Something in his eyes, that he could not place. Feral, but playful. Perhaps something a bit feline, like a great cat.

Cassidy turned to dust. A man of sand was easier to hide than one of flesh and blood, at least. Using his advantage, he led the way into the temple. He would peek around any corner, listen to any sound. If he could spot a threat before they were spotted... well, he could use the full force of the sand form. Time travel or not, this was still the Mesa. It was still a question of finding the right path into the temple. The relics, statues and any writing on the walls. He tried to remember. Anything that his predecessors knew, anything that a former Dust Devil might have discovered about the arcane world that he could use. Was it Setho? Was it something else, darker and even older? Did it matter in the long run, as long as they stopped it? Maybe, but right now, it was still above Cassidy's paygrade to figure things like that out.

Alright, sneaking in, so, in order: Stealth for sneaking: 1d20+14 = 24 Notice for spotting anything, coming their way: 1d20+10 = 12, should've just taken 10, but eh Finally, Arcane Knowledge to see if he recognizes any of the gods, magic stuff and whatever else he might see (if relevant): 1d20+8 = 18

GM The man in the booth nodded slowly, while cleaning his knife. Oswald could see the glow quite clearly once more. "I see, I see." He appeared to be deep in thought. As if he was making a big, hugely important decision. With a quick and practiced motion, he stabbed the knife into the cutting board, then leaned forward over the booth's table, his eyes only inches away from Oswald's. "And how would you end it, if that were the case then? How would you even judge something like that, hmm? A place like that is bound to contain animals no one has even heard of, after all. What may seem like cruelty could be their way of life, could it not?" His tone was still jovial, but with a harder edge to it than before.

Right. The Gas Man tried to take the moral high ground here. Of course he did. Robin just glared at him behind the mask. She really didn't like this guy. At all. He was clearly not trying to be a hero in any way, just an amoral mercenary that only looked out for himself. "I'm good if you are." She replied, ignoring the pun and the insult in one. She was not in the habit of shooting people in the back, but defending herself to the Gas Man wouldn't lead to anything good. And then Finnigan decided to speak up again, complaining about things once more. Wow, he was really not letting this go. Or his constant pun on her chosen hero name. Maybe he and the Gas Man could bond over that a bit. Shaking her head, Robin finally holstered her Justice Buster. Finnigan was cuffed, the Gas Man seemed docile enough, for now at least. "Would you quit it, Finnigan?" She turned to the officer again. "He ain't gonna die like that, if he told me the truth. I tried to figure out his powers, and he told me quite a bit. Apparently, he was cursed when he tried to find a cure for his cancer, and he ended up like this. He's kinda like a zombie, pretty much immortal, despite his looks. That's why I thought it might be a good idea to get hold of A.E.G.I.S. or something. They gotta have someone that can deal with magic. I'm really more of a techie. Solitary so he doesn't spread whatever illnesses he can spread, then some magic confinement until there's a cure or something."

GM The man smiled, shaking his head. "For others, perhaps, it might be. Not here! Nothing dangerous about a log pig, after all." He pointed over his shoulder, to a few carcasses that were hanging off a few hooks behind him, ready to be cleaned, cut and cooked. It was indeed a pair of rather long pigs, easily more than one and a half the length of a regular pig. The man in the booth seemed to enjoy his own joke, chuckling at it for a moment, before reaching out to offer Oz a piece a small piece of cooked meal. "Here, have a taste!" His friendly demeanor soured somewhat, as Oswald mentioned the the menagerie. He looked over his shoulders for a moment, before resuming his jovial tone. "Oh, yes, I have heard tales of this menagerie as well. A vast collection of the possible and impossible creatures of this world, and others. What is your interest, Oz?" He put a bit on pressure on Oswald's chosen name. Spoken a bit harder than the rest of his words.

He calmed down, great! No throwing tear gas around a police station, even this guy could see that would be bad for business. And the police officer was all over Finnigan, trying to handcuff him, despite Robin's warning. Great. She didn't really blame him for missing it in the commotion, but yeah. Not good. And then the Gas Man had to go and tell about that shot. Not exactly Justice's proudest moment, but she wasn't about to back down on it. But, right, one thing at a time. "Yeah... He poisoned me by touch. I was sick for a few days. It's why I told you to get him to solitary and get A.E.G.I.S. or someone else that can deal with that." She shot Finnigan glare. She couldn't trust him at all, but she at least had to try. "Did you do anything to him?" Then, the shot in the back. She had to address that, didn't she? She turned to the officer, not wanting to acknowledge the Gas Man's smug grin. "Remember the tear gas grenade that I said he dropped on me, Finnigan and all the kids? Y'know, underage kids that had done nothing to him? He got me good too, so I couldn't see too much, but he had been threatening the kids with physical harm on the way, and he was armed with several grenades and different kinds of guns. I didn't want to risk that he got his hands on them." Finnigan was handcuffed, so he should stay put at the moment, at least. Holding out the Justice Buster, she made sure that the officer could see it. "Non-lethal only, my own invention. It fires concentrated kinetic energy. It hurts, can knock the wind out of you, but nothing someone in armor couldn't handle." She let the officer get a good look at it, hoping that his interest in super heroes would win him over. "I'd be happy to demonstrate, once we get the guy with the potential to spread a plague locked away." Really, some focus would be nice here!

Recovery roll: 1d20+5 = 10 ?

Hot and dry. Cassidy could deal with all that, sure. Came with the territory. But this? Hot, humid, his clothes clinging to his body with sweat? Far less comfortable. During the hour that they walked, he found himself reaching for his beard several times, stroking it without really thinking about it. He thought it looked good, and it did, but it really wasn't comfortable in a heat like this. His mask didn't help much either, but he had only just met Venomax. Didn't know how far he could trust him. During the walk, he tried asking about the other man. Where he operated, what he could do, things like that. Cassidy even shared a bit about himself, being chosen to protect the Mesa, and trying to protect Southside back in Freedom City. Some about his powers, being made of sand, being strong. Flight. He left out the part about having died. No reason to share that. Maybe knowing just a bit about each other could help them in fight with Setho that was sure to come. Finally, they reached the ruins of a temple. The Lemurian leader made it quite clear what waited them in there. Setho, indeed. Cassidy nodded in recognition. Either he was in there, or it was his place. Maybe even where he grew the damn leaves. Fine, he'd trash the entire place if necessary. He turned to Venomax. "How about we start with a stealthy approach? Depending on when we have arrived, we might be here before Setho know about us. If not, he'll probably be waiting. We can just as well try to make sure he doesn't see us."

Oh, this was not working out the way that Robin had hoped. Of course Finnigan had to speak up. And set the cop off. And set the Gas Man off. And then everything rapidly slipped right into chaos. "Wait! Don't touch him more than necessary, he's..." Robin trailed off her warning, watching the Gas Man fingered one of the grenades on his suit. Was he really about to set something off in here? Tear gas again? Something worse? She could train her Justice Buster at him. He might still be smarting from the last shot. That would leave Finnigan free to go do whatever he wanted. She had appealed to his common sense before, it might help again. Raising her free hand towards the Gas Man, she shouted, just a quick word: "STOP!" Hopefully it would give him pause, letting her get a word in. "Think about what you're about to do. You're inside a police station. Just what do you think you will get out of this in the long run? No bounty hunting, probably thrown in jail, at the very least. Cameras everywhere, eyewitnesses. There would be no getting out of that!" Oh, let it help. Robin really wasn't looking forward to the thought of fighting these two inside a police station.

Dust Devil II (14) Sting in the Tail (14) Forever Boy (16) Extracurricular: Forever Boy Guidebook page. +2 PP Extracurricular: HellQ. +2 PP Dark Red Tide (1) Falling Upwards (6) Fright Night (6) Giant Krampus 2: Krampus Campus (1) The Sparrow of Space (2) Justice (52) A Place for Everything (2) Busy Little Fingers (7) Wall the Build (43) GM (84) All That Glitters (7) Defenders of the Deep (7) I Want My Tears Back (43) Ink (8) Mysterious Menagerie of Monsters (18) Southside Hunting Grounds (1) Other extracurriculars Neverworld Guidebook Page: +2 PP. Put them both on Forever Boy. I have made a few NPCs, but as they're more or less straight 3E conversions and not original creations, I don't know if they give PP or not. If they do, put the PP from both on Forever Boy: NPC converted: Cortex NPC converted: The Terror 36 GM posts to Dust Devil, putting him at 50 posts total. 84 GM posts to Forever Boy, putting him at 100 posts total. 48 GM posts to Justice, putting her at 100 posts total.

Honestly, Pan did not understand much of the talk about water pressure, but if someone thought it was important, it might be. The small robots sounded interesting, however. Automatic maintenance? Curious. Pan moved closer, planting the palms of his hands at the sides of his eyes to block out the light from the room, peeking in to try and catch a look at these curious machines. "I'm guessing you're accessing the robots remotely, if you can see what they're thinking right now, right?" It might be obvious to people here, but Pan had not seen robots like these before. He might not know much about them, but he knew much about trickery. "Could that signal be tampered with somehow? What they are recording, what they are sending?" He turned away again, grinning at Melissa. "Hello Melissa, I'm the Forever Boy."

Halloween was interesting. The students at Claremont regularly dressed up in their costumes, uniforms and for parties and what have you, and yet, this day of Halloween seemed to have a special significance for dressing up. You dressed up differently for Halloween. It was brilliant. He had elected to go for the obvious, with a bright green Peter Pan costume. It was his first Halloween, and he did have that weird connection, anyway. Pan had spent some time out, but now he was back in the rec room with some of the other students. He was floating around near the ceiling. He had found this book with scary stories. Apparently, Halloween seemed to be about being scary, even if few of the other students actually seemed scared. At least not until a student burst in, asking for help. Looking up from his book, Pan couldn't suppress his smile. This sounded like an adventure. "You're... Sam, right? What's wrong?" He hadn't really talked with Sam before. Was this his usual way of acting? Probably not, but still, Claremont had some strange students. Pan himself included.

Well, at least Finnigan was pretty much confessing to everything, in his usual bombastic fashion. Robin looked over at him, not really believing it. Was he actually helping her here? That was so weird. She was just about to get started telling about Finnigan's curse and she'd seen he could do, when the Gas Man barged in. So, how did he know that they were there, and get here this quickly? Was this just another illusion? "Hey Gas Man! Sure, you can have the bounty, just let me finish telling the officer what I've learned about this guy." That was the best way to defuse the situation before it escalated, right? "Is that fine with you, officer?" She sounded maybe a bit too happy here, but she didn't really care about the money. That wasn't the reason she set out to be a hero after all, right?

GM The man smiled mischievously. It was clear that he had his own thoughts about someone being a newcomer. "Just one moment, I need to finish this one." The knife danced, almost as if it was alive. In between cuts, Oswald could notice patterns engraved into the blade. At some cuts, they glowed lightly purple. Nothing the untrained eye would notice, but Oswald's eye was not untrained, was it now? The patterns appeared much like Japanese or Chinese letters, though they did not correspond to any such characters. Finishing with the cut, the man appraised the meat, before hanging it with the previous cut. "Welcome to the Emerald City then, my friend! What may I call you?" His tone was jovial, as he cleaned his knife. Swinging it out, he pointed at a meat. The mischievous smile played over his lips again. "Might I recommend the long pig? It is a speciality."

GM Seeing Facsimile hoisting up the platform, Dr. Midas raised his armored glove towards him again. "Don't you try taking my sensitive scientific equipment." He was somehow completely oblivious to the fact that he had just programmed it to self-destruct. Another laser blast was a wide miss, with the not-so good doctor perhaps wanting to figure out another line of work some time soon. As Facsimile held up the platform, the robotic voice continued its countdown. If he didn't plan to disarm it, he would have to time things perfectly, if he didn't want to cause a mess. "51... 50... 49..."

Dr. Midas taken a shot at Facs! Because he's mean like that! 1d20+12 = 17 And that's a miss again! Facs is up.

GM Ronin And it just so happened that the man that Curtis spoke at the end of the queue had quite a crazed expression in his eyes. His once jet black, now greying hair was long and wild. His eyes flickered around, from side to side. His white shirt seemed like it might have been nice once, but now it was covered in stains and tears. Hopefully mostly from food. He held a note in his hands. The moment Curtis spoke to him, he held it up, practically right in Curtis' face. "Looook at this! Look at it!" He waved it around a bit, making it a bit difficult to see. "This was my medication list! I'd written it down to remember! And looook!" From what Curtis could see with the swinging and swaying, it appeared to be the ingredients for baking a cake. "A cake won't help me!" The pharmacy was noisy, increasingly so since Curtis had entered. Everyone was yelling, everyone was complaining. It might just be a matter of time before things escalated. Doctor Thorne, Mister Strix, Lady Horus As it just so happened, Mister Strix and Lady Horus arrived at almost exactly the same time. The map that Doctor Thorne seemed to have the names switched all around. Just another symptom of the madness that had spread over the city. There were incidents all over the city. Everywhere seemed to have reports of words being changed in some way. A major hotspot seemed to be Snacktastic. Another was the offices used by the city's government, where everything had turned blank. The lottery office was a big one, too. People were still walking around outside with signs, though their meanings had been twisted and turned as well.

"Absolutely! Pan was all smiles again. Glittering fairy dust fell from his feet as he stepped into the air, his hands in Corinne's. This was his element, this was where he felt at home. And he couldn't resist the challenge in Corinne's crooked smile. He had seen the dances here now, he had learned them, and now he would take the lead. Pan spun Corinne around in the same fashion she had moved him, no friction from the floor to break her movement or slow her down. Taking her hand again, he swung her out, before pulling her close again, all while they floated through the air. He did love to put on a show.

Great. She could actually help with things like that. Honestly, she should have looked it up, but in all the shows on television, or at least the ones where they spent any time dealing with the aftermath of the super heroes and villains fighting, the heroes just sort of sent the bad guys over to the cops or A.E.G.I.S., and then that was the end of the story. It hadn't even occured to Robin to try and research that before, but now she found herself wondering how she could ask Lucas Jr. about it, without being too obvious. "Thank you." Robin empathically replied to the officer when he told Finnigan to shut it. She wasn't too happy about the way he was talking about Finnigan, but she had to trust in the officer, for now at least. So, the truth and nothing but the truth, right? "I heard about all the robberies that had taken place at Halloween, so I went out looking for leads. Standard hero stuff, right?" Robin hoped it was, at least. "I managed to find a bunch of kids at Trumble Street that told me about him, and led me to his hiding place. I met the Gas Man on the way, and we agreed to work together. That didn't work out too well." So, where to go from here? Just straight to the fight, probably. No reason to get the kids too involved and in trouble, if it could be helped. "We found Finnigan, and I tried to reason with him when the Gas Man dropped a tear gas bomb on all of us, and we ended up in a fight. The whole place was coming down, but I managed to escape with Finnigan and tried to reason with him. He agreed that he would try to get everything back to the people that had been stolen from and try to stop the stealing, but that didn't work out too well, did it now?" Robin looked at Finnigan, before turning back to the officer. "I went back today and found Finnigan. After some trouble, including him threatening to spread a plague in the entire city and trying to trick me with those illusions I mentioned, I got him to come here. And that's pretty much what happened, but during it all, I learned some things about Finnigan, from himself at least, just in case he says something else. You got everything so far?" She needed a quick breath. Robin was well aware that she was shifting into motor mouth territory, but she couldn't help it.

Survival: 1d20+10 = 25 Fortitude save: 1d20+9+2 = 16 No con damage to DD.

Facs is up, then.

Cassidy glared at Abdul for a moment. So the leaf would help him get out of here? Figures. He had a few left over still. Two or three. It had already been a good idea to bring them along, judging from the interaction with the snakemen. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a single leaf and held it out to Abdul. "Use it right, then. This is the last of them you'll see. Get Sting out of here, go get the lady you'd left in the desert and get to a hospital. I will find you when I get out of here. You better have done as I told you when I do." He turned Venomax and nodded. "Yeah. Might as well get this over with. I don't feel that we can trust those two." At least Venomax had proven himself to be surprisingly trustworthy. That was nice, at least. This would have gone much worse if he had been on his own. Continuing, he moved towards the snakemen. Raising a closed fist, the back of his hand turned to them, he repeated what they had said. "Setho." Then he turned his hand, pointing into the jungle. Lead the way.