Veiled Malice

Cocking his head in curiosity at the spider bot's behavior, Nanowire strode forwards and reached out his hand to grab it. "C'mere, you little bugger," he grumbled as he attempted to latch onto the nimble robot.

Daisuke looked between Darla and Dale, feeling somewhat as though he was a third wheel in the conversation. After a couple moments of awkward silence, he piped up with, "So... you're Dale? Hi, I'm Daisuke." He held out his hand in greeting.

Wow, I was just thinking about trains as a battle site. Either that, or some sort of crazy weather condition. On the reason why we might be doing something so suicidally dangerous, I'd have to go with some sort of catastrophe. Or a shopping trip. Hey, Daisuke can't keep going around in whatever the circus dressed him up in all the time. :)

1) I think we already said something about the Masterful Tactics issue. We'll allow it, but as a feat, not an option. Also, each part of it (Tactics instead of Stealth to set up surprise, and Tactics instead of Intelligence to make a Master Plan check) costs one point, making it two points total for the whole thing. 2) I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. What would it mean? Is it a kind of precognition? And it's pretty much impossible to do what you're talking about. Dice rolls, being inherently random, would make predicting the outcome of a battle impossible in any meaningful way. EDIT: BTW, I love Midnighter, but you realize that if the man was translated into M&M, he'd be rolling at nearly PL 14 with better than 280 pp to his name. :D

Yeah, I was about to say that you don't really list anything concrete that I'm supposed to change. :D

Wow, that's the first time I've felt sorry for an animated squiggle before. :)

Okay, you know he's lying. (Good roll, BTW. )

Sense Motive check, plez.

There was. Inside the pod, connected to all the life support gear... was Robert Luciano. The boy was unconscious, probably from whatever was being pumped into the IV drip attached to his arm. "It's not what you think!" the other Robert piped up, desperately trying to get Velocity's attention. "He kidnapped me! I thought I was some kind of joke until all those guys in suits showed up and dragged me off! It wasn't until all of them left that I was able to knock him out and put him in there!"

Wow, very sorry to hear that, Heritage. All my best goes to you and yours.

Surprised, the figure whipped back to look at Velocity from it's hunched over position in front of an open pod. Velocity instantly recognized him as Robert Luciano, the boy she'd seen earlier. He was now far more nervous than the last time she'd seen him with the kidnappers, though, looking back and forth between her and whatever was in the pod before finally walking towards the door and opening it up. "Oh, thank god you're here!" he exclaimed in gratitude. "They were trying to put me in one of those things!" Robert pointed over towards the open pod.

Ren boggled at the news he'd just been given. Omega, taking over Centurion? He hadn't even noticed the cave behind them filling in, so stunned was he by the revelation that Earth's greatest hero had fallen to it's greatest villain. Despite the fact that he himself was supposed to be a bad guy, Ren had no desire to live in a world in which that maniacal despot ruled. There was no room for someone like him - or someone like Lynn - on a world like that. "How?" Ren finally said, his voice shaky. "How the hell are we supposed to help against Centurion, much less him and Omega combined?"

I loved that part. When Giles popped in and absolutely leveled Willow, I had to fight not to yell out "Oh, snap! You got knocked the #$^% out, witch!" (I was with my then-GF at the time. Of course, she then cut in with, "Daaaamn, the witch got b!+$# slappped!" I nearly died laughing. :rotfl: ) ...and that made me laugh out loud. Thanks, Heritage. :)

Daisuke slumped slightly in dissapointment. He was so hoping that Darla had a magical animal, or a wand or cards or something. What was a magical girl without those things? "Sure, I'm ready!" Daisuke said excitedly.

"It's nice to meet you, Darla," Daisuke said, bowing slightly before the girl. "Oh!" he exclaimed as he realized the mermaid girl was still there. "It's nice to meet you too." He turned back to Darla. "So... the skeleton is your brother? Huh. I thought you'd summoned him or something. You know, being a magical girl and all." A quick scan of the room made Daisuke frown. "Don't you have a magical animal? Like a cat or stuffed animal that talks?"

Ren simply grumbled to himself at Lynn's conclusion, but to be perfectly honest, he wasn't sure if he hadn't had something to do with how the way the world turned out. The thought was not sitting well with him. "And so now what?" he whispered back to her, almost helplessly. "What does that mean for us... for all of us?" he added in quickly at the end. "So where are we going?" he called up to Foreshadow, as loudly as he dared under the circumstances.

Nothing immediately jumped out at her after passing through the hatch, greatly pleasing Velocity. Any time people didn't leap out of the shadows and bash her upside the head, like with a fire extinguisher for example, was a good day for her. The hallway ahead seemed to be more of the same. Aside from the tracks continuing along the ceiling, likely for the pod from the previous room, it seemed to be the same pipes and concrete from before. Kinda boring, really. The pathway opened up near the end, leading onto a catwalk suspended above a factory floor. But that wasn't what Velocity was looking at. No, the pods, the hundreds upon hundreds of pods, most with people suspended inside them, that was what she was looking at with a sense of detached horror. The entire factory floor was devoted to the creation of the pods themselves, robotic arms whirring almost noiselessly as they continued their work without human supervision. Clamps lifted the completed product off the floor and hung them on the wall with the others, filled and not. A control center, up a small stairway and nestled into the wall seemed to be the only place not on the factory floor itself to find out exactly what this place was for. However, there already appeared to be someone there, only at this range, Velocity couldn't tell who.

"" Ren yelled in Japanese as he lay on the floor just before the Japanese girl nailed him with that stick of hers. Fortunately, his tough endoskeleton warded off the worst of the blow. The electrical follow-up shock, however, came as something of a surprise. But even that castcaded off harmlessly, arcing towards the nearby metal table leg with a small *crack*. Once he realized that he hadn't been hurt from the shock stick, Ren grinned victoriously up at his attacker. "You know, that would have worked out a lot better if you didn't suck so much." He kicked off the oven he lay near and rolled to his feet, his grin now growing to maniacal proportions. "Well, it's been fun, what with the robbery and mayhem and all..." His arms suddenly shot out, silvery lines of concentrated nanomachines stabbing into the various cookers, ovens and implements that made up the kitchen. For a moment, he looked like a man suspended solely by wires, as if some horror movie was playing out in front of the Japanese girl's face. But then, the entire kitchen seemed to melt all at once. The metal slurry created by the nanomachine's breakdown of their molecular structure created hundreds of reflective surfaces, futher adding the surrealistic nature of what was happening. All the liquefied metal condensed around Ren, coating him from head to toe in an instant. The amorphous blob solidified quickly, shaping itself into the lines familiar to him as his armored form. Power flowed through him once again, almost drug-like in it's heady quality. Ren, now Nanowire, reared up to his full seven feet, almost scraping the ceiling with his skull plate. "...But now you are the one in trouble," he rumbled, the synthetic properties of his body turning it into the throaty growl of a Mack truck.

BTW, Heridfel, I wrote in a little tribute to your continuing awesomeness in the Kudos thread. I've been meaning to do that for like a week, but I kept on forgetting. (Damn this obscenely early onset Alzheimer's! )

Daisuke slowly pulled up the sheet that had covered his hiding place, peering out between the two legs hanging over the edge. Once he'd assertained that the magical girl's father had, in fact, gone, he scooted himself out from under the bed and looked around anxiously before saying, "Sorry about that... with your father and everything..." "I... I know what it's like, you know," he continued, poking his forefingers together and looking sheepish. "My parents didn't like me either," he added quietly.

I should have been a lot clearer in my last post. Nanowire actually punched the robot. He didn't shoot it. However, the end result is the same, and no harm was done. Except, of course, to the poor robot. :)

Kudos to Heridfel, for his excellent work in Disco Fever. It has been the longest adventure thus far on the board, with consistent and engaging GMing throughout. He made a concentrated effort to work with a couple of very difficult players, (namely Heritage and myself ) who apparently had no interest in changing the past despite joining a thread whose sole purpose was to do just that. Thank you very much for your previous efforts, that continue on to present day. (Of course, present day seems to be an Orwellian nightmare, where few dare thread for fear of being persecuted by a horrific mash-up of Centurion and Omega. )

Well, you might kid, but consider this: Between you, Barnum, and Heridfel, you account for over one third of the posts on the board. :shock: Think on that for a minute.

For a moment, Ren stood where he was, paralyzed with indecision. The kitchen, and the return of Nanowire, was within spitting distance from him. But he didn't know if he'd be able to get there before getting laid into by the women robbing the place. Then, Jawbreaker staggered out of the bathroom and provided all the distraction he needed to make a break for a serious powerup. So he did. All of a sudden, Ren burst into motion, hurtling towards the western-style doors to the kitchen and blew through them, legs still pumping. Unfortunately, the doors blocked the view of what was beyond them, so he was completely unprepared for the countertop that he slammed into. (and subsequently flew over, given his forward velocity) A rain of kitchen implements from the overhanging shelf joined him on the floor, with a ladle bouncing off his forehead. "Ow."

Congrats! May all the bliss that comedians never talk about be yours! :D