Geez3r

Feeling strangely invigorated, Red Star lashes out at Grab, and attempts to hold her back from the rest of the people gathered. "Come one Grab, let's dance."

Things have gotten really hectic, at worst I should be back by this weekend.

Happy be-lated birthday.

A very happy birthday to you.

Yeah, I got to do that later on tonight. Right now I don't wish to be either of them, I would not want to start off with this much on my plate.

Clearly a bit out of his element, Eric looks at you for a moment in contemplation before figuring out what you said. "Ah right, umm, where did I put those..." he bends over and starts rifling through the rather large mound of papers on his desk, pausing every few moments to look at a sticky note at the top of a set of papers. He finally looks at one of the sticky tags, saying "Ah-ha!" Eric looks it over with a small frown on his face before handing it over to Dr. Archeville. "Ah, I see now. Well, the main problem with the metal is that it's kind of like a rope. It'll start "fraying" at high temperatures. While it can still support weight when outside of the tolerance zone, it'll slowly degrade over time. This is a by-product of the way the chemical is essentially made. The way it was explained to me is that back in the olden days, smiths would fold the metal back over itself to rid it of impurities and increase its strength and durability. What our scientists have done, in a rather crude way of saying it, is fold the metal back on itself chemically instead of physically. So the metal harnesses some of the nuclear attraction forces to keep itself together, but as a result heat (or a lack there of) is transferred extremely rapidly throughout the metal and breaks it down from the inside out. But again, don't quote me on that."

Here's my Grapple check. And yes that is a natural 20. Apparently red Star will always get a critical on copying anyone, ever. First fail at punching, Spartan shows me how to punch, next attack I get a critical. Fail at grappling, then , and then I get another critical. I think Red Star has the power to make statisticians cringe. EDIT: Grapple check is a 36 in total.

Happy birthday!

I got missed.

I've been steadily going through this with both Malice and Red Star. I can't really dedicate too much time to them though, so I've probably done about 20% on each of them. It's a real nice way to fill in back story and add a surprising amount of depth to your character, even if no one but you reads it. I can't write for Malice if I'm in a good mood, and I can't write for Red Star if I'm in a bad mood. They're both kind of exaggerations of my own personality I guess.

See the problem with that solution is that it would make sense and save time; clearly that's not what I'm trying to accomplish ;)

I've updated my collection a little bit so I've got: Core book Masterminds Manual Freedom City Instant Superheroes Paragons Campaign Setting Paragons - A More Perfect Union adventure Ultimate Power and Hero Hooks, but that's available for free off the M&M site. I also got Crooks 1e as part of a package deal. I like that book, many hours of boredom have been staved off by converting them to 2e.

"Ah you dog, you've gone and stole him away. S'alright. The good doctor should really get a kick out of the department. And Dr. Archeville, thank you for pointing out the hazards of magenta, you've given me something interesting to ponder." "Take care Dr. Reynolds. Dr. Archeville, if you'll follow me." Eric leads Archeville out of the lab and down to a stair case, which he takes to the floor below, and pauses at the door with his hand on the handle. "You've probably noticed something a little odd about our facility, but out of proper social graces, you didn't say anything. At the start of our meeting, I said that R&D was our largest asset, but we've seen half of the divisions, but only a handful of scientists, how can that be? Well, Misc. R&D happens to take up about 70% of all of R&D. And I really wish no one was working right now, so I could be dramatic and turn on the lights one row at a time for the big reveal. But this will have to suffice." says Eric as he swings open the door to reveal the Misc. Department. The door opens out onto a catwalk over looking a giant room roughly the size of the entire floor above. There are at least 20 scientists working that the various stations, none of them seeming to be working on the same project, and the atmosphere just feels free. Looking just like a proud father, Eric spreads his arms wide proclaiming "This is my contribution to Darts. When I took over as head researcher I told every scientist that we employ that if they ever have a sudden bolt of inspiration, quit whatever you're doing and work on that. My belief is that you can't limit creativity, or innovation for that matter. It all goes back to thinking outside the box, at Darts there's no such thing as a wrong idea. Most of the projects being worked on right now, have no military application, but they get attention because they could very well be a good idea." "The board of course flipped when I started this program, but then they slowly came to realize some of the most profitable ideas are the "wacky pants" off the wall ones. Dr. Silvers for example, created essentially a "perpetual pressure system". No, its not truly perpetual, and its applications are unfortunately quite limited, but Maddie found something that it works wonderfully for, water guns. You pump it once and its good to go until it runs out of water. Quite a few toy companies are biting at the bit to get their hands on the patent for that, so expect to see them on the shelves come later spring." Eric directs you to a set of stairs down to the research level itself saying with a smile "But enough about everyone else, I can't let you out of here without showing you a few of my designs." Eric leads you down to the far end of the facility to his personal lab. It appears to be a little more high tech than some of the other labs you've seen, and a bit bigger and like many of the labs you've seen there is a large metal door in the back. Eric notices something on his desk off in the corner and picks it up. It appears to be a gray blue piece of metal about the size of a cell phone. "Ah, this is the metal I was telling you about before. This is actually a new sample... ah, Dr. Hanson upped the tolerance a bit. The problem with this metal is while it is very strong, and weighs a bit more than 4.4 grams per cubic centimeter, it has a very low tolerance for heat and cold, and I mean very. The structural integrity starts degrading if it goes below 55 F, or above 85 F. Well, at least that's what it was at... Dr. Hansen got it to... 28 and 112 respectively. Here's the formula if you want to look it over."

Malice saunters into the cramped quarters, taking a seat on one of the sides of the table, the chair showing no obvious sign of breaking under his weight. He looks rather uninterested in the affairs until Daedalus' name is mentioned. Daedalus huh? I always wanted to match wits with him, and 75 mil ain't too shabby either, and the gold to boot. Malice leans over in his chair and examines the plans intently. His fingers trace some of the walls and he mutters something to himself. "I've always wanted to tangle with one of Daedalus' designs. It probably won't be pretty but I could probably get that safe open, not to mention provide some much needed firepower for this mission. Assuming we're all still in, what's your plan of attack?"

So want to just fast forward to the Miscellaneous Department?

Trying to play it cool, Malice said "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mum's the word, get on with it." But on the inside, he was starting to get a little worried. With this many metas coming out of the wood work, something big was going to go down. Whoever has orchestrated this event was highly connected, or everyone showing up was desperate; Malice was not sure which alternative made the situation worse.

Can't believe I'm going to do this... Not that I have much say in the matter. If they know who I am, then I've got figure out who they are if I want to be out from under their thumb. Suit's not too cheap either. All this is is a means to an end. At least that's what Eric told himself as he suited up the Mantle of Freedom. True he needed money to continue his personal vendetta, and information was always valuable, as were allies; but something didn't sit right with him. This job sounded like an gray area, even for him, but whatever it was, it was something, and Eric knew he would sit up countless nights wondering at the possibilities. Flying low and fast towards the meeting place, Eric was gone, in his stead was Malice. Eric was weak; he had bills to pay, friends to keep, a life to live. All Malice has is the mission, or at least that's what he hoped. Setting down by the others, Malice took stock of his surroundings, and immediately he disliked the situation even more. Under his helmet, his lip curled as he mentally uttered the word "Metas." Looking distinctly out of place in red, white and blue power armor, Malice simply crossed his arms and said "The name's Malice. Why'd you call us here?"

After Dr. Archeville's speech the room is silent for a moment, as several of the scientists have just been dumbfounded. Dr. Reynolds has his hands folded behind his back and was rocking back and forth on his feet looking at where the color wheel had been projected on the ceiling. Eric is standing a little distance away with his arms folded looking at the space between Dr. Archeville and Reynolds, with a big smirk on his face; was he really enjoying Dr. Archeville showing up his top scientists this much? After a moment, Dr. Reynolds turned to Dr. Archeville saying "I hadn't honestly even thought of that. Hehe. I had a feeling that things were going too smoothly. Well... my initial thoughts on this... Well we could, as you said, just hope for no magenta wavelengths but to hedge our bets outfit the helmets with eye shields to protect the soldier's eyes while using the flash to hinder the opposition. Clearly that is the last ditch option. Secondly, we could go for a collide-a-scope effect and have the color change randomly on the fly. Then again, that would make the suit vulnerable to all colors at one point or another. Not to mention the soldiers would all essentially be wearing rainbow suits, for some reason, I don't think that will fly with the higher ups. Then thirdly, we ignore the colors all together and try to create either a black force field, which I would suspect is nigh impossible or go for a clear force field. We have a clear force field in development, but for reasons I've yet to grasp, it has too much give to it. It doesn't stop projectiles so much as cushion their impact. As for the weight issue, that's Eric's department." Eric explains "While I have significant sway in all of the R&D departments, the Miscellaneous Department is my brain child. We're currently trying to stabilize a new polymer that has twice the strength of steel, at less than a quarter of the weight. Though chemistry is not my forte. Also, I've been working on an exoskeleton that enhanced the user's strength. Either would be useful for this suit, but more on those later. I don't want to steal Dr. Reynolds' thunder."

"Very good then. If you'll just follow me." Eric leads Dr. Archeville down a few more corridors, passing a few scientists on the way, who exchange a bit of small talk every now and then. They finally enter a room marked "Lab 3C". It has a similar set up to the previous lab. This lab however is quite a bit more lively. There are 4 scientists working on assembling various pieces of technology and there are 6 more in the "idea room" working on their computers. As Eric scans the room, a smile appears on his face "Ah, Dr. Reynolds must have had another flash of brilliance. Dr. Reynolds' way of doing things is quite erratic, he won't have any progress for 3 months on end, and then in just a week, he'll make more progress than all the other divisions combined." Eric points to the door that presumably leads to the test area, as it has a bright sign saying "Testing in Progress" right above it. "Let's see what the good doctor's devised this time." Eric walks to the door, swipes his card, and the little light next to it goes from red to yellow. There's a bit of delay before it goes to green and the door opens. "Don't want people barging in when a test is in progress, for obvious safety reasons." At the door to greet you is Dr. Reynolds (or at least someone wearing his name tag), a broad shouldered man with dark hair and a goatee, probably in his 30's. "Ah, Eric you dog - dropping in on me unannounced. And you even brought Dr. Archeville with you. A great pleasure to meet you doctor. Please come in." Inside the room are another 4 scientists milling about. They stand at one end of what appears to be a reinforced firing range. There are many tables set up at the firing range, several adorned with computers and other data collecting gear, but many of the tables also have a collection of guns on them. What they appear to be shooting at (although not at the moment) is a full suit (head to toe) of black body armor in the middle of the firing range. "What we've got here is what we hope will be the pinnacle of infantry defense." Reynolds picks up what appears to be a copy of the elbow length glove that is currently on the range. He slips his hand inside saying "It might now look like much right now, but watch this." He clenches the fist and then the glove appears to be made out of a green crystal material. "A hard light, full body force field generator. And the suit itself without the force field is effective against rounds up to 44 caliber. Downside, this glove probably weighs about 30 lbs all by itself."

Yeah, I figured that might happen. Then again, Red Star's got a shot against her, hopefully, and it'll at least distract her long enough for the clerk to potentially get away.

Almost in unison, both Eric's and Maddie's heads tilt to the side and look at Dr. Archeville's modification to the design. "Huh. That's quite the elegant solution, don't you think Eric? ...Eric?" Maddie turns her head to look at Eric when he doesn't answer, and finds that's he's not there. Sweeping the room she finds Eric walking towards the back of the room. "What're you..." she asks slowly as Eric picks up one of the markers. For an answer, he writes the words "A trigger is more than a firing mechanism." in big letters and underlines every instance of "materials" on the board. Eric walks back towards the pair with a bit of a smile on his face "I would've beat my head against the wall for a month before thinking of half of that." He then pauses about halfway back to the desk and you can see the light bulb go off in his head. "Hold on, I just thought of something." He goes over to the desk, saves the progress Dr. Archeville had made, and brings up a different set of plans. This one is labeled "Project Electric Bullet". "What we've been trying to do with his gun here is fire essentially a self contained stun gun as if it were a bullet. A very large bullet, but a bullet none the less. So it combines the reliability and range of a bullet, without the lethality. Our progress is slow because it has to be fired from the gun, and hit the target, and remain in functioning condition." He explains to Dr. Archeville. Pulling out an electronic pen, Eric starts drawing over the design, talking to himself as much as he is to everyone else "But, if I were to modify your trigger design like so, and integrate that into our air powered flechette gun... we could theoretically fire this up to 80+ yards on air power alone. And we could get that to go even further is we swapped out the gallium titanate that we used at the back to increase the structural integrity, with the phosphoric manganese infused glass... Oh wow. This could really work. Maddie, I think I know what you're new project is." Eric takes a moment to scan the new design, looking over his interlaced fingers. Then he looks over at Dr. Archeville "Thank you doctor. Really. Thank you." Have you had enough of small arms, or would you like to keep digging through our prototypes?"

Aww, I was hoping my fluke would last. Quick, someone show Red Star how to grapple ;)

Finally registering that things are going far better combating Smash than they are at combating Grab, Red Star decides its time to switch tactics. As he takes to the air he shouts to the Spartan and Arrowhawk "Keep him busy. I'll help the others." With that Red Star flies over to where the bulk of Grab's stretchy mass is and attempts to grab her but fails to even get within a foot of her rubbery form. Having had his hand awkwardly grab open air a moment ago Red Star weakly adds "Um, come and get it?"

Dr. Silvers looks upon at Eric for a moment as if she is deciding whether or not she would let this stranger touch her baby, even if it's a brilliant stranger. Eric gives a small nod to Silvers, essentially giving Dr. Archeville a seal of approval. As Dr. Silvers vacates her seat she says to Dr. Archeville "I was going to increase the amperage generated at junction C8, and make the modifications to the chamber listed over there, if that helps any. And do try to not make us look too foolish."

Slight clarification: the room we're in right now is simply the idea room. Its where the plans are made and stored, the prototypes themselves are kept in another room. Maddie is working on the plans right now, making a few modifications to the design of the HHC.