Geez3r

I'll spend one of Red Star's points to get a rank in the Attractive feat. Explanation: Now that Red Star is more familiar with his powers and their use, he has begun to develop an air of self confidence and a bit of a swagger in his step, which many find attractive. I'll wait to spend the other points for Red Star and Malice until I see how their threads turn out.

Eric nods "Yes, I've heard about that. We've integrated some of our defense technology into our lab coats, they don't work quite as well as Kevlar yet, but we're getting pretty close. But personally, I want to put more attention on not having an accident to begin with. I'm not quite sure I agree with you about controlling science per se. Science has been as dangerous since our ancestors put rocks on the end of sticks, no doubt about it, but I'd like to think we've accomplished more good than bad in all the years since. So I don't think walking down any particular path is inherently bad, so long as you watch you step." Then Eric ads with a shrug "Then again, I make weapons for a living, most people don't seek me out for moral advice. Anyways, philosophy later, lets get our hands dirty." Eric leads you down the hallway a bit further, and at a T-turn takes the right fork. A stone's throw later, he leads you through a sliding glass door with the words "LAB 2A" written on it. Inside are several tables are lined with various tools and parts; your expert eye informs you that this is most likely the area where prototypes are assembled. Near the opposite wall a blond male scientist appears to be messing with the circuitry of a fairly large hand gun, which suggests that it doesn't fire standard slugs. In a quiet voice as to not disturb the working scientist, Eric says "This is the assembly area, once it works on paper, and all the parts have been machined in another area, we slap it all together to see if it actually works. My favorite part is testing them out at the range" says Eric as he points to a large metal door at the opposite end of the room. Continuing he says "But what I think you'll really get a kick out of is the idea room on my right." One sliding door later you're in the so called idea room. The right wall is almost entirely taken up by a giant white board, which itself is covered in scribbles, and various pictures and news clippings. A closer inspection reveals this pictures to be various super-tech gadgets, such as Malice's and Daedalus' battle suits, Dr Simian's hover chair, one of Dr. Otaku's mechs, and not to mention a few of Dr. Archeville's own inventions. Around the images are scribbles by various different scientists writing suggestions as to how the item in question works. The remainder of the room is taken up by tables that apparently are essentially computers and the surface of the desks are the monitors. Another scientist is in this room drawing on one of the computer/desk apparently designing something. The scientist who is a female red head, probably in her's late 40's early 50's looks up from her work as the pair enters, and appears to be about to say something to Eric when she notices Dr. Archeville. Her eyes go wide as she stutters a greeting. "Ah, Maddie, nice to see you. Dr. Archeville, this is Dr. Silvers, the lead researcher of the small arms division. Dr. Silvers, meet Dr. Archeville, who really doesn't need an introduction, now that I think about it. I was just giving Dr. Archeville here a tour of the facilities, I figured I should start off where all of our ideas do." Eric then explains that "About 95% of the ideas on the board never come to fruition, but I think it really helps the juices flow and lets the staff start thinking outside the box, or at least the box we're used to. Speaking of, what're you working on Maddie?" asks Eric as he peers over her shoulder at the work she was doing. "O-oh. I thought of a way that we could reduce the kickback and refire rate of the HHC. That's um the Hollow Hand Cannon. It fires a slow light energy projectile instead of slugs, and its power generator can effectively power it forever." "We haven't put it into use yet because the reaction produces a massive kick back, and there's currently about a 4 second delay between each shot to give the generator enough time to build up enough charge for a second round."

Understandably Eric's eyes go a little wide when his idol is essentially calling his corporation a supervillain Either he's even smarter than I gave him credit for, or I'm paranoid and he's making idle chatter. Not sure which is worse. But as Dr. Archeville signs, Eric relaxes, and eager to get away from the topic of super villains, he chuckles a bit about reading the agreement over again, and waves Dr. Archeville to follow him out the door. "It's a little over my head, but as near as I can figure, it says we own everything that exists down in the R&D department. Anything you tack on, we have to give you credit for, but in exchange you don't blab about project X or whatever we're working on. Pretty standard." When Eric opens the door, there are about 4 or 5 people who just so happen to be milling about outside the office. All of them do their best to look at Dr. Archeville and Eric while pretending not to look, most fail miserably. Instead of back to the elevators you originally came up on, Eric takes you off to the right and down the hall a little ways. He then reaches what appears to be a second elevator, but unlike most elevators, this one doesn't have up and down buttons, instead is has a key card reader. Eric takes out a key card and swipes it explaining "For security reasons, this is the only elevator that goes down to the research level." as he waits for the elevator. When the elevator arrives and Eric steps inside he jokingly adds "That, and I really like elevators." After the fairly long elevator ride, the elevator stops at a surgically clean lobby, white walls and cleanings, with white tile, but some black ones break it up a bit. In the corner there is a door marked "STAIRS" which is flanked by 2 security guards, and another guard it at the desk situated between the stairs and the hallway leading off to the R&D department itself. The guards at the stairs nod at Eric who returns the gesture, and the man at the desk gives a cheerful "Mornin'." to the duo. "Hey, Hank. Have a good one." Eric replies. Eric leads Dr. Archeville a short ways down the hallway before entering a door on the right which is a locker room/ safety gear depository. "Safety first." remarks Eric as he trades out his suit jacket and tie for a lab coat, a pair of gloves, some safety goggles and ear muffs, grabbing an extra set for Dr. Archeville. "Alright, you're the guest. Do you want to check out small arms, defense, artillery, or miscellaneous first?"

Hehe. What're the odds? Red Star: *misses horribly* Spartan: "Kid try this." *natural 20* Red Star: "Okay." *natural 20*

Replying to Aristodemus, Red Star says "Fine, I'll try it your way." With that, Red Star promptly stops flying, and drops about a foot to the ground. He takes just a moment to plant his feet like Aristodemus did, and throws a vicious haymaker at Smash, attempting to mimic Aristodemus' own attack. His stance is utterly full of holes, and the attack itself is quite sloppy, but Red Star's fiery arm apparently has mounds of power behind it. After connecting with his attack, Red Star turns and smiles at Aristodemus "Okay. I admit it. That was a good tip."

Eric's brow furrowed slightly when Dr. Archeville said that Darts didn't have sufficient scientific or technological skill. You could tell that Eric took it as a bit of a personal jab, but at the same time, he didn't make a big deal of it because he knew that in comparison to Dr. Archeville he really didn't know anything. But at the end of Archeville's speech Eric's heart skipped a beat. ... Did *the* Dr. Archeville, just ask what he could invent for me? Taking a moment to ensure his composure and think about his words, Eric raised his clasped hands up to his chin, looking at Dr. Archeville over his interlaced fingers. Then in a slow deliberate motion, Eric's hand went over to the previously untouched binder and pulled out a sheet of paper along with a pen, which he laid on the table. A cursory glance revealed that this was a Confidentiality Agreement. In a deliberate voice Eric said "Dr. Archeville. You have quite possibly the greatest scientific mind in the world, and I would be an utter fool if I even thought about rejecting your offer for a second. If you let me pick your brain, then as far as I'm concerned you've got just as much access to Darts' resources as I do. Now as for what you can invent for me, sign that confidentially agreement in front of you, and I'll escort you down to our research levels, and you can see all the prototypes we're working on."

Eric stood quite still for a moment, looking at Dr. Archeville as if he was seeing him for the first time. But then Eric let out the bark like laugh Archeville had heard once before, and Eric shook his head as he walked backed towards Archeville. "You never cease to amaze me. But do not apologize for your image, we all have one, and I would too much of a hypocrite if I were to call you out on it." When Eric took his seat, he started showing more of a professional air. "But as you say, its time for business, so lets get right down to it." Eric pulled his laptop in front of him, and swiveled the screen such that it now laid flat, facing the ceiling. Eric pressed a button on the side of the table and a small projector descending from a ceiling tile, while a screen descended and began covering up the white board. While the screen descended, Eric turned to Archeville saying "If you've been keeping tabs on our company, then a sizeable chunk of this will be review for you, so I'll be giving you an abridged version. If at any point during this presentation you feel the need to chime in for any reason please don't hesitate to do so. Now, Darts was originally formed in 1934 by a man by the name of Elphonzo Darts." A picutre of the man is shown on screen with a few tidbits about him, all of which Eric glosses over. "He saw that the conditions in Europe were worsening and when the time came to go to war, which he correctly believed was imminent he wanted to be ahead of the curve and be able to help supply the front lines. In those days, small arms ammunition was Dart's bread and butter and that strategy carried the company for several decades." A few pictures and diagrams about the ammunition Darts manufactured and how many were sold and to who. "But in the recent years, with the drastic increase in metahuman activity, conventional weapons are becoming less and less useful as even average street thugs are able to get their hands on objects capable of extreme destruction." Several members of the Crime League are pictured as well as several images of those under the effects of MAX and ZOOM, and there is an accompanying graph that shows the decline in Darts profits. "So in order for our company to stay afloat in these times, we had to rethink what a weapon really is. So in the very recent years, our Research and Development Department, which was previously non-existent has ballooned into our largest asset. In a few short years we created the KX-37 an assualt rifle with a 27% higher accuracy rating that its peers, the "High Amp" tazer which is essentially a more powerful form of a taser, but is 40% less likely to cause lasting harm to an individual than a garden variety one. Also, we've created our own line of bullet proof vests which offer an 20% increased survival rate for small arms fire, including armor piercing rounds and hollow points." With the small presentation concluded, Eric turns back to Dr. Archeville and clasps his hands on the table. "So Dr. Archeville, what can we do for you today?"

I see what you missed. I lost the 2 points of Dodge Focus, and purchased 3 additional ranks of Base Defense because I swung the trade-off a bit.

Here's Red Star's check (17)to see if he knows who they are.

I think you skipped me. Is it good, bad, needs work, etc.?

... A rather standard board room. It had a fairly large mahogany table in the center of the room, with 6 black leather chairs on either side and one at each end. The wall opposite had one large window that started about half way up the wall and went all the way to the ceiling. The wall to Dr. Archeville's left had a white board that at the current time is blank, and on the opposite wall are several motivational posters, a stylized "Darts Inc." written on the wall, and the company motto "Be ethical, be innovative, be profitable." On the table there's a bit of food prepared: tea (iced and hot), coffee, bagels, doughnuts, toast, and also a sandwich platter with several different deli meats and cheeses, along with several sandwhich rolls. The most important feature of this room however is the man sitting at the far end of the table, Eric Micheals. He obviously came dressed to impress, as not even a single hair is out of place and his suit looks pressed. There is a rather thick binder filled to the brim with papers on Eric's right. Directly in front of him is a silver laptop, with the Darts logo on the top. Eric is absentmindedly messing with something on the lap top with his left hand while he sips something from a mug in his right. His eyes flick up when he becomes aware that he's being watched, and he gives a small start. Setting his mug down in front of him, Eric rises and crosses the room to meet Dr. Archeville. "Ah Dr. Archeville, so glad you could make it. Found us alright? Pleasure to have you with us. Please, come in, come in. Sit where ever you like." Eric says to Archeville as he gives him a hearty hand shake. Eric seems much more composed than he did at the lecture, but the glint in his eyes is ever present. He waves a hand at the food on the table "Sorry it's not quite as elegant as a spread you provide, but I find it hard to do any business when there's excellent food this early in the morning." he ads with a chuckle. He walks to the doors, and over his shoulder he says "I'm going to have to close these or else half of my staff will just so happen to be milling about outside in a few minutes."

No mechanical effect for fire-fists, they just look cool. And just to make doubly sure its noted, just spent Red Star's HP.

Having put more effort into finding out what exactly was going on, and making the rookie mistake of flying too close to the ceiling and not giving himself enough to maneuver Red Star is unable to get out of the way of the table that is flung at him. And for a moment it looks like Red Star is utterly floored by the attack, but Red Star grits his teeth and powers through the attack using his own strength to lessen the impact. Showing the full arrogance of youth, Red Star shakes off the attack and calls out to his assailant "Oh, so that's how this is gonna go down huh? Alright tough guy, let's dance." With that Red Star strikes a boxing pose, before his fists light on fire, and Red Star rushes the Big Guy but throws a sloppy punch that betrays his inexperience.

Hrmmm, that's a tough one. See I tend to do a few threads were something goes awry or something, so for a change of pace it would be cool to do something "normal" but at the same time, I've been in those sort of threads just because I love them so much. So I really can't decide. But I think a demonstration of some of the technology would be appropriate, malfunctioning or otherwise. If you want to more than that, I'd be quite happy to go along with it.

It was 8:00AM, and on any other day that would mean that Eric's hand would fumble around the side of the end table for a few moments before it found the snooze button without guidance from the eyes that refused to acknowledge that the day had actually started. But today was far from a normal day. Eric had already been awake long enough iron his best power suit (which had also been ironed the night before), take a shower, do and redo his hair, have breakfast (which consisted mostly of cereal and coffee), brush his teeth to get rid of the coffee smell about a dozen times, repeated check his calender to make sure today was the day and last but not least, to pinch himself to make sure that this wasn't a dream so many times that Eric had to switch arms so he wouldn't bruise himself. Saying excitement in the air was a kin to saying the universe was big. Arriving at the office a full 45 minutes ahead of schedule, Eric had a hard time calming his nerves. Harrison, one of the other researchers had been trying to calm Eric by telling him jokes or stories to get his mind off Dr. Archeville, unfortunately for Eric, Harrison was quite poor at telling jokes: Most of the other staff tried to calm Eric, but with similar results. The only one who had any luck was Samantha, the receptionist. Maybe it was because anything was an improvement over Harrison's attempt, maybe it was because Eric had a little crush on Sam, or maybe it was just because she was one of the few whose job had anything to do with talking to people; but no matter the reason, she got through to Eric. She told him flat out "Eric, calm down. Dr. Archeville sought you out, meaning both A) Dr. A knows who you are, and he respects you enough to do business with you. And you know what? We all know you're the best here. Just go in there, with your head held high and knock them dead. We know that this isn't just some business meeting to you, Dr. Archeville is one of your idols. If you're able to lead this company in the day to day grind, imagine what you can do when you really, truly care." "...Remind me to give you a raise when this is over with, and thanks, I really needed that." ========================= Samantha stands at her desk and shakes Dr. Archeville's hand "Welcome to Darts Dr. Archeville. You haven't kept anyone waiting, at least unjustly." Letting go of his hand with a smile she adds "And Doctor, we usually waive the dress code for anyone who flies through the front door, so I think you'll be safe. Your meeting is in Board Room 1. Just take the elevator on your right there to the 3rd floor, it'll be practically right in front of you."

"Oh oh, Red Star. I totally read your blog." "Lookin good Red." "Can I get your autograph?" Trying to calm the crowd and get them out of harm's way Red Star calls out "Hey, Hey, hey. People - please. We can do this after the situation's been handled. Until then, find some place safe and enjoy the show. Alright? Good." With that Red Star flies through the hole in the window created by the CD bin, bathing the interior of the store in red light as he looks around to see who or what is causing the disturbance.

Okay, lets see if I can pull this off. Malice's new trade off are: -2 Def/ +2 Tough, Melee Attacks -2 Atk/ +2 DC, Ranged attacks have no trade off The New Mantle of Freedom: Summation of Changes: Protection 9 -> Protection 6 (3 points) Weapons Array 18 (3 PF's) -> Weapons Array 15 (2 PF's) (7 points) So lost 2 points in device, giving me 8 more points to mess with over all. Then get rid of Dodge Focus (2), and Increase Defense Bonus to 8 (increasing from 5 to 8) [so +2 points, -6 points] 4 points left over, so I'll buy 16 ranks in skills divided as such: Craft (mechanical) 8 (+13) - 8 ranks Diplomacy 5 (+7) - 1 rank Disable Device 5 (+10) - 1 rank Knowledge (technology) 8 (+13) - 1 rank Knowledge (civics) 5 (+10) - 1 rank Knowledge (business) 5 (+10) - 1 rank Medicine 3 (+4) - 3 ranks These ranks just represent a greater understanding of technology and the board room, and rudimentary knowledge of how to patch one's own wounds. So if my math is right, Malice still has outstanding point which he had before the rule changes. For completeness: Costs: Abilities (18) + Combat (32) + Saves (14) + Skills (18) + Feats (10) + Powers (68) - Drawbacks (04) = 156/157

The other day Steven Colbert announced that he had a song on Rock Band titled: Charlene (I'm right behind you) by the ficticious band Steven and the Colberts. If you were to look at the PS3 high scores, you'll see a band titled "Sex Kik" currently has the highest score. That's my band. I didn't play on the song that's on the leader boards, but there's like 6 or7 of us that can really play on rock band so we switch on and off a lot. Yeah we kinda went just a little nuts when we found out we had the high score. So much so that we stayed up to 4am just checking the leaderboards over and over again, and then checking again when we woke up several hours later. So yeah, I just had to tell the internets about this small victory.

Huh, thought I had mentioned that Red Star did have a red aura when he flew; on top of everything else you're a mind reader Dr. A.

Sorry for the delay, but here's Initiative 17 I have a bad habit of not noticing when a second page is up.

Sent a request for a Ref, we just got to wait until one of the them gets enough space in their schedule to start this up.

I'll spend 2 of Malice's 3 points to get 4 ranks in Knowledge: Business and Civics respectively for a +9 modifier total for those two skills Explanation: Having noticed that the upkeep required for a battlesuit and an under ground facility is quite high, Eric suddenly finds it a much better investment of his time to understand some of the inner workings of his company so he has more personal funding. The next point I spend will probably be in Benefit: Wealth, but it'd make more sense if there was a bit of a time lag on those purchases, so not spending it now. Updated by Doc.

Red Star couldn't understand it. People kept looking at him like they couldn't believe their eyes. Sure, Red Star came to expect that from his day job, you know the one where he would fly about the city in a brightly colored uniform, complete with cape and fling fire at the baddies, but today he hadn't expected that kind of treatment. He was just going down the street with 2 brown paper bags full of recently purchased groceries. He was wearing plain old street clothes; a light blue polo shirt and a pair of tan khaki pants. He had even gone the extra mile and gotten a pair of mirrored sun glasses to hide his eyes. The answer to the puzzling large amount of attention became apparent as Red Star passed in front of one of the many stores dotting the road. This particular store was one of those electronic outlets that had like a dozen or so tvs in the window all hooked up to a camera so passersby could make fools of themselves using them as a mirror. It was at this point that Red Star stopped and noticed his own "mirror" image... floating about 6 inches off the ground. After staring at himself for a moment, he slumped his head, purposely hitting it against the glass. Straightening up again, and with a bit of fanagling, he got one of his hands free enough to take off his sunglasses, and tuck them in the neck of his shirt. After taking a moment to make a fool out of himself by admiring his eyes, which he was really starting to get accustomed too, Red Star took to the air, or well took some of the higher air or something. Having only gone a few feet, Red Star's new "freedom" was short lived as a bin full of CD's went crashing through a window in a store a little ways away. Had he been on the ground, Red Star would have just jumped a foot in the air. Red Star's eyes dart back and forth scanning for a relatively low building. Finding one, Red Star deposited his grocery bags and flew off to the scene just outside the store, which was quickly descending into chaos. Call out over the crowd "Is anyone hurt? Who did this?"

As soon as Dr. Archeville's back was turned Eric immediately lost all sense of compsure and had to literally put his hands over his mouth to stop the laughter from being too loud. "Holy ****. I just had a conversation with Dr. Archeville. Wow, wow, wow. Hahaha." Eric just keeps running his hands through his hair, mumbling "wow" to himself over and over again, obviously quite star struck. Then he suddenly stops, and fishes in his jacket for a moment, pulling out a small note pad and a pencil. Eric begins scribbling furiously on the note pad, and anyone looking over his shoulder will notice that they appear to be preparations for a meeting on Friday.

An off topic post, no. A good way to kill a few hours, yes.