Raveled

Mind linking that here, Arich?

The OOC for this thread. Wherein Crow, Glow, and El Heraldo will not have to fight more sharks. Nope, no sir.

Saturday, March 4th, 2012 4:02 PM Waterfront warehouse district, Freedom City Todd Hayden wove his cherry-red Mustang through the traffic of Freedom City was practiced ease, slipping from lane to lane and passing slower cars with barely a glance in his mirrors. As he drove he spoke, his words for the benefit of the three young heroes from Claremont academy that occupied the rest of the car. "My ancestors were pirates," he said. "Freebooters, privateers, sea dogs -- they sailed the oceans and looted and plundered to their hearts content. That's because for years they were also cultists of the Snake People. "We came to the New World with the first wave of English immigrants. Settled up in Boston, among the coves and natural harbors. Eventually the family's wealth was tied up in investments on land, not the sea, and I guess they didn't feel the need to worship the old gods anymore -- or maybe Elijah Prophet got the last of the Dagon-worshippers and the rest of the family didn't want to burn, I don't know." Hayden downshifted and pulled off the freeway, heading steadily towards the docks and piers. "I guess we just couldn't stay away from the water and easy money, though. In the thirties my family was involved with fascist groups in the States. Lots of people were -- I have a photograph of my great-granddad with Henry Ford. But when the war started we threw out lot behind the Nazis, tried to use our money and influence for them. We were almost found out by the first Raven and Lady Liberty, but somehow we just barely managed to keep out of jail. "The family named was ruined, though. My grandfather and father were both gamblers and drunks. I inherited a pile of debts and a legacy scholarship to Georgetown. I just wanted to dig around in the dirt for my whole life, but once I graduated... I was going to spend my entire life working at business or end up bankrupt and living in a shoebox, working at a museum somewhere." The car was crawling through access roads now, the sea close enough to smell. "When the Serpent People approached me, I... I knew it was a deal with the devil, but I thought I had the upper hand! They told me where I could find some old sunken treasure in Chesapeake Bay. I paid off my family's debts with that and started looking to dig abroad. They told me where I could find old Atlantean ruins, outposts from their war thousands of years ago. A whole chapter of history no one knew anything about! It was absurdly easy to make my name, and then I could pick and choose where I worked. "That's when Ernest showed up, and the Serpent People started leaning on me harder and harder. They wanted to know about navy movements, they had me drop sonar buoys and magical trip mines at dig sites. In the Middle East, I handed off money to some man whose name I never got. A week later, an archeological dig in Yemen was dynamited! I thought I should turn myself in, go to the Freedom League, whatever, but Ernest -- or at least one of them -- was always there." Hayden stopped the car and nodded at a row of warehouses. "The one on the very end, that's where the shark skeleton was delivered to. I... I don't know if I can help you any more than this."

Glowstar waited until he was sure the errant shark-man wasn't going to get up and run away, then he took off again and hurried back towards the dock where the other heroes were dealing with the rest of the enemies. He observed that most of the sharks and mobsters were unable to attack, but there were still a couple doing their best to tear into Cannonade and Gabriel. The teen hero let his arm hang by his side and forced power to precipitate down the limb and gather in his palm, until he had a baseball-sized globe of seething Terminus energies. He spun in the air and fastballed it at the nearest shark-man; the monster took it on the chin and spun in the air, landing on its feet and apparently unharmed. Glowstar stared slack-jawed for a moment before exclaiming, "That's just not fair! Big and clumsy or small and weak, those are your options! Overmuscled gymnasts is not what I signed on for."

Glowstar'll fly back and rejoing the fight. Glowstar's ranged attack check, vs Shark 3's Def. DC 27 Tou (1d20+12=28) Boom.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the Claremont teens wouldn't get a chance to try again. The monster's eyes flicked between the assembled heroes, its fallen brother-clones, and the cowering Hayden. Finally it pointed a finger at the archeologist. "You have broken your pact with our masters," it hissed. "Stay well away from the water, and maybe you will be allowed to live out your life in simple disgrace!" Then it turned and raced out of the stately home, leaving the other bodies to lay where they were. After a few minutes Hayden poked his head out of the library and glanced around. "Are they gone? I thought I'd never be free of them..." He lead the teens to the garage, where a classic Mustang muscle car sat, cherry-red and gleaming. They all piled in and Hayden pulled out smoothly, handling the vehicle's heavy horsepower with ease. "I suppose you have a lot of questions," he said. "Well, settle in and I'll try to explain."

Bad guy gets away. Everyone take a HP. Consider this thread locked; I'll get the sequel up sometime tomorrow, likely.

Ironclad stepped over the lip of the hole and fell, trusting in her armor's suit of sensors to tell her when the floor was coming up. As it turned out she didn't have to fall very fall; the tunnel was only a half-dozen meters deep, coming out in a half-flooded sewer tunnel. In front of her the outflow was blocked by a silvery metal plate, and behind it stretched out for some distance, lit by strings of LEDs. Ironclad pulled a face underneath her helmet and sloshed through the muck and sewage. "Why do I keep finding myself knee-deep in human waste? Don't these bad guys know how long it takes to get the smell out of metal plates?" Several tunnels intersected with the sewer and the suited heroine made sure to check each one, but none seemed to hold anything of interest. A few tunnels passed by before the the LEDs came to a halt at another metal door. She put her palm on it and glanced at Wail. "Want to take the loud and fast option," she whispered, "or want to see if this group of lackeys is any more sensible than the last?"

Ernest 3's Toughness save, vs DC 23. (1d20+7=11) Well you can't be Staggered twice, so he's out.

"Any team in the NFL would not be happy with having a T-Baby on the team," he pointed out. "Unless that's what you meant by going ballistic." He shrugged, rolling his shoulders, then uncrossing and recrossing his legs. He was not looking forward to trying that fish... "Nah, I think the hero gig is what I'm going to be doing. At least until I'm all old and wrinkled, at least." He glanced at his hand in the firelight and wondered briefly what would happen to him when he got old. Would his powers fade as his body got weaker? They hadn't been tied to his physical abilities so far, but he'd only had them for a year. Who knew what would happen in the rest of his life? Would he stay as powerful as he was, grow weaker... or maybe some day, lose control and just explode?

Initiative xxx -- Snare -- Injuredx2 41 -- Ernest 1 -- Unconscious, Bound & Helpless -- GM 40 -- Ernest 3 -- Staggered, Dazed (Glow) -- GM 33 -- Ernest 2 -- Staggered, Dazed (El Heraldo) -- GM 25 -- Glow -- Bruisex1 -- HPx3 11 -- Crow -- Fatigue -- HPx0 11 -- El Heraldo -- Uninjured -- HPx1 Since all the bad guys are either Dazed or out of it, we'll move straight over to Glow's turn.

Ernest 1's Toughness save, vs DC 27. (1d20+7=22) Bruise x1 and the Daze refreshes.

Ernest 1's Toughness save, vs DC 32. (1d20+6=16) He is (just barely) out.

Ernest 2 & 3's Toughness save, vs DC 21. (1d20+7=11, 1d20+7=8) 8o Well that's Staggered + Dazed for both of them. Ernest 1's Toughness save, vs DC 21. (1d20+6=14) And Staggered + Dazed for him! Good going, Glow.

Initiative xxx -- Snare -- Injuredx2 41 -- Ernest 1 -- Bruisex1, Bound & Helpless -- GM 40 -- Ernest 3 -- Uninjured -- GM 33 -- Ernest 2 -- Uninjured -- GM 25 -- Glow -- Bruisex1 -- HPx3 11 -- Crow -- Uninjured -- HPx0 11 -- El Heraldo -- Uninjured -- HPx1 Glow is up once again.

The monster butler folded around the flagpole and rode the blow, springing back up and unharmed, hissing at the heroes. The daggers had ripped open its coat and shirt, revealing skin that was hairless and had far too much sheen in the light, like an eel's skin. The monster shivered abruptly and disappeared, flipping over the heroes' heads and landing behind Crow. It slashed out with a backhand but the teen hero somehow contorted his body into almost-impossible angles and avoiding the claws, though the hem of his coat did get a little shredded. The other swiped its claws in a closing circle, hoping to hem in El Heraldo, but the paragon easily danced out of its way. The last once continued to struggle with its bindings, snapping several of the wires but still effectively bound.

Ernest 3's Toughness save, vs DC 26. (1d20+7=27) Aw, damn. Ernest 2 will be Acrobatic Bluff'ing Crow to get through that boosted Def. Ernest's Acrobatic Bluff check. (1d20+20=35) Need a Sense Motive, Acrobatics, or Bluff check vs that, Q. Ernest 3's melee attack check, vs. Crow's flat-footed Def. DC 22 Tou (1d20+7=18) That will hit flat-footed Crow. Ernest 2's melee attack check, vs. El Heraldo's Def. DC 22 Tou (1d20+7=15) That will miss El Heraldo. Snare's Toughness check, vs DC 22. (1d20+4=18) Injury x2!

"We should not forget another option," Starlight pointed out. "Whoever is doing these killings may simply be using the Penitent's form to disguise themselves. We should investigate and see if the victims have anything in common. If we can figure out who the next target is," she added, "we can wait for the perpetrator to attack them and ambush him."

Ironclad fired her thrusters and dashed through the hallways of the institute. She had already converted the building plans into a format readable by her suit and maneuvered by minute twitches of the long muscles in her thighs, rolling gracefully from side to side and pulling sharp turns that made the bladders in her flight suit inflate suddenly. Before long she was closing in on the guards that circled Cannonade warily. "Hello," she called out, swinging one metal-clad fist at a guard who looked ready to jump the helmeted hero. "You know, before you beat up the good guys, you should make sure there's only one around!"

:facepalm: Okay, Ironclad will jet to the front door and help Cannonade with his end of the fight. Move action to, well, move, and punch, um, Guard 6 I suppose. Ironclad's melee attack check, vs Guard 6's Def. DC 27 Tou (1d20+12=18) Ehn, she has the HP, I'll reroll that. Ironclad's melee attack check, vs Guard 6's Def. DC 27 Tou, reroll (1d20+12=18) Le sigh. Effective of 28.

Yes it is. If you want to go with that roll, Crow will be up.

GM "Yeah, well." She shrugged with the arm that wasn't locked around Jack's. "King Crab asked me for a device that could go to another dimension. I really wasn't sure they'd work. I was kind of thinking he'd use them to send Mastermind to some place where the sun's already expanded and boiled off the atmosphere, but hey. We got you instead, that's cool." Stepping over another lip she led Jack into a corridor lined with hanging bunks. "Here we go," she said, letting go of Jack's arm and starting to swing the bunks up against the wall. A simple latch secured them, and in no time at all there was a clear metal hallway. Armor leaned against the doorjamb and watched him. "So how do you fight?"

Ironclad exchanged glances with Supercape and slowly powered down her wrist blasters. "You were placed here by the Preservers? As a cybernetic governing intelligence? I see." She glanced around the room, edging away from the nearest containment tank. Bottled and ready-to-use Terminus energies, ehn? "The, uh, the Re-form civilization is worried about the purpose of this facility," Ironclad explained, "but they also want to know what happened to their researchers and soldiers." So would I, she added silently.

Crow's wires bound the killer butler neatly, but before long it was clawing and biting at them. The wires weren't thick, and soon the heroes could see them begin to fray and tear under the monster's claws. Meanwhile its brothers turned back towards the heroes. One concentrated on Glow and the other on Crow, but the brightly colored hero of Peutro Rico distracted the monster from the coat'ed Cowl. Unfortunately the Aussie telekinetic wasn't so lucky, feeling a razor-tipped hand tear a hole in her costume.