Sszinid

So, Mindsteel is just waiting for someone else to take the lead. I can put up a post to that effect, if it'll help keep things moving.

GM The Coffinmaker snarled in triumph, shaking the tension from his fists where he'd struck the young heroine. He tracked her flight up one of the aisles to the back of the store, then began to tromp slowly after her, savoring the moment as he closed in for the kill. She'd managed to miss hitting anything too solid, which was something of a disappointment; having her break her back on a shelf or get impaled on a candy rack would have been immensely satisfying. But at least this way he would get to savor the fight a little longer. Behind him, the Channel Nine crew kept filming. They might die, but reporters in this city ran that risk, and this was awesome footage. The thugs surrounding Gideon and Amelyth ignored the heroine, making no move to target her; the Coffinmaker's orders to leave the fight between the two of them would be obeyed to the letter. Gideon, however, had no such protection. He was lucky he was so nimble, hitting the floor behind the sample table Amelyth had knocked over just in time to avoid a hail of bullets that shredded what little was left of the displays in the back of the store. The Coffinmaker rolled his eyes; couldn't his men get rid of this irrelevant nuisance? No matter; if this sad little insect was still standing when he arrived, he would break the fool with a single blow.

A heavy thud, and a lull in the hulking villain's stereotypical banter, caused Gideon to look up a moment from his own battle. He stared, eyes wide with awe, as the young superheroine flew straight across the store toward him like a speeding bullet. She streaked past cereal boxes, her sheer velocity shredding them and spreading a rain of Rice Krispies and Raisin Bran in her wake. God, he wished he could do that. It looked so effortless. And then she hit one of the sample tables, scattering clearance Valentine's Day chocolates around her. It finally dawned on him that she wasn't flying over to help him; she'd been hit that hard. Damn, he was out of his weight class; a punch like that could've taken his head clean off. And here she was, still able to quip. "Yes, please," Gideon told her, doing his best to not imitate her banter; he was supposed to be nothing more than a concerned citizen here. Of course, compared to her level of power, he pretty much was even on his best day. But maybe he had a chance to give her a breather here, a minute to regain her feet. He rushed the thug who remained standing, determined to finish their little slugfest. Reaching him, Gideon channeled everything he'd learned in a dozen years of self-defense classes. He brushed the SMG's barrel aside, pushing it left with his left hand so it didn't track across his body, then stamped down hard on the guy's foot. As shock and pain made the guy tense, he brought the same leg up and drove his knee into his opponent's groin. The guy crumpled with a sad little wheeze, his chin coming down just in time to meet Gideon's rising fist. There was a half-second's hangtime before he crashed to the floor, unconscious. Gideon grinned; he was pretty good at this! That grin faded as four more thugs, guns at the ready, took up positions around him...

Sounds fair. Gideon takes a swing at the un-staggered thug and hits him, and the guy goes down hard. The staggered thug drags himself into cover in one of the aisles, and four more thugs take up positions in the aisles flanking Gideon and Amelyth. They open fire on Gideon, but somehow all of them manage to miss. The Coffinmaker starts walking toward the back of the store.

Amelyth is actually saving really well! It was just a brutal hit.

I'm back! In a whole lot of pain, but it shouldn't impair my posting ability too much.

The excitement of standing beside frikkin Foreshadow (which a 20-year old should probably be a little less giddy about, Gideon reminded himself) was dampened by the situation. He had no idea what that stuff was, but given where it was he could guess its purpose. A supervillain prison had to deal with its share of bizarre breakout strategies; now it was Gideon's turn to make sure that one of them didn't work. He jumped a foot when Arrowhawk spoke, then turned on the spot, starstruck again. He was on the front lines with the veterans! Then again, he remembered, suddenly sobering, all the people he'd want to brag to about that were dead or in prison. "I'll take your lead," Mindsteel told the other two heroes, trying to sound as calm and confident as possible even as he admitted that he had no idea what to do. What was the point of firing a giant stink bomb? A distraction, or something more sinister? He hoped one of the others would have a guess.

Fool that I am, I signed up to run from the Dead Sea to Aqabah in a relay half-marathon. I am not sure how much internet access I will have there, if any, but I will return to Amman on Saturday night and catch up with anything I've fallen behind on. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Doing his best to keep cool, though the ominous chanting and gleaming knife weren't helping, Gideon shook his head. "You've shot the messenger. Who in his right mind would help you once word of this gets around?" The tall woman just smiled condescendingly, as though explaining something to a particularly dense child. "No one will miss him. He drove away those who loved him, alienated those who worked with him. No one will give his absence a second's thought." She lifted the knife from the whetstone, testing its edge against her finger. Gideon started forward; he wasn't going to let her stick it in Stevie again. "He's a lost soul," she said. "Somewhat like you, I suspect. How long would it be before someone noticed you were gone? You've thought about it before." Still chanting, the cultists closed ranks around her. "I am blessed, you see. The demon lord of the Forest of Suicides favors me, and so I know your secret." "You don't know anything about me," Gideon spat. "No?" She asked, still smiling that same maddening smile. "You spent a year wishing you were dead. Sometimes you still do. You didn't jump, but it wasn't because you wanted to live; it was because you knew it would only hurt your parents more." But Gideon was done with listening. "I've had enough of people assuming they know who I am," he said, pointing his blade at the group. "Now get out of the way. Let me leave with Stevie and the Boost and you won't have to find out what this thing does."

The answer was no, of course not. So he kept going, psiblade ready, heart racing. With all of his focus on keeping calm, however, his concentration on stealth slipped. His boot came down on broken glass at the bottom of the stairs, clearly audible even over the chanting. He closed his eyes and swore quietly to himself; there was no way that'd gone unnoticed. Sure enough, the voice returned a moment later. "There he is now." Behind Gideon. at the top of the stairs, a reinforced steel door slid into place; a trap, and he'd jumped into the middle of it. "Do come out," he heard from around the corner. Taking a deep breath, he complied. His eyes bulged as he took in the sight before him. The basement had been redone as some sort of imitation Pantheon, with marble columns (clearly fake) supporting a dome that rose and merged seamlessly with the ceiling. Perhaps twenty men and women in hooded green robes, none of them over thirty and most under twenty-five, gathered around a block of stone beneath the dome's center. Stevie had been strapped to the block, his moth-eaten jacket and ratty shirt ripped away to reveal a chest so thin Gideon could count his ribs and even see the pulse of his heartbeat from twenty feet away. Someone had made a shallow cut along his collarbone that was bleeding profusely. Gideon could guess who; beside the drug dealer, a tall, thin woman wearing more body paint and tattoos than clothing was sharpening a curved knife on a foot-powered whetstone. The woman turned around and smiled, revealing teeth sharpened to needle-like points. "What do we have here?"

Moving swiftly along the road, with Blackstone rising up ominously before him, Gideon glanced out to sea, reveling in the icy breeze. He could see a jet-skiier out on the water; that was an unusual hobby to have going on at this time of night, but he had no room to talk. Then again, whoever it was also happened to be headed for the prison, and that set him a little on edge. He peered closer; he considered himself a well-informed person, so if whoever it was happened to be in costume he might just know a thing or two about said individual. Sure enough, he did. Through the gloom, thanks to the jet ski's lights, he could make out a familiar costume. It was Foreshadow! Gideon felt positively giddy; he was out on patrol, and here was a legendary hero, the kind of man he'd idolized as a kid, doing the same thing in the same place at the same time. This was the kind of thing he'd always dreamed of, meeting one of the greats. It was said that Foreshadow now operated very differently from before and so probably wasn't the same person whose exploits Gideon had eagerly followed, but still. Gideon was halfway to waving when he realized he wasn't wearing his costume. Cursing, he pulled over and fished around in his bag for his mask. As he was getting his mask and duster on, glad for the isolation of the dark and lonely stretch of road, he glanced up, scanning for the hero. He'd probably blown his chance now. But as he was looking about, something else caught his attention: goodness gracious, great balls of fire! He stood, dumstruck, as something slammed into Blackstone's walls and burst like an overripe fruit. The distant blaring of alarms brought him back to the present. He kicked the Donorcycle back into action, his purple duster flapping in the wind behind him as he sped for the prison's main gate. This had to be what that strange feeling was about, and it looked like the big leagues. He could only hope he was ready.

GM "You prefer silence?" The Coffinmaker asked, once again avoiding the young heroine's blow. "You shall have it soon enough, and it shall last forever, for it is the silence of the grave!" Still, he was forced to admit that perhaps the duo was more evenly matched than he would care to admit; she'd taken punches that could bend streetlights and remained standing. Now that they'd traded a few blows, shown that she was a worthy foe, it was time to end this little game. He charged forward, heedless of his own safety, and smashed his fists into Amelyth with the force of a freight train. He was confident that this would be the final word in their little contest.

Time was running out for Gideon; he could see that one thug was leaving each of the other entrances to come deal with him. He felt a little proud that he'd managed to make such a nuisance of himself without the benefit of his powers, but pride goeth before a fall, and that was what looked to be coming his way. Sooner or later he'd get hit or brought down by sheer numbers, and that would be the end of it; he would have accomplished nothing. So it was time to change the game, as discreetly as possible. Fortunately, the two thugs were standing close together. He'd discovered how fast he could move now quite by accident, like the rest, but he had fairly fine control of that particular ability. Tapping into that speed, he swing clasped fists toward the thugs in a sweeping haymaker blow. As far as the cameras, and even his opponents, were concerned, he would just have taken advantage of his position to hit them both. Gideon's fists glanced off the first thug's mask, but smashed into the second with immense force; he was pretty sure he'd broken the man's jaw. The thug slumped over, conscious but only barely so, fumbling for his dropped gun. The first thug opened fire again, but his hasty burst as he fell back from Gideon's blow went into the ceiling, missing even the light fixtures. But it wasn't time for celebration just yet; this fight had been tough, and the number of hostile participants was about to triple...

His Toughness and Defense are PL10 standard, if that helps your decision-making. Gideon uses his Area Attack extra for Super-Speed to attack both thugs at once, hitting both; one makes his save, but the other is staggered and stunned. The un-stunned thug opens fire, but thankfully misses by a hair (thank you, trade-offs). "Mister What's-His-Bucket" manages (though only barely) to hit Amelyth again; he's used all-out attack, so the toughness save DC is 30 this time but he's easier to hit. If Amelyth fails this save by 5 or more, she will be knocked back 500 feet and go sailing over to the back of the store, near Gideon.

Pulling the Donorcycle to the side of the long and winding road down Lonely Point, Gideon tugged off his helmet and reached for his thermos. Most people wouldn't be taking a coffee break at 8PM, but most people went to sleep at a reasonable hour. Gideon was not like most people for a variety of reasons, he reflected, thinking of the costume he carried in his backpack and the strange feeling, like a hook anchored in the middle of his forehead, that led him onward. Heaving a heavy sigh, he chugged the lukewarm remainder and hit the road again, his eyes a little wider for the moment. In a little over two weeks of being Mindsteel he'd already managed to get involved in a hostage situation and a drug war, and that kind of thing tended to cut into relaxation time when one also had bills to pay. Factor in keeping up the illusion that his secret identity was his only one and you get a recipe for perpetual tiredness; thank God for caffeine. In all that time he'd either had to go looking for leads or had them drop right into his lap; he could see the past, not the future. So this feeling was an especially strange one, pregnant with purpose he couldn't fathom. Was it the budding of some new psychic power, the manifestation of one of the many energies he'd ripped himself up inside with over the years, or the beginnings of insanity? Whatever the case, it was quite impossible to ignore, so he followed it. Speeding down the road toward Blackstone Penitentiary, he wondered what the hell he was getting himself into...

GM The Coffinmaker's sneer couldn't go any wider without tearing the pallid flesh of his head, but it would have if it could have. He was not in the least upset that his attack had failed to wound Amelyth; there was time enough for that after a worthy fight. "Impressive, child. Perhaps this has not been a complete waste of time. Your death will serve to make my reputation after all." She lunged at him with her purple claws, and he sidestepped with surprising agility for someone so huge. Then he swiveled on the spot, backhanding the young heroine with one colossal fist. The thug Amelyth had battered with her psychic wind joined his comrade in cover behind the checkout counter. They were clearly present only to prevent the hostages from escaping; any interference in the fight would lessen their boss's reputation, and that would be a fatal mistake.

Without his armored costume, Gideon was the squishiest guy in the room; a single shot from one of those SMGs would probably put him in the grave, and they fired fast. So he did his best to press what little advantage he'd gained with his surprise attack. Dropping the ruined milk carton, he leapt at the thug who'd shot at him and brought his fist upward as hard as he could, cracking his knuckles into the man's jaw. It was a truly solid punch, damn good for someone who'd never been trained in combat, but the armored mask dampened the effect somewhat and really hurt Gideon's hand. Regardless, the thug stumbled backward, knocking over a rack of two-liter soda bottles. His milk-soaked comrade, however, had recovered himself. Gideon saw him aiming out of the corner of his eye and dove left just as a hail of bullets obliterated a table of salsa samples. So far he'd been lucky, staying one step ahead of his chosen opponents, but he couldn't count on that luck to hold; even if he took these two down, there was no telling if reinforcements would be dispatched to deal with him. Or if the thugs would just start shooting to punish his interference. But he doubted they intended to leave anyone alive anyway, so he might as well try to save whomever he could...

Nice save! That is a miss, though. Gideon gets a critical hit against thug two, but unfortunately the guy saves really well and is only Stunned and Bruised. "Mister What's-His-Bucket" hits Amelyth with a super-punch, forcing another DC25 Toughness Save. Thug One shoots at Gideon but misses.

Gideon rolls terribly for stealth and is detected on the stairs.

The stairs to the basement, thankfully, were concrete; if whoever was down there hadn't heard him yet, he had a good chance of coming up on them undetected. But as he descended, slowly stepping ball to heel, his sense of unease grew. He was here on the trail of a gang, wasn't he? So what was up with all the chanting? Some kind of initiation rite, or what? And what on earth did they want with Stevie? It was unmistakably the dealer's shrill little voice now. "P... please," he wheezed, the sound carrying easily up to Gideon from the echoing cavern of the basement, "I warned you, didn't I? I warned you he was coming!" Another voice, low and husky and definitely female, answered him. "Better that you'd never told him where we were at all. You lie so often, Stevie, and yet you picked a terrible time to stop." The chanting continued, rising in volume, and Gideon heard a sound that could well be a knife being sharpened. His heart began to race. What the hell? "B... but he'll be coming here right now!" A laugh like the clatter of wind chimes responded. "And he'll join you on the altar." Gideon's breath came quickly as he neared the end of the stairs; he held his psiblade close before him, mentally preparing himself. The sentry had been little threat because they wanted him to come down there. They were ready for him, unworried. He glanced behind him, back toward the relative safety outside. Was he getting in over his head here? Then Stevie let out a howl, and Gideon grimaced. Could he leave anyone, even a weaselly drug dealer, to be tortured?

Gideon wasn't entirely sure what to do with the unconscious thug. The man had been about to shoot him, but he wasn't sure how that was going to hold up in court, especially given that he'd been breaking and entering at the time. Maybe this was why heroes seemed to stick to fighting extradimensional invaders and foiling bank robberies; being proactive had its share of legal problems. At that point, though, he was pretty well committed. He had to find and deal with that stash. The battle hadn't been particularly loud, thanks to the fact that the psiblade was silent and Gideon's opponent had barely known what'd hit him, but Gideon was still surprised that no one had come to investigate. He eased open the door he'd unlocked and found the entire house quiet as the grave; if not for the sentry sprawled on the ground behind him, for lack of a better place to put him, he might've doubted Stevie's information. Cautiously he moved further in, the aged floor creaking beneath his feet. Nothing but broken furniture and the whistling of the sea breeze through cracked windows waited to greet him. It set him on edge, the sudden silence and stillness while the adrenaline of the fight still surged through him. He stalked through the building on tiptoe and still managed to make a racket, wincing with each groan of the floorboards. It was the same all throughout, the stairs up to the second level rotted and collapsed. Just as he began to wonder how to get up them, he heard it. There was chanting coming from the basement, along with a panicked voice. It sounded a lot like Stevie.

Mindsteel's first battle was not an elegant one. He was fast, that much was true, faster than most ordinary humans could ever hope to match. His forward dash took him back down the derelict building's stairs and straight over to the gangbanger long before the man had time to aim his gun. And then, for the first time, Gideon swung his psiblade at another person. He'd been part of a fencing club in high school, though admittedly not very good at it, but he could safely say that this was nothing like swinging an ordinary sword. The blade was utterly weightless. It made no sound as it descended, and there was no resistance when it met the Choker guard's flesh. Gideon overbalanced, nearly pulling himself from his feet when his swift swing just kept going. But the thug fell back, unmarked save for a glaze that came over his eyes and the looseness of his gun in his hand. He didn't drop, though, and Gideon's frantic follow-up swing went wide. The whole scene was utterly surreal. Regaining his balance, Mindsteel swung again as the thug shook off his daze, and once again his blade moved cleanly through the man and kept going. Gideon banged his hand painfully against the brick staircase beside him, scraping his knuckles and leaving what he was sure would be a very painful bruise shortly thereafter. But he was too pumped up on adrenaline to care. He swung again, missed, and then again, and this time the Choker collapsed, crumpling limply onto the pavement. Gideon stood there a moment, breathing hard, eyes wide. He'd done it. He'd won.

Gideon takes 10 on the lock. His first fight ends up a little odd. His first swing hits, and the thug is stunned and bruised. His second misses. His third swing hits, and the thug is stunned and bruised again. His fourth swing misses. His fifth swing hits, and the thug goes down. There's some interesting numerical chiasmus or something going on here.

The address he'd gotten from Stevie was at the Boardwalk's edge, conveniently located near Southside for easy access to the Chokers' other safehouses. It was an old brick building, rundown and crumbling but with a fresh steel door and thick bars over the windows. To no one's great surprise, the gang apparently valued privacy. Gideon had brought his sledgehammer from the Donorcycle, the heavy tool hanging loosely from straps across the back of his duster, but he didn't fancy his chances of smashing his way in; he wasn't exactly weak, but it'd take him a decade. Fortunately, he happened to be a locksmith. And people tended to skimp on the quality of their locks. With a furtive look up and down the street, he darted forward and set to work, his tools springing easily to hand. He could've done this in his sleep. There was no sign of trouble, he mused, clicking another tumbler into place; maybe Stevie had just run off by himself. As the next tumbler clicked, Gideon wondered about the legality of all this. He wasn't deputized. He had no license. And there was no search warrant for this place even if he had been. Technically he was breaking and entering, reasons be damned. Was this all just another excuse for him to seek the thrill of the stealthy trespass? His worries were interrupted when the sentry came around the corner. They stared at each other for a moment, the husky gangbanger in the green hoodie and the slim youth in the purple duster, each utterly baffled by the other's presence. Gideon cursed himself for a fool. Why hadn't he checked for guards? Then the moment was over, and the man went for his pistol. Dropping his tools as the door swung open, Gideon crossed the distance between them in an instant, a blade of a thousand colors extending from his wrist like a backhanded claw. The last time he'd been in a fight, it'd been on a playground. He could only hope his psiblade would make up for his combat naivety...

I would be thrilled to have Mindsteel involved, PLs and space permitting.