Mad Scientist

Well...I think I have to call it, for now. With working two jobs, I have less free time than I did before, and it's being fairly consistently prioritised so other things get done before I get a chance to turn to role playing. Rather than chronically keeping people waiting, I'm going to retire from the field for now. Anyone can feel free to NPC my characters if they would be useful anywhere, and I may be back one day if my schedule changes. Have fun, and game on! -- Mad Scientist

Notice: 1d20 5 I see NUFFINK!

Gah! You don't get a chance to reply on things for a day or two, and you miss out on all the threads! Poor Eileen....

Move action: get up. Standard Action: Nova! Dazzle (Visual) 9 (Nova. Extras: Area: Perception, Duration: Concentration, Penetrating [2]; Flaws: Range: Touch; Drawbacks: Full Power) Nova Perception DC19 Ref/For (Lasting) Blind Free action: Mirror Images.

Cerulean was battered, bruised, and frankly more than a little surprised that it hadn't been worse than that, all things considered -- hard light force fields for the win! Hauling herself up off the nose of the crashed gyrogryphon, she completed the motion by rising a few feet into the air, taking in the scene about her. Yes, she was surrounded by many of the Sky Lord's troops. On the other hand, these were likely roughly the equivalent of regular Navy, rather than the aviators and marines she'd been wrestling with for the past few minutes. You wouldn't want to be in front of their ship-mounted weapons, but face to face? She noted that her decoys had lapsed at some point in the past few very busy moments, and made a mental note to do something about that, but her attention was on something that Expendable Extra: Crewman #3 had said. 'Corrupt officials'? Had there been people of import on that flight, rather than just your everyday cross-country commuters? "If your leader punishes any passengers, he's going to forfeit any leniency that anyone more generous than me might be willing to offer him," she replied, her voice a a little high in her excitement. "Gosh, all this attention, and fixed right on me?" she added, almost coquettishly, realizing the opportunity that had presented itself. And went Nova. Brilliant blue light burst out from her, radiating in all directions and washing over the multitude of faces staring at her, aghast. She brought up her decoys, splitting off into a multitude of versions that, with luck, not many people could even see at the moment. Still glowing like a small star, she looked about the room and tried to figure out the best way to go from here. She was sure as hell making things up as she went along, but her improvising hadn't seemed to have caused any disasters as of yet....

Yikes! That felt like it was more than a little bit close, and noting the clockwork flappy birds had to make attack runs much like any other aircraft would, Cerulean decided to start using the terrain that was available to her. And considering they were thousands of feet in the air (and man, that air was cold, especially when your heroic outfit had the 'benefit' of full sensory transmission), terrain consisted of the massive airship. Leaving a glowing net of contrails behind her, the brilliant blue heroine and her decoys flitted up close against the mass of the immense dirigible. A rumbling thunder vibrated in her belly as she approached one of the massive encased propellers that directed the Lady Aetheria's passage through the heavens, and with a careful approach to stay out of the windstream, she landed upon the protective coping and turned to face the gryphons. Try and get a decent shot on her now, boyos! Well, they tried. The four still in position began an attack run at her, and she took the opportunity to use her sniper beam on one of them. She'd been tempted to call it 'Looks Can Kill', but she wasn't really comfortable with the idea of killing people anyway, and so the beams that shot with incredible range and unerring accuracy from her eyes merely caused some structural damage and likely some consternation from the pilot as controls overloaded inside his cockpit. The remaining three continued in on their attack run, however, and in concert launched what looked like crackling nets composed of pure electricity at her. One went wide, but the other pair slammed into her, despite many tasty decoys to target instead. Electricity crackled painfully over her, and she yelped in a most undignified manner, but the thought of falling off and getting sucked through the churning props gave her enough adrenaline to stay on her feet. What a way to go! The first two gryphons made new attack runs as the other three peeled off, but her choice of terrain paid off as one had to break off its attack early to avoid running into a support stay of some sort, and the other didn't manage to avoid it, clipping a wing and spinning to crash into the side of the dirigible with stunning force! The massive airship itself seemed little worse for wear, but the flier was clearly damaged beyond simple repairs. The first gryphon she'd blasted was just now beginning to come back on heading, and so it was the same trio that had nailed her before that began another attack run again. This time, however, she had a moment to prepare, and as they approached a brilliant ball of light was forming between her hands. And before they got into optimal attack range on their end, she unleashed her Big Gun on them -- the Kamehameha. An incredibly intense bar of blue light, fully twenty five feet across and over five hundred feet long, lanced out to catch all three fliers within its cornea. The lead gryphon came apart entirely, the pilot ejecting in time to descend earthward under the slowing effect of a pair of madly spinning back-mounted gyroprops. The next in line appeared to have been partially shielded by the first, but the third lost bits and pieces of its bird as it was hammered spinning back through the air by the titanic blast. And that damnable gryphon that was still coming tagged her with another of those electrical nets, this one managing to wrap around her face as well! She felt like her eyeballs were being fried, but she gritted her teeth and pushed through the pain -- the alternative was far worse than coping with it. She speared another with her eye beams, and was hit in return with something new, a focused blast of intense winds that threatened to rip her right off her perch upon the prop housing! Her feet skidded across the polished metal, but she managed to retain her footing. She returned fire with another massive, brilliant blast -- that, hopefully, might be visible from the ground far below, especially if people are looking up to see where the debris of shattered attack gryphons is falling from -- and scattered two of the three attacking birds again. The third took more damage, mechanical wing struts cracking, but it came on, a direct attack run. And kept coming. And coming. Until, too late, Cerulean realized that it wasn't trying for a close shot, but was going to try to smear her against the side of the airship in some sort of kamikaze run! Her attempt to dodge came too late, and she was *wuffed* off her feet with a bruising impact. She managed to put enough elevation in her aborted motion to continue rolling up up the front of the cockpit rather than being wrapped around the beak like a hood ornament -- action heroes, eat your heart out -- and then all was noise and battering and debris as they crashed bodily through the support wall and smashed into the interior of the airship itself!

Cerulean regarded the cute little pocket gate with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her 'easy ride home' had just become a lot less simple, and she might just be stuck here for a while after all. "Uh," she replied intelligently, her mind still scrambling to catch up with the implications. "I...guess the theory is there," she replied dubiously. "I mean, I've never done it or anything -- look, I do stuff with light, I'm not made of it!" she protested. "Not to mention that a few photons wide is tiny," she observed. "Even if I could turn myself into light--" which was something that she'd never considered before, but was definitely an interesting idea "--I'd somehow have to funnel myself through a pinhole without losing any of me. It's..." She trailed off, not sure of how to frame her protests. "...can we maybe steal one of theirs?" she countered hopefully.

Cerulean's featureless blue eyes narrowed slightly as the Tin Tyrant made its speech of genocide and destruction, and she regarded it consideringly as the others rebutted the, ah, 'misconception'. "Are you guys getting the same thing I am?" she muttered in a quiet aside. "I'm thinking King Terminator here is in as bad shape as the rest of the planet -- that thing seems more like a wheelchair than a throne, amirite?" It only then, of course, occurred to her that they weren't dealing with organic ears but mechanical microphones, and it was entirely possible that everything she'd just said had been clearly overheard. Uh, whoops?

Wildcat: So Great A Cause Cerulean: Ashes Of This World Kindness To Every Living Thing Sky Crime! Hūhunu: Envious Eyes GM:

Flexing the four primary phalanges of each hand over the controls, Hūhunu looked over the faint data traces and contemplated the vast three dimensions of space about them. "I should hope they're not still relying on the EM spectrum," the compact marine replied scornfully. "Might as well be using magnifying lenses. We're probably going to have to get a lot closer before we can find anything more than traces, am I right?" A few manipulations of the controls brought a likely sector of space to start into close magnification on the primary viewscreen. Not being any real sort of scientist, especially compared to some of the other Praetorians, Hūhunu was more than willing to leave the specifics of that sort of analysis in their hands. Guiding their ship to where the scientists could do their work -- that, the little recon marine could do.

Having been just provided with a gut-burning reason to be pissed off and motivated in the manner of a scathing talking-down by Jack, Wildcat was more than ready to react with extreme prejudice when something showed up to be the target of his ire. He...just wasn't quite expecting it to be in the form of a cyborg dinosaur being piloted by a mouthy cowboy. That threw him off his game for only a moment, but that moment was enough for everyone else to explode into action and have the entire situation in hand by the time the adrenaline dump hit his system. That...wasn't exactly the best way to prove that he 'deserved' a respectful name in the eyes of Jack of Running-at-the-mouth. With an angry snarl, he gave the dinosaur and the heroes dangling from it a wide berth as he bounded around them, heading up toward the ridge. "How exactly did you miss seeing that coming?" he asked scornfully of Escher Girl in passing -- she'd done a perimeter sweep just a minute ago, after all. He himself was off to see if there were any more of these impossibilities coming.

Sorry for my recent slow-to-post, which is likely going to continue for a bit -- working two jobs, one of which is currently at its peak busy time, is eating up most of my free time. I'll still be posting, just at more infrequent intervals, with a priority to any multilayer threads to avoid slowing too many people down -- thread triage! Hopefully my schedule will settle somewhat soon, and I can stop being such a posting laggard!

Initiative: 1d20+9 11

Sounds good -- did you want to lead that in, or should I?

Once again at the controls, albeit this time of the smaller Kavaca, Huhunu deftly piloted the Praetorian craft through the Terran satellite bodies at the edge of their star system. Not that it was particularly difficult a task, what with space being vast and largely empty, but when one approached any particular stellar system, the relative density of matter went up a significant degree. "We have any idea yet what sort of signal we're looking for?" the diminutive Marine asked, without taking eyes off the piloting sensors. Shockingly bright coral nasal ridges flared for a moment, stark contrast against the more burnt ochre of their pilot's hide, and the four primary fingers of both hands massaged the controls.

Cerulean hesitated, torn, as she returned the Governor's handshake, her feet hovering a few inches from the ground and putting her on an advantageous footing with him. One the one hand, it was pretty hard to argue that her arrival and participation hadn't triggered this whole conflict that had just dragged the Firanjii into their war, and to then just up and abandon these people to their troubles, after they jumped to help her? On the other hand...well, this wasn't her world, and she did have one of those to go back to. She was of a minority peoples here, didn't understand the languages, and she had friends and family that would wonder what had happened to her. Plus, y'know -- a war. It was one thing being a superhero, dealing with villains and disasters and saving the day. But getting into a war, where people were genuinely trying to kill each other on a regular and wholesale basis, and she might be expected to do the same? "My...photokinesis is just what you need to power your gateway?" she replied, addressing what grabbed at her attention. "Isn't that a bit...coincidental?" she asked, her tone just a touch wry. "I don't think I can justify staying for the long term; I have people that depend on me back in my reality," she went on, and if by 'people' she meant 'my mom', and by 'depend on' she meant 'would kill me', well, they didn't have to know that part. "That doesn't mean that I didn't appreciate your willingness to sacrifice your neutrality to assist me," she went on, favouring them all with a quick smile. "Is there anything that I in particular might be able to do for you and your people before I return home?" she offered. And hoped she wouldn't have something nasty come and bite her in the ass because of this offer....

Your tactical brain comes up with a lightning-fast plan, and you can go first! The swarms are perhaps 200' away at this point, and closing from multiple directions -- with the exception of directly up the path, or back down the path, as it happens.

Wildcat -- Animal I Have Become, Three Day's Grace Cerulean -- Walking On Sunshine, Katrina & The Waves Hūhunu -- Forsaken, Disturbed

No no, that way sounds suitably dramatic. I was just considering abandoning the fight with the gyros and heading inside to see about doing some derring-do. Plus, it's right up my ally of less-than-dignified but effective heroic action that's so amusing.

WILL'D TO ACTION BY HGM Wildcat edits! Even easier -- +1 to Will Save. Not even going to provide a formatted sheet for that one.

IDENTIFIED BY HGM Update for Cerulean! Easy one this time -- +1 each to Reflex and Will saves, and reduce the frequency of her Drawback from Common to Uncommon. 3PP.

Toughness Save DC 25: 1d20+9 21 Ooof! She's just done a full-round action with one of the most dramatic effects from her light array -- I think stunting off that is probably not the most logical way to go. Let's go for a Reflex save to roll up the Gryphon, movie-hero-hit-by-a-car style: Reflex Save DC: 20: 1d20+7 27 Boom! An unprecedentedly fortunate roll.

Despite himself, Wildcat felt a snarl bubbling up in his throat as he stared at Jack. "My name...is not...'Meow Mix'," he stated bluntly, his voice all concealed claws...for now. "Don't get all pushy, we're in this together until we figure out what happened." He may have been even a little more on edge than he could have been, given the situation; he was a city boy, and all this wilderness was...disconcerting. He was used to hearing a lot of background noise that most people weren't even aware of -- motion detectors, electronics, all sorts of ultra-high pitched byproduct sounds -- and there just wasn't any of that out here. He hadn't really been aware how much of it he had been hearing until it was suddenly gone. "...It's Wildcat," he introduced himself grudgingly, conceding the point that if he didn't provide anything better to use, he'd likely continue to be saddled with 'Meow Mix'. "I'll see if I can sniff out any supplies as well, and maybe something to carry them in." They might not need anything after all, but who knows where they ended up -- it could be hours before they ran across civilization. The scattered cars was likely a good place to start, certainly preferable to the garbage dumpsters, anyhow....

Wish she knew their radar had locked onto her. She'll likely figure it out soon enough. Fort Save DC: 18: 1d20+8 27 Definite overkill for a DC 18, but I'll still take it! Still trying for increased visibility from below -- massive Kamehameha 25' x 550' brilliant blue beam spearing out ad the Gryphons again! As above, Blast 11, Penetrative 5, +5 Knockback. It's a full round action to activate, Toughness Save DC 26, a Reflex Save at DC 21 reduces that Toughness DC to 20.

All right then, a roll vs stun it is! ...but it's a Stun 13 power? Ouch. Better not get tagged by many of those! Fort Save DC: 28: 1d20+8 27