Gizmo

Awesome, condescension from the jukebox hero, Jack grimaced internally as his head pounded. Ironically, he could already feel himself getting impatient of the chatter, which was largely what had driven him to rash action in the first place. "Sword innuendo, great. 'Cause that's new. And if you need polite warning to use your defensive shield, you've got a problem," he grumbled under his breath, largely to himself. As the pounding in his head subsided, he made a conscious effort to think the situation through. "It was a set up," he announced suddenly. "They were never going to take anything in the first place. They were leaving something behind." The fencer turned to the rest of the motley band. "You don't leave something like that turned on for storage, and if it's not plugged in you don't need an energy dampening container. I just set the damn thing off early." He'd initially assumed it was just the aftereffects of the blinding flash, but as he recovered Jack realized that the colour of everything around him appeared oddly muted. It couldn't just be his eyesight, however, as the others looked perfectly normal. When he noticed the bugs, frozen in midair like it was amber, he felt a different kind of headache coming on. "Aw, nertz."

I can change it if you want. Jack's always happy to refer to someone my a vaguely condescending nickname instead. I just assumed that since Breakdown was already referring to people by name that the implication was they'd introduced themselves while searching the warehouse.

Definitely initiative count. Also: I'm not fighting the monsters, Jack is! (I'm only PL 2...)

For the attack, just use her ranged attack bonus (+6, I believe). For Toughness DC:

Jack of all Blades normally kept his patrols restrained to the West End and after dark, but he'd been getting the oddest sense of echoing deja vu from his energy awareness coming from the Parkside area and decided to investigate. The acrobat was still reveling in his new grappling hook, swinging from rooftop to rooftop across distances he never would have been able to cross unaided. As he did, he kept an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. As he swung low, something bounded into his peripheral vision. Snapping he head around, Jack's jaw dropped. Keeping pace with him via prodigious leaps was a five foot tall anthromorphic rabbit in a costume practically identical to his own. Jackalope of all Blades considered his human counterpart analytically. Suddenly his mouth spread in a bucktoothed grin. "Shucks, I can even make being a bald ape look good!" he announced. The Earth-Prime native responded with a startled, "Gah!" accidentally letting go of his grapple line in surprise. Momentum threw him up into the air until he began to arc back down, plummeting between buildings to the street below. "Whoops," Jackalope winced as he hopped forward. "Slightly less handsome me is still too good looking to be carrot topped street pizza! Calico, a little help?" he called to the winged cat flying nearby.

Sighing at Jester's antics, Jack ran a hand across his face, partly to hide the corner of his mouth, which was threatening to twitch up in a grin. Heh, Captain Glow Stick and No Pants Kid... S'pretty funny. Outwardly, however, he gave the sanity-challenged clown a flat look and turned to the others. "Well, I think we can assume whatever brought us here was random selection. I can't imagine anyone choosing to recruit Jester on purpose." He shrugged in surrender. "Except maybe the giggle gang. We're flying blind here; we could use the intel."

Deciding that there wasn't much more he could do on the rooftop, Jack nimbly hopped back down into the alley, his acrobatics making the drop seem but a trifle. "'Not from around here,' he says. Don't miss a trick, huh, padre?" he drawled. Reflecting on the archaic cut of his coat and mask, the swashbuckler rubbed his chin with his free hand. "Alright, so maybe I blend a bit." A wolfish grin spread across Jack's face as his considered Colt's newly acquired outfit and Grim's glamoured costume. "So the only ones who really know about this guild are the members, huh? Think they're hiring?"

Groaning, Jack staggered back to his feet, holding the sides of his head and squeezing his eyes closed. "Yeah, alright, that one's on me," he admitted, blinking groggily. "In my defense, what happened to all the stuff in here being broken or failed or whatever? Besides, better we opened with Thad's force field up than the..." The swordsman's voice trailed off as his senses cleared enough for him to think straight. "The police," he said, making his way unsteadily to the hole that had been smashed in the warehouse wall. He'd definitely heard approaching sirens while they were poking around the stacked boxes. "Should have been here by now..." They couldn't have come and gone; they wouldn't have left the metahumans lying unconscious on the floor. An queasy pit formed in Jack's stomach.

Man, Jack opened the box to avoid another round of Notice checks... He's still got 20 from Skill Mastery, and whatever his energy sense tells him.

Jack doesn't solve mysteries! Jack stabs things! Jack is going to open the crate! With stabbing!

Jack shrugged as he ambled up to the crate. "Or it could be an absurdly large number of styrofoam peanuts," he pointed out as he gave the large box a once over with his metahuman senses. There wasn't anything that screamed 'dangerous energy' to him; no obvious radiation or pulsing charge. Of course, that might just mean whatever was inside hadn't been triggered yet. "Let's face it, all this science stuff? There could be a megaton bomb the size of a breadbox stowed away in here, for all we know." Considering for a moment, the swordsman evidently made up his mind. A thin line of electricity leapt from the lights overhead to his hand, an arcing rapier formed of lightning appearing in his hand. "Screw it. Hey, brain guy, hows about setting us up with a telekinetic shield or something just in case?" So saying, Jack jammed his sword into the edge of the crate's lid, using it as a rather exotic crowbar to reveal what was inside.

I went with Initiative. (1d20+9=19) a while back, so I ought to stick to it.

We were just kidding about the telepathy thing, Darius. Mind reading tends to solve problems really quickly, so it's common in both comics and the game for the writer/GM to handwave the telepath, or at least their powers, out of the fight. Martian Manhunter gets that a lot.

Jack's nose wrinkled as Breakdown's black haired friend arrived. It took a moment to realize that the familiar smell assaulting his nose was courtesy of his energy awareness. The youth positively reeked of hellfire. Having finally purged himself of that particular taint, the swashbuckler wasn't wild about working with a demonically powered teen. Although, he thought with a sigh as Breakdown ran towards the motionless group, that distaste might have more to do with the 'teen' part than anything else. He turned to Hellion with a long-suffering expression. "Alright, Brimstone Boy, let's go. Keep an eye of 'your man' while we're at it; I'm marginally less confident in his ability not to get his head bashed in by a brain puppet." Sprinting forward, the swordsman fired his grapple at the roof of the house, retracting the cable immediately and letting it carry him up and over the roof, swinging into the backyard.

And now the phrase every GM is bloody sick of hearing by now: "What does Jack's energy awareness say?" About the big crate, specifically. Anything radioactive or whatever inside he can pick up on?

Actually, Moira and I were talking about that in chat. I'm going to say that, with the obvious exception of Jestnut, the Infurceptors or whoever they are have to play by Earth-Prime's rules. They're still surprisingly durable, but no producing stuff out of thin air. Think about how Elmer Fudd could survive getting a piano dropped on him, but he couldn't do instant wardrobe changes like Bugs Bunny.

Those Broan still in possession of their wits paused in mid-battle, the tusk-filled expressions unreadable to the human heroes. After a long moment, one of them choked out an unfamiliar curse and slapped a panel on his bracer. "The pirates are all but dead, the mission is accomplished! Regroup!" One by one, the alien soldiers disappeared in a red and gold spiral of lights. Their ship hovered for a moment longer above the clearing, then disappeared into the overcast sky. The blue skinned woman howled after them. "Fearcowards!" As the Broan ship rose above the clouds, the electricity surrounding her dwindled then disappeared, and she collapsed to her knees next to the body of her fallen shipmate. Her fingers hesitantly brushed his azure cheek, as tears quietly etched lines down her own face. The locals composed themselves, then gathered around her, offering a moment of respectful silence. The thunderclouds finally decided to open up, and rain fell softly all about them. It was Jack of all Blades who broke the hush first. "I... we're very sorry for your loss," he said simply. The words felt saccharine in his mouth, but his tone conveyed a simple sincerity. The alien woman looked up, tears mixing with rain water. "Crewfriends... crewfamily... The Broanfoes, they use an electromagnetic weapon. Cripples shipsystems for a few cycles... surgekills most organics, too," she explained quietly. "My people, Tempestborn, are immune, but..." Her face contorted with grief. "We have failed!"

Gonna roll all of them together to save time: Intimidate save vs. DC 37 (1d20+14=15) Haha, what? I'm pretty sure, mechanically, that means they just soiled their armor, man. I could Fiat, but that's actually kinda awesome, so... Fight ends, everybody gets an HP for showing up. Let's go meet the neighbours!

Jack winced involuntarily as the airship treated the Meta-Grue like a windshield treats a bug on the Interstate. "Thanks for the assist, goggles!" he called as he flipped gracefully back down to street level to stand above the alien menace. "This has just got to be an embarrassing day for you, huh? Seriously, I am never gonna stop telling this story." With an infuriating smirk, the swashbuckler battered the shrunken villain with a swift cross cut.

Jack drops down and makes a Power Attack 5 (1d20+12=28) If the Meta-Grue's Defense is still 20, that's enough for DC 31! That's probably enough to take Tiny out of the fight, but just in case... SURGE! Power Attack 5 (1d20+12=13) What? No. Re-roll SURGE! Power Attack 5 (1d20+12=24) Better. DC 29. Jack's either down to 1 or 2 HP, I'm not sure...

Cue the patented J'onn J'onzz recoil-in-telepathic-horror while muttering, "Its mind is so alien..."

Gossamer's hair flew forward like a blonde battering ram, smashing against the Broan's armor. Startled, he batted the mobile lock away with his staff. "This is madness!" he bellowed to his comrade."I told you we should never have followed them to this system!" "Your final mistake, friendkiller!" cried the alien woman in an oddly lilting accent as she gathered blue-white electricity around her. The air around her crackled with power, growing brighter and brighter until it was difficult to look at at. Without warning, she released the ball lightning at her closest foe, the effects exploding outward to encompass much of the clearing. The already battered Broan's howled in pain.

The Tempestian's ball lightning attack catches the two Broan's attacking her, the thee Atlas just slammed into the ship and the one who managed to save against the shockwave earlier. Reflex Save vs. DC 17 (1d20+5=10, 1d20+5=7, 1d20+5=14, 1d20+5=24, 1d20+5=13, 1d20+5=9) One of them makes the save to reduce his Toughness check. The two uninjured Broans: Toughness Save vs. DC 22 (1d20+8=9, 1d20+8=22) One staggered and stunned, one uninjured. The stunned and bruisedx2 Broan who got slammed into the ship: Toughness Save vs. DC 22 (1d20+6=20) Picks up a third bruise. The staggered, stunned and bruised Broan who made the reflex save: Toughness Save vs. DC 18 (1d20+7=18) Made his save. The staggered, stunned and bruised Broan who didn't make the reflex save: Toughness Save vs. DC 22 (1d20+7=12) That would be another staggered condition, so he's unconscious! Just 11 to go! The stunned Broan who previously saved against Atlas's shockwave: Toughness Save vs. DC 22 (1d20+8=11) Staggered and stunned again. 25 Tempestian Lady - uninjured 22 Arrowhawk - 1 HP - uninjured 16 Physicus - 0 HP - bruised 13 Jack of all Blades - 3 HP - uninjured 13 Broan Soldiers [*:2t7gvtdl]6 uninjured [*:2t7gvtdl]1 stunned and bruisedx3 [*:2t7gvtdl]3 staggered and stunned [*:2t7gvtdl]1 staggered, stunned and bruised [*:2t7gvtdl]1 unconscious 13 Atlas - 4 HP - uninjured 6 Gossamer - 0 HP - uninjured In retrospect, I may have made these guys a little tougher than I meant to. But that's okay! Now I know enough to make the real battle ever more awesome! :awesome:

Hey, you don't need to be able to follow the clues if you can just beat up the ghost and pull off his mask, right? Stupid question: did they look inside the big crate?

Phooey. I wish it was more clear where the line between "sense fine details" and "perceive specific details" was. Acute lets you distinguish between subjects, so he should be able to tell if her power is like something else, right? I mean, regular vision lets you tell if something is darker or lighter blue, even if you can't determine the exact hexcode for the shade. At the very least he should be able to confirm whether or not it's magic rather than another type of superpower. Sorry to carry on about it; I've never been entirely clear what Jack is and isn't allowed to pick up on with his energy awareness. I should probably just pick up Analytical and be done with it, but it seems to go against the interpretive, gut reaction I'm going for.