Carces

"Uh... thanks." Vance had often associated the echoed sounds of a surreal technological presence with the dangerous psychotic AIs that were common in a number of science fiction horror shows. Despite the fact that the scientist was a friend of Silhouette and had managed to help him so far, Vance couldn't help but consider the similarities to the situation. He ventured over to the kitchen, grabbing a can of soda from the fridge and popping it open before returning. He silently perused the screens until he found the still-running movie of "Revenge of the Wolfguy". He smiled as he recognized the movie's place, as a young woman was putting on her easily-broken high heels to take her midnight stroll in the safety of the incredibly dense fog. As entertaining as a good horror film was, Vance did his best to remind himself that it might also be prudent to take the opportunity to assume a good night form - especially since things may take a while, and there was no telling when he'd be going home. While the guitar guy's image was an inconspicuous fit in the outside world, the ability to blend in was somewhat overrated in a warehouse filled with extraordinary and wondrous scientific devices.

The Lady of the Parlor frowns in disappointment at her fallen minions, who remain knocked out on the floor. "It seems I have underestimated your power. No matter! I am the undisputed queen of these waters and you will feel the very wrath of my Realm!" Once again, the Mistress of the Fishery reaches to the other side of the aquarium, and a much larger orb of water floats effortlessly through the glass, carrying with it three rather large Alligator Snapping Turtles. "We'll see just how well you fare when your weapons break against the impenetrable shells of the seas! Minions!" With another gesture, a spray of water, and a flash of light the turtles grow and twist, as their bodies turn into large, animated metal and spikes grow from the shells. Soon, what appears to be 3 large, solid suits of over-sized armor glowers down at you as the slits were eyes should be glow a violent red.

Sure have. SHADOW wasn't after the VCR-device, as the entire project was considered a failure and the facility was raided before the good doctor was able to produce actual results. Lady Tesla is an expert with particularly old, electronic devices and offered her services after her "retirement" to hold a treasure trove of villainous equipment - and no one had more of that interesting stuff than SHADOW back in the day. Her expertise and the devices hidden in the vault include Null Zone technology - and a sect of SHADOW, wishing for the glory days of der Ubermensch, has been trying different methods of persuasion to get her to work towards portal technology. Tortures are out, as she is still an old woman who wouldn't survive particularly painful stuff. Thus, they're trying spirit-breaking techniques and hypnosis, and brain-washing which takes a great deal more time. If the investigation went sour, or there wasn't an investigation at all, I figure SHADOW will eventually turn to coercion by looking up friends and family - the only person who would show up on a search like that would be Vance, her employee. Of course, as I mentioned, I'm pretty easy as far as how plots turn out. If we want to go somewhere else with this, that's good too!

Nice. KC's the king of Overkill. The ninja can't possibly make the save, so you've taken both of them out. Go ahead and make an IC post when you get a chance, LS. I'll tell you what happens next right after.

"I dunno about any medical conditions..." Vance thought out loud while he mused about what he knew of Ms. Lights that could be of use. "Oh, but she did have a lightning cat. It looked like a real cat too, until, y'know, she picked it up and started firing lightning at the SHADOWy guys. Then it looked all cat-terminator-robot-gun and stuff." Creature Feature stroked his chin knowingly as he recounted the details of the cat to the best of his ability. Unfortunately, it seemed to Vance that it was unlikely someone would get a license to own a robot-lightning-cat. Even then, a pet license probably wouldn't tell you much about a person.

Yep. On an autofire attack, you roll for each guy you're trying to hit. You smoked the first ninja, but we don't know about the second one yet.

"That's a... That's a definite relief." Creature Feature breathed a sigh of relief again after Dragonfly's explanation. "I suppose I'm rather lucky, then." After a few long breaths, the cheerful smile returned to Creature Feature's face. He exclaimed in his excitement"And that means I can keep fighting crime! Right, Miss Sil?" Vance celebrated and cheered. The whole thing was like a dream come true. If what the scientific genius said was true, and there was little doubt that it was, whatever was in those needles was in control. No mental changes. No insanities. No gruesome deaths or horrible biological explosions! Vance was in control. Looking at Silhouette as he grinned from ear to ear, he knew he could use whatever this power was for the good of Freedom City and the world. Just like so many brave and stalwart legends before him, he'd be a Freedom City hero. He turned back to Dragonfly. "Thank you again for all your help, doct... Er, Ma'am!"

"Uh, thanks, Sil..." Creature Feature blurted as he looked down at the cartoon-decorated bandage. It was odd to think of a serious crime-fighting guru-ninja like Silhouette as being a fan of cartoons. Probably best not to think about it... Creature Feature thought to himself uncomfortably As Dragonfly finished her unusual investigation, Creature Feature nodded tensely and breathed out a sigh of relief. "Well, that's good, then." Vance exclaimed as he backed away from Dragonfly's workspace. "I was worried that it might... w-wait, my nervous system? Like, my brain?!" Vance's eyes were wide with shock, but they did not betray even half of his internal, panicky state. Silhouette had warned him that the shape shifting might possibly cause insanity. And what about that Grue mind-control thing that both of them were talking about minutes before? The gears in Vance's head started to turn as his imagination set out to work against the young hero, coming up with more disastrous scenarios. Opening his mouth, Vance started to speak before stopping himself. The non-doctor had stated that this was safe. It had suddenly struck Vance that hearing the quasi-doctor's definition of "unsafe" would not help matters much. Instead, he opted to let out a barely audible whimper.

Creature Feature was wrong. Not looking at the needle didn't make it any less painful. "Augh!" As soon as the needle was removed, Vance grabbed his arm, rubbing it vigorously. "Geeze, doc. Awfully enthusiastic with that needle, aintcha?" Vance looked down at his arm as he continued to rub it. There'd definitely be a bruise there later, at the very least. Aren't you supposed to disinfect everything before taking blood anyway? With alcohol swabs and whatnot? Creature Feature grimaced as he imagined the possibilities, deciding that he might get lucky if he only got a bruise from the ordeal. He peered over at the fruits of Dragonfly's effort - the blood sample within the beaker. Confused, Vance tilted his head and squinted hard at the beaker, trying to see whatever it was Dragonfly was seeing. "Is... uh... everything alright?"

I still need that second attack roll if you get a chance, please Lone_Star. If you're indisposed, I'll roll for you and continue the thread in a couple of days.

Vance grimaced at the sound of Dragonfly's tone of voice and the size of the syringe. While obviously brilliant, there was a very real possibility that the scientist was not all there. Didn't she admit to not having her expertise in biology? That just made the question of what the purpose of the large syringe in the workshop an unsettling one. It was best not to think about it. Vance rolled up the sleeve of his newly-created blue shirt. Taking a moment to decide whether it would be prudent to watch a person coming at him with a stabbing implement, Creature Feature turned his head away after extending his arm, deciding that the image of the needle was most likely worse than the actual blood drawing itself.

Vance reflexively reached out for his hat before realizing what Silhouette was up to and sinking his hands into his pockets. He shrugged to his mentor as he grinned a bit. "Y-yeah, I'm still working on the video bit." Creature Feature chuckled nervously. Losing an employer before she had a chance to give him anything resembling a paycheck made purchasing electronics a little more difficult than usual. Between school and his newfound crime-fighting career, getting another job was a difficult task. Fortunately, Creature Feature had considered the need for fighting lessons already, and had stocked up on a number of old Kung-Fu movies to even out his "studies" of the monster films, to get a wide variety of watchable combat techniques in the comfort of his own home. He even snagged some old camcorder videos of "Heroes!" the reality program where amateur cameramen follow self-proclaimed Freedom City heroes as they took down criminals, with little thought behind the safety of the camera's operators. There were sure to be a few martial art types in there. And yet, somehow he doubted that Silhouette would be impressed. Ah well. Just another thing to add to the To-Do list. Being a superhero sure was hard work!

Creature Feature bobbed to the music with a confused look on his face. "Well, that's great music and all, but I don't see how it'll help with the investiga... oh! OH! Duh!" Vance slapped the side of his fishy head for his braindead moment. Seconds later, the form of the Beast of Black Lake shifted into a young guy with a cap, still adorned with Vance's goofy grin. He held out his hands in anticipation of a wicked-awesome electrical guitar to presumably fall from heaven. No such guitar materialized. "Aww man. I was kinda hoping the guitar was part of the ensemble." Creature Feature rubbed his hand on the back of his head and through what bits of newly-acquired hair were not hidden by the baseball cap. "Do you have a needle or somethin'? I'd rather not bleed the old fashioned way, if I can help it."

"Oh man..." Creature Feature, in blatant violation of the "No Touching" rule, crumpled backwards, leaning on the closest sturdy structure he could find. This wasn't the first time that the possibility of the shapeshifting was dangerous to Vance, and he was prepared to hear bad news. However, the possibility of Grue manipulation? Or nanobots of unknown programming active in his body? And Replicating? It didn't take a scientific genius to understand that there were a great number of possible scenarios in which whatever was happening was dangerous to those around him. If that was the case, Vance had to know. While it was most likely dangerous to proceed with an investigation of what was going on inside, the price of ignorance was simply too high. Creature Feature mustered all of the resolve he could when he addressed Dragonfly. "Please, ma'am... I gotta know what's going on inside me - especially if it can somehow put other people in danger. If we gotta do something risky, I-I'll take that chance."

"Hey, I heard of those Grue guys!" Creature Feature said as he pointed towards the stock footage. "Those were those alien guys that just attacked Freedom City, right? I remember dad talkin' about it. There were fights on the news and everything." Vance nodded to himself with some small amount of satisfaction. He remembered hearing about the Grue having some morphing powers, and the picture on the view screen confirmed it. Were the few Grue cells in the needle powerful enough to give humans shapeshifting abilities? There couldn't have been that many cells in the needle afterall - it would have taken an awfully long time to inject for starters! "Wait... so somebody got some Grue samples from this Grue fight, made a VCR-needle-thing in a month or so, and then hid it in Ms. Lights secret basement lair just before an attack from those DARKNAZI guys or whatever? That doesn't seem right."

"'Biological strain?' Is that an actual..." Creature Feature blinked hard as he tried to follow both the conversation and the scientist's investigation at the same time - a rather difficult endeavor, considering how fast both were going. "I'll try to keep things simpler." Vance nodded to no one in particular, since Dragonfly had her back to him. "Uh, yeah, a little bit. I got stabbed pretty good by whatever it was, but I wasn't gushing out pints of blood or anything. When I looked again, I couldn't find whatever it was, so I figured it must have been some sort of broken piece." Vance peered over again at Dragonfly without getting close enough to be distracting. This was likely somewhat moot, as the level of focus she demonstrated must come from an unnerving amount of concentration. Despite his desire to keep out of the way, Vance was uncomfortably out of the loop as to what was going on, and a dumb-sounding question was likely his only salvation. "So... what's with the hand...thing...gizmo, anyway? Is it, like, a piece of a robot with some sorta crazy scanning apparatus? Or a virtual hand able to, like, interface with the VCR and read all of the secrets? Maybe, like, a hand probe?" Vance broke free of his somewhat depressing ignorance with a flight of imagination. He gasped with revelation. "Could it be... a Power Glove?"

"W-well, it wasn't like that, see? There were demons comin' outta holes an' THEY were wreckin' up stuff and I was just... uh... well, it was sorta hard to stand up and everything and, well..." Vance tried to explain the situation while trying to keep an eye on what it was that Dragonfly had discovered. Her intense focus on something in the device was difficult to ignore, even as the beginning of the Wolfguy movie began to play. "Did you find something?"

"Nazis?" Creature Feature scratched his head as he looked at the logo "I don't remember a logo like that in history class. Did they upgrade or somethin'?" Vance's knowledge of history was admittedly foggy at best. Like most teenagers his age, his concepts of history were an odd amalgamation of what he managed to remember from school and what he managed to pick up from movies. There had been more than enough nazi monster movies that suggested that remnants of the nazi party could still be around, probably performing bizarre experiments doomed to catastrophic failure when they weren't getting beaten up by leather jacket-wearing pulp heroes. "The guys in the store that night were wearing lots of black ninja-garb stuff and firing laser guns." Creature Feature couldn't help but shudder. The thought of nazi-hired laser ninjas was a surprisingly chilling one.

"Needle? Is that some sorta.. technical term?" Creature Feature leaned over to see what it was the scientist was currently working on, and noticed the interest in the bulky add-on to the usual VCR. "Oh, that needle! They usually put the option stuff in an out-of-the-way compartment on these old VCRs. But there was something really sharp an' pointy in there. I think something must've broken loose or something." Creature Feature watched as the opening title sequence rolled for the grainy television version of "Revenge of the Wolfguy". He knew all the names off by heart, as he had seen his personal copy a dozen different times. As the corny, dramatic soundtrack started to play, he smiled a little to himself.

"Oh!" Even out of the water, the Beast of Black Lake's hearing was phenomenal. Creature Feature perked up after hearing the conversation about his VCR. "I brought a video if you wanted to test the VCR. It's just an old, taped version of 'Revenge of the Wolfguy' I found playing on the Shock'n Horror channel on Halloween. I, uh, didn't know if we were goin' some place with VHS-type things, y'know?" Vance reached into one of the larger, inner pockets of the coat, pulling out a ratty, old blank VHS with a hastily-scribbled "Wolfguy" penned to the label. "I, er, don't have a TV or anything here though." Vance peered over at Dragonfly's giant, flashing screen. "I'd wager you might have that part covered, though."

Anything on my sheet is open game. Heck, I'm pretty easy if you want to make up stuff too. That's what role-playing's all about. The device had an injection method - a one use stick-your-finger-in deal that Vance stumbled on. There's likely traces of the stuff still there too. The VCR bit, as far as I was concerned, was an actual VCR. The device was intended as a self-contained experiment where subjects would inject themselves with the nanite solution, wait in solitary confinement, and then watch video recordings of super heroes that the nanomachines could respond to. It should also be obvious to Dragonfly that the methodology behind both the nanomachine and the trigger were rather sloppy and dangerous - the byproduct of a shortening deadline and expendable subjects.

"Whoa..." As Vance stepped into the workshop his jaw hung open in amazement of the various devices and gadgets of all types. Despite his own inexperience with technology, each piece of technology fired up his young imagination as he puzzled together what purpose each gizmo might be for. Naturally, Vance's eyes eventually wandered to the blanketed object, peering at the veiled vehicle with interest. Opting to stay where the concrete was not quite so decimated rather than venture all the way to the far end of the warehouse, Creature Feature squinted hard, trying to locate any hole or uncovered part that might shed some light on the mysterious object. When his idle search proved to be fruitless, he turned to look at the host of the warehouse, standing awkwardly in silence as he tried to come up with something appropriate to say. "Uh, Neat place you have here..."

That's a miss. You can make an IC post if you care to, Troll. FYI defense is +7, so you can tell if you hit or not for your posts. I imagine these guys will go down pretty quick, though.

Feeling a little disconnected from the conversation between Silhouette and the door, Vance leaned sideways and gave a friendly wave towards the warehouse in general as he spoke in a parched, nervous voice. "Hello... warehouse person. I'm Va... uh, Creature Feature. I'm with, uh, with Sil." He pointed a webbed finger at Silhouette with one hand while lifting his hat off of his head with another, attempting to grin harmlessly as he did so. Joyful expressions are usually quite alien to the Beast form, and Vance's attempts at being friendly were not particularly pretty. "Is it okay for me to be here, Sil? 'cause I can totally leave if it means not seeing the, uh, 'defenses' in action."

Creature Feature Double Features GM Palace of Fortune Under a Crimson Glow