Cubist

If we're talking about these 'backdoor' thingies: Jay Xavier is a freelancer, with specialties in troubleshooting and technical writing. He's always working on at least one or two contracts at any given time. For him, an obvious 'backdoor' would be Client X demands Xavier's presence in person, right this second.

[nods] Sounds like a plan to me!

Of course, Jubatus took note of the other fellow's descent from above. And today's special guest star is… a leftover from the Old West, whose antigrav boots and energy pistol had to've been ordered from Sears & Roebuck and delivered via Wells Fargo? Well, if it works for him… The feline didn't bother adding 'What he said' to the newcomer's remarks; instead, he concentrated on observing Horny Guy's reactions… …which were pretty much what Jube expected, given the information he already had. Okay, let's see if the obvious tactic works. Jubatus upshifted—blurred over to, and up the back of, Horny Guy—and perched on the not-a-Viking, one hindpaw on each shoulder. Hey, guy, I'd love to leave you alone, but you've done a little too much property damage for that, and that's before we get to the cop you tossed through a plate glass window. Now, let's see what happens when you lose the hat, shall we? Still upshifted, Jubatus grabbed the helmet by its horns, tried to pull it off its caddy's head… …and failed utterly. The feline's whipcord musculature writhed under his fur, but to no avail; the helmet was simply not going to leave Horny Guy's head. Aargh! What the hell did he do, superglue the damn hat to his scalp? Okay, that suggests the helmet's the real problem—if we can separate hat from head, hopefully it'll all be over… Jubatus downshifted (a calculated gamble, given that he was standing on the Not-a-Viking's shoulders) just barely long enough to call out to the Mysterious Flying Super: "Try shooting the hat off his head!"

Jube's evil plan: zip on over to Horny Guy, stand on HG's back, and pull the friggin' helmet off HG's head. If the helmet isn't strapped onto HG's head, this should be fairly easy; if it is strapped on, removing it will be more difficult, but should hopefully be something Jube can manage to do in one round (especially if he Takes 20 on this task!) If this works, we then get to grapple with the question of whether or not the helmet's malign influence can affect a cheetah…

Diplomacy fail. I hate being right all the time… whatever. Let's see how Horny Guy handles getting ensnared in duct-tape. The Fastest Cat Alive upshifted, put several loops of tape around the I-can't-believe-he's-not-a-Viking's legs, and then downshifted to see the results of his action. The bad news was, the not-a-Viking snapped the tape with no evident difficulty. Hmm. Gonna have to see if any brands of tape use tricks like kevlar-reinforcement, if I want to keep using the stuff on anything stronger than normal humans. The worse news was, the guy with the horny hat swung his impromptu concrete club… …which Jubatus dodged. Hm. That swing got a little closer than I like. Seems that whatever the hat did to him, it probably includes "inject some combat skill into the wearer's brain"? Now safely out of arm-plus-slab's reach of the not-a-Viking, Jubatus said, "I don't know what got your knickers in a twist, but if that's how you react to a simple request for information, you're obviously not in a mood for a meeting of minds. So you got two choices: One, you just stand there and wait for the nice policemen to show up. Or two, I beat on you until you lose consciousness—and I'm enough faster than you that I can do that." Here Jubatus paused for a moment. "Pick one."

A name for the ponified version of Myrmidon... "Warhorse" and "Charger" are appropriate. Also "Four-Horse", given his power of duplication. Glowstar: "Sunbeam".

Jubatus nodded. "What she said." "That's the thing about pure research: It has a way of being applicable to real problems and issues. Now, if I understand you, building this bug would require reconstructing the DNA of the ur-virus, the ell-you-see-ay from which all contemporary viruses are descended, right?" Highfollower nodded. "Okay. And that would require, I don't know, taking mass quantities of sequenced viral genomes and running them all through BLAST, for starters..?" Jubatus was fairly certain that his question was elementary, to a person of Highfollower's level of biological expertise; that was alright. With any luck, he'd just triggered the doctor's 'educator reflexes', and Highfollower would expound further, in great (and useful!) detail, on the specifics of How To Build A Meta-Virus.

[nods] Fair enough. There's also the practical 'in character' consideration that Jubatus doesn't know the school has any actual supertypes on its faculty, so why would he be interested in this particular school of self-defense? This is an issue that would've had to be addressed if it was going to happen. That said: According to this post, "(the dojo's neighborhood) had become a noticeably nicer area since the proprietors of the dojo had moved in". So perhaps Jubatus might have noticed this regional improvement, and decided that investing in (donating to) the dojo might be a worthwhile use of his money? Just a thought…

The main reason that Jube could be incapable of spending a Hero Point, is if he doesn't have any HP to spend… Okay, Highfollower is a good guy, just a little discombobulated about *H*E*R*O*E*S* in his office. His responses thus far haven't been all that helpful, other than the pointer to "Victor at FCU"; Jube will spend a little time inquiring for more details. Since Jube is (a) more knowledgeable on these topics than the average man in the street (see also: Jack of All Trades) and ( nowhere near as well-informed as Highfollower, perhaps Highfollower may slip into 'professor mode' and mention some other information that could help us narrow down the possible range o suspects & etc. Or not.

Hmm. I could've sworn that I read it was 15+[power ranks], but now that I re-check it, it seems that you're right. Given how poorly-organized the Core book is, perhaps it's not surprising that this error was not detected by anyone who saw the sheet before now... ah, well. Jube's Attack roll for Snare (1d20+12=26) is going to hit. Given HG's Reflex save of +7, it is unlikely that he will be more than mildly inconvenienced (if even that) by the duct tape, but it's worth a shot anyway.

Jube's Initiative roll (1d20+31=38) is unlikely to be exceeded by Horny Guy… Jube's response to Horny Guy's threat: Break out the duct tape to try for Snare 5. The plan is to start by taping HG's legs together, and move on to taping his wrists together behind his back, and finally tape his wrists to his ankles. No, there's no snarky dialogue here, because Jube's operation at his max tempo of 40 and HG's tempo is 1. We shall see how well this gambit works.

Alright… Jube's Sense Motive (1d20+7=10) is clearly inadequate, so I want to burn a Hero Point for a re-roll. Hero points haven't been mentioned yet, as far as I know, so this may well not be possible. If I can burn a Hero Point, the new result is Sense Motive re-roll (1d20+7=15) -- but the Improve Roll option (pg 121 of the Core Book) says you get to add 10 to the total if the re-rolled dice comes up in the range 1-10, so the result of 8 on the re-rolled dice means the re-roll ends up at 25.

Hmm. Highfollower is clearly attempting to get Jube and YB out of his office as quickly as he can possibly manage, while at the same time providing a minimum of information. This could be as innocent as Highfollower being embarrassed and therefore just not wanting to talk about it; then again, it could also be a sign that Highfollower knows, and is trying to actively conceal, a lot more about the Freedom City outbreak than he's letting on. Also, is he telling the truth when he mentioins "that VIctor guy" and so on? This is a job for... Sense Motive skill! Jube has Sense Motive +7. I'm pretty sure Jube can Take 20 on this; Taking 20 on a skill roll normally means you're taking 20* more time than a standard skill roll, but since Jube has Quickness, he can bring the time expended back down to normal. Thus, Jube gets a Take 20 'roll' of 27.

Jay Xavier—Jubatus—was fast, but no matter how quick you were, it just didn't matter unless you knew where you were going. That's why Xavier had, as a continuing work-in-progress, spent a chunk of his copious free time working on 'Jeeves', a voice-activated software entity that sucked in police transmissions and news reports; extracted information therefrom; evaluated everything in terms of its threat potential; and presented its results to Xavier, sorted by the criterion of "how much good can a supersonic cheetah do here?". And, of course, doing all the above in realtime. Well… that was the theory, anyway. In practice, 'evaluate everything in terms of its threat potential' and sorting by how-much-good-can-Jubatus-do were both very hard problems indeed. Which is why Jeeves was a still a work in progress, and probably always would be. The latest addition to Jeeves' code: Giving the evaluation subroutines access to publicly-available data sources, so Jeeves could make use of relevant data that wasn't explicitly mentioned in the reports it was working off of. Now it was time to test the new code. Xavier was in the converted SUV he called 'home'; the Jeeves code resided on a server he owned outright, a server located some distance away from Freedom City, a server which had impenetrable encryption on all of its remote access channels. "Jeeves: Wake up," Xavier said. "Jeeves: Use web. Jeeves: Who needs me?" "Working on it," said Jeeves' blatantly synthetic voice. It didn't have to be that way, but every time Xavier thought about improving Jeeves' voice, there were always higher-priority goals to focus on. Always… "Hunter Museum of Natural History. Perp grabbed a Viking helmet with non-trivial odds of mystical hoo-hah." Xavier knew that there were any number of people with genuinely real magical abilities who might take offense at such terminology, but since Jeeves was never going to interact with anybody but him, he wasn't overly concerned about what other people might think. "Security fired shots with no discernable effect. Perp destroyed large window with thrown security. Perp—" "Jeeves: That's enough." Yep, this does seem like a job for Jubatus. Xavier started his 'pre-heroing checklist' and said, "Jeeves: Details on perp?" "Perp is lone male with high enhanced resilience and strength, and low odds of flight. No ID on perp. No data on perp's objective. No data on other exotic abilities." Okay, I'm ready. And as Jubatus blurred into action, he said: "Jeeves: Other supers involved?" "One other super. No match with known supers." Oh, great. Another newbie. "Super has flight. No further data." "Jeeves: Thank you. Jeeves: Get some rest." And then Jubatus arrived at the Hunter Museum. Shattered plate-glass window, check. Paramedics converging on prone cop, check. Scent-trail of perp… hoo-boy does he need a shower… check-and-a-half. The perp's scent was a single-digit number of minutes old; trivially easy to track, if you happened to have a predator's nose. And there's our boy now. Prolly wearing the helmet he grabbed. And the Mysterious Flying Super… is up there, I see. Wonder why Horny Guy felt like stomping through FCU? Okay, let's try diplomacy, and keep the whupass in reserve for when Horny Guy doesn't ruddy listen. Jubatus downshifted to match Horny Guy's tempo of 1, and walked alongside him, out of reach of a hand-to-hand attack. "Hello there! I'm Jubatus," he called out to the Viking-helmeted perp. "Any chance you can tell me who you are, and what you're doing here?"

Jubatus noted, with interest, that Highfollower hadn't discernably hesitated before shaking the forepaw of a bipedal cat. Wish there were more like him… whatever. Keep your mind on business, Jube. "Talking would be good, Dr. Highfollower. A bit of a while ago, you made some interesting speculative comments on a hypothetical 'meta-virus', a pathogen that could mimic a variety of other pathogens… and over in Freedom City, there's been a few cases of somewhat non-standard disease, such that it's reasonable to suppose the victims might have been infected with a virus of the kind you described." Jubatus was ready and willing to share all the information he had, should Highfollower choose to ask. "So the $64,000 question is this: If someone were to try to make your speculations into reality, what sort of skills and equipment might be required for them to do so?

How do you feel about a feline speedster butting in on the Marshal's action?

A music-oriented thread? Jay Xavier could be there in his capacity as a technical troubleshooter with nontrivial music experience… and if/when the schist hits the fan, all terrakinetics must die Jay can & will switch gears to go all Jubatus on whatever the menace may be.

Jubatus Post counts are accurate as of 1 Sep 2012 Canon threads Crikey!: 0 posts Dead Heat: 1 post I Don't ~Feel~ Tardy: 4 posts Medical Maladies: 4 posts Riffsational!: 4 posts Robot Dinosaur Rampage: 3 posts Smoke on the Water: 1 post Three-Legged Race: 0 posts Non-canon thread Checkered Flag: 0 posts

[Author's note: This story was intended for the Crucible vignette, but I didn't finish it in time to beat the Dreaded Deadline Doom… Midtown, evening of 13 February 2011 And it came to pass that Jubatus, the Fastest Cat Alive, encountered a woman dressed in an expensive-looking, stylized version of a standard cowgirl outfit. He saw her at a jewelry store in the Midtown district, at 2 AM. Frozen in the stillness of fast-time, she was leaning through the remains of a jeweler's shattered plate-glass storefront window, her arms poised in the act of cramming loose gemstones and such into a heavy canvas sack. No cops? Hmm. I'll bet Ado Annie there was on the scene right when the window broke. Of course, the tableau before him was, in essence, a single frame of a movie. In and of itself, that one frame wasn't enough to distinguish a thief from a public-spirited citizen who was returning the stolen goods to the storefront… Still upshifted, the cheetah deployed his customary set of high-speed digital cameras to record this interaction from all angles at once; he photographed the woman's fingerprints; then used a pair of long-handled tongs to extract from the sack a few items which he dusted for prints. Well, well. Extremely clear match. Say howdy to Mr. Probable Cause, cowgirl! In the woman's eyes, what happened next was simply this: Her sack, with all the not-yet-collected valuables in the store, vanished in a split-second -- and a bipedal cheetah appeared in their place. "What in the consarned -- why, you're Mr. Jubatus!" She knows who I am, and she's not worried? Okay, she's a heretofore-unknown black hat. Wonderful. 'Exercise caution in your daily affairs,' Jube. "Okay, lady, funtime's over. You can come quietly, or you can scream as you go. Your choice. " "Well, Mr. Jubatus, that's mighty kind of you to offer me a choice, but I believe I'll just go about my business in peace." "Wrong answer. You don't get a third option." And he upshifted—but when the rest of the world froze into immobility, the cowgirl did not. "Sure I do!" the woman said in a cheerful and confident tone. "Y' see, I call myself Annie Oakley. 'Cause anything you can do—" Without warning, the woman burst into motion, literally running circles around the Fastest Cat Alive! "—I can do better!" And she punctuated her sentence with a hyperspeed swat at the cheetah's head, a blow which he saw coming every millimeter of the way, a blow he wasn't quick enough to evade. For a moment, the pain of the impact sent a constellation of phosphenes across his field of vision. "Mr. Jubatus, I'd greatly appreciate it if'n you just left me alone and be on your way. 'Cause if you don't, well, I don't much care for folks what abuses animals, and I'd surely hate it if'n you forced me to beat on a fine ol' cheetah like yourself." She started looking around, ignoring Jube. Is she that stupid, or that confident? Let's find out, the feline mused through his discomfort. "Now, where, oh where, can all my loot have—" By this time, Jubatus was back to battle-readiness, and he leapt at her and tackled her, with a roll of duct-tape at the ready "—oh! Why, you big ol' stubborn kitty!" Oakley cried, and she completely negated his tackle with another hyperspeed swat, harder than the first one, that sent the feline crashing painfully into one of the jewelry store's interior walls. Son of a xixxx, that hurts—don't think anything's broken—oh, joy, she can copy more than one power at a time— "I get it! You're not just fast, you got yerself a li'l ol' Early Warning Radar kinda deal!" She grinned. "Which means I got that, too. So if'n I was you, Mr. Jubatus, I'd just hightail it on out of here, in whatsoever direction you see fit to travel." Jube growled at her and focused through his pain. She may have copied my 'radar sense', but when I triggered it, at first she didn't seem to recognize it for what it was… As his mind raced, the cheetah declared, "Not… not gonna happen, lady. You want these jewels… you're gonna have to abuse this animal. Is the loot really worth that?" "Aw, come on, Mr. Jubatus!" said Oakley as she stepped in through the glassless window. She began walking around inside, keeping one eye on the cheetah while looking all around herself. "I could just as easy ask, do you really think these shiny trinkets is worth your gettin' the crap beaten outta you? Heck, they ain't even your trinkets!" As Jube laboriously unpeeled himself from the cheetah-shaped indentation in the drywall he'd smacked into, he spoke: "I think…" Okay, I got my third wind now. "…the only thing necessary…" But why did she let me have time to recover? "…for the triumph of evil…" She's faster than me, she could've pounded me into a coma, easy! "…is for good men to do nothing." Which means… she can't just make with a hyperspeed beatdown at any arbitrary moment. "And that works for values of 'good men'…" What's she need to make it happen? "…that include me." Obvious hypothesis is obvious. Now to test it. "Well, that's a right fine sentiment, Mr. Jubatus—" The cowgirl abruptly stopped in her tracks. "Ah-hah! There's my bag—and my sweet Lord, I do believe it's more full than it used to be!" She looked in the bag, then smiled a 50,000-watt smile at Jube. "Thank you very kindly indeed, Mr. Jubatus! I'll just be on my way now, if you please. Good-bye!" Carrying the bulging sack over one shoulder, Annie Oakley turned her back on Jubatus and walked out of the jewelery store. Well, of course, Jube thought. She thinks I can't do a damn thing to stop her, so why shouldn't she ignore me? A jagged twinge of pain danced across the cheetah's lower back. Let's hope she's wrong about that… okay. Testing a hypothesis about her power. And the Fastest Cat Alive turned off his Timeshift, thus returning to his default state of 6 times faster than normal. Immediately, gravity's hold on Jubatus dropped to 1/6 its normal strength; the reduction in physical stress soothed his various aches and pains. He still found himself favoring his left leg, however… Jubatus extracted a roll of duct tape from his vest, and followed Oakley outside. Okay. Okay. Step and step again. Too damn slow, but there's my innate 6* multiplier… and here we go. He pulled at the loose end of his tape-roll, and smiled as he saw the beginning of Oakley's reaction. Right, she's got my 'danger sense'. But I'm not using my Timeshift, so—what the— and then the world exploded into pain. Later, Jubatus would reconstruct the glitch: Oakley had sensed his approach. She'd swung a fist at him. His 'danger sense' detected this attack, and reflexively triggered his Timeshift—which meant Oakley had the Timeshift, too—which made her attack faster, more dangerous—which made his instincts boost his Timeshift— Positive feedback. Oakley's fist was moving at a speed well in excess of Mach 1 before it made contact with the cheetah's ribcage. Somewhere, a wounded animal whimpered… Oh. Wait. That's me, isn't it? was Jubatus' first coherent thought. He tried to move—and discovered that he was wrapped up in his own duct tape. And… yes, he was being carried. By Annie Oakley. Low-intensity agony washed through the cheetah's body in discrete pulses, synchronized with Oakley's footsteps. He deliberately did not think about the possibility of permanent damage. Instead, he focused his thoughts on the villain who was taking him who-knows-where. Lemme see… right. She didn't pull a Timeshift just then, not until my damn instincts triggered my own upshift. Betcha that's a limit on her power of mimickry; otherwise, she'd never have let me catch up to her. A momentary headache derailed his train of thought. Where was I..? Right. Oakley's Xerox power. The original has to be active before she can copy it for her own use? Seems that way. Doesn't retain a copied power for long, maybe not at all… Somewhere in Jube's cogitations, he realized that Oakley had stopped moving. He looked up at her face; she had a concerned look, and her lips were (slowly, slowly) moving. Huh. Interesting, but I've got other things to think about. The cheetah continued thinking about Oakley's power, and what sort of responses were available to him in the current situation… and when he was done, he downshifted to a tempo of 1. He caught Oakley in the middle of a sentence: "—awake, Mr. Jubatus. So how about y'all talk to me, okay?" Hm. Very worried look on her face. "Aawwwrr, Annie," he said, his speech even worse-sounding than usual. "Lazzt chance: Zzurrrenderr. To me." The worry faded from Oakley's countenance, shoved to one side by shocked admiration. "You're—well, you ain't okay, exactly, but you're okay enough to try that!?" She shook her head. "I swear, Mr. Jubatus: I seen people try to bluff on a busted flush, and I seen people try to bluff on a handful o' nothin'. But in all my born days on this Earth, I have never once seen anyone try to bluff on no cards at all!" The cheetah shrugged, winced from the pain that was triggered by that minor motion. "Di'n't think you'd go forr it. Had to trry. I' was worrth a zzhot." "Yeah, I suppose it was," the cowgirl agreed, and she started walking again. "Since you're awake an' all, I thought you should know I'm takin' you to the Hanover Zoo, 'cause yer li'l ol' Medic Alert bracelet says that's where you get yer doctorin' from—and Lord knows you could use a perishin' big pile o' doctorin' right now." Hm. So she does care about hurting animals. Lucky me… wait, it is lucky. Fits my next—Jubatus did not allow himself to think the word 'final'—tactic. "Thankz, I g'isss," he replied. "Taking a while. Mind if I upzzhift?" "I don't… oh! 'Upshift', that's what you call it when you go all speedy, right?" "Got it… in one." "Well, you just go right ahead, Mr. Jubatus! And thanks for bein' so understanding about this." The feline was as good as his word; he upshifted, and both he and Oakley were at a tempo of 40. "De nada," he said. "You'rre not afrraid o'… whateverr carrdz… I might have up my sleeve?" "Not in the least," Oakley said with a smile. "You ain't got any cards that can hurt me." No, I don't, was the cheetah's silent rejoinder. But you do. "Juzzt checking." And he waited for the surgically perfect instant… "Come on, Mr. Jubatus. You can't do nothin' to me; you can't even talk straight! How d'you—aaaaaaahhhh!" …the surgically perfect instant… right between the moment her front foot had made contact with the ground, and the moment her back foot left the ground. The surgically perfect instant when Jubatus downshifted to a tempo of something less than 1/4, a tempo perhaps one-twentyfifth as quick as his standard default value, a tempo at which gravity's pull on him was boosted to 25 times its normal strength. Annie Oakley's power was already plugged into Jubatus' Timeshift; when he downshifted, she did the same. And her strange ability gave her a stronger version of whatever power she was copying… For both Timeshifted people, gravity's effective pull was multiplied by 25 or more. But Jubatus had an unfair advantage: His baseline default value for gravity was a mere 1/6G—not the 1 full G it was for Annie Oakley. She hit the ground much harder than Jubatus, not to mention being crushed under what was, from her perspective, the ton-and-a-quarter weight of his body. Under most circumstances, 4 Gs probably wouldn't have hurt Jubatus; probably wouldn't even have done more than immobilize him. But 'most circumstances' didn't include the cheetah's having already absorbed a beating severe enough to warrant medical attention… The smell of blood was thick in his nostrils when Jubatus woke up. He was resting on a warm, lumpy cushion, none too comfortable… No, not a cushion. Oakley. And then, a little later: I think this means I won..? Call me 'Pyrrhus', and hooray for the good guys. A little later yet, the feline put his fangs and claws to work, clumsily cutting himself free of his own duct-tape, and dialed 9-1-1 to report the theft and summon medical assistance for himself and Oakley.

Boston being about 350 miles from Freedom City, Jubatus knew he wouldn't get there in the blink of an eye. Seven minutes, twenty-five seconds. Not bad for a jumped-up kittycat. But not so good if the other half of the crew need help right away… hmph. Deal, Jube. Reality doesn't care if you like it. He was surprised to see that Young Britannia had arrived in Boston before him—and glad to see that transit time would not be an issue, in the event that things went pear-shaped for the other half of the group. Jube smiled at this. "Not to worry. 'Events which we now recognize as probably irreversible', right?" The feline nodded. "Good idea. I like the way you think." He let Young Britannia take the lead, on the theory that she knew the precise address they were going to. Jube waved the compliment away. "Thanks, but I don't know that much about it—certainly nowhere near as much as a real doctor. I just have a lot of time on my hands for reading, is all. And…" The feline frowned. "Wonderful. Online data says the official address of Tufts Medical College is both one-three-six Harrison Avenue and one-four-five Harrison Avenue. Hrrm. Could be a problem, if the guy you talked to didn't bother to feed you the actual location we're supposed to meet Highfollower at." A bit later on, Jubatus turned to his comrade with a question: "Hey, if the other guys have any problems, could you get both of us back to them as fast as it took you to get here?"

Correct-amundo.

Jubatus filled his 150-hour-long days with reading anything that caught his fancy. He knew very well that this was in no way a true substitute for specialized training in a technical field; when it came to medical expertise, however, his voluminous, voracious autodidacticism had made him at least two or three cuts above the average man in the street. So it was that the Fastest Cat Alive actually managed to do a reasonable job of performing advanced First Aid on the injured Butterfly—even to the extent of helping her regain consciousness—within a small number of clock-seconds. "Hi there," he said to the winged woman. "I'm Jubatus, and I patched you up a little. How are you feeling?"

The penny just dropped. That "parallel Roman world" wouldn't happen to be the timeline in which Jubatus and Martin Brandtfordt spent most of the QUICK TO ERR thread. would it? If so, feel free to drag the cheetah into your alt-Romans-vs.-Nazis thread!

Note for Raveled, when figuring out how Blue Jay reacts when she sees Jube coming towards her: When Jube is on all fours, he looks almost exactly like a natural-born cheetah. The differences are, his braincase is somewhat larger; the digits on his forepaws are longer and more dexterous; and of course he's wearing his overstuffed utility belt Vest Of Many Things. Also, Jube's voice is highly bizarre; he has a 100% cheetah-normal vocal tract, hence he can't 'really' talk, so he simulates speech by stringing together carefully-selected sound effects (clicks and hisses and whines and etc).

Jubatus had got his second wind a large number of clock-seconds ago—and burned through it not long after. Now he was working on, what, his fourth wind? Fifth? He gradually became aware that his Timeshift was completely inactive, that he was lounging around at his default tempo of 6. That helped; the Timeshift burned some energy, and right now, he didn't have a whole lot of that to spare. And at a tempo of 6, gravity dropped to 1/6 of the standard value (as far as he was concerned, at least), which also helped. Running on empty now… too bad I noshed all my solid protein… waitasec, I think I got some fluids left? Fortunately, there was indeed an unopened can of Red Bull in his vest. The cheetah pulled it out with mildly shaking hand… and rather than fuss with the can's pull-top, he inserted the can between his jaws and bit down, his fangs shearing the whole thing wide open. Sparkling fluid drifted languidly in the lunar-equivalent gravity of fast-time; Jubatus caught every drop in his mouth and in the can, and soon the entire 16 ounces were nestled comfortably in the cheetah's stomach. Thus refreshed, Jubatus got up for a good, long, leisurely stretch, after which he downshifted to the common tempo of 1. A worried paramedic was beside him: "Um, we… weren't sure if you were having a seizure, ah, Mr. Jubatus…" Jube waved the paramedic's concern away. "Naah, I'm okay." Huh. Guy barely even twitched when he heard my voice. Maybe I am getting better at speech? "I was just working at my default tempo of 6." "So you… have to slow down…" Then the paramedic pulled himself together with visible effort. "Right. Thank you, sir; I'll let my boss know you're okay." The cheetah nodded, with a dreamlike smile born of deep, deep fatigue. "You do that. And you're welcome." What now, what now… oh, yeah. The noobs. He swiveled his head around, and noted both Bee-Boy and the archer—the latter of whom had moved off by herself. Hmm. Looks like she's planning to leave real soon? Fine, she gets the meet-and-greet first. Thus resolved, the Fastest Cat Alive padded calmly over towards Blue Jay, pausing at one point when she looked at him and jerked back a little. What the..? Then he looked down at himself and knew exactly why she'd recoiled: He was on all fours. Right. Stalking cat, 'course she freaked. I must be tired, not to have noticed that before. The cheetah took a deep breath and closed his eyes, then levered himself up into a bipedal position; then he continued walking, on two legs now rather than four. He raised his right hand for a friendly (albeit somewhat unsteady) wave as he approached. "Hello! My name's Jubatus. I haven't seen you around Freedom City before, but it looks like you're starting off okay. What do they call you?" After exchanging pleasantries with Blue Jay, Jube walked himself back to where the ambulances were—If they need any courier runs to bring in needed supplies, I think I can handle it…—and all but collided with the King of Suits! "Ah, the times we meet at! It would be good to see you during a less stressful event, Jubatus. That aside, please accept my thanks for your assistance, from what I have heard you were quite invaluable!" "Maybe," Jube allowed with a smile that did not reveal his fangs. "My good deed for the clock-hour. Hey, I saw you in there a couple times, but, you know, isolated snapshots; what were you up to?" The two heroes compared notes. When the King of Suits went off to find Blue Jay, the cheetah sought out the man in the bee-themed armor…