Cubist

Have posted to the IC thread. The obviously-relevant info hath been passed along to the rest of the crew. Have given the name "Terrence Highfollower" to that bloke at Tufts with the meta-virus hypothesis; if you had a different name in mind for the bloke, say the word and I'll edit my post so that different name is used instrad of my placeholder name.

The Fastest Cat Alive wasn't inclined to sit idle while waiting for Dr. Philo to respond to the request for information; Jube extracted a sleek black cylinder from one of his many vest-pockets. After unrolling the cylinder into a high-end tablet computer, Jubatus' right hand (and the stylus he held in it) blurred back and forth across its screen, on which a multitude of websites and documents blinked into life. The feline absorbed all this information every bit as swiftly as one might expect of a cheetah speedster. Hmm… interesting… not helpful… very interesting… not something I'd've expected, but makes sense… okay, debrief the crew. "Got some data which should be helpful, Athena willing. One: The World Health Organization stores samples of most-to-all of the bugs we're seeing now -- might be worth talking to WHO to see if any of their frozen bugs have turned up missing recently. Two: All the victims take public transportation to work. Not sure if there's any specific route, or any one bus in particular, which they share in common; need to do some more digging on that point. Three: There's a 'Terrence Highfollower' at Tufts Medical College who's lately made some noise about a 'meta-virus' with surface molecular fragments…" Jube paused, considered the probable level of medical knowledge amongst the supertypes he was currently working with, edited his statement-in-progress, and went on: "ah… the sucker can fool your immune system by 'disguising' itself as pretty much any other virus or bacteria. The good news is, Highfollower's just talking about a hypothesis, not anything that's actually real." Or so I hope, anyway. "I'm thinking a hospital rep should get in touch with Highfollower, just on general principles, but one of us hero-types could do that, too. Four: There's an alleged religion called The Cult Of The Dripping Pox whose main tenet seems to be that viruses are the true masters of the planet, and humans should be happy to be infected by as many different strains as biologically possible. Not sure if this Cult is closer to LDS or Scientology or or the Church of the Sub-Genius or what, so a little more research is indicated here, too."

As I see it, this new school would be a plot device along the same lines as both Nicholson and Claremont, with the significant distinction that the new school is not explicitly restricted to teenagers (i.e., Claremont) and younger (i.e., Nicholson). The biggest question mark I see is, are there enough post-highschool-age characters around that such a school would really be worth bothering with in the first place? As to the question of what sort of stories you could tell at the new school which you could not tell with C. and/or N: Stories about characters who aren't children or otherwise pre-adult. Hm. Okay, it looks like there are already some perfectly adequate pre-existing in-universe resources for what I had in mind, and it's just a matter of actually, like, using said pre-existing resources in stories. I think I'll let my idea die a quiet death from neglect and/or disuse...

Jubatus Canon threads Bee-nevolence: 8 posts Crikey!: 2 posts Don't Blink: 0 posts Life Changing Decisions: 0 posts Medical Maladies: 3 posts Miniature Heroland: 0 posts Three-Legged Race: 0 post Non-canon thread Checkered Flag: 0 posts

The Thing From Another Dimension... should be the realmswalkers' equivalent of a Great Dane. It's a big, clumsy, friendly animal without a hostile bone in its body, but it does have innate planeshifting capabilities which have the potential to really mess things up when said capabilities are used in an inappropriate setting. Like, say, the streets of Freedom City. Why is the critter super-cheerful? When you can avoid enemies by shifting to another dimension with a thought, you don't need to be hostile or paranoid! It should at least be able to open portals which Other Things can pass thru, and maybe even have the ability to carry nontrivial mass of cargo when it hops dimensions. The critter sincerely wants to be nice and helpful to everyone it encounters; the trouble is, it is an animal, and its mentality is strictly animal-level, so what it thinks of as "being nice"… may be problematic. Of course, people who are mean to the animal are likely to end up Elsewhere. Which could be a problem, depending what sort of behavior the animal regards as "being mean".

The Claremont Academy is for superpowered teens, and it more-or-less maintains a 'secret identity' as an expensive private school. It serves the FCPBP campaign well as an epicenter for superteen angst and action. All well and good, but I think FCPBP might have room for another school-for-supertypes, a school which caters to the needs of a different segment of the supertype population, and this here is me putting the idea out for people to comment on. Basic idea: This new school is all about training supertypes of any age, not just teenagers, in the use of their powers. This school is publicly known as a training facility for supertypes; no 'secret identity' needed here. I expect that any PCs who are students here would be heroes, or at least working towards that goal, but t The school doesn't require its students to be heroes, or at least working towards that goal -- but any PC students should be among that segment of the student body that does want to be heroes. The fact that heroing isn't mandatory means we can have NPCs (supporting cast, background characters, etc) whose powers really don't lend themselves to the proverbial "never-ending battle" of superheroing. Age-wise, the student body ranges from 9 to 90 and then some, which offers opportunities for character interaction that might be hard to find at the Claremont Academy. Yes? No? Good idea? Bad idea?

Suffer the Consequences Editor's note: Ed Halstonne is the therapist of Jay Xavier, the cheetah-man also known to the public as Jubatus. All eyes were on the scarred giant who limped into Madden's during the tail-end of the lunch rush. The man's size alone would have attracted a certain amount of attention, for he was well over six feet tall, and quite solidly built, albeit with discernable indications that he'd slacked off on his exercises in recent months. The same could be said of his scars; there were many well-healed wounds on his right hand and the right side of his face. And as if all of the preceding weren't enough, he also wore a black patch over his right eye, and could only walk with the evidently necessary assistance of a dark grey cane. Yes, all eyes were on the scarred giant. In most cases, people stared because of curiosity, or, perhaps, the darker impulses which impelled the crowds of an earlier age to see freak shows. In my case, however, it was professional interest. My name is Edmund Halstonne. I'm a psychiatrist who specializes in body issues. As such, I couldn't help but wonder if the man might benefit from my services. Apart from that, the man seemed familiar, somehow; my brain insisted that I'd seen him before, but for the life of me, I couldn't recall where or when. Most peculiar, given the man's highly distinctive appearance. And… hmm. While the man was ignoring the sea of staring eyes that surrounded him, his own eyes widened when he looked in my direction. Perhaps he was in the market for such services as I could provide? Well, if that were so, he was clearly capable of making this desire known to me; I finished off the last surviving remnants of my BBQ Cheese Fries, and started work on my Three-Ringer Apple Pie. For me, as it is for so many others, I fear the dessert menu at Madden's is my weakness… Slow, heavy footsteps heralded the scarred man's arrival at the booth in which I was dining. "Hey there. Mind if I sit down?" he asked in a slurred voice with a rasping undertone, which was probably explained by the scars on his throat. "Not at all," I replied, and I gestured at the bench on the opposite site of the table. He began the painstaking procedure of maneuvering his damaged body into a seated position on the bench. That (mildly onerous) task finished, he exhaled forcefully and said, "Thanks. Ed Halstonne, right?" When I confirmed his information, he went on: "My name's Manny Culligan. I'm one of the five thugs your pal Jay Xavier tore up last year." I don't think my heart skipped a beat… but this information was quite a shock, in large part because of the implications. Of course he looked familiar! During Jay's trial, the plaintiff's attorney had provided ample (if not excessive) photographic documentation of Culligan and Charles Rahmer, both of whom had been confined to Intensive Care Units at the time. My face betrayed the shock of my recognition, it seemed. The right side of Culligan's face twitched, and his slurred rasp of a voice said, "Don't worry. I'm in no condition to give you any grief, even if I wanted to. Which I don't. What I want is, you pass a message along to the cat-man. You got a recorder, right?" "Ah… yes, yes, I do," I said as I extracted the device from a pocket. When I'd set it up, Culligan began to speak: "Okay… I'm Manny Culligan, and this is me trying to get straight with Jay Xavier, like the program says I should. "First thing you gotta know is, we were stupid. If you're part of a street gang in the world capital of superheroes, stupid isn't much of a surprise, y'know? But it's one hell of a rush, seeing how much you can get away with before a super flies down to nail your butt to the asphalt… "So anyway. Me and the boys, we were hassling this one tourist. Ryan was high on kay-red like usual, but he's in charge, so what he said, went. "Then this two-legged cheetah showed. Xavier, not that any of us had a clue at the time. So we got this spotted cat walkin' towards us, makin' noise about how we should leave the tourist alone. My first thought was, No way I want to fight something with that many sharp bits. But when you're on the street, you just don't show fear, not unless you want to get eaten alive. And Xavier, he's, like, six feet tall and a hundred pounds. So he's gotta be a lot more fragile than we are; I mean, I got more than triple his body mass all by myself, okay? And I'm thinking that if we get into it, nobody's gonna outrun a damn cheetah -- but if I can just get one good hit in, kitty's gonna break. "So Ryan tells the cat to get lost. Xavier sticks around. He's starting to remind me of a scared little kitten, and like I said, showing fear is a good way to get yourself beaten on. Then Ryan says we gotta [bg=black]xxxx[/bg] up Spot the Cat, so we did. Or at least we started to. It was a pretty good beatdown until Xavier started zippin' around like he'd ODed on Zoom. Then it was still a pretty good beatdown, just with us on the taking end of it, not the giving end. Things got real fuzzy for a couple seconds… and then the lights went out. "I woke up a week and a half later. I was in a hospital bed, and I was hurting all over. But the pain was alright, because, hey, morphine. "Over the next three months, I spent a lot of time unconscious. Took lots of surgeries for the docs to re-assemble my body. And all that time, the only drugs in me were medically-indicated chemicals of whatever kind. "Ryan, he was the first visitor I can remember having. Xavier'd messed him up, too, just a lot less than me, and he promised we'd get revenge on Spot the Cat. Seems he'd found a source for some really potent Zoom and Max. "Now, if Ryan told me that three months earlier, I'd'a said 'sure, let's go for it'. But this was after three months in hospital, the longest time I'd been clean since I was in high school. I was thinking a lot clearer than I used to. So I just closed my eyes like I was tired, and I must've been tired for real because I did fall asleep, and Ryan wasn't there when I woke up. Haven't seen him since. "So… In the hospital I had a lot of time to myself. Lots of time to think, in between Physical Therapy sessions and all that. At first I was pretty damned pissed off about my injuries, and all the stuff I wouldn't be able to do any more. But… like I said, this was the longest I'd been clean since high school. So I got to thinking about what I wouldn't be doing any more, and it was all gang stuff, beating people up and stealing crap and blah blah blah. And I wondered, what the hell was I gonna do with myself for the rest of my life? "This was the first time I'd ever really given any serious thought to my future. Gang-banging, well, you mostly don't think about your future at all, and when you do, you just kind of expect you're probably gonna die within the next couple of years. But gang-banging wasn't an option for me any more, so I had to think about more time than a couple of years. "So, okay, I did a bunch of soul-searching and crap, and I got a plan. I'm cleaning up my record. Got myself signed up for Narcotics Anonymous, 'cause that shows commitment. Getting ready to enroll in Freedom College. Gonna see if I can swing it on my own, no live-in helper, but we'll see how that goes. "Most of all, I'm not fooling myself any more. I used to blame everybody but myself for all the crap in my life, but now that I'm clean, I can see how much of that crap is my own fault for bein' a dumbass. I got Xavier to thank for putting me in a place where I couldn't just keep on being stupid, where I had to be honest with myself. Sure, my life's a mess, 'cause Xavier's beating left me more-or-less crippled for life, and I still got to deal with fallout from the years I spent making dumbass choices. But hey, my life was already a mess, so no change there, y'know? And now, I got the law on my side, and without the drugs I got me on my side for the first time in a damn long while. So I think I've got a pretty decent chance to turn it all around. Won't be easy -- but before Xavier worked me over, it wouldn't even have been possible. "I'm not gonna say I like Xavier, but he's the one who saved my butt, and I give him props for that. Just, y'know, I'm not putting the cat-man on my Christmas card list any time soon." "Mr. Culligan?" This voice belonged to a waiter, who bore a platter on which was what I presumed to be the scarred man's meal. He nodded, and the staffer neatly and efficiently made table-space to deposit the plate before Culligan. I noted that his Bacon-Wrapped Steak and Bigtime Corn Muffin were both already chopped up into small, fork-sized bits; this was not a service I'd ever requested of Madden's, but given his general condition, I could see why Culligan had. I turned off my recorder while the waiter was doing his business. "Would you like to add more to your statement?" I asked. As he maneuvered his left hand into an inside jacket pocket, Culligan replied, "No, but you gotta give Xavier my card… Contact info, so he can get in touch if he wants to… yeah!" His wallet was in his left hand; he opened it and put it on the table, then his right hand clamped it in place as he dug the aforementioned card out of it with his left. Of course I accepted the offered card. "I'll pass it, and your recording, along to Mr. Xavier. However, I cannot promise that he will respond." Culligan nodded. He began the mildly laborious process of moving his arms into the appropriate configuration for eating, and said, "What I figured. He's a busy guy. You, too, I bet, so I'm not gonna keep you any longer. Later, Halstonne." "And… goodbye to you, too, Mr. Culligan. I wish you the best of luck." He merely nodded; I took my leave. My own midday meal being complete, I returned to my office. Along the way, I thought about Culligan, and what our encounter said about his determination, his ability to make and execute plans, and the strength of his desire to turn over a new leaf… I resolved to look into Culligan's background. Presuming he truly was what he presented himself as being, he could surely use some assistance; perhaps I might be able to send some help his way.

In Sidestep's first (few?) adventures, it might be appropriate to emphasize the bits of the character that make her unique/interesting/different. She's got the carnie background, she's got the Japanese culture, she's got the whole "realmswalker" deal… hmmm… [*:vb2znozs]Of the 10 ideas Arichamus came up with, the ones that are least 'generic', most suited for Sidestep in particular, strike me as being #s 10, 6, and maybe 8 (assuming the mysterious fires originate from another dimension somehow). #s 5, 4, and 6 seem like they'd be tailor-made for opening up a window into the character's secret heart-of-hearts, which is generally a good thing for the readers. [*:vb2znozs]Her father is a honkin' big Loose End™ in her backstory, so you could definitely get some mileage out of stories that involve Ch't; the main question, in my mind, is whether Daddy Dearest should show up early on in Sidestep's hero-career, or, instead, you should give Sidestep some time to grow into her heroic role before Daddy pops up. [*:vb2znozs]Freckles and red hair: Curse of the gingers? Okay, maybe not… [*:vb2znozs]Given her 'foster parents', perhaps Sidestep could deal with an outbreak of anti-Japanese bigotry. Extra points for making the bigots all confused about why an blatantly Irish lassie would *care* about those dirty, job-stealing [insert anti-Japanese slur here]s. [*:vb2znozs]Crazy idea #N: A mysterious store opens up one day, a store that sells 'magical' goods which have unpleasant side-effects. As is usual for such establishments, after a few days this one vanishes as if it had never been there at all. Sidestep has to follow the store out to whatever other plane of existence it's taken itself to, and convince the proprietor to undo the harm he/she/it/they are responsible for.

Jubatus' head cleared when he left the 'blast radius' of the big bug's dust, but he stayed away for a few clock-seconds more, just to give his turbo-charged metabolism more time to burn off the last vestiges of… whatever that dust might be. He wasn't sure who the butterfly-winged woman was, but given the meager data he had to work with, he provisionally concluded that she was (a) probably a hero-type, and ( only recently come into her powers. The cat-things were still up and moving, no great surprise. Fine: Obvious move was to zip in and duct-tape up a second über-kitty. Okay, hold my breath to avoid a second dose of dust, and pay attention so I don't get blindsided by another claw-swipe, and—oh damn! For this second cat-thing had somehow managed to free one foreleg from Jube's duct-tape snare before he could tape either of its hindlegs to its forelegs. In other words, Jube had failed. Damn! That'll teach me to divide my attention. He zipped back beyond the reach of über-kitty's claws, and spared a moment to scan the area to see where everyone was…

Now that he knows the situation, Jube's immediate reaction is to do some research. Which, thanks to his Timeshift, means a few Take-20-on-information-skill rolls. Jube's got Knowledge skills for Business (+8), Current Events (+8), Technology (+9), and Theology & Philosophy (+9), hence all these Take 20 'rolls' will beat a DC of 25, while failing against a DC of 30. Business: Looking for any new biotech companies that might reasonably be working on the pathogens of interest. Also, looking for any existing companies which might own, or have acquired within a suitable time-frame, the kind of lab equipment that would be needed to cook up the sorts of bugs we're seeing now. Current Events: Looking for any special event (movie premiere, socialites' party, etc) at which any/all of the known victims would have been present, whether as guests or staff or whatever else. Bonus points for any such event which was only attended by the known victims. That is, eliminate some possibilities for the vector of infection. Technology: Looking for any specific techniques that would have been necessary in order to create the bugs we're seeing. This information isn't likely to be directly useful, but it could help us narrow down the list of suspects. Theology & Philosophy: Looking for any cults or sects whose funky beliefs might lend themselves to infecting innocent people with deadly plagues. Again, this is more for narrowing down the list of suspects than anything else.

Jay Xavier tended to avoid hospitals; with his predator-grade senses, it was best to avoid places with high concentrations of vomit, disinfectants, and the like. But no matter how awful the stench of hospitals might be, he could tolerate the experience if there was good reason to. And the current medical proto-emergency qualified. Jubatus stifled a momentary wince—Come on, my forepaws aren't that unrecognizably different from hands… oh, put a cork in it, Jube. How many sophonts like me has he ever seen in the flesh?—as he shook hands with Philo. The feline acknowledged the other hero-types with a nod as they entered; time enough for introductions and such later, after the briefing. Man-made—and probably not for any good purpose. So far, weaponized pathogens like ebola were strictly hypothetical… and control (or the lack thereof, to be more precise) was a goodly chunk of the reason why. After you release your disease onto the enemy populace, what keeps your own people from being infected? But a non-infectious variant of a lethal illness, now, that was a weapon you could deploy with a decently small risk of collateral damage. Until the damn thing mutates into a new variant which may or may not restore its former virulence… or worse… "Right," Jubatus agreed. "Okay: We're gonna need information. First, all the epidemiological data you've got—where each victim lives, what their usual behavior-slash-habits-slash-activities are, and then some. Second, all the biological data you've got on the pathogens of interest, genetic and biochemical and so on. Third, the corresponding biological data on the normal versions of the pathogens of interest. Knowing what makes these bugs different should help us figure out how these bugs were made in the first place." Preliminary list of candidates would be anybody with a notably high degree of expertise in bioengineering. Once we know what was done to these pathogens, we can rule out at least some of the names on the preliminary list.

That Reflex roll of 30 means the cat-thing didn't get entangled. Sigh. From what I can tell, at best maybe the cat-thing was momentarily delayed in its advance towards innocent civilians; at worst (and with that Reflex roll, more likely), it wasn't even delayed.

After Jube's head clears, he's going to replay the duct-tape maneuver on one of the remaining cat-things. Take 10 on the roll to hit, etc. Since it worked once, it should work a second time, right?

The first time Jay Xavier deliberately inserted a minor error into his calculations, his intent was to see if the kid, Brandtford, would catch it. That the error was caught, was merely expected; that the correction was not in the kid's handwriting, but, instead, had been inscribed by the hand of Archimedes, came as a surprise. Xavier's mind boggled, a little. We've got somewhere over two thousand years of accumulated scientific knowledge on the man, and with minimal exposure to it all, he grasps the concepts well enough to identify and correct mistakes!? Unless Archie's a temporal exile himself..? Naah. We should be so lucky. That settled it: There was no way in Hell, Hades, the Elysian Fields, or Niflheim that Archimedes could be allowed to retain custody of the hardware he was helping them build, not for any appreciable length of time! Since the two temporal exiles should never have been here-and-now in the first place, it was clearly an ethical imperative for them to inflict the smallest amount of alteration on this timeline that they could manage. It was equally clear that, the Syracusian savant being who and what he was, leaving any futuristic technology behind would contravene that imperative. Thoth only knew how much Archie had already learned from talking to him and the kid, and working on the generator; while that was bad enough on its own, there was no sense making the problem any worse than it was going to be anyway. Fortunately, there was a simple solution to this problem: All they had to do was make sure the generator's lubrication was inadequate, and friction would do the rest. No matter how smart Archimedes was, there was no bleeding way a man of this time period would be able to learn one damned thing from a pile of ash, charred wooden beams, and heat-warped (if not just plain melted) wires. With the Greek Empire's greatest polymath (and the resources he commanded by virtue of that status) assisting them, it wasn't so very long before the machinery was complete and functional. There was the generator, and the capstan—the kid insisted on calling it a 'treadmill', for whatever reason—on which Xavier would run to make that generator spin. At the feline's insistence, they'd tested every one of the components and subassemblies at every step of the way. So it was that the finished mechanism held no surprises whatsoever; so it was that the final one-tenth-speed test run yielded precisely the calculated amount of electricity (which everyone noted), not to mention the amount of waste heat that Xavier had privately calculated (which no one else, particularly not Brandtford, was aware of). Emboldened by the test results, the kid said, "Now that we know for certain it's all working, let's go home!" Xavier snorted. "Right now, this late in the day? Not. We're all hungry and tired, and that's just asking for somebody to screw up somehow. Let's get some sleep, and light the fuse tomorrow after breakfast, when we're all properly fed and rested. Much better odds then." Later that evening, well after a large dinner, Brandtford approached the feline. Speaking quietly, so as not to disturb anyone in earshot who might be trying to rest, he said, "Um… Mr. Xavier, I want to apologize." Under cover of darkness, Xavier frowned. Why does anyone even say they "want to" apologize? If you want to apologize, don't talk about it, just do it! "If you've messed with someone, find the guy and apologize to them," he said with a shrug that the kid probably couldn't see. "Anyone stopping you?" "Sir, I'm trying to apologize to the man I've wronged, but I'm not sure if you're going to let me!" Ah: Still feeling guilty over the whole careless-temporal-kidnap thing. "Don't worry about it, Brandtford. Yes, you were an idiot, but you acknowledged your mistake, and you've been—" "No!" the kid said with as much force as he could put into a whisper. Hm. Martin Brandtford, who's usually a quarter-inch away from worshipping the pavement I run on, just interrupted me? Bemused, Xavier allowed the kid to continue. "No, this is different. I, um, just figured out why you've been in such an all-fired hurry to get back home." "Sure: I'm a speedster. What did you expect?" "No, Mr. Xavier. I'm talking about the real reason, which you wouldn't ever mention on your own." Oh, joy and rapture. Wait for it… "Cheetahs in captivity… don't live longer than maybe 20 years, at most." Bingo. The kid's whisper got even softer: "And with your high-speed metabolism…" Since Brandtford was apparently unable to complete the thought, Xavier did it for him: "I pretty much have to assume I'm gonna drop dead within 2-3 calendar years of when the fur coat arrived." Leave it alone, kid. This is a conversation we really don't need to have. Let's see if I can squelch it… "Yes, it sucks great green rocks with a Dixie straw. But if the universe gave a damn about me or my preferences, I wouldn't have the fur coat, or the deadline that came with it. What's your point?" "My point is, I'm responsible for wasting a big fraction of whatever time you—" "Thought so. Save it, Brandtford; talk is real cheap. You want me to know you're sorry, you make damn sure the screw-up that put us here never happens again." The kid was silent for some time, long enough for Xavier to begin second-guessing himself: Was I too hard on the kid? No—he came to me for absolution, and I don't do absolution. Anyway, this isn't a damn movie; it's my life he messed with when he made that stupid mistake, and there's no Scriptwriter out there to make sure it all works out in the end. Brandtford's Channeler device commands an absolutely terrifying level of power, and he [bg=black]xxxxixx[/bg] well needs to start taking the bloody thing seriously… "Yes, sir. It won't happen again, sir." The night passed uneventfully. In the morning, after a fine Mediterranean breakfast, Xavier insisted on one final review of the machinery, just in case there had been any changes (no matter how minor) overnight. There hadn't been, praise Murphy for staying the hell out of it. When Xavier got on the capstan and started moving, something bothered him right off the bat; something he couldn't put a clawtip on immediately… Okay, what's wrong here? The big wheel's turning smoothly, Brandtford isn't displaying any signs of concern over the power flow, I'm not overheat—oh, [bg=black]xxix[/bg]! The lubrication! For the moving parts were turning smoothly. Too smoothly. And the bearings weren't getting anywhere near hot enough to even char, let alone ignite, the wooden framework. Could Archie have recognized that there wasn't, or at least hadn't been, enough oil? If so… "Okay, we've got a full charge!" the kid called out. [bg=black]xxix[/bg], [bg=black]xxix[/bg], [bg=black]xxix[/bg]! Need a second run, without sufficient oil, but how?—don't know how I could 'accidentally' discharge the Channeler, and wouldn't dare try it even if I did know— "Time to go home now. Right, Mr. Xavier?" Going home: The prize he'd always been telling Brandtford they should keep their eyes on. Aargh! No contest. And this was never our timeline anyway, so whatever collateral damage happens, it's not our problem. "Hrrm, right. Goodbye, Archimedes. Don't take this the wrong way, but I hope we never meet again." The Syracusian nodded with a thoughful expression. "I perceive the intended meaning, and share the sentiment. Goodbye to you, Jay Xavier, and you, Martin Brandtford." Water, check; fully charged Channeler, check; Archimedes backed off well beyond the Channeler's maximum radius of effect, check. And when Brandtford hit the 'go' button, the two time-lost travelers slipped between the cracks of Eternity… It was impossible to say how long they spent in the atemporal 'space' between timelines. More than long enough for Xavier to review his memories of where everyone had been at which moments, and therefore who even could have meddled with the lubrication. And then, after splashdown, after the informal debriefing, when Xavier and the kid finally had some time to themselves: "You topped off the capstan's oil reservoir, didn't you," the feline said in an overly calm tone. "The treadmill? You bet I did!" Brandtford proudly replied. "I'm sure you were just distracted, or you would've done it yourself, right?" Then he noticed Xavier's expression; not the 'pleased acknowledgement of a job well done' he'd expected, but, rather, an unreadably neutral mask. "I… It made the process more efficient. Minimized the energy lost to friction." Xavier nodded. "Yep. Because the waste heat could easily have been enough to ignite the wooden framework." "Well, sure. And that, uh, would have been bad…" The kid paused, his enthusiasm drained by Xavier's continuing impassiveness. "Wait. You… wanted it to burn..?" "Rather than let Archimedes study the mechanism at his leisure? Damn right I wanted it to burn." Now Brandtford got it. "Oh, boy," he said in a very small voice… Xavier sighed, a peculiar sound coming from his inhuman throat. "Well, what's done is done. Strictly speaking, all you really did was save Archie the trouble of having to reconstruct the thing from memory, however long that would've taken him in between inventing new marvels for the Greek Empire… hrrrmphht." Let it go, Jay. What's done is done. However bad a mess we left behind us, it's stupid to take the risk of making it worse with ignorant meddling. "We… we've got to do something! Gotta go back and fix it! We…" Brandtford's voice trailed off under Xavier's force-12 glare. "You," the irate feline declared, "are a naive. Headstrong. Optimistic." -- he snarled the word as if it were a vile curse -- "Willful. Idiot. Who should be kept on a very short leash. You are awfully damned lucky I don't believe in killing or maiming, because the logical thing to do with you would be to lobotomize you before you can tangle up every existing timeline in a snarl that makes the Gordian Knot look like a straight line." Xavier glowered at the kid for a moment… Damnit, he does need to be kept on a short leash. But who can be trusted to hold the far end of that leash? Sure, I could browbeat him into promising never to screw with dimensions again, but odds are, such a promise wouldn't last two weeks. Savitar preserve me, there's only one way forward that I can see has any hope of being a viable option… The feline inhaled deeply, then released his breath with an overextended hissing sound. "Okay. Here's the deal, Brandtford: You never work with that Channeler by yourself—you always have some kind of adult supervision when you're playing with the damn thing. And if you ever feel the need to go timeline-hopping on purpose? You always run the idea past me, before you do anything else, and both of us have to agree on the before-hop preparations. And once we agree on the prep-work, we make the agreed-on preparations. And we make 'em before we leave the here-and-now. Got it?" Brandtford looked like he wanted to throw up. Good; he's actually beginning to take it seriously. "Y-yes, sir, Mr. Xavier. I, I got it." And in a timeline far, far away, Archimedes stroked his beard as he paced around the machinery his recent guests had left behind. "There can be no harm," he told himself, "in merely examining a few of its properties..."

Tagged with micrometric, pathologically meticulous overexactitude!

The Red Phone rang. One of the things Jay Xavier had done, as part of his preparations for becoming a superhero, was set up a telephone number with all the privacy money could buy. Xavier was highly selective about who he gave this number to; in fact, he could count those people on the digits of one forepaw. The ringtone for the special cellphone dedicated to this number was the Red Alert sound effect from the original Star Trek series. When Xavier answered the Red Phone, the voice on the other end of the line did not belong to any of the people he'd given its number to: "Ah, hello? Is this Jubatus?" Well, I didn't forbid anyone from passing it on. Just insisted that they needed a damn good reason to, a matter of life and death at minimum. Xavier felt a fleeting urge to reply, There is no Jubatus. You have reached Borg Assimilation Associates, in the most inhuman, artificial tones his throat could produce. He squelched the unhelpful impulse and said, "Jubatus speaking. Who are you, how did you get this number, and what's your problem?" "I'm Dr. Kerry Philo, chief metahuman liaison for Freedom Medical Center. I don't actually have the number—this call is being routed through an ArcheTech switchboard." Excellent. I knew there was a reason I put Dr. Archeville on the short list. "And the problem is a very worrisome cluster of lethal infections which we hope to God can be contained before the pathogens break out into the populace at large." Xavier wasn't a dedicated student of history, but a man whose days were 150 hours long had lots of time to read about any and every topic under the sun. Such as the influenza pandemic of 1918, and the Black Death of 1348-1350… He shuddered. "I'm more than willing to help, but… I have no medical training. What can I do here?" "We need you because the in vitro tests proved you're immune to everything we're seeing." Score one for non-human metabolism. "Okay. Tell me where you want me, and I'll be there in 30 seconds." And the only reason it'll take me that long to show up is because I need to send emails to all my current clients, letting 'em know that their contracts are officially on the back burner for the duration, and offering suggestions for who else can handle their job now if they can't wait. "Ah… right. Please come to Freedom Medical Center, admittance desk 3." "Eff-Emm-See admittance desk 3. Got it, and see you there." Xavier blasted through the necessary emails, and arrived at the designated spot within 27 seconds. Even his well-honed pessimism didn't prepare him for the sights, sounds, and odors that assaulted his senses when he arrived…

And the Herr Doktor did press the switch upon the Electromagnetic Screwdriver, and did count to three, three being the number required of the user to count before the power source warms up, and the Doktor's enemies did become entrapped in a force-field…

Jubatus NPC Vignette featuring Jube's therapist, Ed Halstonne Suffer the Consequences Canon threads Crikey!: 0 posts Don't Blink: 0 posts Life Changing Decisions: 0 posts Medical Maladies: 1+ post(s) Miniature Heroland: 0 posts Quick to Err: 1 post Three-Legged Race: 0 post Non-canon thread Checkered Flag: 0 posts

Archimedes proved to be at least as intelligent as history claimed, if not more so. Wonder if this guy's heard of Daedalus? "Heard of", hell—wonder if he is Daedalus? This timeline's version, anyway… In many cases, Xavier was utterly ignorant of some specific details of the questions the Greek asked, so he had to work from first principles to come up with even vaguely reasonable answers. "Well…" Xavier upshifted, making extra time to consider his reply. Don't want to contaminate this time period with information from uptime. But if I lie or dissemble, Archie's probably gonna know it; he's not familiar with me, true, but he's damn perceptive. The thought occured to Xavier that he was second-guessing himself, followed closely by the comforting realization that this probably meant he wouldn't suffer any lingering after-effects from his recent… psychological misadventure. All the time he hadn't quite been himself, he'd been utterly, completely, 1,000% confident in himself and his judgements… Feh. Truth it is. This guy wrote The Sand Reckoner; if anybody in this time period can handle the truth, it's Archimedes! Xavier returned to the common tempo of 1. "…I started out as a normal human, and am currently a cheetah, plus-or-minus a few anatomical differences. The switchover happened about a year ago. As to where I'm from, that gets complicated; the short answer is, I was born about 2,000 years from now." Unbidden, the next words of the song—"When they landed on the Moon, I showed them how"—passed through his mind. The human absorbed this answer with surprisingly little disbelief. "I believe I comprehend your situation. You wish to return to your proper time; doing so would appear to require large quantities of metal and other resources; and rather than satisfy your needs by means of theft or exploiting your advanced knowledge in ways that we of this time would be powerless to resist, you have chosen to earn what you need by means of performing as an… apologies, but 'trained animal' is really the only term which fits. These facts speak well of you." Clearly, Archimedes was well-informed about the recent doings of the two time-lost travelers. "Whatever secrets the future may hold, I will not ask you to reveal them. However—" Oh, hell… "in for a penny, in for a pound". "If you're asking whether there's more like me, no. I'm one-of-a-kind, or at least I hope I am, because it'd really suck if the scuzzwad who did this to me went on to hit any other victims. As for those stories you refer to? Odds are, they're bogus. The thing is, it's a big Universe, and there's lots of sentient races out there. But almost none of them come from Earth, so while it's mathematically possible that any one story of this kind might be a reliable report of a non-human sophont, every one of 'em is so improbable that in the absence of hard data, you're justified in dismissing any such story as a fabrication." "'Almost none." Damn, he's sharp. "Yeah, but there's not a lot of solid information about Earth's non-human races, or at least none I have access to—all I really know for sure is the names, 'Serpent People' and 'Deep Ones'…" The conversation was still going strong when the Sun rose.

Jube had been maybe 20 feet away from the cat-things. Since this was clearly too close (thank you, Invisible Castle), he's backed off to 70-100 feet away whilst he's recovering himself.

Well, what do you know: The duct tape held, Jubatus thought to himself as he watched the taped-up cat-thing fail to free itself from its adhesive bonds. Then a surprise: A butterfly-winged person flew overhead, dropping clouds of some sort of… interesting-smelling dust… on the cat-things. Jube felt the beginnings of a buzz in the back of his skull. Mmmm… potent stuff… even at this range… or is it just my nose? Thoroughly distracted by the effects of even a trace quantity of the mysterious dust, the Fastest Cat Alive utterly failed to notice the two cat-things that crept up on him, wanting to chew on his face. Think I'd better… move further ou— "—wwrroowwrrl!!" he snarled as one of the cat-things slashed at him. Adrenaline blew the cobwebs out of Jube's brain; he put some distance between himself and the two cat-things that sought to play with him…

Okay... Jube's got +10 for his Toughness save, so his Toughness save vs DC 25 (1d20+10=16) is a big, fat FAIL. According to the table on pg 163 of the Core Rulebook, failing by 9 yields a result of "stunned + bruised". This is a horrible way to begin a battle, so I'm going to burn 1 (one) Hero Point for a re-roll. Since these re-rolls are effectively 1D10+10, rather than 1D20, the Re-roll on Toughness save (1d20+10+10=22)… is another FAIL, just a smaller and slimmer version. Well, FAIL by 3 just means Jube has picked up a Bruised condition, which is… well, it could be worse. I'll let the Bruised condition stand. Now the question is, how does a speedster like Jube, who operates 40* faster than normal, manage to get tagged by a big kitty? In this case, the answer is: His sensitive predator's nose (specifically, Jube's Olfactory Sense has Acute and Tracking on it). He was close enough to Butterfly's 'rain of dust' that he actually inhaled a small dose of the stuff, and therefore got mildly handicapped by it. So Jube is going to spend this round moving away from the battle and clearing his head.

Fortunately, Brandtford was willing to go along with the feline's scheme. Xavier didn't bother to correct the kid when he suggested that Xavier, an obligate carnivore, might enjoy some fruit; the kid meant well, and it wasn't like he was actually trying to cram an apple down Xavier's gullet… Xavier nodded solemnly. "Good. You should be frightened. Your little toy mucks with the fabric of the space-time continuum; the worst-case scenario makes a negasphere look like a soggy firecracker." Archimedes was due to show up in four days. During this period, Xavier made a point of chatting with the kid more than he ordinarily would have, even if they were back home—and then there were the 'talking cat' exhibitions he and Brandtford put on after dusk. Xavier was quite serious about engaging in something like social interactions with humans, it seemed. The time-lost travelers' 'ventriloquist act' was an appropriate, even welcome, addition to the festivities that heralded Archimedes' arrival—and it also added a few more chunks of metal and such to the pile of resources they'd already accumulated. When the savant himself actually did arrive, Xavier gave him a few hours to settle in before intruding on his personal space. The intrusion proper went smoothly; at Xavier's Timeshifted tempo of 40, it would have taken more than one act of god (or gods) to serve as anything like an effective obstruction. Okay, let him take the lead. The more he feels in control, the less likely it is he'll call a guard or whatever. Xavier made sure he was standing on his hind legs before he downshifted; no sense compounding the shock of his sudden appearance with the further shock of it being a quadrupedal predator that (seemingly) 'poofed' into existence from nothing. And when he did… "Ah." Just that one syllable, calm and without even ultrasonic overtones of distress. And Archimedes gazed at the feline with raised eyebrows and an interested gaze: "I believe I may owe Kaurus an apology. Between 'Jay' and 'Jubatus', have you any preference?" "Call me Jay," the feline said… Oh crap, should I shake hands or… oh. Of course I do. Magic translator effect again, I guess. …and offered his right forepaw to Archimedes, who accepted it and performed the gesture of greeting. "The other one is a name I perform under." "Yours is a… remarkable… voice, Jay. Does it pain you to make such… sounds?" Xavier managed not to wince. He doesn't know, of course he's curious. "Not physically, but… I used to have a good voice." Archimedes paused a moment, then nodded. "I see… You must excuse my poor hospitality, but I have a good deal of work to do." "Anything I can help with?" "Perhaps…" The human gave Xavier a calculating look. "What knowledge have you of the physical sciences?" Shrug. "Pick a problem and try me." "I shall. The problem at hand involves control of the flow of lava…"

Can't say I've built me own machine, but I have upgraded RAM and transplanted hard drives. So… Be careful about static electricity. If you've got a grounding strap, use it. If not, make sure you touch metal (the drain off any static charge you may have accumulated) before you handle any components that would be sensitive to static charges.

Alternate worlds and speedsters go together like peanut butter and jelly—just ask Barry Allen. So go ahead and throw Jubatus into the mix.