Cubist

When he heard these words, Xavier's mind raced: Archie's here! Or he will be when his schedule frees up. Betcha I can help out with that… This timeline's version of Archimedes was at least as intelligent as Prime's version, so it was very likely that he was much smarter than either Xavier or Brandtford—but the temporal exiles had heads full of facts and information several centuries ahead of anything any version of Archimedes would have seen, or invented. And Xavier's power to Timeshift meant that if he could do a thing at all, he could do it in 1/40 as many clock-hours it would take anyone at a normal tempo. Yeah… however long a list of tasks the Greek Empire might have dumped on Archimedes, the odds were pretty good that Xavier and the kid would be able to help him burn through it in record time. Basically, we'll be using Archie as a means to an end. Not sure how I should feel about that. Then again, Archie's probably got ten men's curiosity, so odds are, he'd choose to work with us regardless, simply because of what we are and what we'll be asking him to do for us. Pause. Don't think I should mention this particular concern to the kid. "I got a better idea," Xavier replied. "I say I drop in on Archie and help him clear up his to-do list A-S-A-P. Whatever minders the Greek Empire has assigned to him, I can get past 'em easy, and I'll bet the man will be curious enough about me that he won't let anyone take me away from him before he's had a decent chance to investigate me. And the sooner he's free, the sooner he can do what we want him to do. "As for you, Brandtford," the cheetah mused, "I think you should hang back until it's clear that I'll be able to get close to Archie for an extended period of time. Once I've got the 'first contact' all nailed down, then we can think about bringing you in with Archimedes; before that point, you can do whatever you like."

Big damn kitties, Jubatus thought to himself. Not sure what species, but they sure look like they could be a prehistoric breed—time-travel? genetically engineered? Whatever. Fine: Let's see if duct tape can hold 'em. With that, the fastest cat alive extracted a roll of 4-inch-wide tape from his vest as he sped directly towards the frontmost cat-thing. Operating at his standard superheroic tempo of 40 times faster than normal, Jubatus had little difficulty ensnaring his target; first taping its forelegs together, then its hindlegs, then taping fore- to hind-legs, and finally sealing its muzzle closed with a few deft loops of tape. Then he zipped back a couple dozen feet away, well out of range of the cat-things claws in case the duct-tape wasn't strong enough to hold the beast, and downshifted to observe the cat-thing's reaction…

The "Mark II backstory" has been incorporated into the character sheet.

Jube's Initiative bonus is +31, so I'll just Take 10 for an Initiative 'roll' of 41. On the presumption that Jube goes first, the cheetah will work on the kitty that's closest to the civilians. Specifically, he's gonna try to immobilize the beast by duct-taping its limbs together, with another loop or three of duct tape to keep its mouth firmly shut. I suspect that the Flat-Footed combat penalty doesn't apply here, so Jube's got to deal with a Defense bonus of +12, so he needs to match or exceed (10 + 12 =) 22. And… hmm. Jube's Melee combat bonus is +12. If he Takes 10 on this attack roll, that gives him exactly what he needs to hit the target. Okay, let's do that. The duct tape is statted out as Snare 5. Looking over the power description for Snare (pg. 99 in the 2nd-edition MnM rulebook), it looks like the beast's STR of 20 should be enough to let it snap the duct tape "automatically as a free action"… drat. Unless the beastie has a severe allergy to duct-tape adhesive, or some analogous stroke of outrageous good fortune, Jube's pretty much wasted this round. Ah, well.

o/~ "Playin' with the king of Hearts..." o/~

It's Tuesday, so this must be Belgium, Jay Xavier thought. Or at least Parkside, anyway. Jubatus wasn't fast enough to cover the entire city in one evening, so he made a point of starting each of his patrols in a different area, and Parkside was tonight's lucky winner. As well, he made sure never to begin at the same time twice in a row—no sense in being overly predictable about these things. So it was that a few minutes before sundown, Xavier parked his SUV-cum-mobile home not far from the intersection of Allen and 66th… and blurred into action. Two duct-tape-ensnared muggers later, Jubatus noticed a weird subsonic vibration in his bones. He downshifted to the normal tempo of 1, and the vibration doppler-shifted up into audibility, resolving itself to the roars of some sort of bizarre animals! Huh. That doesn't sound much like any of the usual suspects, lions or tigers. Better check it out, just in case it's a shiny new biological weapon; logical place to start is the Aussie Baby exhibit at Liberty Park. So resolved, the fastest cat alive upshifted and ran towards that target…

Weaponized kittens? Sounds like a job for (among others) Jubatus!

Xavier nodded. When we left Segesta, that sounds about right. Would've taken a while for the psychological glitches to get bad enough that they were externally evident. The cheetah snorted. "That'd be more plausible if we'd ever had any candy for me to eat," he pointed out. Xavier emitted a rude sound that could never have come from a human throat. "You think the Channeler's radiation made me go off the rails? Not. You were carrying the damn thing when it went off, hence much closer to it than me, hence you must have sucked up a much higher dose than me. How come I was affected so much worse than you?" Not giving Brandtford a chance to respond, Xavier went on: "Here's my best guess at what happened: When the fur and fangs were installed… it rewired my brain. And… I'm pretty sure I got some degree of cheetah instincts rolling around in here." And this is why I should've insisted on going back for more data after my last checkup got interrupted… "Left to my own devices, I'd probably start thinking more and more like a cheetah—but normally, I interact with enough humans to reinforce human-type thought patterns. And I haven't had a whole hell of a lot of human interaction recently, hrrm? So…" Xavier shrugged. "Not your fault, kid. Except maybe indirectly, what with your gizmo-ex-machina having sent us back where I could go without human interaction for an extended period. But mostly, it's nobody's fault, just… another damn thing we gotta deal with. For the present…" The cheetah shrugged, then spent a couple of upshifted minutes pondering all the things Brandtford had said after he woke up. "Hrrm. Archimedes, good, making contact with him was always on the to-do list, just doubted it was doable. In the meantime, we may as well collect more of the materials we need. I'm okay with more racing, but in view of how messed-up I got, I think we should start pushing the ventriloquist act. More human interaction for me, hrrm?"

My avatar is something I made myself. The concept is certainly not original, but I think I executed it well. Anybody who is particularly impressed with my graphical art-type powers may be interested to know that I've got t-shirts and suchlike for this, and some other smiley variations, available for purchase here.

If the medical Powers That Be request assistance from hero-types who are immune to disease, Jubatus (who's got a couple points in Immunity to Diseases, courtesy of his hybrid metabolism) might be one of the people who receive such a call.

Jubatus Canon threads Crikey! Don't Blink: 0 posts Life Changing Decisions: 0 posts Miniature Heroland: 0 posts Quick to Err Three-Legged Race: 0 post Non-canon thread Checkered Flag: 0 posts

Such a surprise: It was an herbalist who was okay with paying an exorbitant price to preserve his goodies from the advancing lava. Of course, the cheetah thought. Doctors are always going to be wealthy, regardless of the time or society. After catching the scent of what the herbalist wanted him to transport first, the cheetah wasn't happy—he recognized catnip when he smelled it, and wasn't at all sure there was enough 'human' in his biochemistry to make him immune to the damn stuff—but a contract was a contract, and that was all there was to it. So he packaged it up as best he could to minimize his exposure to the drug, and carted it to the destination point, always striving to ignore the catnip's intoxicating effects… Consciousness emerged from a sea of… something else. Where the hell am I… Then, after reviewing his recent memories, and becoming uncomfortably aware of certain holes in his recollections: And where the hell was I? Did I do anything stoopid while I was stoned out of my gourd on catnip? There was a kind of basso rumbling… Right, he was at his default tempo of 6, and some normal-speed types were conversing. Whatever. Okay, I'd better review all my memories for signs of anomalous behavior and/or thought patterns; for all I know, Sicily might have some sort of feline intoxicants growing wild in the countryside… It didn't take long before Xavier noticed exactly the sort of 'anomalous behavior' he was worried about. The damn-fool kids—I was actually okay with them hurting themselves!? And good god, how I handled those idiot attackers— A chill oozed down Xavier's spine and tail. What the hell happened to me? he asked himself, and for a professional troubleshooter like him, to ask such a question was to start thinking of possible answers… Eventually, Xavier noticed that Brandtford was in the room with him, looking as if he was attempting to converse. The feline downshifted: "…really worried when that scouting group found you on that hill," the kid said. "This herbalist guy was talking with some assistant of his about vivisecting you while you slept! Thankfully he proved very amenable after I punched him a whole bunch of times and headbutted his assistant." Wait. This is Brandtford talking about getting violent!? No [bg=black]xxxxixx[/bg] way! Thoroughly preoccupied with his own disturbing thoughts, Xavier did not interrupt nor reply as the kid chattered about possibly talking to Archimedes. "So, sir, what would you like to do while we wait? I managed to save our cart of supplies, and the ox, too." The feline was silent. "Ah… sir? Are you okay?" This question brought Xavier out of his self-absorbed funk. "No," he said. "I'm not okay, and I haven't been for… I don't know how long. I… hrrr… Brandtford. I need a second opinion from someone who knows me. When did I start acting weird?"

Fair enough. I thought the backstory I came up with is a reasonable one for an "anti-Jubatus" villain, but since it's a sticking point, how about this instead: The woman who would be Acinonyx is an animal rights zealot who has committed a number of questionable acts in her crusade. One day her computer goes all BSOD, so she hires a freelance troubleshooter, Jay Xavier, to make it better. While working on her machine, Jay finds evidence of some of her illegal actions... so he turns her in to the police. The woman blows her stack over this "betrayal", as she calls it, and swears vengeance upon Jay. Woman exploits her 'underground' connections, 'upgrades' herself to a cheetah, and is ready to embark on a new career as a supervillain. If this is okay, I'll rework the backstory on the character sheet post. If not, well, I can come up with something else.

Yes, I am. If you're wondering why I haven't done any editing/tweaking on the character sheet in the OP, it's because I figure that sheet is as good as it's gonna get in the absence of feedback/commentary from people who know what they're doing, and I've been awaiting that feedback/commentary.

It may be worth noting that with a 'replicator gizmo' as the villain, it's very possible that each of the six heroes could face a separate & distinct replicator-infestation by themself; thus, the six heroes can be grouped as densely as the GM likes, or separated as widely as the GM likes.

The menace: Some sort of Von Neumann replicator-type gizmo that can (a) convert existing machinery into copies of itself, and ( 'possess' existing technology to incorporate it into a larger system. Katamari-type positive feedback; the longer this gizmo is allowed to go about its business unmolested, the more copies of itself it makes. And the more copies of itself there are, the more easily it/they can 'absorb' cars and computers and iPhones and etc into an increasingly massive Menace...

Idea: Some sort of uber-mystical type (a deity? a world-class mage? something else?) does something which ensures that the six heroes will find each other. The "particular task" need not be the thing which gets the heroes together in the first place, of course, but you can certainly go there if you like. If the U-MT didn't intend for the sextet to join together, you've basically got the Loki-forms-the-Avengers scenario from Marvel Comics. On t'other hand, if the U-MT did intend the heroes to get together, the next question is "why did they want that to happen?" Maybe the U-MT foresaw a threat which only that combination of heroes could effectively oppose (i.e., Marvel's Exiles, more or less), maybe the U-MT figured the sextet would make good cat's-paws to accomplish some purpose of its own, maybe the U-MT wanted to bring the six heroes together as an experiment of some kind, maybe something else. And if the heroes discover that they've been manipulated and therefore decide to rebel against the U-MT's ulterior motive, or at least break away from whatever support the U-MT may have given them… good! Plot-wise, the whole reason for invoking this Uber-Mystical Type is to provide a justification for an otherwise-improbable series of events which brings the heroes together Real Quickly. We don't want to have the heroes appear to be puppets dancing on the U-MT's strings, so it would prolly be a good idea to address said appearance in the inaugural thread (open rebellion/breaking away from the U-MT, the heroes get some hints of the true state of affairs and make a note to Find Out What The Heck Is Going On, whatever).

Possible logo candidate for the new group:

Jubatus Canon threads Don't Blink: 0 posts Life Changing Decisions: 0 posts Miniature Heroland: 0 posts Quick to Err: 1 post Three-Legged Race: 0 posts Canon solo-type posts After the Hot Zone: 1 post Non-canon thread Checkered Flag: 0 posts

Excerpt from Jay Xavier's personal journal Proteus virus: A bioweapon that grants superhuman abilities while, at the same time, chewing up your immune system. Nasty idea. Hope to Jenner and Semmelweis there's no re-run any time soon. Or at all, ideally. I kinda figured I was immune, since the damn thing was specifically targeted on human life, and I'm roughly 90% cheetah, genetically speaking. No such luck: The damn thing hit me in my remaining 10%-or-so human DNA. And what it did to me… isn't entirely clear in my mind. But then, considering how Proteus zapped me, it's no wonder my memories of that time are a little weird. Here's my earliest impression, as best I can tell now: I noticed that my menubar clock had jumped a few hours ahead, and then it felt like some deranged freak was injecting napalm into my veins. Then the burning agony stopped -- and the menubar had jumped ahead another couple minutes. A little respite from agony, then the bloodburn started up again; said torture ended at its peak, accompanied by the 'jumping' clock. This cute little cycle repeated itself Chronos only knows how many times before they doped out a cure for Proteus… Somewhere in there, Brandtford found me and got my fuzzy tail into a hospital. Seems his continuum-sensors picked up some weird readings that bore a family resemblance to what he gets from my Timeshift, and the weirdness kept on cycling on and off with no end in sight. Didn't recognize the kid; I wasn't exactly in any shape to talk, or respond to outside stimuli, or even form coherent memories, at the time. It's a serious stroke of luck that my blindly flailing claws didn't slice him up bad. As it was, it would've been a miracle if I hadn't done the poor bastard any damage. Thanks for nothing, gods! On the plus side, it was all strictly superficial, and he shouldn't even have any scars. Me and Brandtford compared notes later (as in, "after I was cured and coherent"). It looks like my Proteus-given power-boost was an extension to my Timeshift; in addition to the usual faster-or-slower deal, it seems I could also make my personal Time run backwards. Set the clock back, as it were. Fun stuff. And the fire-in-the-blood thing? Well, my DNA has some genetic 'booby-traps' built into it. Among other things, most/all of the commonest, easiest options for restoring my original genetic material will backfire. End result: Ebola-like bleedout, body-wide organ failure, et cetera ad nauseum with emphasis on the nauseum. The Grue bastard(s) who did this to me must be hella fun at parties, hm? So Proteus does its gene-editing thing, and of course its DNA-changes trigger bunches and bunches of my Grue-given 'time-bombs'—and by the way, it just happens that the damn virus is, at one and the same time, eating my immune system. And let's not forget that my metabolism runs a lot faster than anyone else's, just because… So I've got like 30 seconds to live, and I'm in xxxxixx agony, and the first (only) thing it occurs to me to try is 'ultimate maximum downshift'. However many seconds I have left, maybe I can stretch 'em out to a large-enough number of clock-seconds that I'll get fixed before I finish dying, okay? That's the plan, anyway. Downshifting does have serious drawbacks, but considering I'm already going to die in the next several seconds, I'm thinking it's the least-bad option available. But I'm a little distracted by the biological torture I'm suffering… so when I try to downshift, what I actually do is activate the new power. I rewind. All the way back to just before the moment when my shiny new Timeshift accessory showed up. Can't go any further back, because 'further back' is a time when I don't have that ability. But my body's still infected with the Proteus virus, which continues doing the job it was engineered to do. So it tweaks my DNA, which triggers the genetic booby-traps, which start to kill my body, which makes me rewind back to just before I got the rewind power, which… Yeah. Vicious circle. I'm just glad it's over now. No chance of any lingering genetic after-effects, thank Mendel, because if there were any such after-effects, I'd still be replaying that damn cycle.

"We are living in a science-fiction world." -- Ray Bradbury (if memory serves)

Okay… Neutralizing the bomb, I've done as much as I dare, Jubatus thought to himself. And Revenant knows the score, so I'll let her worry about the civilians whilst I figure out where our plastic pal is getting its orders from. Of course, all those action figures with delusions of policehood are a bit of an obstacle… The fastest cat alive pondered the situation for a long, upshifted moment. Haven't seen any flyers yet, just ground-pounders. And… yeah, there's a sufficiency of tall structures, 3 stories and up. Let's see how many of the angry dolls ever look up, shall we? Thus resolved, Jube blurred up to to the top of the parking structure all the shrink-ray victims had been deposited on, and leaped over to the roof of a neighboring building—success! Not one of the dolls even looked up, let alone took a shot at him! Excellent. Now to zero in on the source of those signals. Blurring from rooftop to rooftop, Jubatus covered most (if not all) of the model layout. Sadly, between the relative crudeness of his signal-tracing equipment and all the radio-distorting metal bits in the layout (nails, staples, and so on), he only managed to narrow it down to five candidate locations. Annoying. Better than nothing, but still annoying. And what's the rest of the crew been up to whilst I was busy..? Jube's commlink was a rather nonstandard model, and one of its nonstandard features was that it recorded everything within range of its microphones, playing it all back at whatever arbitrary tempo so that it would sound normal to Jube's Timeshifted ears. So it wasn't long, as measured on a clock, before Jube caught up with the conversation. Hmm… yeah, finding a safer place for the civilians is a good idea. "I can try. You should know that I've found five points in the layout from which signals are being transmitted; there's the Eiffel Tower, a cruise ship that might be a replica of the Titanic, the Statue of Liberty, the Sydney Opera House, and Big Ben. The Tower's where the shrink ray was fired from, so I'm betting it's a good idea to stay away from it; as to the rest, I'm not sure yet, but I'd recommend avoiding those spots anyway, just on general principles." "Not a problem. The existing supply of toys on the ground don't seem to have a concept of 'up'—if you can fly or otherwise stay over their heads, you can avoid them completely. Dunno when, or if, there's gonna be any aerial toys to worry about, but we may as well exploit that flaw in the system while it lasts. I'm gonna look for a safer haven, and I'll keep you posted on what I find, if anything. Jubatus out." Safer place for the shrink-ray's victims… It sure sounded as if Revenant and the rest were thinking purely in terms of on the layout. But they already knew that some parts of the layout had to have been meddled with by the Big Bad, who- or what-ever it might be, so how could they be sure that any part of the layout was truly safe? Of course, given what they'd seen of the Big Bad's scheme thus far, it was possible that BB had a force field or something in place to keep his hostages bottled up on the layout… Upshifted to his maximum tempo of 40, the fastest cat alive started his Search For Safety by circumnavigating the layout and throwing small objects over the edge. Would the objects bounce off an invisible force field, or be fried in mid-air? And if so, was there any point on the circumference which wasn't covered by that barrier?

The plan: Wreck the raygun with a supersonic thrown object. Jube is in such a position that if he misses the gun, Vimes himself is the obvious next target in line to intercept Jube's projectile. Not sure what sort of die-roll is needed, but it's worth noting that Jube killed the lights, therefore gaining that temporary bonus to hit and so on.

Looks like money is not on this clown's radar as a motivation, Jubatus thought to himself as Vimes monologued. Fine, but what is? Don't really want to go up against a gorilla with human intellect… Right: [bg=black]Xxxx[/bg] that noise. New plan: Rip this schmuck several new orifices, thought the (greatly annoyed) fastest cat alive. As Vimes cackled a textbook example of a mad scientist's insane laugh, Jubatus upshifted and sent the signal to kill the power in this building. Gorilla-boy wasn't expecting the lights to die; Jubatus, however, was. He moved up onto the ceiling, positioning himself so that Vimes' torso was directly behind his toy gun… extracted a small, unimportant object from the web-harness he was currently wearing… and threw it at the raygun at a velocity somewhere over Mach 1.

And… right, he's shooting for the obvious target. Not a problem, the feline mused. The arrow wasn't moving all that quickly, by his standards; he decided to give it a clock-second or so of lead time before— Of course. Of bleeding course. The feline took personal offense at this eruption. How the hell am I supposed to collect my winnings, when Isosceles here is running for his life? He noted Brandtford's use of the Channeler with mixed emotions; while the kid's action meant he didn't have to waste any effort, at the same time it also drained what little charge was still in the device's battery. Then again, how much difference can that make, considering how close to 'empty' it was in the first place? "Who you calling 'we', kemosabe?" the feline thought. Not our world, not our problem. "Hold it, kid!" the feline declared. "There's one, and only one, thing we have to do, and that's 'get the hell out of this [bg=black]xxix[/bg]hole'! Putting our lives at risk is counterproductive at best." Especially in your case. You're my ticket out of here, so no way I want you anywhere near the damn lava. Brandtford boggled at the feline's retort. "Well, yes, but—what about all those other lives that are at risk?" "What about 'em?" the feline asked with a shrug. "In case it's slipped your mind, every last one of these people was already dead more than 2,000 years before either of us was born! You want to save everybody's life, or just the ones who die in a volcanic eruption?" I can't let the kid risk his ass, end of discussion. But I need his voluntary cooperation, so forcible restraint… is a much worse option than talking him down. Brandtford's eyes grew wider. "But… what if someone dies who shouldn't have? We don't want to risk changing history, do we?" The kid's flailing blindly, the feline thought. Good; the sooner he realizes there simply isn't any reason for us to get involved, the sooner we can both move to safety. "Come on, Brandtford. It's not our timeline, okay? No matter what happens, our history is not gonna be affected!" "Ah… the people we help will be grateful to us…" The feline almost replied Yeah. And that, plus an obol, will buy a cup of whatever these yokels use for Coke. Almost, because—"You're right, Brandtford: They will be grateful. Which means we should be able to pretty much name our price for our services!" And with those words, the cheetah blurred off to inquire who in the area would be willing to pay the most for having their property shielded from the oncoming lava…