Cubist

[goto=][/goto]Jubatus Canon threads Don't Blink Life Changing Decisions Miniature Heroland Quick to Err Three-Legged Race Non-canon thread Checkered Flag

Player Name: Cubist / tier 1 NPC villain Character Name: Acinonyx Power Level: 11 (165/165PP) Trade-Offs: -3 Attack / +3 Damage, -3 Defense / +3 Toughness Unspent PP: 0 In Brief: The Eobard "Reverse-Flash" Thawne to Jubatus' Barry "Flash" Allen Alternate Identity: Susan Marie Donnermutter Identity: Secret Birthplace: Scranton, PA Occupation: Self-appointed 'hero' and 'crusader' Affiliations: None Family: Age: ??? (DoB: Month [Optionally, Day & Month], Year) Apparent Age: Young adult (who can tell how old a cheetah is, from their looks?) Gender: Female Ethnicity: Cheetah (formerly Caucasian) Height: 5'11" (standing bipedally) Weight: 127 lbs Eyes: Green Hair: Fur w/ typical cheetah markings -- sandy-yellow w/ black spots all over, with white on the torso's front side Description: Acinonyx is a female cheetah. As it happens, cheetahs have very little sexual dimorphism, so most humans are unlikely to realize that she is female. Compared to Jubatus, she's maybe an inch or two shorter than him, and has 10-20 pounds more body mass (most of it muscle). She is equally comfortable with bipedal or quadrupedal posture. Her forepaws are somewhat more clumsy than Jube's. Power Descriptions: Acinonyx is more-or-less a cheetah on steroids. In physical terms, Acinonyx is a lot tougher & more powerful than Jube. Her STR is higher than his; she's got a better Toughness save; her claws do more damage; and so on. She does not have Jube's Timeshift power. Acinonyx has enthusiastically embraced her inhuman nature, and as a result, she can be extremely terrifying when she wants to be—which is a rather large percentage of the time. History: Everyone wears masks, figuratively speaking. Case in point: Susan Marie Donnermutter, normal secretary by day, and Animal Rights activist (read, 'terrorist') by night and on weekends. Susan was always careful to keep her two lives separated, until the day when a virus reduced her laptop to an odd-shaped brick… and she hired a troubleshooter named Jay Xavier to recover her data and get the machine up and running. Xavier was an animal himself, so of course it wouldn't hurt if he discovered any evidence of her Animal Rights-related activities while restoring her files, right? How could a hunting cat possibly object to anything that would improve the lot of the world's non-human inhabitants? Alas for Susan, this particular hunting cat did not share her views regarding the proper relationship between humans and animals. Worse, when Xavier discovered documentary proof of Susan's lawbreaking career, he turned all of this evidence over to the FBI. With the help of the other members of her 'activist' cell, Susan managed to avoid being captured. She was furious at Xavier for his unprovoked betrayal—or at least, that's how she saw it—and she wanted revenge. But how? What could Susan Marie Donnermutter possibly do to a super-fast predator like Xavier? The obvious answer was, she couldn't do anything to him, not as long as she was a puny, worthless human. Well, there were ways to change one's species. Susan hadn't looked into the matter, because while she didn't particularly like being human, up to now she'd always felt that her human life was too useful to The Cause for her to give up on it. Of course, 'up to now' was before her Animal Rights activities were exposed to public view… Since she was going to have to construct a new life from the ground up anyway, why shouldn't she abandon her old species along with her old job, old bank account, old everything else? So she made certain inquiries, and before long she met a person who assured her that yes, he could completely remake her body, from the nucleotides up. Susan didn't know, or care, that this person worked for the Labyrinth; all she did care about was getting the power to do unto Xavier what he'd already done unto her. Before long, Susan Marie Donnermutter had ceased to exist, replaced by the feline engine of fury called Acinonyx. Personality & Motivation: The erstwhile Susan Marie Donnermutter doesn't miss her human form. She thinks humans are weak and ugly and smell bad, but even if humans are an inferior species, it's not right to abuse them. You don't kick puppies, right? She's careful not to inflict collateral damage on animals, but at the same time, she's distinctly less concerned about humans. She doesn't actively seek to harm innocents; rather, she just doesn't really care if a hairless ape is 'caught in the blast radius', and is quite likely to apply the can't-make-an-omelette-without-breaking-eggs rationalization in such cases. Acinonyx is driven by vengeance. She wants to make Jubatus suffer; if she can't kill him, injuring him or ruining his reputation are acceptible alternatives. She'll keep on attacking him until she thinks he's paid the price for what he did to her. Plotlines this character is likely to be involved with: Stealing advanced biotechnology; testing the stolen biotech on innocent human victims; kidnapping life-sciences specialists. Robberies (jewel thefts, banks heists, etc etc) to pay for stuff she can't or won't steal. Hiring herself out as 'muscle' to anyone who can pay her high fees. 'Improving' the lives of animals by any means necessary, up to and including Animal Rights-focused acts of terrorism. Being mistaken for Jubatus while doing any of the above. Powers & Tactics: While Jubatus is about control and precision, Acinonyx is about raw, brute power. She does not use gadgets/tools if she can help it; she sees Jube's reliance on technology as a character flaw, and yet another indication that Jube is not worthy of his furry form. She isn't particularly persuasive, so in order to get other people to do as she wishes, she generally ends up relying on fear and intimidation. Complications: Dark secret: Acinonyx has abandoned her former, human, identity, but since she feels her radical change in species/appearance/etc is enough protection for her 'dark secret', she has not made any effort to obscure her history. If anyone actually went to the trouble of researching Acinonyx's human past, she would do anything necessary—up to and including murder—in order to keep that secret from being revealed. Waiting for the other shoe to drop: The Labyrinth is not noted for its charity. Acinonyx owes them, and may the good Lord protect her when the Labyrinth decides it's time to collect on this debt. Abilities: 8 + 12 + 4 + 2 + 2 + 8 = 36PP Strength: 18 (+4) / with Rage: 22 (+6) Dexterity: 22 (+6) Constitution: 14 (+2) Intelligence: 12 (+1) Wisdom: 12 (+1) Charisma: 18 (+4) Combat: 16 + 16 = 32PP Initiative: +10 (+6 DEX, +4 Improved Initiative) Attack: +8 Grapple: +12 (+8 Melee, +4 STR) Defense: +8 (+8 Base, +0 Dodge Focus), +4 Flat-Footed / with Rage: +6 Knockback: -3 Saving Throws: 7 + 3 + 8 = 18PP Toughness: +12 (+2 Con, +8 [Protection], +2 Defensive Roll) Fortitude: +9 (+2 Con, +7) / with Rage: +11 Reflex: +9 (+6 Dex, +3) Will: +0 (+1 Wis, +8) / with Rage: +2 Skills: 76R = 19PP Acrobatics 4 (+10) Climb 8 (+12) Handle Animal 5 (+6) Intimidate 16 (+20) Notice 12 (+13) Search 4 (+5) Sense Motive 11 (+12) Stealth 4 (+10) Survival 6 (+7) Swim 6 (+10) Feats: 26PP All-out Attack Ambidexterity Animal Empathy Blind-Fight Contacts / Ecoterrorism network(s) Distract/Intimidate Elusive Target Fast Overrun Fearless Fearsome Presence 5 Hide in Plain Sight Improved Critical 2 / Crit on 18-20 Improved Sunder Instant Up Move-by Action Power Attack Rage / +4 STR, +2 FORT save, +2 WILL save, -2 Defense for 5 rounds, followed by 5 rounds of Fatigue Startle Takedown Attack 2 Uncanny Dodge (Hearing) Equipment: 0PP None Powers: 8 + 4 + 6 + 12 + 4 = 34PP Protection 8 [8PP] Speed 4 100 MPH/880 fps (Hunting sprint) [4PP] Strike 5 (Feats: Mighty) (Claws) [5+1 PP] Super-Movement 6 (Slow Fall, Sure-footed 4, Trackless) [12PP] Super-Senses 4 (Low-light vision, Scent, Tracking (scent), Ultra Hearing) [4PP] Drawbacks: (-0) + (-0) = -0PP DC Block: ATTACK   RANGE   SAVE            EFFECT Strike Touch DC23 Toughness Damage (physical) Abilities (36) + Combat (32) + Saving Throws (18) + Skills (19) + Feats (26) + Powers (34) - Drawbacks (0) = 165/165 Power Points

The cheetah is hungry. The cheetah is always hungry. The cheetah can remember not-hungry… but that was long-long-ago, and it hurts to remember long-long-ago, so the cheetah doesn't do that. The cheetah is hungry. Jay Xavier. Jubatus. The two names were interchangeable by now; he answered to either one, no matter what garments he happened to be wearing at the time. A lot had changed since that long-past morning when he awoke to discover that he'd unwittingly traded up from his human body, and in his opinion, the most significant change was that he was at peace with himself and his once-alien body. That change had taken no small amount of time to accomplish, but Jay had all the time in the world -- and not just because he was a speedster. His high-speed metabolism operated six times faster than normal; considering the lifespan of natural-born cheetahs, he ought to have died of old age well before the third anniversary of his new life. But when that anniversary came and went, what actually did happen was… nothing at all. In the strict technical sense, Jay wasn't immune to aging -- it's just that his turbochanged metabolism repaired all damage and injuries, including those associated with the passage of time, almost before they happened. True immortality it might not be, but Jay figured it'd do until the real thing came along. In the meantime, he had a permanent ticket to see the future: All he had to do was wait for it to happen! And he'd seen so very much of that future as it became the present, then receded into the past. Not bad for a California boy who'd celebrated his first birthday before Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. Jay's memories of that event were kind of fuzzy, but he clearly remembered Sputnik, Gagarin, and Apollo 11. He remembered the massive headlines which greeted the final victory over smallpox, and then the smaller ones announcing the extinction of rinderpest. The first Clarke space elevator… the first wholly synthetic life-form… the first target-specific antimatter… the first economically viable powersats… the first child born in orbit… the first practical negative-refraction 'invisibility cloak'… It hadn't all been nice, of course. For every advance in medical gene-splicing, there were some well-educated morons who insisted on twisting that advance for evil ends; for each novel application of metallurgical science, an imbecile who built an armored suit of the new alloy so they could ruin somebody else's day. No, it definitely hadn't been all nice. But the statistical trend was clear, to any eyes that assembled and collated the necessary data: The idiots were losing. As the years went by, the percentage of the populace that took up that kind of anti-social hobby grew smaller and smaller yet. The idiots were losing! And assuming the current trend continued, Jay estimated that the final victory over vicious idiocy would occur sometime between 75 and 120 years from now. Life was good.

Xavier nodded. "I heard him, and I'll be glad to take his trade goods. Since there's no way I can lose, see if he's willing to bet two pounds of copper." The feline didn't particularly care about specific details, such as where this 'race' would begin, so he didn't bother to ask the kid about those details. The plain fact of the matter was, he could outrun any arrow, no matter what terrain might be under his paws, and he damn well knew it, so why should he care? He let the kid go off to negotiate for higher stakes… and yep, there was an archer. The feline padded over towards the guy with the bow, ending up standing besides him on all four paws. Then the archer nocked an arrow… brought his bow up into firing position… and when he released his missile, the feline blurred on ahead! The ground was distinctly warm under the feline's paws. Gosh, it's almost as if there's a subterranean heat source fairly close to the surface here, Xavier thought. Another data-point to support the hypothesis that this timeline's Earth has the same geography as Earth-Prime. That it won't erupt at all while we're here is probably too much to ask for, sigh. At least the odds are in favor of the next eruption here being relatively minor, if memory serves re: Etna-Prime's pattern of activity…

Damn, Jubatus thought as he accepted the card. This guy does not believe in keeping a secret ID… And that, plus the business card, is rather an embarrassment of riches, digging-up-background-wise. Jube nodded. "Understood, and I won't hassle you any further." But I will research the living hell outta you over the next however-many days. "As for me, well, I don't do the 'secret identity' thing myself, for reasons that should be obvious. I'm also called Jay Xavier, and you can probably learn more about me than you ever wanted to know if you google for my name. Be seeing you, Life Knight." So saying, Jubatus resumed his interrupted patrol of the evening. Let's see, now, he mused, thinking over the card Life Knight had handed him. I got a tattooing business with a name, "Knight's Ink", an address, and business hours. That gives me something to search for, public records-wise; business permits, tax records, payroll data, yada yada yada. Then,moving on to Life Knight's story, If his data can be trusted, his history includes an accidental multi-death, and two years later, an attempted lynching. The first even should have made the news, so find out if there even is a "Tunnel Hill, Alabama", and if so, start combing through newspaper morgues in the vicinity thereof. The man's apparent age is basically meaningless, given his powers, but that apparent age at least provides a window of time to start examining the data for. Factory town, what industry? 100% White population prior to…

Jubatus paid close attention to the big ape's oration… Upshift: Jubatus spent less than a clock-second thinking it over for a minute or so. Wonder-frigging-ful. I've got half a mind to let the schmuck splice my genes (Grue-made 'landmines' included!) into his DNA, and see how bad he gets screwed over. No point in warning Vimes, though; he'll just assume I'm making [bg=black]xxix[/bg] up to discourage him. Well, let's see if the V-man is willing to listen to reason… "Okay, you've been abused by idiots; I know the feeling. What I don't know, is why a guy who's been screwed-over, would be eager to screw others over himself. What, you liked being bullied so much you just had to emulate the bullies' behavior? I got a better idea, which I can sum up in six words: The best revenge is living well. By your own admission, you've worked up a real effective administrative infrastructure for distributed scientific research, and using this, you've discovered how to splice foreign DNA into an adult life-form and have the foreign traits express themselves without any untidy side-effects like body-wide cancer or catastrophic cellular collapse. Either of those items, by itself, would be enough to let you write your own ticket! And once you're filthy rich, you can buy the bullies from out of petty cash—not to mention offer respectable sums for legitimate, voluntary access to any DNA structure you're interested in. So how about you lose the supervillain stuff and make yourself ridiculously wealthy by honest means, hrrm?" As he spoke, the feline upshifted periodically, making himself plenty of seconds of time during which he memorized the sizes, positions, and so on, of every object in the room. The feline hoped he could persuade Vimes to give up on illegal activities; however, he was not sufficiently optimistic to think the gorilla would be willing to go along with such a program. So if the big ape thought Vengeance was more important than Obscene Wealth, Jube had to be prepped and ready for a fight…

Jubatus is trying to get Vimes started monologuing. If he succeeds, Jube will have that much more information on Vimes (yay!), and he'll also have plenty of chances to upshift for a fraction of a clock-second and spend that time on visual scans of the chamber Vimes is in. Jube wants to know where everything is before he acts, if at all possible.

Jubatus didn't buy Vimes' confident assertions. The feline had already gotten free of one set of restraints, after all. So why shouldn't he doubt the big ape's claim that there was no escape? It was just a matter of keeping his eyes and ears and nose open, and being ready to exploit any opportunities that might arise. Of course, that depended on his noticing those opportunities… "Yeah, yeah, 'resistance is futile'. Since I'm stuck here, how about you talk to me, Vimes? What's your story—you're looking for revenge on the scum who turned you into an ape, or your change was a voluntary D-I-Y job and you're trying to boost yourself further, or what?"

Jubatus didn't buy Vimes' confident assertions. The feline had already gotten free of one set of restraints, after all. So why shouldn't he doubt the big ape's claim that there was no escape? It was just a matter of keeping his eyes and ears and nose open, and being ready to exploit any opportunities that might arise. Of course, that depended on his noticing those opportunities… "Yeah, yeah, 'resistance is futile'. Since I'm stuck here, how about you talk to me, Vimes? What's your story—you're looking for revenge on the scum who turned you into an ape, or your change was a voluntary D-I-Y job and you're trying to boost yourself further, or what?"

Jubatus (PL 11 speedster) isn't magically inclined, but with Jack of All Trades, he can fake it -- which could be rather interesting, considering that he doesn't care for magic At. All. A hardshell atheist/rationalist (that being Jube) facing a menace that isn't just magical, but is, in fact, honest-to-Lucifer demonic? What's not to love?

Since Jube didn't find his vest anywhere else in this complex, either (a) it's in the same room as Vimes, or else ( it ain't here at all. He's going to search this room at speed, always keeping one eye on Vimes—and he's always going to be ready to perform a Block maneuver, just in case the big ape manages to get a shot off at him.

Jube didn't kill the power right away because he's waiting for an appropriate opening to do it. The lights will go when the power dies, of course; this abrupt darkness should come as a complete surprise to Vimes, while Jube will be prepared & ready for it when it happens. Call it a one-time bonus to Jube's attack and defense, perhaps?

The floor of Vimes' sanctum was a virtual thicket of cables, cords, and wires, all of them bound by gravity. Jubatus was not—or at least he had special dispensation while upshifted, such that gravity kind of looked the other way—and so he sped along walls and ceilings as he scoured the rooms in search of his 'utility vest'. He found the architect of his recent captivity first: Big damn gorilla—hand-to-hand is probably a mistake. Sure, I'm faster, but if he tags me at all, I'm toast. Now, how can I load the dice..? Leaving the (literal) big ape to his phone calls, Jube explored the relatively few rooms and corridors, seeking vulnerabilities in the structure—and finding them! Behind an an unlocked door was the place's electrical nerve center, complete with fuses and circuit breakers and comically misnamed (as the fastest cat alive would demonstrate) Uninterruptible Power Supplies. In a fraction of a clock-second, every UPS in the room was disconnected and then some, as Jube's claws slashed through the lines which connected them to the building's internal power grid. Next, the feline spent a few precious clock-seconds wrestling with power-line conduits and the paraphernalia he'd commandeered from the so-called 'extraction chamber'; what he ended up with was a crude-but-functional 'kill switch', in the form of an outsized, spring-loaded dagger that was sharp enough to cut deep into feeder cables, plus a remote-controlled solenoid to make the dagger move when it received a particular signal. All Jube had to do was hit a switch on the harness he now wore, and the dagger would bite, shorting out the entire building! Thus prepared, the cheetah rocketed back to Vimes, stopped at a doorway, downshifted to the normal tempo of 1, and shouted, "Hey, Vimes! Do your clients know you're into kidnapping and illicit genetic modifications?" Considering what Jube's voice sounded like, there was a decent chance that anyone talking to Vimes who heard and understood what the cheetah had just said, would think those words had been uttered by a victim of Vimesian gene-splicing… with amusing, and immediately relevant, consequences for their business relationship with the primate.

Whilst looking around Vimes' "lair", Jube will stay on the walls and ceiling as much as he can, exactly so that he can avoid all those friggin' tangled cords/cables/wires on the floor. Jube will be looking for the following: First and foremost, his 'utility vest'. If he finds it, Jube will spend some time checking out its contents, to confirm whether or not Vimes tampered with any of Jube's tools & etc. Should the vest prove to not have been tampered with, Jube will reclaim it and put it on, leaving behind the stuff he commandeered from the thugs he took care of. Second, a means of killing the power to this building. Fuses, circuit breakers, they're all fair game. If he does find the fuses/breakers, Jube will not kill the power then and there; rather, he'll (try to?) throw together a little remote-control gizmo that will kill the power when he sends the right signal. This will be fairly simple if Jube has his own utility vest; if he's only got the stuff he commandeered from the thugs, it may be difficult or even impossible. Third, a backup power source. Does this place have an on-site generator, or a so-called Uninterruptible Power Supply, or something else of that kind? If Jube finds such a beast, he will kill the backup power source on the spot. Simply cutting out & removing a nontrivial section of the wires which connect the backup power to the rest of the building will do, but if he can't find those wires, Jube will settle for physical destruction of the backup power. If Jube recovers his vest, he'll turn on his microrecorder so's he can surreptitiously get a record of anything that's said in his general vicinity from then on. Yes, the idea here is to get Vimes monologuing so that he confesses his crimes to Jube, and the cheetah gets that confession on tape (as it were). Without the vest, well, maybe the stuff Jube grabbed from his 'captors' included a recorder? (prolly not, i know, but one can hope) And... that's about it for the intended preparations for the Final Encounter With Jason Vimes.

Some of the questionable aspects of the idea go away if the mage in question is on the low end of the Magical Expertise scale, and his being able to summon/control a deity (!) are the result of a seriously improbable stroke of luck (perhaps one that was orchestrated by one of [deity's] rivals in their pantheon?). That way, the mage isn't the prime mover behind a sorta-kinda squicky series of events; rather, he's just opportunistically taking advantage of a jackpot that fell from a clear blue sky. Of course, if this scenario doesn't suit Sandman's notion of what this mage character is like, feel free to ignore it.

Power-boosted elementalists? Sounds like a job for, well, us...

"Hey, I cover me eating half the restaurant," Jubatus said with a smile that was only mildly snarky. "Familiar ground here. That said, it's your call, so okay, 50-50." The feline considered his offer to still be on the table; if it turned out that Overclock didn't quite have funds enough to pay his half of the bill, Jubatus would take care of it without any fuss. In other words, "I can't always turn it off when I want to." Whoever convinced this kid to play hero is clearly guilty of child abuse. "Alright. 'Rush', huh? So your speed works something like an adrenaline rush or sugar rush?" It didn't take that long (not even subjectively) for 'Smith' to slow down to normal; Jubatus matched his tempo all throughout this period of deceleration. "Okay, food now," the feline declared. "Just one thing: I kinda stand out in a crowd, y' know? So don't be surprised if some of the customers maybe act a little weird around me." Since it's lunchtime, there's gonna be a lot of customers, meaning a lot of people who may have weird reactions to me… and some of these reactions may even not be about my appearance. "Shall we enter?"

Dutch Baby addendum: On Wednesday, I cooked up a DB with sausage in it. It was Johnstown brand garlic sausage with tiny chunks of red pepper and three cheeses, and I chopped up two of those sausages into tiny bits which got stirred into the batter before cooking. The resulting DB was well-recieved, so I must have done something right.

Now that Jube has defanged the bomb in the building… First: Commlink time—let Revenant know about the bomb, and what he's done to make the bomb safe. Suggest that it might be a good idea to get the civilians out of harm's way in case Jube's 'fix' for the bomb turns out not to be a real solution. Tell her about the transciever in the bot. Also tell her that Jube's going to be tracking down the source of the signals that the bot was receiving. Second: Track down the signals. This involves moving around the layout we're stuck in. Depending on how many scale-model buildings this layout has, Jube will try to zip from rooftop to rooftop, above the toys at street-level; hopefully the toys won't notice him blurring by overhead, and even if they do, they might have at much as 1 (one) shot at Jube before he's out of line-of-sight. If there's not enough 'tall' buildings for rooftop travel to be a viable option, Plan B is to try zipping by so fast that he cannot register on the toys' sensors—i.e., a Power Stunt. Game mechanics-wise, burn a Hero Point for an AP on Jube's Timeshift Container; since that Container is 30 pts, he's got 30 pts to play with for this stunt, so it'll be 20 pts in Concealment (for "total concealment from all sense types other than tactile" (UP, pg 34), plus 8 pts in Speed (so he's still able to run at his usual top speed, or pretty close to it), plus 2 pts in Enhanced STR.

Annnnd… no joy, Jubatus thought to himself, after failing to find his missing equipment. He'd ignored the guards while he searched the room; unshifted as he was, there really wasn't any significant probability that the two goons could represent a hazard to him, absent an equalizer like the 'nerve agent' he'd succumbed to before. Still running at his upshifted tempo of 40, Jube gave the nearly mobile speedbumps-in-uniform a visual scan, top to bottom and back again. Gee, their mouths moved—they must be in process of saying words. That's nice. Their toys are nicer; I think I'll commandeer some of 'em until I get my own stuff back. One [bg=green]Stunning Attack[/bg] carefully calibrated skull-against-skull KRAK later, the two 'guards' were unconscious; their 'captive' stripped them down to their underwear and sorted through everything they'd been wearing. Reinforced kevlar straps with industrial-grade velcro closures? Must be their answer to duct tape. Each thug's wrists and ankles were quickly fastened together behind their backs. And I got plenty to spare for later, oboy! Nice military-style web harness they got here… don't like the weapons, so I'll just dismantle those with extreme prejudice… the harness itself, hmmm, looks like I can adjust its straps to the point where it's wearable… The cheetah's recent room-search had revealed a number of interesting tools and instruments; he stowed them in his new harness, at least what he could manage to fit in the harness' pouches, anyway. Not as versatile a collection as I got in my vest, but it's better than nothing. Was there anything else to do here? Don't want to mess with the 'extraction equipment'—don't know anything about it, let alone enough to merit my poking an iron crowbar into the junction box. Keys, got the ones carried by both thugs, so they won't be escaping on their own. Commlinks, got what they had on them. Thugs hogtied on floor, the uniforms and e-t-c I took off of them are safely located out of their reach. And… yeah, that's it. The fastest cat alive exited the extraction chamber and used the guards' own keys to lock them inside it. Then he began looking for that big ape, Vimes…

First: Jubatus takes out the mooks -- knocks their heads together, and uses his Stunning Attack feat so there's no risk of physical damage. Takedown Attack would be nice here, but alas, Jube does not have that feat. Perhaps burn a Hero Point to acquire TA temporarily? Once the mooks are out, strip them down to their underwear and… not duct-tape them into immobility, because the tape is in Jube's vest, which is who-knows-where. Okay, check the mooks' gear; if they have handcuffs or the like, Jube will use their own equipment to immobilize them. If the mooks have harnesses to hold their gear, Jube will definitely consider grabbing one of said harnesses, checking its contents, and destroying anything he doesn't care to use himself while commandeering whatever tools and weapons he thinks may look good.

One consideration you might want to think about is that Wail is 4 PLs higher than JD and 3 higher than Jube. Provide opposition that can give Wail a hard time, and the lower-PL heroes are likely to get squashed; provide opposition that's a good match for the lower-PL types, and Wail is likely to run roughshod over it. Of course, if either of those scenarios is something you're okay with happening (adversity is good for character development, right?), I say bring it on! Apart from the above, Jube is good for either action or talk. He's reasonably effective as a combatant, and his abrasive personality can make for interesting clashes with other characters.

…and the only 'surprise' he found was a transceiver, just the thing for a remote unit to receive orders and send status reports back to its controller. Jube's vest provided a signal analyzer; apparently, the robot's orders were coming from someplace towards the west end of the scale-model layout he and the civilians were stuck in. Be nice to pinpoint the direction better than that, but considering all the interference from metal in the structures around us… fine. Zip around, take multiple readings, triangulate the source. But first— He extracted a pair of small gizmoes from his vest, earpieces that wouldn't have looked out of place in one of the original Star Trek episodes, and handed one to Revenant. "This thing is a short-range communicator," he said, and he inserted the second unit into his own ear. "Should be able to keep in touch no matter where we are. Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta run." Triangulating the source of the robot's control signals was a sound plan, but Jubatus shelved it early on. First, the scale-model streets of the layout were filled with scale-model police officers—action figures of both genders, riding on toy motorcycles. And what are the odds of these dolls not being equipped with all kinds of lethal accessories, hm? Second, and more importantly, his nose caught an acrid odor—the scent of an explosive! It was the work of an upshifted moment to find the bomb: Deep in the lowest level of the parking garage that all the shrunken people had been deposited on. Jubatus was impressed at the level of detail that Fun Time Toys had put into this layout—Who the hell would ever even see THIS part of the damn thing?—but there was work to do. Namely, figure out how to neutralize the bomb, preferably before it went off. The cheetah didn't understand why Toy Boy (or whoever it was) had bothered with a shrunken explosive device in the first place, rather than something full-sized; even a firecracker would be seriously dangerous to someone shrunk down to this scale! Doesn't matter, Jube. Just be grateful that whoever-it-is was determined to waste some of their time and effort and resources on this rather than be more rational-slash-efficient about it. And shrunken or not, it's still a bomb. Needs to be dealt with. The cheetah examined the bomb with care—and some non-invasive instruments. He didn't learn as much as he'd have preferred, but given the data at hand, it looked like the bomb would go off when triggered by a radio signal… so with a battery and a few electronic components from his vest, Jubatus slapped together a white-noise generator and put it next to the bomb. There. Fairly weak, but the inverse-square rule is with me; let's see any external signal try to punch through that! And then Jube waited, just in case the bomb was set up to detonate if it didn't receive a 'heartbeat', a regular series of "not yet" signals from its distant master. While thus occupied, the cheetah spoke to Revenant over his commlink: "Found a bomb at the lowest level of the parking garage we're on top of. Since I found it by the scent of the explosive, I'm assuming it's the real thing. Looks to be triggered by radio, so I set up a white-noise generator to jam the denotation signal when it's sent. Don't know what tricks might be up the bomb-maker's sleeve, so better move everybody to a different location regardless. Also found a transciever in the robot, seems to be connected to a source towards the west end of this layout. Gonna try to trace it down more precisely."

Shouldn't that question be "who would like to make a cameo appearance in the first issue of Jade Dragon's new series?" Be that as it may, Jubatus is up for it.

Oh, frabjous day, Jubatus thought. This Vimes yutz is yet another datapoint in support of the proposition that INT and WIS should be separate stats. Definitely don't want to experience that 'extraction' process up, close, and personal. The question was, how to get free of the straps? The obvious lines of attack had all failed… Jubatus upshifted to buy himself some extra time to ponder his options. The straps are tough S-O-Bs, no question. But they've got some flexibility, so maybe I can stretch 'em until they're loose enough for me to slip my paws out? The feline levered an arm up as best he could—yes, there was a non-zero amount of slack—but the moment he let up the pressure, the strap returned to its former degree of tightness. Oh, well. Didn't really expect it'd work, but it was worth trying. Hmmm… He wracked his brains for any scrap of data he could think of that might be relevant to escaping from leather straps—and found something from a biography of the great escapologist Harry Houdini. One of Houdini's tricks was tensing his muscles while being bound or chained or whatever, so that when his muscles relaxed, he created an exploitable degree of slack in the bonds! Too bad I was out cold while they trussed me up. But maybe I can pull off a variation on Houdini's trick now..? Downshift—put tension on one arm's straps—upshift and pull the arm out. Jubatus spent several of his seconds judging whether or not this procedure has done any good whatsoever… and decided it had. That arm was now a fraction of a centimeter closer to freedom! He smiled. In this situation, a fraction of a centimeter was as good as a kilometer, because he could keep on doing it, over and over again, gaining a small amount of ground each time, until that arm was free of its straps. Downshift-pull-upshift… downshift-pull-upshift… By no means was the process comfortable. That was alright, because it worked. Even better, the amount of physical motion involved was sufficiently small that Vimes' goons managed to completely overlook it! And with one arm free, it took a fraction of a clock-second for the fastest cat alive to finish releasing himself from the straps. Still upshifted, Jubatus gave the room a super-fast search, looking for his Vest Of Many Things. Assuming he found it, his next move would be to check the gas mask and rebreather unit, just in case Vimes might have messed with Jube's gimmicks while the cheetah was unconscious…