Cubist

"Hurt? Naah, there's no pain at all" -- no physical pain, at least -- "so..." But the gadgeteer wasn't paying attention; she'd already extracted some sort of compact gizmo from her belt and was fiddling with it. What the -- oh, come on. Does she really think she can do anything for my voice after just a couple clock-seconds of hearing me talk!? Apparently, Blueshift did think exactly that: Jubatus tried to keep his annoyance from showing on his face. Okay, she's an idiot, but she means well... "Hrrm, thanks, Blue," he replied as he put the gizmo in a vest-pocket. "Like I said, it doesn't hurt, so there's no real need for a palliative. I'll definitely check out the gizmo when I've got the right tools and sensors to give it a proper once-over, though." And then Marcel spoke up -- [OOC]

Since Fenris posted a remark which indicates that he might have been trying to deduce Jube's mode of delivery from the sound of the cheetah's words, I thought I should point out that Jube's voice sounds very weird. His throat is 100% cheetah, meaning he doesn't have a human-style larynx; what Jube does when he wants to say something is, he uses his cheetah-style throat to generate a string of carefully-chosen sound effects which sound like intelligibly-spoken words. Obviously, anybody who hears Jube talk can try to identify the cheetah's tone of voice. The question is whether or not they'll succeed in doing so with any degree of accuracy...

[OOC note: It may be worth noting that the bloke what inquired about tides was the incognito King of Suits, not Jubatus. I'd expect that Marcel has his own reasons for inquiring about high tide, eh wot? It may also be worth noting that Jube has an extremely unusual/distinctive voice; since his throat is 100% cheetah, he can't actually talk in the human manner. However, he can make a wide variety of sound effects, and if you string the right ones together in the right order, you can end up with a noise that's recognizable as intelligibly spoken words. Which is what Jube does, and why his voice is so weird. So I'm not the only hero in Freedom who makes a point of tracking other heroes' media presences. Groovy. "Sure, why not. Can I call you 'Aunt Bea'?" Let's see if she catches the Andy Griffith reference... Since this little shindig was a hero-heavy affair, Jubatus strongly suspected that 'Marcel' wasn't the man's real name. But it was as good a label as any, and it was what the man wanted to be called, so Jube would go along with it. The cheetah was of two minds regarding how he should respond to 'Marcel' -- Do I give him a straight answer, or say "damn right I'm a nature spirit" and see how long it takes him to spot the gag? -- but Blueshift jumped in with her reply, thus spoiling any chance of a joke. Oh, well. Cheetah who hesitates is lost. "Yeah, what she said. Last year at this time, I was a boring, normal human, and if you really want to know more, Google is your friend." That was all he said to Marcel. My nose says the dude's afraid of me; best to minimize interactions with him than risk freaking him out in a big way. The feline accepted the bag of surveyor's stakes with a shrug. "Fine by me," he said as he vanished in a blur, the afterimage fading from the others' eyes somewhat after his words reached their ears. He didn't reappear for a number of seconds, and when a sand-colored blur resolved itself to the fastest cat alive, there were no stakes left in the bag he carried. "Partially done," he said, handing the empty bag back to Blueshift. "You didn't hand me enough stakes for all the building sites we'll be working on, y' know. " When Push approached the little group, Jubatus noted the absence of fear in the kinetics-user's scent. He also noted the presence of... well, he wasn't sure what he was smelling, but there was a non-trivial component of Push's scent which made Jube's hackles rise. Ignore it. Guy can't help it if his metabolism spits out nasty-smelling volatiles. Blueshift, well, who could tell what she smelled like inside her armor? "Hello, Push. Just taking a break now..." he said, his eyes scanning Push's cargo. "Looks like you've got most of the stuff I haven't moved yet. I'll just see what's left, if anything." And the fastest cat alive vanished in another blur.

By the time the other heroes arrived at today's building site, Jubatus had transferred perhaps 60% of the necessary tools and materials there. It wasn't slacking off; rather, Jube knew that heat buildup was the primary limiting factor of a natural-born cheetah's hunting sprint, and in the Haitian heat, he preferred not to risk overexerting himself. The transportation he provided was still at least one order of magnitude swifter than would have been possible without a speedster, so as far as Jube was concerned, he had nothing to apologize for. What the heck; might as well take a break, the feline thought to himself. Gotta talk to them sometime, right? And... hmm. Blueshift and one of the heroes he didn't recognize; the woman's demeanor suggested that she, herself, might be as flaky as her cloaking device. When he recognized her behavior anomalies, Jube's internal monologue included the psychological equivalent of an unconcerned shrug: So she's got some funky mental quirks. Ess-eff-dub'ya. Not like you're any kind of paragon of psychological health, right, Jay? Okay, Blueshift and what's-their-face were done talking. Jube stepped in closer, saying, "Jubatus here.[to the woman] I think you're Blueshift, and [to the King of Suits, who Jube fails to recognize] who might you be, son?"

The audience was eating it up -- especially that one kid, the tall boy-child, who kept on chanting 'Ed-dee! Ed-dee!" at a volume level sufficiently high as to drown out the music within a 3-foot radius of his mouth. He was as oblivious to the annoyed looks he was garnering, as he was to the fact that there was a slowly-growing bubble of space around him as people shuffled away from the blatant dorkosaurus...

Jubatus upshifted -- in a fairly literal sense, he made himself some extra time to consider this new information, and what he ought to do now. Obvious fact: He needed to stay on Miss Steampunk's (he'd have to remember to call her 'Wells' when speaking normally) good side. If the culture/society of this version of Earth really was a near-equivalent to that of the British Empire during Victoria's reign, Jube strongly doubted he'd enjoy living here, so there was no upside to pissing off the one person who owned his ticket home. His personality being what it was, he'd probably annoy her regardless... but at least he could try to keep a lid on his more-abrasive qualities. The corpse being 'one of the finest engineers in England': This suggested that the perp was an agent of some other nation than the Empire. After all, who was more likely to benefit from such a death than one of the Empire's competitors on the world stage? Great: Worst case, Jube had gotten dragged into an international incident on a world about whose geopolitics he knew absolutely nothing. Such fun. Miss Steampunk's doubts about the local constabulary were not happy-making. At best, those doubts signified nothing more than an aristocrat's genteel contempt for what she regarded as second-class citizens of the Empire; at worst, Miss Steampunk correctly feared that the local coppers were actively in league with the perp, or at least with whoever the perp had been working for when he made the hit. After Wells finished her own summary of the situation, Jubatus nodded. "Makes sense. Also, while I got no clue what this world's geopolitical realities are like, I'd be willing to bet that if your Empire has any serious rivals, one of those rivals is responsible for this murder. You'd know better than me who the likely candidates are, of course." Jubatus gave the tin can a sardonic smile. "One question is 'the Nth degree'? I do not think that phrase means what you think it means." "Industrial? Pfft! Try 'international', is my guess." When Miss Steampunk mentioned that the victim was a high-grade weapons designer -- effectively an Imperial resource -- Jube suppressed the urge to tell Fenris, 'told you so'. There's a killer in the vicinity. Powers or no powers, it's just stupid to irritate someone who's supposed to watch your back. Frowning and nodding, Jube growled under his breath, acknowledging the younger woman's wisdom. Considering how the Elephant Man had been treated by the Victorian Empire on his world, he wasn't at all keen to discover how this world's Empire would react to a Cheetah Man. After spending a clock-second thinking it over for a minute or so, he replied: "How about this: I'm a biologist. I was working with extracts from exotic plants in the Americas, looking for a way to accelerate the human body in a controlled manner. My financial backers got cold feet, and in hopes of retaining their support, I tried my formula's latest, untested, version on myself... with the results you see, which drove away all my then-existing backers. But I do know the formula works now, so I'm trying to eliminate the unfortunate side-effects, and seeking out funds for that is why I'm here in the Empire.." Jube looked at Miss Steampunk: "How's that cover story sound to you, Miss Wells?" "Fine -- but first, how about if I see what scents I can pick up from the corpse and near vicinity?" To Miss Steampunk: "Yes, I do have a nose not unlike that of a bloodhound. Do I have your permission to go sniffing around?"

Jay Xavier hadn't been expecting the email. Yes, it made sense that a speedster would be useful for a construction project -- last-minute problems cropped up in every endeavor, and speedsters were obviously well-equipped to help ensure that those last-minute problems yielded a minimum amount of delay -- but why him, in particular? He wasn't the only speedster around, and nowhere near the quickest; he hadn't been at the heroing game long enough to have become well-known even in Freedom City, let alone outside the continental US; and lastly, perhaps most importantly, his non-human appearance could easily cause problems, interaction-with-the-locals-wise. Before responding, Jay consulted Wikipedia about Haitian culture. It seemed that Haitian Voodoo included a figure known as Agassou, "the product of a divine mating -- his mother was a princess and is said to have mated with a Leopard", whose role was to "guard... the old traditions of Dahomey". Jay wasn't sure how far he could trust Wikipedia's overly-concise page on Agassou, but if that page's data was halfway accurate, his being a cheetah might actually have been an influential, if not decisive, factor in the mind of whoever had decided to ask him to take part in this project... Jay decided not to research this 'Agassou' in any detail. There was just too damn much information about Voodoo, and even with his Timeshift, it would take too damn long for him to look it all over and distinguish genuinely valid information from the kind of garbage that showed up in poorly-researched mass-market books. When Jay mentioned the email to his therapist, Ed Halstonne, naturally Ed thought he should go for it. The Agassou thing only strengthened Ed's opinion: "Look, Jay. Even if followers of the local religion don't think you're human, they're still going to treat you with respect, am I right?" Haiti was hot. It didn't go well with Jay's -- no, make that Jubatus', he was "on the clock" -- permanent, built-in fur coat, but given how little he wore on top of the fur, the heat was tolerable. The humidity didn't help; his inhumanly thin limbs did, thanks to their comparatively high surface/volume ratio. Jubatus wondered if the other supertypes would be more or less of a problem than the heat... Of his four companions, he recognized two from news reports: Push, a specialist in kinetics originally from out of Freedom, and Blueshift, a technocratic tin can with a flaky cloaking device. Neither of that pair had ever come anywhere near a newspaper's front page, as best Jube could tell. Apparently, whoever was running this particular show had made a point of not going for 'headliner' heroes; that seemed sensible, given the likelihood of a Big Name Hero's being followed by one of their personal rogue's gallery, or perhaps just an idiot looking to make a name for themselves by taking on Captain Worldwidefame. Jubatus hadn't bothered introducing himself to any of his companions; he'd been a loner all his life, and the cheetah thing hadn't made him any more gregarious. As soon as the plane was parked at Port-au-Prince, the feline speedster zipped outside and started transferring tools and building materials from the warehouses they were at, to the sites where they'd be put to use, as the plan called for. By the time everyone else arrived on site, all those tools and materials would be deployed in an orderly fashion, so that the construction process would run more smoothly...

Jubatus is in. The kitteh being a speedster who is literally capable of cramming a month of time into a day, he's good to go any time in April.

Jubatus' speed, and enhanced strength whilst accelerated, could make him useful as a courier. "When it has to be there right this second", eh wot?

This is my standard dish for potlucks and similar 'contribute to the feast' gatherings. It has always been well received. Dutch Baby, or, the Pancake of Doom Needed equipment A paella pan. If you're not sure what that is, look for a round, shallow, wide pan with a flat bottom and sloping sides; any pan which fits that description should do nicely. Mixing bowl. For this specific rendition, a 2-quart (2-liter) mixing bowel should do; if you want to make a bigger Dutch Baby, a larger mixing bowl may be indicated. Eggbeater. I heartily recommend an electric beater, but if you prefer a manual eggbeater, that's your business. Measuring cups. You'll want two -- one for the milk, and one for the flour. Unless you're okay with using the same cup for both milk and flour, in which case, go right ahead [shrug]. Functioning oven. You'll want the pan to have a lot of empty space above it, so arrange the cooking racks accordingly. Ingredients Four fresh eggs Milk -- 1 (one) cup , or 250 ml Flour -- 1 (one) cup, or, again, 250 ml 1 (one) cube of butter -- 4 ounces (120 g), that is Instructions Start pre-heating the oven. 375 degrees Fahrenheit, or 190 degrees Celsius for those of you who live in a country that's gone metric. Use the eggbeater to blend the eggs together into a yellowish goop. Set the beater/blender on 'high'; you want to force a bunch of teeny little air bubbles into the batter in colloid suspension. Add the milk to said goop, blending all the while. Stir/blend the flour into the egg/milk proto-batter. After the oven reaches the desired temperature, put the butter in the pan, and then put the pan in the oven. Keep stirring/blending whilst the butter is hotting up. When the butter is completely melted, pour the batter into the pan. Cook for about 12 minutes, or until the batter is a friendly golden-brown with inviting 'hills' billowing up from its surface. When the pancake is done, its edges should be rising/curling up like a big bowl (see also: "empty space above the pan"). Together with the billowy hills in the center, it's quite impressive-looking. Carve that sucker up like a pizza pie. Serves as many as 8-12, depending on how big you make the slices. Variations The recipe scales up or down, depending on the size of the pan you're gonna cook it in. Let N be the number of quarts (liters) of water your pan can hold; you'll want N eggs, N/4 cups (N * 60-odd ml) of milk, N/4 cups (N * 60-odd ml) of flower, and N ounces (N * 30 g) of butter (up to a maximum of N=4 -- as long as you've got enough butter to 'wet' most of the pan's bottom when said butter melts, you should be good to go). Yes, the recipe above assumes a pan that holds four quarts. Personally, I use a six-quart pan, hence I need 6 eggs and 1.5 cups apiece of milk and flour; when it's done, I slice it into 16 bits like any self-respecting hacker-type would. Margarine can be substituted for butter with little/no ill effect. The butter gives it enough flavor (salt) that this can be eaten as it stands. At the same time, the recipe is sufficiently 'neutral' that you can get away with adding a wide variety of other ingredients, if you like; you can add sliced hotdogs to the pre-cooking batter, or slather fruit preserves on the finished pancake, or add pretty much anything else within arm's reach of 'edible', really. I've been told that this recipe is basically "Yorkshire pudding without the drippings". This phrase may inspire some ideas amongst those of you who are more familiar with British cuisine than I am. I have tried using ground-up rice in place of wheat flour. The taste is pretty much unaffected; the resulting rice-based pancake is somewhat... 'heavier', I suppose is the best way to describe it... than the usual wheat-based version. Key point: Make sure the rice is thoroughly reduced to powder before you stir it into the batter! To whatever extent the rice kernels remain kernels rather than powder, your pancake is gonna have some real dense pockets in it. Latest edit, 22 May 2012: Finally noticed the missing bits of 'Needed Equipment' (i.e., mixing bowl and measuring cups). Said bits are no longer missing. Edit, 24 May 2011: Noted the results of an experimental rice-based variant. Edit, 23 Apr 2011: Added metric equivalents to the many measurements which didn't have them already

Okay, my error. I've edited my most-recent post to correct my screw-up(s). Hopefully I haven't added any new mistakes...

For my part, I'm making two assumptions in my most-recent post to the thread: One, that Carrie is in her full Changeling regalia. Two, that Jube's knowledge of Carrie/Changeling is whatever he could get from Taking 20 on a Skill roll for Knowledge: Current Events (+8) -- Jube has lots of time on his hands, so he's got justification for being aware of any knowledge that's more-or-less publicly available. If either or these assumptions (the first one in particular) isn't valid, just say so and I'll edit the post to accomodate the needed changes.

It wasn't Hell, just a reasonable facsimile thereof. Jubatus kept his eyes firmly shut while the vehicle moved through... whatever weird space-like continuum it was moving through, and not just to keep his tears from freezing. Those bizarrely-twisting colors, they were just wrong on a primal level somewhere below, or off to one side of, mundane consciousness. Closing his eyes didn't completely eliminate the bizarre colors, but it helped. A little. Apart from that, he was hearing things; impossible voices in the vacuum, voices which spoke not-quite-clear words in eldritch tones, voices whose disquieting words gradually approached comprehensibility as the journey continued -- And then it was over. Gravity returned with a vengeance -- the feline retained enough presence of mind to turn off his Timeshift, so he wouldn't be crushed by the intensified gravity of his downshift -- and he let himself collapse to the ground, or floor, or whatever it was. It was solid, and there was air to breathe, and heat to thaw the nascent ice crystals off of his body, and he spent a couple of minutes curled in on himself, shivering, at his default tempo of 6... ...right, enough malingering. Jubatus hadn't entirely recovered from his recent ordeal, but he'd at least caught his second wind. He was functional, for a given value of 'functional'. And... hmm. The dude in the tin can had to be new; Jube couldn't recall having seen any information about him on the internet or the mainstream news media. The older woman looked to be the owner of the steampunky vehicle, if her Victorian-influenced clothing was any indication. The younger woman he didn't recognize at all. These people obviously hadn't done anything to harm Jube while he was incommunicado; this suggested that their intentions were good, or at least not actively evil. But that behavioral clue was only suggestive, not conclusive, so he'd have to be wary. Jube downshifted to the normal tempo of 1 just in time to hear the younger woman ask him, "--you prefer Jay?" Okay, she was a Freedom City resident who paid attention to media coverage of heroes. Heroine in her own right? Maybe. "I, hrrm, go by Jubatus when I'm doing the hero thing. Not a secret identity, as such -- that, hrrm, doesn't really work when you're blatantly nonhuman 24/7 -- but, you know, more of a stage name. Let's just say it helps categorize incoming requests." To the other two: "Like she said, I'm Jubatus. Who're you guys?" After hearing the younger woman's '25 words or less' summary of the situation, the feline looked at Miss Steampunk. "Murder. So... we're here because you" -- he pointed at Miss Wells -- "felt like pulling in help from another dimension? I'm going to assume you had a damned good reason to do that, rather than let your Empire's home-grown bobbies handle the investigation. Want to explain the full situation?"

Jubatus had just dealt with a purse-snatcher, and was on his super-speedy way to whatever criminal act might be next, when the world went mad around him. Without any warning, Freedom City vanished -- taking the gravity and atmosphere with it -- and was replaced by a bizarrely shifting array of colors that looked like something Peter Max might have come up with after a hit of particularly good acid. What the [bg=black]xxxxixx[/bg] hell!? and Need air! and countless other reflexive thoughts vied for Jube's attention, each one elbowing the others out of its way. Casting his gaze wildly in all directions, one thing caught the feline speedster's eye: It looked like an automobile with mass quantities of gears and cogwheels, a steampunk nightmare. Could it be his ticket out of this weird, airless space? Jubatus forced himself over towards the machine, not knowing or caring how he was able to do this in freefall, and used his claws to cling to a gear-free curved metal panel. The panel itself was alright, but the vacuum which surrounded it was damned cold. Jube risked a temporary withdrawal of one of his four points of support; that is, he used one hand to wrap himself up in a heat-containing space blanket he extracted from his vest. It wasn't as easy as if he'd used both hands, nor was the end result anywhere near as effective, heat-conservation-wise, but the feline just wasn't willing to risk losing his grip on the vehicle he was literally hitching a ride on. When assembling the 'kit' for his vest, Jube had figured the space blanket would be useful to prevent hypothermia after fishing someone out of the South or Wading Rivers. Fortunately, its insulating properties would serve him just as well here and now. Would this vehicle hit an air-filled space before Jubatus suffocated? He had no idea... but he knew how to load the dice in his favor. The feline downshifted as hard as he could, reducing his tempo until he was only running at 1/30 of normal speed. He didn't like to downshift, because it increased gravity's pull on him even as it stretched Time out. But he was in freefall, and 'twice nothing is still nothing'. Jubatus had literally bet his life on this vehicle. He hoped the bet would pay off. Jube allowed a small amount of air to escape from his lungs; if he remembered what he'd read about sudden decompression, keeping it in was just asking for internal damage from the pressure differential. And tiny ice crystals in his exhaled breath glittered in the rainbow light...

Jubatus PCI KAN HAZ HUMANITY? Murder on the VIctorian Express Habitat for Metahumanity PC and GM A Star is (re-) Born

Eddie Ozan's unorthodox entrance actually stunned the audience into silence for a moment... followed by a burst of applause! All they knew was that they'd just seen one killer piece of performance. It was hard to pick out any individual person from the mass of listeners, but one kid made it easy, for this one was at more than a head taller than everyone around him. Apart from that, his hairless face had the smoothness ordinarily associated with pre-pubescence, and he was clearly into the music to a much higher degree than anyone else on the floor...

When the band showed up, Jay Xavier didn't interact with them more than the bare minimum -- he introduced himself, explained that he was the de facto sound engineer, answered whatever questions the musicians had about the setup here at KayJay's, and that was it. Curiously, Ozan was missing; well, that was the band's problem... When the audience started coming in, Jay didn't interact with them at all. Too many of them looked to be of high-school age; he remembered his own high school days. That had been an experience he didn't care for at all, and didn't appreciate being reminded of nowadays. Jay fully intended to stay backstage, and/or behind the place's 28-channel mixing board, until closing time. With judicious use of his Timeshift power, nobody would see him coming or going unless he damn well wanted them to. When the band took the stage -- still sans Ozan -- Jay made Timeshifted trips outside, one every few clock-seconds, to see if Ozan was just running late; if and when the singer showed, Jay intended to hurry him along as only Jubatus could. When Ozan arrived on stage, heralded by what amounted to a pocket lightning bolt and accompanying thunder, Jay's instincts triggered an involuntary upshift -- and then he started reviewing his mental files on the superbeings of Freedom City. The information Jay had memorized didn't cover all of Freedom's supertypes, of course. However, a guy whose days are 150 hours long has plenty of time on his hands, time enough to do a lot of reading... ...but the band was actually playing, so Jay back-burnered his private 'who is Eddie Ozan?' search and focused all of his attention on the task he was discharging.

And then Jay's brain caught up with his overly speedy mouth: Congratulations: You just mouthed off to the finest scientific mind of the last several decades! Hey -- wanna see how far you can push Archie before he loses his temper? The feline winced... "Okay," the feline replied in a subdued manner, if not quite 'tone'. "I, hrrm, right. Sorry about snapping at you -- I just, hrmm, mood swings. Borderline personality disorder, my shrink says. We're working on it." Jay shrugged. "My landlord was allergic to cats. I figured I didn't want to find out the hard way if that includes cheetahs." "Thank you, Doktor Archeville." Then, turning his attention to Dr. Rao: "Hrrrm, now what? This is all pretty new to me -- do the tissue samples next? Brainwave scans? Hrr, metabolic study on a treadmill? You're the doctor..." "Tissue samples first," was Rao's reply. Before long, Rao had samples of Jay's fur, blood, lymphatic fluid, earwax, saliva, and mucus, as well as a millimeter-sized chunk of muscle. The only bodily fluid not represented was semen; when Rao mentioned it, Jay's deeply horrified expression was enough to persuade her to do without that particular substance.

And on the first Friday in March, Jay Xavier failed to show up at KayJay's at 6 PM. Instead, he showed at 5:30. And after a perfunctory exchange of courtesies with KayJay, the feline got to work, checking over the sound system one last time before Octopus Dropkick arrived...

KayJay's is housed in a Quonset hut. Internally, it's about 50 feet wide and 20 feet high, and about 180 feet long. The main entrance is at one end; also at that end is a mezzanine level. I'd like to include graphics in this post, but the BB software won't let me do that -- it complains that it can't determine the dimensions of the images -- so you'll have to make do with clickable URLs. The main floor: http://transform.to/~cubist/stuff/Kayja ... -floor.gif (note: large image, 590*2009) The mezzanine level: http://transform.to/~cubist/stuff/Kayjays-mezzanine.gif Cross-sectional view: http://transform.to/~cubist/stuff/Kayjays-xsection.gif

Yes, the thread is alive. I wanted to work up a floor plan for KayJay's... and since it's a somewhat unusual shape of building, I figured it would be a good idea to do a 3D model of the place in Google SketchUp. Too time-consuming, alas. Am putting the 3D on the back burner and finishing up the 'conventional' floorplan now. Will post floorplan GIFs to this thread, and then we can all continue.

A note about Jubatus' first post in the MotVE thread: The idea here is that Jube sensed the proverbial 'disturbance in the Force' when Ms. Wells entered this dimension, and the sensation was strong/weird enough to drag him out of a more-or-less sound sleep. Okay, as "sound' as Jube's sleep ever is. Unable to just get back to sleep, Jube goes on patrol; I dunno how long it'll take Wells to finish recruiting local heroes and return to Earth Victoriana, but we can finesse the details so that Jube is Timeshifting at whichever precise moment Wells activates her 'dimension hopper' (with results we've already specified).

Elsewhere in Freedom City, a feline speedster was wrenched from unconsciousness. Jubatus had been in the converted SUV he called home, sleeping normally -- well, as 'normal' as anything was for him these days -- and now that he was awake, he was trying to remember what had roused him. Might have been nothing; Morpheus knew that the cheetah had woken up screaming/growling from nightmares often enough in the first few calendar-weeks after the fur showed up. Then again, Jube hadn't had one of those nightmares in the past three calendar-months, and he hadn't screamed this time... Let Hallstonne worry about it, he mused. That's what a therapist is for. In the meantime... In the meantime, Jubatus found he just wasn't sleepy any more. Figures. I got time to kill, then, he thought to himself. Don't need to hunt for any more freelance contracts just now... existing contracts fall into one of two categories, either 'don't feel like working on it at the moment'' or else 'waiting on necessary external resource'... don't need to go on an early shopping trip... In the end, there was only one item on Jube's agenda that really could use his attention right this second: Doing the superhero thing. And a few clock-seconds later, the fastest cat alive was speeding over the streets of Freedom.

Jay frowned at Archeville. "Don't make promises you can't keep, Doktor. And lay off the sunny forecasts -- I only want the truth out of you, no matter how unpleasant that truth might be." "Not necessary," the feline said as he reached into one of his many vest-pockets and pulled out a small, sealed plastic pouch that contained some loose strands of hair. Handing the pouch over to Dr. Rao, he explained, "Here you go -- hair from a comb of mine." "Thank you, Mr. Xavier!" Dr. Rao said. "I must admit, this is a pleasant surprise. How did you know you'd need to bring this with you?" "I didn't know I'd need it," Jay replied with his unique shrug. "I just figured it might be useful, and 'better to have and not need, than to need and not have', you know? Go wild. And... yeah, if that's not enough, you got my permission to send a team for a DNA search-and-retrieve. Probably won't find anything useful -- the place I was living at the time, they've got to have cleaned it up and rented to a new tenant by now -- but it's worth a shot anyway."

Preferred chance of failure: Greater than zero, because I like it when the good guys earn their happy ending. Preferred chance of getting beaten up: Again, greater than zero. Intelligent characters will presumably try to plan things out so as to minimize the chance of harm to themselves, but you know what they say about "the best-laid plans of mice and men"... Character death should come in one of two flavors: First, as a pre-arranged plot element with the cooperation of the character's player. Second, when a character has gone waaaay the heck out of their way to be really, really, really stoopid. I'm pretty sure that neither of those flavors of character death will be applicable here? Preferred level(s) of combat, socializing, etc: GM's choice. As long as Jube has opportunities to be useful, I'm okay with it. Dramatic elements/conflicts to include: What is the Measure of a Man? Jube isn't biologically human, so it's likely that some folks will treat him like the animal he resembles... Jube's 'cover story': He's a MIRACLE OF SCIENCE from the Americas, of course! (no way on Odin's green earth that Jube is ever going to employ a 'cover story' that entails his pretending to be an *animal*) Afterthought: As you correctly note, Jube is much different from the other characters. So how come he gets taken to EV with the others? Maybe-answeer: Jube's Timeshift makes Time itself run faster or slower -- hence, he's directly manipulating the fabric of the space/time continuum. What would happen if there was a trans-dimensional traveler in the 'vicinity' while Jube is actively twisting Time? Possibility of some sort of feedback/interference...Jube could perhaps get sucked into the traveler's "wake", or vice versa.