Search the Community

Thursday April 16, 2015 The Cline House Port Regal Don't make it sound like a creepy sex thing - don't make it sound like a creepy sex thing. Fast-Forward reminded himself as he finished tapping in the number for Starlight's drop phone, having exchanged contact information with the heroine after they'd finished their unpleasant encounter with the city's drug trade. Normally he was much more confident about phone conversations, but he'd picked up on some hints in conversing with the young woman that her situation was pretty dire - and he was familiar enough with poverty and desperation to know how the 'optics' (to use a phrase their PR guy Tony liked to use) might look shady to someone who didn't know him well. With his kids playing on the Wii U downstairs and his wife 'listening' to the phone call while she read a book on her iPad across the bedroom, it was easy to forget just how far up he'd come. Until he thought about the look in the eyes of kids like Starlight - and remembered it on his own face. When Starlight picked up, Richard said in a friendly voice, "Hello, Starlight - it's Richard Cline. Are you busy?"

Cline Home Port Regal, Freedom City, New Jersey 7:22 PM Saturday, February 21st, 2015 During Next-Gen's weekly training sessions, which had increased to bi-weekly since alien robots failed to destroy the planet, Will had expressed to his teammates that his parents needed a babysitter for his sister. Professor Psion's recent bout of being alive had left the family on high alert. Though before their teammate could spit out the request in full Thaelia had already gleefully volunteered. It went without saying that there was a moment of relief when Errant volunteered afterwards to help the overly ambitious demigoddess. The ever optimistic Glamazon was many things. An experienced hand at watching children was not at the top of the list. The fact that her mind was an open book was equally a mixed blessing in that she'd be someone not bothered in the slightest about watching over a telepath. As her telepathic partner in arms could attest. The princess of Atlantis had neither the patience nor the inclination to wait for a taxi, Thaelia had sped alongside traffic from the academy to the private Cline estate. A blur charging in an out of traffic without even the slightest notice of the below freezing temperature. Upon arriving she gave the premises an excited visual scan from the outside. Thaelia's familiarity with the living situation of her friends was mainly limited to the academy dorms. The Cline house was no dorm room for sure. The powerhouse babysitter would take a rare moment to wait for the other youth before starting a trek to the front door. Despite his lack of ability to encroach upon the sound barrier, Thaelia had never known Errant to be anything less than punctual.

February 28th, 2015 Night The Fens, Freedom City, New Jersey Miras stood at the edge of the rooftop and watched the police wheel the body out of the tiny apartment. She knew she really shouldn’t be here, she knew that it was a violation of the anonymity of Narcotics Anonymous, but her brain wouldn’t just let it go. She had missed Allison’s tousled blonde head at three weekly meetings, and after a couple of drinks the woman’s sponsor allowed that Allison wasn’t answering her cellphone, either. It had been a little bit harder to track her after that, as NA didn’t keep membership records, but she found the food bank Allison volunteered at and someone that Allison had taken home one night. That lead Miras to a dinky apartment in the Fens; at least she hadn’t had to break down the door to get inside. Inside it had been, well, the sort of place someone lives when they’re working too many hours at four different minimum wage jobs. The only thing that didn’t fit, the one thing Miras had been dreading, was Allison’s corpse on her bed, a needle still in her arm. She had called the police from a payphone and waited. To give credit to Freedom City’s finest, they responded quickly to an anonymous phone call from the bad part of town telling them that someone had ODed. Now the witch’s eyes followed the police and the paramedics as they wheeled the body away. She rolled an empty glass bottle between her fingers; it was a simple sort that existed by the hundred in any pharmacy. The label had been peeled off, and someone had drawn dozens of tiny ‘Z’s had been drawn on it with markers and fit it with a new rubber cap. It was perfect to hold a sample of intravenous drugs. A drug that had killed Allison. Miras felt something sharp cutting into her palm and looked down at her hand. The bottle was suddenly broken into little glass shards. She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. Whoever was behind this would pay for Alison’s death, but Miras wouldn’t let the scumbag take her own life and freedom away.

December 25th Continued from >Mind Over Matter Fast-Forward was back on the streets of Freedom City so fast he barely had time to grab a candy cane from a department store giveaway as he made his way to his first destination. It was evening New Jersey time when he appeared at Dancia Devons' front door in Lincoln, where his super-speed knock sounded like a machine gun's rat-a-tat before he slowed himself back down (and sped everything else up) until once again he was in sync with the normal world. Knocking firmly, he called, "Dancia Devons! Dancia Devons!" When she opened the door, the Discovery Channel personality on Dancia's doorstep said without preamble, "Scarab needs you to save the world from robot psychics from space." He glanced around quickly to make sure no one was in the hallway; luckily her neighbors were all still enjoying their Christmas. "How quickly can you get to Puerto Rico?"

November 1, 2014 Frances Psion swore up and down she had nothing to do with the mysterious fire in Blackstone's psychiatric wing a couple of weeks ago - but given her powers and her penchant for scrapping with prison security personnel, the Blackstone authorities haven't been inclined to take any chances. She's gotten into trouble with inmates too, trouble enough that there have been some very nasty threats against her life (and other things) made inside the prison compound. The Psions have been scrapping with villains for years and Ember had always been the Professor's fist; a sadistic brute whose fiery punishments were great at striking fear across the villain community. In jail, in power restraints, she's just a short woman with a strange accent, reddish-blonde hair and skin tanned a faint, perpetual orange. She's being transported to lockup in upstate New York, where she'll be held for the next few weeks until the repairs to Blackstone are finished and her safety can be guaranteed. After that, she'll start what may be the first of many trials sometime in the beginning of 2015. Surrounded by two heavily armored female prison guards, she's in power-nullification shackles and a Blackstone orange uniform that she wears like a badge of honor. She's not talkative today; instead staring out the open window she can make out past the guard on her left, her eyes hooded as she looks out at the clouds overhead. Among the passengers on this particular flight is someone very special - the second Foreshadow, a special consultant who has experience dealing with Ember Psion and her ways - as well as an ability to foresee the future. For this prisoner, with the escape attempts that have already happened, that's a very good thing. - Stronghold is in the air, soaring high above the clouds! It's cool and crisp this high, with only her ring's power saving her from an icy coating and hypoxia, but that's okay - it's a beautiful day and the clouds are the sort of light, fluffy things that in cartoons would be like big balls of cotton candy. Nearby she can see what looks like a Lear Jet zipping through the sky, but she's an experienced enough flyer by now to know how to handle herself around civilian traffic. It really is a beautiful day. - Back in Freedom City, it's Richard and Paige's day off - as well it might be, given that it's Saturday! Holly has begged her way into another viewing of Maleficent, and Will has blessedly volunteered to save his parents from yet another showing of a movie they've seen no less than four times now between the two of them. Christie had pulled some strings and gotten a prison-band radio for them to monitor Frances' flight, and occasionally in between house-cleaning they listened to the check-ins and all-clears from the pilots - who were now safely in the air.

HP for everybody!

November 26, 2014 Southside "Ugh." As the thunder rolled overhead, Fast-Forward stopped under a bus stop to change. "I hate running in the rain," he muttered to himself, "my whole front is soaked!" But it was less than a second, literally, for him to be in a fresh outfit. Sitting on the shelter's bench, he took out his hand-written directions, having as usual spurned advice to put directions on his phone. Don't need to carry that thing anyway. "OK, the guy is right here, and man, this neighborhood went to the dogs!" Southside had been a favorite hangout of his back in the day when he'd been young and stupid (and also awesome!) and this particular street had had the best spots. Vinny's is now a gay bar with no pub food and the old newstand is gone...oh man, this was the place where we got that costume of Paige's that - well, he certainly didn't mind his wife overhearing those thoughts (if she happened to be listening), but they certainly weren't productive for what was supposed to be a business conversation. "All right," he said aloud, "this place looks a little hinky, but magic people are always a little hinky." Not gonna burgle some guy's house unless he's a bad guy, so I'll wait till I know who's in there before I search the place. Phantasmo sounds like a legit name for a wizard, probably. Rechecking his black and white jumpsuit, cool shades, and high-topped sneakers to make sure he looked not just like a superhero but like a totally radical superhero, he headed over and zipped into the abandoned store at super-speed.

OOC

Bluebound Books Saturday, July 19th, 2014 7:30 PM Joe Macayle considered himself something of an amateur historian. But some times, that could be a broad consideration. There were areas he didn't know a whole lot about - the medieval era, the Civil War, the early American Revolution. But, at the same time, he knew there were areas that he could just tear into. World War II, early labor history, the superheroic record of Freedom City... and the town's punk scene. Which was why he was spending tonight at a bookstore instead of a club. Marc Varren, veteran Freedom City journalist, was presenting a reading from his new book, Screaming Indecency: Punk Rock, Freedom City, and the Moore Era. Joe knew a bit about the era, learned from the veterans of the scene - Moore's efforts to push for order, decency, and ethics (defined entirely by him, of course) pushed hard, and of course, the "disorderly," "indecent," and "unethical" of the city pushed back even harder. It was a time that had given rise to blistering music, a punk scene with enough passion to set the city of fire... and more than a few violent dissidents that almost did, something the papers of the era had been happy to make hay of. Then again, he hadn't lived it. Varren was one of the old guard punks, skin like shoe leather and tongue like fire. It'd be a hell of a thing to hear about the time from someone who'd been there on the streets.

Freedom City April 2014 The Crime Lab (Remote Site) Richard Cline was not one for advanced planning most of the time, but then again most of the time he wasn't going back to dinosaur times. "All right, the advance team has been on the island for almost a week, and they haven't run into anything larger than a Great Dane, so I think we'll be all right." He let one of the techs pop a USB into the computer's port (something he had deliberately notmastered), playing what looked like an iMovie recording of a mostly-deserted tropical island, complete with birds in the air and animals on the beach - until the viewer saw the teeth and scales on the feathered fliers overhead, or realized that those weren't dogs fighting over the washed-up fish on the beach. The island looked to be in the center of a small bay, with low hills and a river visible on the opposite coast a few miles away. "They're almost exactly at the site of Chicxulub, good good. We're lucky that island was there, the ultralights they sent out said it's all swampy marsh on the mainland." Fred Tanzin, the second unit director for Supercrime!, focused on the special guests. "We'll do some footage of you for the promos, either here in the studio once you come back or while you're in the field. We're still on for filming all the way from the 22nd through the 25th, local time. I know you've had a chance to read our briefing packet and be introduced to the on-air talent - but do you have any questions I can answer for you about the show?"

-Richard Cline, An Oral History of the Terminus Invasion Summer 1993 First National Bank of Lincoln Richard Cline stuck out in the crowd of customers waiting in line for the teller for three reasons - his tapping foot, rolling eyes, and general air of impatience marked him as someone eager to be anywhere else than waiting in line, his white skin and flashy clothes marked him as an outsider among the bank’s mostly working-class customers, and his baseball cap and sunglasses were just a little odd for this early in the morning. The other customers gave him a wide berth, when they weren’t glaring at him - just as planned. It was hot in the bank, but not quite hot enough for them to run the air - instead the music from the lot across the street gently thrummed in through the open windows. “Cause my heart is beatin’ triple time, yeah!” He did a little dance in place, snapping his fingers to the beat, and winked at a little kid watching him from the row behind. Poor little bastard, stuck in these lines with his boring mundane ‘rents. Maybe we’ll give him something to think about. He slid back and forth on his sneakers as he stood there, brand-new rubber squeaking again and again against the green marble floor. He and Paige hadn’t been back in Freedom City for a while, but they’d kept up their careers in New York and London, and even made the front page in the latter when they’d squared off against Britannia while making off with the Prime Minister’s watch. Maybe we should go to Canada next. Those jerks in True North could be taken down a notch or two. “What are _you_ looking at?” he sneered over his sunglasses at an older man in the business suit before he pulled the shades back up and made a rude face. Stupid old man, thinks he can start something. He yanked his fingers down his vest, snapping it tight, and thought Paige’s way. Baby, once we pawn the jewels, let’s run up to that theater in Queens and see Jurassic Park again. He knew his girl was already in position, getting the crowd in the bank ready for the show of their boring little lives, while he kept everyone’s attention through his confident demeanor and manly swagger. He tapped his pristine white Air Jordans and thought good thoughts about showing Paige a very good time in that darkened theater. Feeling like a T-Rex today! He was thirty years old, he had the best superpowers and the best girl in the world, and they were about to do what they did best - CRIME! Guard’s at the door...checking his watch...think he’s gonna go take a whiz. When he finally got to the front of the line, an eternally frustrating five or six minutes later, Richard pulled off his shades and smiled real big at the middle-aged clerk, flashing his pearly whites. “Honey, I got good news, and I got good news - first, you can take the day off. Even better is -” He jumped up and kicked off, speeding up the room and slowing himself as he did a totally, bodaciously badass flip that landed him on top of the counter. Enjoying the shocked faces of the crowd in that one long, frozen moment, he pulled off his magenta vest, bright red tie, black leather jacket, and white tee, and threw on the black and white jumpsuit that he’d been wearing since he was a teenager. “Fast-Forward and Hologram are here to put a little color in your lives! Everybody get down!”

Let's see, go ahead and give me an unmodified d20 roll for this one.

January 6, 2014 7:20 AM EST The first ray of sunshine came in the window and Richard Cline opened his eyes, ready for his last day off before they headed back to the West Coast for a full week of shooting. Richard sat up, pushing aside the linen sheets, and looked at the waxed-paper window on the wall of the little wooden house. Ticktickticktick Time slowed to a crawl for Richard Cline, as Fast-Forward took in his changed bedroom with all the time in the world. Linen sheets, featherbed, waxpaper windows, and I think that's a chamberpot under the bed...oh, geez, am I back in the Renaissance again? He looked down at the woman sharing his bed and reached down to gently nudge Paige awake, feeling the familiar brush against his mind that had been part of his soul for twenty-five years. Aw, geez, did I take her back with me again? She's gonna kick my ass after that thing with the Wild West... Ticktickticktick On the handwrought, overlapping planks, there was a woodcut of a man frozen in a blur of motion paired with a smiling woman in a low-cut dress, smoke and fire rising from her hands. Behind them were a young man in equal speed, and a young girl with the same energies as her mother. The legend read CIRCUS OF CRIME, MAGIC, MISCHIEF, AND MERRIMENT! STARRING THE LEGENDARY ROGUES - THE CLINE FAMILY! WITH PASSION PLAYS TO SHOW THE TRUE MORAL WAY! The smell of horses outside, the sounds of activity; a circus in the middle of waking up for the day. It's another goddamned crisis in time! Richard Cline snapped awake alongside an altered version of his wife, dressed in a long black nightdress, and asked the question he had to ask. "...Baby, is that you?"

Aw yeah this is bad

GM January 19th, 2014 Freedom City Fingers fly over a keyboard faster than the eye can see. "Dear Set II? Set Jr? This is Clock Queen, and it's high TIME we got together and talked about your old man. I'm in Freedom City right now and it's gloomsville around here. If you remember where the old Set put his stuff, you should meet me tonight at eight in the warehouse where the old Set kept that helicopter with the giant snake face. He really dug those snakes, hah-hah. Don't keep me waiting! Your good friend, Clock Queen. PS: Is it true you're just seventeen? BUMMER." With the email message set, Anne Cline sat back in her son's house and sighed. She'd been in this house nearly a week now; Paige was grieving her father, Dickie was helping Paige, and the kids knew their parents were going ape without hardly knowing the reasons why. She'd come up immediately from Florida when she'd heard they needed help, and was glad to do it. But it was sooooooo booooorrrriiiinnngggg.

December 7, 2013 Kingston Midnight "Fullæstum! Cwæ, fullæstum mec!" The cry was coming from a deserted stretch of half-grown forest near a recent development as Cobalt Templar and Stronghold flew overhead, and as the ring-bearing sentinels flew low they soon found the source of the cry - a young woman about Corbin's apparent age, with long black hair cascading down her back and nearly chalk-white skin. Her clothes were a mess, a torn and slashed fast-food worker's uniform exposing half-healed wounds beneath as if she'd been attacked by a wild animal. Her eyes were the most striking; one an almost brilliant blue, the other a deep shade of purest black. When she caught sight of the descending heroes, she ran towards them, her eyes wide and her voice a scream. "Ellefnee, brega! Ic wédenheortu!" - December 7, 2013 Lincoln 1 AM Temperance was on patrol when the giant landed on the roof opposite her - there was no other way to describe the man-shaped, eagle-headed and magnificently-winged creature that towered at least twice her father's height as it pointed a taloned fist at her and spoke. The words were chilling like a winter squall, cold and wet as they slapped against her skin, the giant's voice like an avian shriek in an alien tongue. "Drýicge, for anlécas, ærfæder - Cume æt mec, or ic ábær ðu!" It shouted the words again, shaking those mighty wings, as it came closer and closer. Up close, she could feel the celestial chill that rose from those great wings, and see the ice that rimed the massive feathers - it was reaching for her, all right, as if planning to scoop her up into the night sky from which it had soundlessly come!

A DC 20 Bluff check reveals that's not Samedi at all, but an imposter. Initiative time! Richard goes on 15+27=42 Samedi goes on 21 Clock Queen goes on 23+12=35

2AM (Los Angeles time) December 5, 2013 Richard Cline sipped his coffee and checked his 1989 Chrono-Quartz digital watch, a 20th anniversary present that he would get tired of about the time his son stopped asking him when he was going to learn how to text. Six am in Freedom City. Better get moving. "Juanita," he said, slapping a twenty down to pay for the several cups he'd drunk that morning, "your coffee is great every night, but this stuff?" he picked up the cup and winked, glad as ever he'd found this greasy spoon diner instead of the trendy coffee shops everyone else seemed to hit in LA. "Totally radical." He stepped out of the shop, let his feet hit the pavement - and ran. Back in the late 90s when he and Paige had been trying to have a kid, Richard had sat down for the first time with a science-type and figured out how his powers worked. Behind all the nerd stuff, the German guy they'd hired had been pretty straightforward: first he emitted a chroniton field that stopped time all around himself, freezing everyone and everything in a nanosecond bubble of no-time as his powers washed over everything like paint on a tie-dyed shirt. And then he turned his power on himself, accelerating his own subjective time so that he was running faster than a man, faster than a plane, faster than Johnny Rocket, as he laughed at the sound barrier and reached his typical cruising speed of 20,000 miles an hour. At the end of a run, he reversed the process, slowing himself back down again, then restarting local time so that he synched back up with the rest of the world. From Richard's perspective, though, it was like this - Olvera Street slowed to first a crawl, then a stand-still as Richard sprinted down the zigzag brick street. Pause. A moment later, as acceleration kicked in, the city erupted to life again as Fast-Forward rocketed down blurred LA streets faster than a jet could fly, Richard's phenomenal reflexes turning speeding cars and zipping bikes into so many standing-still slowpokes. Play. As he left the LA basin behind, Richard reached down his watch and hit the timer button, a smile curling his lips. "Time to fast-forward!" he exulted as he hit hypersonic speed, the wind in his face like a summer breeze as the world became a series of slow-moving images and garbled sounds, the thousands of miles between LA and Freedom City falling away like a sprint around the block. 8 and a half minutes from LA to Freedom City. Four slow, slow minutes buying a box of assorted doughnuts at World's Fair in St. Louis. His watch beeped at 6:13 as he hit the streets of Freedom City and Richard slowed down, coming to a halt just outside the Cline family's brand-new front door at six-fifteen on the dot. He glanced down at his watch and turned off the little timer, keeping a grimace off his face. Fifteen minutes to go cross-country. I'm turning into Don freaking Ameche here! He pushed that thought down, reminding himself that today wasn't about the old man, today was about his boy and the family taking him to school. Holly was asleep, or at least her lights were off, but even still there was no burdening his little girl with her dad's unhappy thoughts. He glanced back at the white picket fences around the house and opened the door; his leather jacket was hanging up and costume in his belt buckle faster than a normal man could blink, and he set the box of donuts down where they'd stay warm in the kitchen. All right, time for breakfast...Freedom City was cold, so reluctantly he turned on the electric stove, flipping his way through five or six cookbooks until he remembered where he'd left Will's favorite Mexican bacon and egg recipe. This was a big day for the kid - better get it started off right!

Players Name: AvengerAssembled Characters Name: Fast-Forward Power Level: 12/14 (229/232PP) Trade-Offs: +5 Defense/-5 Toughness and None Attack/Damage as a Speedster, +5 Defense/-5 Toughness and -4 Attack/+4 Damage as Mystic Unspent PP: 3 In Brief: Iron Age villain turned Modern Age hero, speedster punk turned family man and veteran hero Alternate Identities: Tempus Fugitive Identity: Richard Anthony Cline Birthplace: Freedom City, New Jersey, USA Occupation: TV Star Affiliations: Shenanigans Family: Paige Psion-Cline, William Cline, Holly Cline Age: 50 (born 1963) Apparent Age: 30s Gender: Male Ethnicity: White American Height: 6 feet Weight: 160 lbs Eyes: Blue Hair: Black Description: Richard Cline is a tall, slim man with a runner's build. His hair is slicked up in that peculiarly 80s style and he wears leather jackets and jeans when he can, just like his hero Bruce Springsteen. His costume is a black and white bodysuit in traditional style - he doesn't wear a mask, and never has. He does wear a jacket over his spandex bodysuit, particularly when he needs to carry things. These days he carries a small, leather-bound Victorian book in his pocket. Powers and Abilities: Fast-Forward's speed powers are based in temporal manipulation rather than in super-speed as such - he accelerates his local frame of reference and appears to run fast, punch as fast and hard as an assault rifle, and a great many other super-speed tricks. He leaves behind a faint glowing red trail as he runs, a phenomenon caused by hyper-accelerated air molecules crashing back into their neighbors. His powers have begun to fade slightly as he ages, but he remains one of the fastest beings alive. His magical abilities come from carrying around the Tome of Theurgy, a sort of pocket guide to the magic of the stars that lets him call on the magic of the Behenian fixed stars to aid him in battle. Not being a subtle man, he uses his powers for spectacular evocations - hurling glowing fireballs, summoning tremendous storms, and otherwise making sure that he is the life of the party that he has always believed himself to be. Personality and Motivation: Richard's kind of a jerk, something of an occupational hazard for your typical speedster. But he's also a veteran who's been around the block many times, and that's significantly tempered the arrogant jerk who was pretty hard to be around back in the 1980s. He wants to make Freedom City safe for his family, and help make sure the kids tehse days don't make the mistakes he made when he was a kid. He loves his wife and kids more than anything in the world, though he has a considerably more complicated relationship with his still-living parents. He's still inclined to question authority in a Green Arrow sort of way, and doesn't always get along great with cops and other government officials, though he is always perfectly correct when there are cameras around. He's very handsome, though also very married. History: Some legacies in Freedom City aren't forged in the light of day. Richard Cline was born in August of 1964 to Anne Cline, aka Calendar Girl, speedster and smash-and-grab thief and briefly the sidekick of Doc Holiday. Abandoned by her partner when she got pregnant, Anne did the only thing she could, she raised her son at her side as first her ward, then her partner in crime. Richard developed his speed powers early, a legacy of all the times his mother had used her powers while he was in utero, and eagerly trained as his mother's sidekick. His childhood was great in some ways: the Crime League of the 1960s and 1970s were like a weird little family for him. He met gods and monsters, scientists and mystics, and sometimes crashed at their place for a few weeks until his mom could escape. She was Clock Queen, beautiful and glamorous, and he loved her with the devotion of a son for a doting parent. But his childhood was poor in some ways as well; he spent less than a year inside a classroom from age six to age eighteen, and only learned to read and write well from being able to practice at super-speed when he was very bored. Even when he put on a shiny four-colored costume to match his mother's, Richard didn't really know anything about the world except how to rob it. Eventually time ran out for Clock Queen and her sidekick Tempus Fugitive. As the world darkened into the grim days of the 1980s, their brand of crime no longer fit. A few months before his 18th birthday, Richard joined his mother for one last big score in Freedom City, a jewel heist that would give him a nest egg to start on his own career as an independent villain - and maybe work something out with Paige Psion, the daughter of Parker Psion and somebody he was more than sweet on. But it all went wrong: the cops showed up with temporal nullifiers and stopped them both dead in their tracks, dragging mother and son both off to jail. As the police closed in, Anne Cline saw her son's life in peril from a rogue Freedom City cop (there were a lot of those in those days) and shattered the man's legs, escalating this arrest to one that might have seen both mother and son go away for many years. Abandoned by the Crime League (which was already coming to an end itself), the Clines were left without allies. Anne stepped up for perhaps the first time in her life, spinning a grim story to the cops about how she’d abused and brainwashed Richard, that he’d only obeyed her out of fear of her wrath. Richard was sentenced as a juvenile despite the multiple felonies he was charged with and was released on his 21st birthday in 1985; Anne herself got a twenty year sentence. When Richard got out, the Moore era was just beginning, and the young man was disgusted by what he saw. Criminals had turned into psychopaths, cops had become bullies and tyrants, and the heroes had been chased away or turned killer. It was time to turn to _crime_: Fast-Forward, the laughing speedster-rogue, debuted by publicly pantsing the mayor, making sure the police would hunt him for his blood for the rest of the Moore administration. Maybe that life had been forgotten in a Freedom City had turned its back on its superheroes; had turned its back on the joy and laughter of the previous generation. Well, that was all right: he'd bring that world back. He'd _make_ the stupid sheep of Freedom City understand what they'd lost and he'd get damn rich in the process. And he'd do it without bending his head to any of the other supercriminals on the loose in his city in the process. Richard assembled a new costume together out of the raddest fashion gear he could: tight black spandex, aviator glasses, and bought enough mousse to give himself the big hair of the guys he'd seen on TV when he was locked up. Richard had always been a walking temporal anomaly, but in the 1980s he really was a man out of time: a costumed criminal who didn't kill, who avoided violence when he could, who focused on wacky theme crime with matching henchmen, who preferred to thumb his nose at vigilantes and the law rather than punch them in the face. He was equally likely to fight RIOT as FORCE Ops, and indeed he and Archer had something of a grudging understanding given their mutual history and how much the world had changed around both men. When cops opened fire on him, he'd laugh and rip the guns out of their hands or just slap them silly; when RIOT hurled fireballs at him he'd leave them paused and naked on the street. A dozen times, he nearly died, but he was just too fast for the world around him. (It helped that the super-speedsters of the past who'd once bedeviled him had all retired or died at this point, making him basically invulnerable to the local cops and supers alike if he had room to run) And luckily, he wasn't alone. Paige had finally broken out from under her father's tyrannical thumb, and the two of them hooked up again not long after his release. Paige Psion was a good influence on him; she got him to try bigger stuff than just petty, hilarious snatch-and-grabs like robbing an entire CODE fundraiser of their valuables, she also got him off cocaine and the other drugs he'd started taking, making clear that if he did want their relationship to resume, he needed to make her his focus, not his cocaine habit. Taking the name Hologram in honor of her illusion powers, Richard and Paige became a daring criminal duo like people in Freedom City hadn’t seen in years, gleefully bilking the rich and stupid while making sure they spent enough to stay popular in the community. It was a good life, one which Richard, deep down, sometimes still misses. The end of the Moore Act promised good things for the future for the young couple; who knew what fun they could have now that the heroes were back? All that came to an end when the Terminus Invasion happened. Fast-Forward and Hologram stood together against the world-conquering threat of Omega, battling Omegadrones and Annihilists alike, watching as friends and enemies and thousands of others died before Omega was finally defeated. Was it the horrors of T-Day that prompted Fast-Forward’s moral switch? The impact on him of the death of the Centurion? Or was it simply the realization that his old life just wasn’t working anymore in the new Freedom City now that the people had learned to appreciate their heroes again? Either way, he and Hologram decided it was time to get out of town: taking advantage of a Freedom Leage offer that gave a full pardon to all supers who’d helped out in the invasion as long as they stopped committing crimes, Richard and Paige skipped town and headed out of Freedom City. With a full pardon in hand from the US government, they lived in Freedom City and helped out for a few years, finding steady work and (after a few years, and a lot of trying) becoming parents of William Cline. Richard hated it, and almost went back on the coke he'd quit some years earlier, but he was determined to build a steady life for himself and his family. But it's tough to keep a secret from a psychic, especially your wife, and Paige was ready to travel too. When William was eight, they packed up and started moving, traveling in an RV and exploring the country, living the life of hard-traveling adventurers. They did a little of this and a little of that, and worked as part-time heroes, but weren't very happy: they got a big surprise when it turned out that Richard's regenerative and temporal abilities meant that his vasectomy hadn't taken and Paige became pregnant again - Holly Cline was born in Freedom City just in time for his creepy father-in-law to start sniffing around again. Richard despised Parker and frankly wouldn't have minded ratting the old man out, or maybe making sure he stopped being a threat to the family, but thought it was better to get out of Freedom fast. So they went back on the road, this time until they reached the Pacific, where the Psion family had never had much reach. Their window into a renewed celebrity came just a few years ago, when they were called in as consultants for a show the Discovery Channel was airing about the history of super-crime. The pair were funny and charismatic, and had stories to tell most people had never heard, and after several guest appearances they were spun off as the cohosts of Supercrime! Supercrime! (don't forget the !) is a wide-ranging show that takes a broad look at the history of supercrime in the United States, and Richard is very happy there, working alongside his wife and (sometimes) his son! But recently things have been changing, and not necessarily to Richard's advantage. Richard's daughter's psychic powers erupted recently, leaving the eight year old girl with mighty psychic powers and the family with a problem. Moving out to Freedom City (and commuting home with Richard's powers) helped with that, giving her access to the Nicholson School and eventually Claremont. (It also meant getting a heroic education for William, who by now was getting a little old to be taught by his parents) But one problem that couldn't be solved were Richard's powers: the super-speed that had powered him for most of his life had begun to fade by the time he reached his late forties, a slow decline that the super-doctors on the West Coast probably would last for the rest of his life. His speed dropped from close to light speed to hypersonic within the space of a few months, and the thought of being forever stuck in second gear made him feel unhappy. Faced with the choice of letting his powers fade gracefully or trying to infuse himself with more chronitons (a risky, dangerous task), Richard took a third option. He dug an old book out of his collection, one he'd picked up in a moment of panic in 1993 to help save the world, and for the first time opened it up and began to read... History of the Tome: The Tome of Theurgy is a handwritten volume by Violet Pennyworth, Master Mage of Earth before her tragic death in 1893. The book describes Pennyworth's experiments with directly tapping the magical essence of the Behenian stars, using Hermetic ritual and incantation to summon the mystic energies of those fifteen stars to Earth for great power. Pennyworth ultimately abandoned her work, leaving the book itself only halfway finished at her death - though her interest in starry magic did ultimately lead her to her last and fatal confrontation with cultists of the Unspeakable One. The book itself is a small, pocket-sized edition of what was once a diary, bound in pristine black leather. The pages inside are covered in handwritten notes and observations that would take a scholar hours to read and digest. The Tome disappeared from Violet's library not long after her death and has only occasionally been seen since - starry magic is a particularly laborious process given the need to perform all the relevant astronomical calculations moment-to-moment, and the incomplete nature of the book means that secrets may lie inside for the unwary. The Tome was last seen by the general super-public in the late 1970s, when the supervillain Clock Queen and her sidekick Tempus Fugitive robbed the estate sale of the Usher family, appropriating many valuable texts from that twisted criminal line. Mechanically, the tome is difficult to use in combat - its densely packed script is challenging to read, the calculations it requires must be done with incredible precision, and the Earth moves so rapidly that after the initial few castings of the summoning spells contained within, the book must be set aside so the spells inside can be recast over a period of hours. To use the book reliably in combat, a mystic would need both fantastic speed and a mastery over time itself. A silver chain keeps it fastened to Richard's jacket when he takes it out, something he can snap on instantly thanks to his superspeed. Complications: Under Pressure: Richard has a family to protect, for good or ill - including a mother and father who are among the most notorious thieves of the Silver Age, and one of its nuttiest costumed villains, respectively. (Clock Queen and Doc Holiday have not spoken since the breakup of the Silver Age Crime League). Pour Some Sugar On Me: Richard is happily married as only a man with a beautiful wife who just happens to be a psychic can be. However, he’s always had a soft heart for the ladies and may be vulnerable to some persuasion by them in a crisis. The Magic Number: While the Tome of Theurgy carries the gestalt knowledge of centuries of astral magic, Richard does not actually know anything about magic. Back in Black: Like many who lived in Freedom City in the Iron Age, Richard hates ninjas. Stupid Katanarchists. Walk This Way: A celebrity Discovery Channel host, Richard's face is known, and he has to behave himself in public most of the time Karma Chameleon: Richard is a convicted felon. Though his record is putatively clean today (thanks to many of his offenses being committed while he was a juvenile and others wiped away by either the statute of limitations or his pardon after the Terminus Invasion), he’s acutely aware that well-connected enemies could potentially cause a lot of problems for him. White Lines (Don't Do It): Former cokehead Fast-Forward is now a Narcanon member, and may find that responsibility taking him to some very interesting places indeed. Don't You Forget About Me: Freedom City has largely forgotten the 80s and early 90s, with the heroes and villains of those days dismissed as murderers or psychotic killers respectively - this is something Richard is determined to make sure they never forget. Walk Like An Egyptian: Fast-Forward once spent a week in Set’s lair. It was actually fine, Set kept his word to Clock Queen and was a good, if stern, provider: but in the aftermath, Richard has never really liked snakes. He thinks they’re spying on him. And maybe they are. Like a Virgin: Richard can be kind of a jerk sometimes. He’s working on that, though, and is much more pleasant to be around than he was in the 1980s. Take On Me: Though he’s aware he’s slower than most of the younger speedsters out there, Richard isn’t above competition with potential rivals like Downtime, Johnny Rocket, or even PC speedsters. I Can’t Go For That: Like many middle-aged people, Richard is most comfortable in the pop culture of his youth. Though he plays it up for laughs, he honestly doesn’t understand the charm of most modern-day music, style, and entertainment, and sometimes technology from after 1995 or so leaves him baffled. He’s a quick study, but it takes a lot to get him to make that studying in the first place. Hungry Like The Wolf: Fast-Forward has never quite gotten over the Iron Age. Not that he’s eager to go back to the days of lethal heroes and monstrous villains, much less a corrupt system and sheep-like townspeople, but he’s never lost the feeling that there’s another Moore Act out there just waiting to be passed. This has left him with a distrust for authority figures and government types that can occasionally seem a little odd in the modern era. You Shook Me All Night Long: Richard really hates corrupt cops and prison guards, and makes them particular targets of his hero work: nothing is more satisfying than putting away one of the cops (or their spiritual descendants) who used to harass him when he was a kid or in juvie. I Can't Change Time: Given the nature of Richard's powers, GMs should feel free to have interesting things happen when he uses extra effort with his Speedster array - surprise time travel, the arrival of dinosaurs, etc. As it goes! With Or Without You: Fast-Forward is on a first-name basis with many of the old lags from the Silver and Bronze Age Crime Leagues, some of whom helped raise him from birth. While he won’t go easy on them if they’re actually doing something bad, he takes something of a live and let live approach (in the finest tradition of the live-action Batman series) to those old-timers. No Way Out: Between one thing and another, most people don't leave the Crime League. Fast-Forward is one of the few people who has and lived to tell the tale. So far, anyway. Enola Gay: The Tome of Theurgy is a blunt instrument at the best of times, and Fast-Forward's not a terribly subtle guy. Sometimes he has to lay off the magic so he doesn't set the town on fire. Abilities: 2 + 6 + 6 + 0 + 4 + 6 = 24PP STR 12 (+1) DEX 16 (+3) CON 16 (+3) INT 10 (+0 WIS 14 (+2) CHA 16 (+3) Combat: 12 + 12 = 24PP ATK: +6 (+8 Theurgy/+10 Speedster Array) DEF: +17/+15/+11 (+6 Base, +5 Dodge Focus, +4 Enhanced Dodge, +2 Shield; +3 flat-footed) Init: +3/+27 with Speedster Powers Grapple: +7 Knockback: -3/-2/-1 Saves: 5 + 16 + 8 = 29PP TOU +7/+5/+3 (+3 Con, +2 Defensive Roll, +2 Protection) FORT +8 (+3 Con, +5) REF +19 (+3 Dex, +16) WILL +10 (+2 Wis, +8) Skills: 124R = 31PP Acrobatics 9 (+12) Bluff 11 (+14) Skill Mastery Climb 8 (+9) Disable Device 15 (+15) Skill Mastery Escape Artist 9 (+12) Gather Information 8 (+11) Knowledge (History) 15 (+15) Knowledge [Popular Culture] 2 (+2) Languages 1 (Hebrew; English base) Notice 8 (+10) Search 8 (+8) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Skill Mastery Sleight of Hand 10 (+13) Stealth 12 (+15) Skill Mastery Feats: 11PP Challenge (Fast Taunt) Dodge Focus 5 Evasion Move-By Action Skill Mastery (Bluff, Disable Device, Sense Motive, Stealth) Taunt Uncanny Dodge (Auditory) Enhanced Feats Defensive Roll Dodge Focus 4 Evasion [to 2] Fast Overrun Improved Initiative 6 Improved Overrun Instant Up Powers: 32 + 15 + 1 + 7 + 1 + 6 + 1 + 1 + 42 + 3 + 1 = 110PP Device 8 (40PP, Tome of Theurgy, Flaw: Hard to Lose) [32PP] Enhanced Skills 20 (Knowledge [Arcane Lore] 10 (+10), Knowledge [Theology and Philosophy] 10 (+10)) [5DP] Force Field 2 (mystic shields) [2DP] Shield 2 (mystic shields) [2DP] Super-Senses 7 (Detect Magic 3 [mental], Enhancements: Acute, Analytical, Radius, Ranged) [7DP] Theurgy Array 24 (48 PP, PFs: Accurate, Alternate Powers 5, Flaw: Action [Full], Drawback: Action 6 [20 minutes to change allocation]) [24DP] BE: Paralyze 12 (cursed light of Algol; Extras: Alternate Save [Fortitude, +0], Area [General, Cone], Secondary Effect) {48/48} AP: Dazzle 12 (visual) (blinding light of Asteroth; Extras: Area [General, Burst], Secondary Effect) {48/48} AP: Damage 16 (stormy light of Arcturus; Extra: Area [Targeted, Shapeable], PFs: Indirect 2, Stunning Attack, Variable Descriptor 1 [any weather]) {36/48} AP: Blast 16 (burning light of Sirius; Extra: Area [Targeted, Cylinder]) {48/48} AP: Snare 12 (nourishing light of Spica; Extras: Area [General, Burst], Regenerating) {48/48} AP: Teleport 12 (1200 ft/20 million miles) (hasty light of the Pleiades; Extras: Affects Others, Area [burst]) {48/48} Enhanced Feats 15 (Defensive Roll, Dodge Focus 4, Evasion [to 2], Fast Overrun, Improved Initiative 6, Improved Overrun, Instant Up) [15PP] Feature 1 (temporal inertia) [1PP] Healing 1 (temporal acceleration, Extra: Affects Others, PF: Persistent) [7PP] Immunity 1 (aging) [1PP] Immunity 10 (psionic effects; Flaw: Limited [Half-Effect]; PF: Selective) [6PP] Quickness 1 (x2) [1PP] Speed 1 (10 MPH/100 feet per move action) [1PP] Speedster Array 19 (38PP, PFs: Alternate Power 4) [42PP] BE: Enhanced Speed 9 [to Speed 10 (10,000 MPH/100,000 feet per move action)] (Extra: Affects Others 10) + Enhanced Quickness 9 [To Quickness 10 (x5000)] (Extra: Affects Others 10) {19+19=38/38} AP: Damage 10 (goon-sweeper, Extras: Area [Targeted, Shapeable], Penetrating [6], Selective, PFs: Accurate 2) {38/38} AP: Damage 10 (velocity punch, Extras: Autofire, Penetrating [6], Secondary Effect, PFs: Accurate 2) {38/38} AP: Feature 30 (Buys off Action Flaw and Drawback on Magic) + Enhanced Speed 4 (to Speed 5 (250 MPH/2500 feet per move action])+ Enhanced Quickness 4 (to Quickness 5 (x50)] {30+4+4=38} {38/38} AP: Paralyze 10 (time-stop, Extras: Alternate Save [Reflex, +0], Autofire, PFs: Accurate 2, Improved Crit 2) {34/38} Super-Movement 3 (Wall-Crawling 2, Water-Walking, Flaw: Limited [Only While Running]) [3PP] Super-Senses 1 (Communications Link [mental] (Hologram)) [1PP] DC Block: ATTACK RANGE SAVE EFFECT Unarmed Touch DC 16 Tou Damage [Physical] Goonsweeper Area [Shapeable] DC 20 Ref [DC 25/20 Tou] Damage [Physical] Velocity Punch Touch DC 25 Tou Damage [Physical] Time-Stop Touch DC 20 Ref Slowed/Paralyzed Cursed Light Area [Cone] DC 22 Ref [DC 22/16 Fort] Slowed/Paralyzed Blinding Light Ranged [Burst] DC 22 Ref/DC 22 Ref [DC 22 Fort] Blinded Stormy Light Area [Shapeable] DC 31 Tou Damage [Physical/Energy] Burning Light Ranged [Cylinder] DC 31 Tou Damage [Energy] Nourishing Light Ranged [Burst] DC 22 Ref/DC 22 Ref Entangled/Bound Totals: Abilities 24 + Combat 24 + Saves 29 + Skills 31 + Feats 11 + Powers 110 = 229/232PP