Paradigm_Shift

OOC:

Human Base: Yes. Involuntary on your part: Not my problem. And do you think somebody trying to kill you is going to sit still and just LET YOU monologue? Whether or not you stop talking is up to you. I never said you stopped talking, merely that your speech was cut off by an action that would usually have prompted you ceasing to make noise with your mouth. If you want to keep talking while fighting, I am not stopping you. That would be kinda cool if Flashpoint did that, actually. Makes him kinda badass. If I worded my previous posts in a way that implied I was forcing an interrupt, I apologize. That was not my intention.

And FYI, not talking anymore won't change anything. Just hearing you speak once caused the over-ride. Not talking won't change that since he still knows you can, in fact, speak. Hence the entire scenario I'm inacting right now is that of attacking your character because he is viewed as a hostile. As the situation currently is, my character has no desire to coincide peacefully with your character. In other words: I are pee vee peeing.

BIC:

Unfortunately for Flashpoint's flame, Egregore had a thermal shield, evidenced by the faint orange glow that now surrounded the Cyborg in place of his kinetic shield. This was going to get hot...Or not, really. Suddenly Egregore had teleported a way off and attempted to fire off another shot with his sap stick. As he 'ported in, he made an odd jerking motion with his left foot, as if kicking something...

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"To be..."

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Once more the tanker was cut off by the actions of the cyborg, who yet again heard the tanker speaking in THAT language. He materialized a gas canister in his right hand and dropped to the ground to dispense its contents. And gas did not have a friendly fire feature. Seeing as this was the same stuff Longbow Cataphracts and PPD Enforcers used to make even the toughest brutes stop dead in their tracks to hurl their entire stomache out, it would NOT be pleasent to be caught in it.

Of course, that alone wasn't really enough. At best, it would only hinder Flashpoint for a brief moment-Unless Egregore somehow got his defenses to drop. Which is where the sap stick he still had in hand came into play. Calling it a sap stick was actually not the proper term-It was a nullifier stick. It was made to drain various energy types or cause feedback, and was also designed to temporarily shut down certain abilities among supers, often referred to as 'toggles.' If Flashpoint should be unlucky enough, the weapon could make him much more vulnerable to the gas even now bursting forth from the canister.

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anything Flashpoint Zeo says, any humans who hear it, hear it in their own native tongue- there are one or two exceptions to the 'humans only' rule, but they're not likely to turn up in this particular situation.

[/ QUOTE ]"Not what. Who." the big tanker corrected blandly.

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Flashpoint Zero didn't get any further than that. Egregore had been slightly confused after the first two words, and then he realized just what language the tanker was speaking in. He spent the final two words kicking into overdrive.

Prime Directive Over-ride initiated. Source: Eternal Engine. New Prime Directive: Terminate identified varient with extreme predjudice.

And while this was happening, Egregore's systems had automatically given the flaming newcomer a good look-over. A super-speeding meta with a shielding varient of fire manipulation. It processed all the information it could find and then gave Egregore the best possible scenario. His plasma rifle dematerialized to be replaced with a Vanguard Psi bomb. The first indication that everything was about to go straight to hell was simply him pressing the remote detonation button on the device. An extremely powerful 45 meter omnidirectional blast of pure Psi power flooded the area. Not to say everyone wasn't at risk. Indeed, Egregore had a friendly fire feature programmed into all of his modules. The soldiers, all tagged as friendly, would be unaffected, as would Egregore. Flashpoint Zero, on the other hand, had been tagged as a code black hostile.

There was no warning for any of this. Heck, the only indication that ANYTHING had just happened was simply Egregore's plasma rifle vanishing. Whether Flashpoint Zero could react to this in time and in the correct manner remained to be seen, but regardless of whether or not he escaped the blast, Egregore Device proceeded to raise his sap stick and fire it at the tanker...

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"Not very well", the soldier replied, cautiously coming out to where the cyborg could see he, though her rifle was still pointed squarely at his chest. "I guess you realised that already", she added as she heard him laughing. Tempting as it was to shoot him just for that, she didn't. "Do you speak German?", she asked hopefully, not really wanting to keep amusing him with her horrible accent.

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Egregore quickly recovered from his laughter and proceeded. "Not at the moment. I was hoping you'd reply in German so my systems could run a few algorithms and update my speech center. But, here we are talking in English."

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In any case, she knew she'd feel better with someone backing her up, and thus the other three now moved out of cover as well. True, generally this wasn't a sound maneuver, but if this wasn't an ŠZBV cyborg after all, it was a show of good faith - and if it was...well, cover wouldn't have helped much anyway.

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The cyborg casually made his plasma rifle materialize in his right hand, although he did not raise it.

"Now to fully answer your question from before...I am from Primal Earth. Axis forces and some others I didn't recognize came through a portal. Several heroes along with myself got caught up in the ensuing fight, and suddenly the portal blows up. Next thing I know I'm here. I wouldn't know if any of the others survived or got caught in the blast."

Not really, no.

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What language is that? English? That settled it, this guy must be from somewhere else. She knew the ŠZBV cyborgs never talked to their targets, just killed them. So this guy either was from Primal Earth or some third party she was unaware of. She tried to remember as much as she could of the English she'd learned back in school before speaking. "Who are you, and where did you come from?", she yelled back to the cyborg. Her pronunciation was off at times and her accent was horrible, but it was understandable at least.

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"Oh, thank Joule. You speak English. I'm from Primal Earth, and I-" Which was about when he caught sight of the translation his systems had rattled off. The girl's accent and pronunciation were both horrible. So horrible, in fact, that the translator did not identify the language being spoken as English and fired off several equations until it came up with a translation. A little line of text ran across Egregore's eye.

Me love you long time.

And with that, the Cyborg started laughing. A deep, bellowing noise that rang and echoed off the sewer walls.

Egregore narrowed his eyes from behind his goggles. How come they hadn't attacked yet? This was unusual. VERY unusual. From what he knew of Axis America, their forces usually attacked on sight-Sometimes their very own citizens. If this was a group of Axis, they would not be behaving this way. Something was up.

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"Hey!" she yelled around the corner, of course staying in cover with her rifle clutched ready and speaking in German, "What are you waiting for? Your Sovereign decide killing people quickly isn't good enough anymore...?!"

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A stream of pure gibberish flooded the cyborg's ears.

'Ok. What? Damn language barrier. I don't even know if they'll understand my witty retort. Wait-That's it...'

Translation process started. More input needed.

"Speak up some you crazy Germans, I can't understand a thing you're saying." Egregore Device yelled back.

As for as customization goes, as far as I have seen, CoX is the best. There is nothing else out there that gives anywhere near as much customization freedom as we get.

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"Don't they usually attack on sight? It obviously knows we're here, so why's it just sitting there?", one of the other grey-uniformed soldiers spoke up in German, a slight trembling in her voice betraying the repressed desire to turn and run like hell, even though she knew she'd never outrun it. She swung round to check behind them, half expecting to see another cyborg coming up behind them to take advantage of the distraction, but there was nothing.

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OOC:

You do realize Egregore just threw a knife into the gunman's scope? It would be ridiculously easy to mistake it for an actual attack.

Or was that reaction intentional, already knowing that?

The gunman got a glimpse of something narrow and shiny before the throwing knife suddenly embedded itself in his scope, rendering it useless. Egregore Device raised his hand and another knife materialized in his right hand, ready to be thrown at a moment's notice. His sap stick was suddenly in his left hand, which was lowered-Perhaps he was reluctant to use it. He had decloaked. He didn't see a need for it, oft treating it as a last resort.

There was the faint glow of a kinetic shield around the cyborg, and rest assured, any shot from a gun would fail to penetrate unless it was a perfectly precise shot. *The shield served to further deflect inaccurate shots, but could not deflect shots perfectly in-line with its module in the center of Egregore's chest.* Without his scope, the gunman would not be making any such shots unless he was at point-blank range.

That had been the warning. The cyborg was not looking for a fight-But he would defend himself if necessary. He stood perfectly still, knife gleaming under the light fixtures above, glaring at the gunman from behind his goggles as if daring him to take a shot.

But he did not strike. He waited. Now it all came down to how twitchy the group of four was.

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A spacious system of tunnel-like sewers proved present as well, though unlike Paragon's back home, the one here had actually been designed with sanitation in mind.

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'Woah.' Egregore thought after prying up the sewer lid and sliding down through. 'It looks like the sewers here were constructed logically. Those germans and their hyper-efficiency. No zombies or homeless people down here I'll bet.'

He then used his plasma rifle to fuse the sewer lid back into place by narrowing the fire into an extremely thin shot. This gave the benefit of not using as much plasma per shot, resulting in a pulse-like 'beam.' Nobody would be coming in the way he had unless they blasted the lid to pieces.

Settling against a wall, 'Sitting down in a sewer. It's clean enough. Who'da thunk it?' Egregore Device took out the med kit and started applying it t himself. Of course, he was still invisible at this point. The only indication that he was there was the little trail of bile leading to his current position.

I just realized, Paragonwiki says that Frostfire FOUNDED the outcasts, they didn't exist at all before he made them.

Also, Statesman is an [censored].

OOC:

Fine.

BIC:

Egregore Device dropped down into an alley and rushed, invisible, along the streets. He saw the trio of helicopters above him going in the opposite direction.

'Good. I want to be as far away as possible from them.' He thought. He started scanning the street for a possible sewer cap that would possibly lead to a very conveniently spacious sewer system for no adequete or logical reason.

Of course, he still deposited droplets of black and yellow bile onto the ground with every few steps.

Goober = Averick. Considering Mystic's tiny outburst when Egregore originally credited him, I had been hoping to see his reaction to me dumping the responsibility for the ley-line in his lap.

Well.

I have three characters so far who could loosely be defined as ambiguously evil.

Mechanomorphic, for example, is a terrorist. He bombs crap and steals from the government whilst killing manys of innocents. However, deep down he's just a good 'ol boy who would like nothing more than to sit down at a nice bar and sing all night. Not that he can do that anymore. Being a terrorist puts a bit of a crimp in that sort of lifestyle. He tries to act very jolly most of the time, but underneath he really is sad. He anonymously donates to charities world-wide, mostly with stolen cash.

The point with him is, he knows he's evil. He regrets his choices and actions, but he knows there is no going back at this point, and he has decided simply to make the best of his current lot in life. Needless to say, he will not go out of his way to purposely hurt people unless it somehow DIRECTLY furthers his immediate goals. Otherwise its just a senseless waste of human life. So on the outside he's psychotic murderer/terrorist. On the inside, he's a guilt-wracked and sorrowful person. His actions may not be ambiguous, but his portrayl makes it seem so.

Then we have Egregore Device. He is a freelance mercenary. He will do ANYTHING as long as it pays the bills. Including slaughtering helpless citizens. He has no real moral codes, but it should be pointed out that he will not act unless he is employed. Depending on who is employer is, he can be a force of Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil. Thus it all balances out, murdering and spilling blood one day whilst healing and saving the entire world the next. The only reason he isn't true nuetral is because he does it all for money/misc. So he aligns slightly more as Nuetral Evil, but the point is he is not anymore picky about being good as he is about being bad.

Finally, there's Plate Knuckle. While technically a 'good guy,' he does a lot of underhanded actions in order to get the job done. While he always tries to preserve human life, protect the innocent, save the human race and generally just be a nice guy, sometimes he has to bend the rules in order to make sure the world keeps spinning. Up to and including some pretty dispicable actions. He defaults to chaotic good-He has good intentions but well...The road to hell and all of that.

What makes all these characters AMBIGUOUSLY evil rather than outright evil is that I always write them in such a way that makes them come off as laid-back and as sensible as any normal hero. Heck, I bet over half the people in the RP forum still think Egregore Device is a hero. *snerk*

I find that when trying to instill a sense of Ambiguity, have the character either question their own actions and possibly regret them or come up with an excuse, claiming that there are some lines that they cannot cross.

'[censored].' Egregore thought as he saw the incoming blast. As he was now, he wouldn't be able to escape it. He didn't have enough power left to port...

***

Egregore Device blinked. First at the soldier he still had pinned down, then at his surroundings. He immediately took note of how none of the others were thefre...Or at least out of sight. Panic quickly took hold.

'Was I the only one who got hit...Damnit...I need to get out of here...'

The plasma rifle dematerialized from his hands, and he quickly rose and pivoted and started running for the edge of the roof. He faded as his combat invisibility kicked in. It would be easy for even a novice tracker to follow him though, as he appeared to be more worried about finding a place to mend his mounds then he cared about making sure black and yellow bile that seeped from his wounds didn't leave the most obvious trail in the world behind him...

OOC:

And I'm just waiting on everyone else in general. Not much Egregore can do at the moment anyway.

I thought for sure the kid was going to be Keystone.

OOC:

Yo. Uh. What just happened? >.>

Egregore glanced over at Rezyin. The cyborg had started to dribble black and yellow fluids from the holes in his body. His metalic face-mask was gone after he had pulled it off to vomit the black bile previously, and with every breath extra flecks of black and yellow ooze dribbled from his lips.

"One o' them portal people." Egregore gasped. "Knocked em out. Was gonna question him later. Think he's from that Axis place, not sure. Missing the gas-mask. They were shootin at each other."

He paused for a brief moment to vomit what looked like an entire organ onto the rooftop before wiping off his lips, and unsteadily getting back onto his feet.

"Couldn't understand what they were speaking. It was like German or Russian, something."

The cyborg suddenly reached for one of the modules sticking out of his chest and ripped it out, wires and sparks flying everywhere. The unit cracked open and a flood of a pale-blue gel fell out and slopped onto the unconcious soldier's face. As it were, the gel had a mild electrical charge running through it. It was part of the cyborg's endurance system, and could be absorbed through the skin to create endorphins and adrenalin. The soldier Egregore had just dumped the stuff on had essentially just received a second wind of energy to replace what the sap stick had taken away. The whole thing was accompanied with a slight jolt to get things moving again.

Of course, the soldier would not be going anywhere-A plasma rifle had suddenly materialized in Egregore's hands and was pointed squarely at the man's chest.

OOC:

onomatopoeia

OOC:

Nom nom nom. ^.^

OOC:

I think this was well written, and I understand how this could have been hard to write for you. A tiny point I'd like to make, Rick does not appear to be Chaotic Evil. I'd say more around Nuetral evil. He does what he wants according to his whims, but he is fairly predictable in that he wants lots of death and enjoys...lesser activities. Chaotic Evil characters, such as the joker, can sometimes be good. They have zero motivation for any of their actions. Sometimes they do something just because they DON'T want to do it.

Just a small nit-pick there. I am digging the excellent writing and look forward to more, as always. ^.^

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((*pokes rp with a stick* ...did it die again?))

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OOC:

From what I've seen of Unholygiant, he usually comes into the RP section a few times every few months and posts a new open RP. They usually do not attract interest. When they die, he posts more. This goes on for a bit until he just up and leaves. The ones he creates that ARE successful he usually tends to for a month or two before vanishing again.

Might be that he's been abducted by aliens again. :/