Rebel_Scum

I shall do so, and use the tickets thus gained to unlock everything I need to publish mine.

Edit: 130 tickets required, I think. Maybe 170, I can't remember if I put auras on any of them.

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Meanwhile, Pax attempted to make contact - unfortunately, that went to his helmet, which had been set elsewhere. At present, the Kheldian received no answer...

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"Figures, the one time I want to talk to a villain he's not picking up...", Pax grumbled to herself before leaving a short message on Drago's comm unit explaining most of the key details. If/when the draconian retrieved the helmet, he'd presumably get it.

"Nope, can't say I have", she replied to Malachite, getting up and looking over at him as the device fizzled and popped. "Whatever it was, I think it's dead now."

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Cassie had to resist the urge to facepalm as several of the guards went into varying degrees of shock and unconsciousness. "Always gotta overdo it, don't you Mac", she commented with a sigh.

"But I didn't-!", the assault bot started to protest, but Cassie cut him off.

"Yeah, I know. Not your fault. Anyway," she turned to the one who seemed to be reasonable, but not before shooting a glance at Mac. The big robot kept his weapons powered up, just in case. "We were looking for a number of missing regenerating metas, some of whom we tracked to that warehouse next door which in turn is owned by your company. So..." She gestured and one of her two Protector Bots appeared through their customary teleport.

"Hack, see what you can find on their computers", she ordered, turning back to the man as the Protector saluted and wandered off to the nearest computer terminal to begin living up to his name. "Anyway, I have the name of a company, apparently in London. Ayre/Webber Strategic Security. That and some guy by the name of Clancy Stein, goes by 'Wrecthaus'. Either of those ring any bells?"

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Chances were that though Isabel's was now a useless piece of twisted metal, it had very much protected her.

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Even if it hadn't Isabel probably would have been ok or at least alive, having rather hastily redirected the energies she'd been gathering into a personal forcefield. That field remained active as she extricated herself from the wreckage of the door, along with a good chunk of the wall that had held it. "Well. Not entirely according to plan...", she commented in a somewhat amused voice.

With the power dampeners rather offline due to the damage, she was extremely tempted to cut herself a path to the nearest outside wall and leave. However, she realised that'd probably result in her having half an army on her tail again and this time they might not be so reasonable. Besides, the ones she'd met so far didn't really seem the 'evil' type. She was starting to doubt she'd been on the right side after all.

Thus, she stayed. Didn't even leave her cell in fact, though she did poke her head out through the gaping hold that had been the door and inquire as to what the hell just happened.

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It arrived at Štátna Zbrojovka just as part of a window row of the city-sized facility's upper tower blew out in a gout of smoke and fire; namely, that of the 33rd floor...

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Valerie had been tracking the Molvia on the way in (and wondering how it hadn't seen her, surely with the equipment those things had they could spot a sniper of a rooftop, especially with it having flown almost directly over her?), until the aforementioned explosion drew her attention.

Well. This certainly changed things. The extra security they'd no doubt put in place after something like that would almost certainly ruin any plans of sneaking in. As it was, the only option Valerie had was to stay where she was and wait, hoping that Isabel would free herself. Needless to say, she wasn't exactly happy to be force into such inaction. She was half-tempted to take a shot at the Molvia just to say she'd done something, but wasn't quite frustrated enough to actually do it just yet.

The only 'buff' energy melee needs in my opinion is to be made blue - at least for blasters, to match energy blast.

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I thought inspirations as a resource could be better.

I think we could abolish them as a material, and instead make them into abilities bound to the F1-F5. As we fight enemies, a resource fills up to a certain point and enables us to pick an inspiration to fire off. If we wait a little longer and allow it to go into a sort of "overdrive" part of the bar, we can fire off a significantly stronger version of the inspiration you choose.
This would remove the random factor of insp drops while in missions.

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This idea I like very much, but I can't help but think it'd be more trouble than it's worth to code.

Sounds like a nice power. Now, what set will it be in, what are the other 8 powers in that set and what ATs will have it?

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Frankly, I wouldn't have been surprised if it turned out that the Center had plans to have the three of them assassinated.

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Horribly off topic I know, but this needs to become a MA arc.

Welp, SB gives 175% +runspeed and only 68.3% +flyspeed according to Mids. So it still won't be as big a problem.

Personally, I solved the problem by learning to control myself at high speeds. Also getting a better computer that didn't lag when moving at said speeds.

Here's a crazy idea, if you really want to reward players for getting massive badge counts. 500 badges on any one character on either side = unlock an epic AT?

(Not really being serious)

I just ignore the NPCs are bring a heap of insps with me. Amazing how fast and easily an EB dies when you have softcapped defenses and close to the damage cap.

Personally, I want to be able to drink from something that isn't a glass. A bottle maybe, or a can.

Also drums that aren't wooden tribal drums and /e airguitar.

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"I hate it when he keeps these people alive." one detention block guard sighed to the other at the 'camera malfunction', "What's yours doing?"

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There was actually a very good reason why Isabel had blasted the camera, and it only had a little to do with simply annoying the guards. With her powers vastly weakened as they were - they were returning, but it'd take time - she lacked the strength required to simply blow a hole in the wall and leave. However, if she took the small amount she could access and charged it up a bit, she could achieve much the same result. Except the guards would have prevented that by interrupting her, thus the destroyed camera.

Really, she should have informed Flashpoint of her intentions. But, the radio she'd been left to contact him with was almost certainly being monitored, and thus informing Flashpoint would only result in the same interruption she didn't want. So it'd have to be a surprise.

She stood up off the cot, spreading her stance wide for stability as she began building up the power she needed. At this rate it'd take a couple of minutes, and she hoped the guards weren't paying enough attention to notice the soft humming noise her charging was making until it was too late.

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(( Since Crimson's bailed on us, I'm skipping Valerie ahead. Sans bikers. ))

After seeing Isabel on that news report Valerie made all haste out here, unable to sit idly by doing nothing while they did who knows what to her sister in that tower. Somewhere along the way she'd lost the biker gang, which was understandable given what she'd been intending to do. They had no reason to follow her into what was most likely suicide.

Utilising a stolen cloaking device, she'd snuck past the patrols and now lay on a rooftop nearish to the tower where Isabel and her allies were being held. Several times she'd come so close to people that they had to have seen her, but amazingly she'd gone unnoticed. This led to her being slightly paranoid about maybe them wanting her here for whatever reason, and her checking the area around her frequently for any signs that would indicate the presence of anyone else on her rooftop.

In between those checks, she looked through the scope of her sniper rifle (also cloaked by the device, and a handy substitute for the binoculars she no longer had) at the tower a few blocks over, and tried to come up with a plan of how to get Isabel out. Though, if this Isabel was anything like the one Valerie had grown up with, she'd get herself out.

Yay it's back!

"Feh. Speak English dammit", Ildela asked of the two of them as she wandered over to Tony, pulling out the remaining fifteen bucks of what she'd won off the first round.

"Hmm...", she mused, looking up at the collection of villains going after Sea Witch and the stalker assaulting the Zig. "Feh. I've seen better villains than those come out of the cesspools in Mercy. And Longbow have always been and will always be useless, so five on the Sea Witch and five on that stalker to beat the Officer senseless." She handed over the money and settled on a nearby chair to watch Lusca and the heroes beating seven shades of snot out of each other.

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"Ah, Oakes runs through Arbiters and Marshalls pretty quick. Its kind of the place careers go to die."

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"Heh, a couple of them died at my hand even", Ildela bragged. "No wait, that might've been those Family boss dudes, I can barely even remember 'cause it was so long ago. Feh, one or the other did."

(( End of term assignment rush, I'll try and get a post up tonight.

Edit: And so I did.))

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"Since the losers are all dead, who has to buy the post bar fight drinks?"

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"Well, I won the fight and used an extremely expensive weapon doing it, so drinks are on you I think", Ildela laughed. "'Course I didn't exactly pay for it but still...", she added, turning and going back inside. She absently prodded one of the robots at the entrance before going over to the bar and picking up her forgotten drink, oddly unharmed in all the fighting.

"Hey, Tony! You got anything interesting over there?", she called over to the Family representative.

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"Would you please quit that already?!" a guard told Isabel via the speaker in her cell, the actual person standing outside in the corridor, finger on the 'talk' button of the intercom, "They're going to make me clean that up, you know!"

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Isabel made an escessively rude gesture at camera, before there was a bright flash and the signal abruptly cut off. An examination of the last few moments of clear picture would reveal she'd thrown a blast at the camera, or more specifically at the cable which presumably either powered it or carried the signal. Didn't really matter which, either way there would be no more video coming from that camera but it wouldn't be difficult to fix it.

(( Have we lost Crimson? If so I might just skip Valerie forward a bit, or at least condense it down into one long post. ))

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“Did I miss everything?” he asked as attention set on him.

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One was of what looked to be a dragon.

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Pax ignored the man that appeared behind her, concentrating instead on what she found in the surprisingly unsecured phone. She noted down the various numbers and other important information before attempting to open a private communications channel to the one named Drago. In the pecking order of the Isles Arachnos usually sat on top, so she surmised the one in the Arachnos uniform was the leader.

Handing over information to known villains wasn't exactly a heroic thing to do, but then Pax hadn't exactly been a hero for a fair while now.

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"What, everyone's all stunned by the good looking chick but no one even notices the walking death machine?", Cassie asked irritably, looking around at the guards as the completely ignored her. "Alright then. Mac, that one." She pointed to one of them and the big robot obediently pointed both cannons at the man, the faint glow within the barrels confirming they were indeed fully charged. As yet though he didn't fire. Cassie was simply trying to prvoke a reaction from the man.

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(please don't take offense, Kasoh, most comic book women are shapely, and all Player created ones are, too )

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(( For future reference, Cassie is decidedly average in that department. ))

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Taking that as their signal, the rest of the Crey operatives began their attack. Leading the charge were a pair of Paragon Protectors with strikingly similar cybernetic enhancements to the ones Claws had. They seemed to move perfectly in sync with each other, almost as if they shared one mind.

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"Aww, come on", Ildela sighed, a stray shot pinging off her shield as she walked out of the bar. "This is getting out of hand way too fast." She gave a slightly disturbing laugh. "Alright, I can do out of hand way better than you lot can."

With that, she deactivated the Talsorian blades she was still carrying and put them back in the same pocket she'd got them from, withdrawing instead a small beacon-like device and pressing a button on it before throwing it down amid the group of Crey operatives. Moments later, the ever-present clouds above parted briefly as a small object dropped from orbit, or at least very high altitude if the speed it came down at was any indication. "Duck and cover, folks", Ildela said calmly over a private channel to the various bar patrons, just before the warhead hit the ground precisely on top of the beacon that had called it down. Instantly, it detonated and the surrounding thirty foot radius or so disappeared beneath a miniature nuclear detonation.

"Gotta love those Warburg nukes", she laughed, turning away from the fireball.

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"Pass that here, let me take a look at it."

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Pax handed it over to him with a smile. "Tell me what you find out if you could, please."

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That's Paxtera, a...time cop, I think.

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"I'm pretty sure the official term is 'time lord', actually", the peacebringer replied, the look on her face clearly showing what she thought of the term. "But I always though that sounded a little pretentious so I won't mind if you don't use it."

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Just then the Damned threw his fireball which struck Claws square in the chest and expanded outward, catching anything nearby in the blast.

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The shimmering aura of Ildela's energy shield as it deflected the wave of flame was likely the last thing the Damned saw before the stalker hit him swords first. With one blade through his arm and the other through his opposite shoulder, the impact knocked him to the ground and pinned him to the floor.

Standing up, she winced as a second smaller fire blast got through her shields. Glaring down at him, she gave him a solid boot to the side of his head and he fell unconscious. Leaving the two swords impaled on his unconscious form, she pulled an odd pair of handheld emitter devices from a pocket inside her trenchcoat. Those with the requisite experience would recognise them as Vanguard-issue Talsorian blades, especially once she activated them and they projected a pair of glowing purple blades.

"Something tells me we're about to have a heap of company, and not just useless thugs like these idiots", she said, in a tone that left no doubt as to what she intented to do to said company. "Looks like you're getting that help after all", the stalker added before flinging herself at the remaining Hellions, blades flashing.

Ildela sighed quietly, mostly to herself. "Just once, I'd like to go to a bar and have a nice quiet drink without someone starting a fight and inevitably dragging me into it." she put her drink back down on the bar, and looked back at the Hellions. "Ahh well, guess if I'm going to be the bouncer then I'd better start bouncing."

And that she did. Precisely, off the ceiling after jumping upwards, before rebounding and flinging herself at the lead Damned with both swords drawn. If the man didn't get out of the way in one hell of a hurry, he was about to be minced. Or at the very least, stabbed a few times until he gave up.

(( Damn you Claws I had a post all written and now I have to rewrite it ))

Ildela raised an eyebrow as the man so blatantly ran into her sword. "Was that really necessary?", she asked, wiping the small amount of blood off her blade before resheathing it. She'd been just about to remove the blade anyway, but he'd beaten her to it.

"To be honest," she turned back to Brian. "Finding a guy, killing him and making sure Longbow doesn't find out doesn't sound very heroic to me. If he'd ask nicely, I might even help with it." Considering the matter over, unless the aforementioned request materialised, she went back to the bar and ordered another of the same drink she'd had before.

Isabel sat calmly against the wall of her cell, absently tossing small energy bolts at the wall and slowly making a smiley face pattern out of scorch marks. There was actually a reason for this beyond simple amusement. The guards in all likelihood thought their walls would hold her fine, that this was the extent of her power and the walls could take it. In truth, Isabel as yet had only a fraction of her powers back. The rest would return in time, as her body fought off the power dampening field in the cell.

For now though, she was content to draw smiley faces in scorch marks on the wall.

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"Come on guys, out", Valerie ordered, climbing out of the manhole first and offering her hand to help the bikers up as they came. With all of them up, she stood and looked intently at each one in turn. "Hide the guns please, if you can. Biker gangs aren't entirely unheard of here, but very rarely do they openly carry weapons. If you get seen with those we'll be in a heap of trouble."

Her accent was still atrocious but slowly getting better with practice as she led them through the city. Where she was going even she didn't exactly know, but wherever it was they did seem to be avoiding getting into trouble on the way there. Well, until something in a store window caught her eye. A TV, showing a picture of a woman who looked a lot like Valerie. She stopped abruptly, her whole attention on what seemed to be a news report of some kind.

Ildela looked around as the Doctor ran off, muttering something probably very unfriendly about mad scientists under her breath. She started to turn back to Brian to see what he had to say about these Lost, but stopped as the one she recognised as a hero came in. Almost reflexively, she shimmered out of sight.

If the hero had any sense at all, he'd be expecting what came next. Assuming he didn't act to stop her, he'd end up with the same sword across his throat that the enforcer had gotten earlier. "Mind telling us what a hero's doing in a bar full of villains?", she asked, sounding more curious than threatening.

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But this time, he kept his distance and allowed Ildela to kill the coralax in her own time.

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Ildela chuckled quietly to herself as the man did more or less exactly as she'd expected him to do. After all, if she'd wanted to do anything more than deter him from interrupting her then that knife could have gone far more painful places than into his gun. The stalker left him alone as she continued forward, systematically wiping out every living fishman in the warehouse.

"Right then", she finally commented to him, wiping the blood off her blades and sheathing them as she spoke. "Just be aware that if your story about the Lost is a lie then I'll be back and you'll be the first to get stabbed." With that she turned and vanished, the sound of footsteps fading as she walked away before stopping entirely as she lifted into the air and flew away.

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Back at the bar, Ildela did much as she had the first time around and decloaked sitting on a stool at the bar, right opposite Brian. "Warehouse is empty", she announced simply, looking over to Tony next to his screens to see if anything interesting was happening. "Also, met another guy there. Claimed to be there on business from the Family, that they were hiring the Lost to take care of that warehouse for them. I can go back if that's different from what you've been told."

"...also, who's the crazy guy with the spud?", she added with a hint of curiosity, gesturing towards Doctor Von Krayzee.