CAST:
Robert.............Orland, boy genius/punchin' bag
Robert.............Dr. T., your chauffeur
Alan................Team Gardiner
Paul................Action Billy Ray, w/kung-fu grip
Paul................Brian "Mr. Bubbles" Briazz
Mark...............Mon Calamari
Jeff.................."Judge-mental", Judge, Jury, Executioner, and
Defendant
Isaac...............Your Bartender
Me..................Your Cruise-Director
Having defeated the well-armed agenty types near town, the team got word
last issue that the helicopter they had spotted with the bogus KPLS call
letters was crosstown trying to load up some suspiciously well-armored
individuals on the top of Armitage Pharmaceuticals. They raced to the scene,
leaving the Police's super-powered detainment team to search the rest of the
building for any stragglers.
Orland spent his day at the base and then is informed of the happenings at
Armitage, and speeds off on his cycle, arriving at about the same time as
our other heroes. He runs in and goes up the stairs while the heroes
approach from the back of the building. Two developments have happened: The
police on the scene have managed to sufficiently damage the helicopter with
gunplay enough to get it to crash into the rooftop. It is a smoking husk
when players arrive. The other thing is that the police are being held back
by suppressive fire of the armored gents on the roof.
Some take the stairs while others climb the side of the building. The
steambots begin to drag injured police officers off of the battlefield. Thok
drags JudgeMental all the way to the top of the building then remembers he's
crazy for going into the line of fire and has wasted a few phases. Likewise,
Billy Ray has trouble defeating the entrance door for three phases. Orland
is average running speed and takes a while to get to the top. So the first
engagements come in the form of the mentalists (Judge & Thok) doing
line-of-sight attacks, to limited effect. One of the armored individuals is
a fellow not dressed like the others; he is in green with a funky "ripple"
pattern on his outfit; he is tossing out oddly shaped projectiles that
explode. Jeff seems to be doing serious damage until we realize I am
instructing him on how to roll a killing attack when instead his attack is
actually an Ego Attack that does body. The "reset" of a fallen villain to
conscious status changes the impact of the battle. These guys have small
amounts of Mental defense, but it's enough to have a serious impact on our
LoS heroes as they try to chip away.
The villains have a nasty selection of firepower which hurts Thok, and
eventually Billy Ray when he gets to the roof, but REALLY hurts Orland when
he arrives. He has a good opportunity to punch hole in a bad guy, but bad
rolls cause him to miss. They hit him around his cover by using an explosion
effect attack, taking him out.
Another helicopter is coming! This one is better made, meant for business
than the "camouflaged" one that was intended to go unnoticed as a typical
city helicopter. Thok does his best to keep it from landing with a Mind
Control on the driver, which works. He hovers instead. Billy Ray is kicking
some agent ass, but they kick in their nasty weaponry and begin to do their
worst on the heroes.
Billy Ray has run off with two duffel bags that the agents were carrying.
Problem is that while he's off hiding it, one of the agents sees Orland, who
is awakening, and shouts something in Russian (Which Orland recognizes as
the word "Rook") and they are suddenly more concerned with the prone boy
than with the items they were stealing. Steambots & Master arrive and begin
to attack while Billy Ray is concealing the bags in a bathroom on the second
floor.
Now the terrifying ballet sequence: Billy Ray runs over and smacks an agent
who is trying to haul Orland over to a helicopter which has finally landed
on the pad. He smacks the agent causing knockback. The unconscious Orland is
dragged with the agent. Geoff Gardiner runs over and grabs the boy. He wants
to haul them both up, but does not have the STR to do so, and so they
contest who gets to keep the boy. Geoff Gardiner beats the agent (who
continues to fall). Then another "grab by" maneuver occurs on the edge fo
the building as Geoff Gardiner is hauling Orland up. The villain in green
(Shockwave) reaches out and grabs the boy and yanks him from Geoff
Gardiner's grasp. They do contested STR rolls... Shockwave just barely makes
his roll, while GG... rolls an 18!!! The botch causes him to have to make a
DEX roll to stay on the building, which he does! Whew!
Thok T-ports into the copter and scares the driver. The person in back of
the copter (the female who escaped the heroes by teleporting out of the last
scene) gets out and is bitten by a spider and then punched for horrendous
damage by Billy Ray Wifebeater. Fortunately he only did 7 or 10 BODY, so
she's not dying. Of course Billy Ray has taken some serious BODY himself;
he's at about half.
Did I mention the "Molecular Disruption" attack? Billy Ray was earlier
tapped on the shoulder by Shockwave. He has since that time been slowly
dispersing, his atoms coming apart, forcing him into nothingness. Soon he
will cease to exist (Cool/mean attack, no?). As it's "uncontrolled" I should
have been rolling it more often, but that's my error.
Anyway, back to Shockwave & Orland. Shockwave is flying away while any
conscious agents are fleeing via their belts (A teleport trick I call
"escape clause"). Two agents are down, the woman is down, two agents and the
pilot t-ported out, and shockwave is flying off with Orland. Thok follows
for a while, but has difficulty keeping up. He has 20" Teleport versus the
other guy's 12" flight, BUT the flight can go directly and upward, whereas
the t-port can only get him from building to building. I allow this
craziness for a while, but ultimately make them do INT rolls. Shockwave
makes his roll by 9! Thok misses his roll. The badguy gets away with the boy
genius.
Our heroes throw the Judge's "Healing Robe" onto Billy Ray and he stops
deteriorating. Back at the base the new scientist has shown up. We shall
call him "Mr. Bubble" pending any other sort of name. He is a molecular
biologist who makes a nice science roll and determines that Billy Ray is no
longer deteriorating and that he will recover as normal. (Truth is, I need
to look at healing rules for Regeneration v. Transformation Attack. I'm not
sure it's applicable, since it's for healing 'actual damage'. Either way,
he's fine now anyway).
Some characters witness a "suit" from the Pharmaceutical company talking to
the police and saying, "No, they didn't get away with anything." Thok
corrects them (via mindlnk to a cop) telling him that he is wrong, that they
escaped with Orland, to which the suit shrugs, saying he didn't see the
whole combat but his inventory shows nothing missing.
The team then figure out that the villains t-port belts are linked to two
locations. The villains will likely rendezvous and one of them. Four heroes
strap on belts and teleport to the first scene. They find a small base with
normal people, operating below ground in the badlands outside of Lazarus.
While the other heroes cross town in vehicles and at blazing speeds make it
there in a few minutes (they probably should have taken much longer in
hindsight; It's a big city and it's loaded with traffic). Anyway, the heroes
inside the base were waiting for them to arrive anyway, so that's fine.
Geoff Gardiner & Bots handle the surface (a diner and truckstop along the
road) while the others are downstairs subduing agents.
Problem: One agent gets his helmet in place and subsequently becomes a HUGE
pain. Mr. Bubble's been doing a great job of mopping up some of the guys in
his bubble entangles and messing up their DEX based skills. The guy now
helmeted and in his suit becomes a huge pain to everyone present. He is
hurting people right and left. Our Judge does several grab manuvers to
subdue him and keep him from fighting, but not before he manages to send
Thok into a wall with a nasty, nasty, nasty 4D6K attack in which I roll 21
BODY and 105 STUN! Miracle roll, baby. Goooood Night. Eventually they come
close to taking this guy down through a combination of blasting and
grappling, but he decides on discretion and T-ports out of the grab and is
gone.
Meanwhile Geoff Gardiner & Bots encounter shockwave, who does some cool
attacks that are having no effect at all other than tossing the robots
around. After a while he decides he can't defeat them head to head and
alone, so he desolidifies and goes out through the walls.
The heroes discover Orland and another prisoner. Orland is unconscious. The
other guy is identified by questioning as Russian National Igor Verbansky,
aka CIPHER. He's a mutant with the uncanny ability to decipher languages,
text, and all sorts of code. He claims to have been abducted for translating
something.
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