Witchfrost

I started this story a while back, and have had the urge lately to finish it for some reason (probably because of Going Rogue right around the corner). It's the story of my Erg/WP Brute, Two-Shot Tony. If I get some decent feedback, I'll keep posting (I have a few 'chapters' done).

Round 1

The referee calls us out the center of the ring and starts telling us how the fight’s gonna be. ‘Fight clean,’ he says, ‘no dirty punches or headbutting.’ He’s an alright guy; I’ve fought fights with him calling before. The ref's name is Davison; I think his first name is Jon. Short guy, stocky; I know he wears glasses but uses contacts when he refs, which causes him a slight blind spot on the right for some reason. Last year I took a cheap shot to the back by that sloppy ******* Gonzales because of it that nearly cost me the fight, but Gonzales paid for it tenfold when I broke his collarbone the next round. What Davison doesn’t know when he tells us to fight clean is that the fight’s already dirty – he just doesn’t know it.

I use the time Davison is flapping his jaws to look over my opponent. Christ, this kid’s a chump. Sure, he’s a heavyweight in size, but anyone watching knows this kid isn’t a real fighter. He’s too thin in the chest for one thing, with a nose that hasn’t been punched in nearly enough for him to have gotten this high in the rankings; this kid’s been pushed all the way through to me like he’d been boxing on an expressway with no stops. And he’s got a bad habit of leaning forward when he’s about to throw a jab – I know, because I’ve been watching the tapes – which I can’t exploit because one uppercut to that exposed chin would take his head clean off.

“Pounder” Paul Phillips. What kind of jerkoffs gave the kid that nickname, anyway? I bet it was his uncle, the “Back Alley Brawler,” which is another ridiculous nickname for a guy who isn’t even a good fighter. I’ve seen his tapes too; how that guy ever got to be hero to the city is beyond me – probably because he’s been bowing to Statesman since before I was born. There’s a pair. If this kid wasn’t Brawler’s nephew I wouldn’t be in this mess, but I’m the next big thing, so they say, and taking me down gets the kid his title shot, which makes Dear Old Unca Brawler proud. A title shot that should be mine, but I’m promised first crack at the kid when he makes champ, which apparently is already a made deal. Funny, I wonder what the champ’s being paid to take a dive. Bet he’s getting more than I am.

We touch gloves, and I notice the smirk the kid’s got on his face as they connect. He thinks he can really fight; someone’s not telling him he’s a bought champ. I’d love to show it to him by taking out about ten of his teeth in the first round, but it’ll have to wait for another fight. Jeez, this one’s not even begun and I’m already waiting for that one. I can hear them from across the ring; they’re telling him to avoid my combos by staying at a distance and using his reach. Like that would save him if I wanted him down. They don’t call me “Two-Shot” for nothing; I once knocked out a guy through the gloves blocking his face. They told me afterward that I had broken six bones in the guy’s face, and they had to wire his jaw shut for months.

The bell rings and I’m up, and meander my way to the center of the ring. I need to sell that I’m getting beaten, so I can’t move too fast out there, even at the beginning. I need to make it look like something’s wrong; maybe a stomach flu or dehydration, so when I go down it’s realistic; no one who knows fighting is ever going to believe this kid beat me any other way. “Pounder” dances out, like he’s in the freakin’ ballet. I want to punch his face in so bad it’s making my teeth hurt. Or is that the withdrawal starting; I can’t be really sure anymore, but I know I’d better focus or I’ll end up screwing this up.

The kid throws a couple quick jabs, and then a combo that never even comes close. I have to pass up at least five opportunities to break his face – and we’ve been fighting less than a minute. I lightly tap him a few times, just to let him know where he is, and you’d have thought I hit him full force. He staggers, and I start to sweat. This is never going to work, I think, and I start to panic. I hear the ring announcer counting down the end of the round, and I start thinking: How the hell did I get myself into this mess?

Three years earlier:

Light streamed into the office through the large picture window behind the desk, shining down upon two large, overstuffed armchairs on either side. The glass topped desk was covered in files and charts, and the stacked paperwork created the image of a fortress, in which the paperweight took on the appearance of a king under siege. The door opened, and two men entered. One sat down immediately, the chair under him creaking and groaning under his weight. The other moved to a short hook on the wall near the opposite chair.

“Look, Tony, you’re a great fighter. Probably the best I’ve ever seen. But the bones in your hand just can’t take the stresses you put on them. You hit too hard; you’ve broken every bone in your hand at least three times in the last five years. I don’t think it’s going to heal right this time, son.” Doctor Paul Wilson took his coat off and sat down in the chair in his office. He took out a cigar and lit it, and offered another to the man sitting in the chair across from him, who declined.

The man was big, shorter than you’d expect from a boxer of his weight, but so bulky he didn’t fit right even in the doctor’s oversized chairs. Head hung low, his massive brow creased as he considered Wilson’s words. People often mistook Tony Jones for stupid when he did this, since it made him look like a Neanderthal; he was anything but. He wasn’t a rocket scientist, by any means, but he possessed quick wits and a very cunning way of getting inside an opponent’s head. He lifted his head and looked Wilson straight in the eye, a look Wilson found vaguely unsettling coming from a man of this size with this reputation.

“What am I supposed to do now, Doc? Are you saying my career’s over?”

“Well, the surgery might take, but we’ll have to break your hand again to do it, and we can put pins and plates in to help, but either way it might possibly cripple them.” Tony’s head again dipped. “If we can find a way to make bones heal faster and stronger, it’d be a piece of cake, son. But we can’t.” Wilson was an old-school doctor, and called everyone son, regardless of age or race (and in at least one case, sex). He was a rare breed, and felt terrible that he couldn’t help the man sitting in front of him. But there was nothing he could do.

Tony Jones rose, slowly, to his feet, and lightly shook Wilson’s hand with his fingertips, mindful of the bandages and plaster holding his shattered bones together within. “Thanks Doc. I appreciate it. Let’s do the surgery, and go from there.” He opened the door, said goodbye to Wilson’s secretary, and let the door swing shut behind him. Wilson could hear Tony’s steps as he lumbered down the hallway, and took a slow, deliberate puff of his cigar as he considered the man’s (now limited) options.

I would seriously love to see this done. I will happily volunteer either my Stone Tank or my Kinetics Defender in pursuit of this noble activity.

Well, based on the PM I just received, I have to say this thread's busted and done, at least for me. I believe the initial post wanted us to have a frank and open discussion, without worrying about hurting feelings and the like. Apparently though, I'm just a big ol' meanie, and certain folks can't handle it. Strangely, though, quite a few people have agreed with what I was saying, so I can't have been too off the mark.

No offense, Arch, but I liked how you followed this:

And for the record, I have no gripe with you either, Hulkers. I've run with you on more than one occasion. Just remember, when I'm being sarcastic, it's not meant to be mean. And if it was mean, remember, Sooner made me do it.

I'll pop in to give my two cents on some of this stuff, because I think Kid and Ice's comments were spot on, though in some cases I think they may not have gone far enough.


I miss the days when Jello Shooters was actually a Protector channel.

Yeah, me too. And I know why, and why the server has become increasingly hostile towards newcomers and more intolerant, and it goes along with this:
I miss the days when the server actually had spirit, we had a mascot, we had things like Robot Rampage and RP Task Forces (Not my thing, but still thought it was cool), we were a server of doers.

I'm a five-year-plus vet. In my five years, I've seen a lot of Protector greatness. I was on the first successful Hami raid on Protector, and we were what, second or third in the entire game in beating him, an incredible feat given our always low population. Kid and his usual Regulars post some of the fastest record times for TF's across all servers on a regular basis (I know this - I've been in a few). When new challenges pop up, Protector leads the way, almost always either completing the task first or being in the top few that do a task first.

And yet, we're belittled on other servers. People (and you've seen them) like to think that they need to come over to our server and our forums and show us poor little Protectorites how to play, which at least once recently got someone red-repped for doing it. I've personally seen people on JS actively recruiting for other servers.

I know people from other servers have good ideas to share, but when their sentences to vets start off with, "let me show you how we do this better on [server x]," they don't go over well. So I tend to listen less and actively look for new people rarely. And I won't even go into how I feel about all the people fleeing Protector lately for other servers, especially when the excuse is population. You're certainly not helping population for the rest of us by moving, now are you?

I miss the days when this was a close-knit community.

No offense, Kyo, but

Nobody ever tells me anything. I always find out about this stuff last.

Till later, kiddo.

~Frosty

I learned the most important lesson of all, I believe.

"Never fear. Fear is the enemy. In your life, if you're charging headlong into a situation in which you know you are going to die, one in which you know you have made an epic mistake that will result in massive damage, dismemberment, and carnage, one in which you already know the life of you and the object of your rescue are already forfeit, be brave, for you can always...........

........pause, hit reset, and start the level over again."

STF: I'd go for a "Lock It Down" strategy:
1 Tank - Hard to argue with Inv/SS. With a Kin on board, Stone/Fire (good PBAoE) alternate.
1 Defender - Kin/Ice. Kinetics, 2 holds, and good single target damage.
2 Controllers - Earth/Rad (arguably tops in raw control ability) and an Illusion/Rad (double rad, extra crew) or another Earth/Rad
3 Blasters - 2xIce/* for Blizzard, great damage, and 2 holds apiece; and a Fire/Erg (damage machine)
1 Scrapper - Elec/*. Electric is a nasty scrapper set. Running with a Kin troller and FS they rack up ridiculous damage.

- If you can hold it, you can kill it. If you swap out another E/Rad for the I/Rad, that's potentially fourteen holds on 8 toons. Loaded down with Lockdown +2's, Devastation xHolds, Grav Anchors in the Immobs on the Trollers? "Oh look another mob that's....not moving." "Oh look an AV...that isn't moving." While it may be a slower moving TF, there's no scenario I can imagine that would be a defeat for that team.


Numina: Speed run. Let's face it; not the most difficult of the TF's. The only major pain in the *** is the kill missions. Maximize your damage output and rampage. I'd do a fun theme for it maybe. Call it, "Fire In The Hole."
-Inv/Fire or WP/Fire
-Blastersx3 Fire/Erg (Fireball/Fireball/Fireball;RoFire/RoFire/RoFire; Inferno/Inferno/Inferno - That's just sick.)
-Controllersx2 Fire/Kin
-Rad/Rad Defender
-Assorted Fire Scrapper


Posi: Keep it small.
-1 Scrapper/Tank
-2 Blasters
-If a 4th player, Rad Def/Troller

For the record, I think any decent team that takes it slowly and plays well can succeed. I don't think, beyond making sure that you have some sort of buff/debuffage, there's a magic combo for TF success. I've made a Master RSF run with a Corruptor that only had SO's and needed an overhaul, and watched what should have been a perfect ITF (Stone Tank, Kin, decent blasters) go tits-up due to morons (the only players in the entire game I've ever one-starred were on that doozy). YMMV.

*Claps*

I suspect this may be a long, rambling thread, but I swear it will eventually reach its point. Probably long after you've stopped reading. I would also not be surprised if most of the people reading this thread have no idea who I am. Even though I've been playing the game since the first week, I keep a relatively low profile (I play with a core group of around 10-15 or so, don't do many events, and usually stay as far away from the 'social' raids- Hami and RtR- as I can, due to low tolerance for lag, griefing, and stupidity). But I owe someone a big 'Thankya,' and they're going to get it one way or the other.

In another thread, a player is asking to trade names for stuff, which I'll chime in and say, "not a bad idea." That thread got me to thinking about my name. A name that, although it's my global handle, I never actually owned. I never actually had Witchfrost; I've only had its derivative, Witch-frost. The reason for that is a very long story.

When the game first dropped, I had no idea it even existed. My good friend, who reads every game mag known to man, snagged his copy on day one. He invited me over to show me this game he knew I was going to love, so I played along. I went. And I was hooked instantly, from the moment he showed me character creation. So I made a toon on his account, modeled after my Diablo II character that I loved so much, Witchfrost (Ice sorceress, though I suspect you D2 players already guessed that). A few days later, when my buddy was out of town, I was so hooked I went out and bought my own account. Witchfrost was taken (by myself, on his account), so I grabbed the derivative Witch-frost as my master account name, figuring that as soon as my buddy got back from out of town, I'd steal my original name back as my own toon.

It didn't happen that way. Part of it was my own fault- I was having so much damn fun I forgot to ask him about switching it early on; part was his, since I had told him I had wanted to do it eventually and asked him to save the name. He forgot. After about six months, he started deleting toons, and Witchfrost became a casualty. A couple months after that, when he mentioned he had done some housecleaning, I realized that the house he cleaned had Witch's name as one of the dustbunnies. I tried to get it back - but someone had already taken it.

I tried to get it back off and on for a couple years; someone always had it (I sent the occasional tell about it, but never got a response), and I forgot about it as time went on. I was Witch-frost; so what if it was a hyphenated version, and besides, she was pretty much retired anyway (second Ice/Ice blaster 50 on this server ever, thanyouverymuch). I probably hadn't thought about the circumstances surrounding the name for a year and a half or more. Then I saw the name thread today.

On a lark, I decided to take a shot at the name again. I had been tinkering with the idea of making an Ice controller; wouldn't it be a gas if it was available again? And it was.

So to whoever had it (perhaps someone not even reading these threads anymore because they quit), whatever the reason, thanks for freeing up my name.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.

And God bless us, everyone.

And from all of us, to all of you: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

**Okay, I'm cliche farming. But the sentiment's still there. Have a wonderful, safe Christmas holiday.

Sincerely,
WF

Thanks to all (and to some in advance) for the B-day wishes!