FistOfJustice

SO the heroes are getting secret identity day jobs. Are the villians also getting access to this system? Thematically it would be an ackward fit.

"So Doug, where are those TPS reports?"

"*muttering* In the plasma cannon I keep secretly pointed at your house night and day. Waiting for you be on the verge of acheiving one moment of true happiness so that I may pulll the trigger and prevent you from having it!"

"What?"

"I said they're on the way!"

"Good stuff!"

We got 3 dancing Nemesis at one point.

It is hard question to answer, if only because it is hard to introduce the concept of love in a game like this and do it right. Having the character him/herself find love would be so problematic as to be near impossible.

I suggest next year you give people the option of doing the old missions, people seemed to like being ables to get the badges/costume peices for characters that didn't exist last year. But a new story arc an new setting for next year.

Everyone loved the chalet, so perhaps design a new mini zone to be available for the duration of the event. It would fit in since, as the chalet proved, DJ Zero can be persuaded by other entities to create link to thier dominas for a time. As for what sort of place this should be, I'm not sure. Romantic would be the theme since this is Valentine's day we're talking about. Maybe a section of a Paris-esque city? Or maybe a park-type place blooming with flowers? Just as people gave each other presents last Winter event, maybe something simular with bundels of flowers or heart-shaped candy boxes?

As for the story-arc itself: What about a highly placed person from the blue side meets and falls in love with a highly placed person from the red side while they were visiting Pocket D? Both sides worry about what thier person is telling the other person over the pillow. Militants on both sides assume the worse and start gearing up for war. DJ Zero feels somewhat responicible (or at least doesn't want to give ammo to Pocket D's opponents) so he organizes heros and villians to help defuse the situation. The heroes don't want to see the citizens of Paragon endangered by the skirmishes with the Rogue Ilse turn into a full-scale war. The villians want to be crooks, not soldiers. They don't want to subordinate thier own interests to a war effort. So hero and villian must join together again.

Those are my ideas anyway.

Marvel zombies, now we get City of Heroes zombies?

Not a bad idea to turn the tables. Too bad I don't browse this section of the forums more and noticed this sooner. Just as well. I'm not really qualified to vote on this matter and most of my characters are not what you would call overtly sexy. Only one stalker character of mine even comes close to being the sort of thing sought here. Always next year!

... a story that's shaping up nice so far.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...art=1&vc=1

[ QUOTE ]
Emp/Psy, but I rolled him at sometime between 1 and 2AM.

Those are the only powers I can really think of that will work though. ((*hates the super soaker of doom*))

[/ QUOTE ] Surprised you didn't make him an illusion controller. Share the random freaky hallucinations with everyone!

Strange memories on this nervous night in Paragon. Eight issues later? Seven? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a main era - -the kind of peak that never comes again. Paragon pre enhancement diversification was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across Independance Port, then up at Skyway City or down the road to Talos Island. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

And that, I think, was the handle - -that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - -on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than eight issues later, you can go up on a tall building in Steel Canyon and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - -the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

((Looked like Dollhouse and Julienne were actually starting something. Was trying to insert myself in what looked like a develpoing story but it went no-where. *shrug*))

Alpha Vector hated this. He looked down from the rafters at the human and metahumans parting below and was torn. At one time he would have joined in the parting without hesitation, able to just lose himself in the moment. Somewhere along the line he had lost that ability. Maybe it was all the times people's lives and his own life depended on his ability to stay cool and think clearly. Alpha Vector had gotten used to carefully thinking about every action, even if he had only seconds to do so. Gaining that nessessary survival tool had seemed to have some at the price of being able to take mindless pleasure in things. Even though Alpha Vector was still in his twenties he felt old compared to his "normal" friends.

There was also the question of the crowd. While there were many people we would love to toss back a drink with and some ladies he would have loved to show what his nanobot-altered nervous system could do on the dance floor, there was the issue of them. Trash from the Rogue Isles and Paragon's own back streets. He couldn't look at them without wondering how many people they had hurt before they had arrived at the club and how many they would hurt after they left; it made him twitchy. It was always the same. It was like he was always Alpha Vector even when he had the techno-organic armor retracted into his body and was living the life of Derrick Cline. He'd try to go about his day like normal but before long he'd see a drug deal going down or get word from a contact of the latest impending doom. Just like that, Derrick gets swept aside and Alpha Vector steps forward.

Like tonight for example Derrick might be down there having fun but Alpha Vector was up in the rafters, the billions of interlinked nanobots that made up his armor shifting colours to provide him with the camoflage nessesary to stay hidden and spy on the crowd. That the club was used for various clandestine meetings was news to no-one. However, Longbow had asked him to use his stealth abilities to gather info on an smuggling operation that was going on in their own back yard. Usually it was the case that contraband orginated in the Rogue Ilse got smuggled into Paragon. There was only so much that could be done about that. There was, however, something that could be done when someone in Paragon was selling to the enemy. Someone was selling restricted technology to the Rogue Ilse inhabitants, some of which ended back in Paragon in the hands of bad guys bent on doing bad things.

The problem was there was entirely too much to watch. The deals could have been happing right below him but he missed them because he was looking at the wrong set of hoods at the time. At the moment his eye stopped on known carnie having a quiet conversation with a catgirl. Maybe they were trading makeup tips. Maybe it was just another petty drug buy. What he noticed at how the causalness of their body language and movments were contrasting with the intentness in their eyes. It ook barely a flick of ankels to send him soaring across the wide room. Alpha Vector barely had to think to make the nanobots respond, reconfiguring the soles of his boots for maximum shock absorption. This not only let him make a 20 foot landing without breaking his legs, but ensured he landed at the edge of the crowd by the wall with scarcly a sound. He drew closer, his techno-organic armor ever sensitive to the ambient light frequencies, shifting colours to match and provide continuing concealment.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"There's not enough good chinese restaurants in Paragon City. It's odd considering all the cat girls running around." - Unnamed Tanker roleplaying.

[/ QUOTE ]

I thought everyone knew... the catgirls ARE the chinese food...

[/ QUOTE ]
Is that some sort of reference to eating p.. errr.. never mind.. I don't feel like getting banned today...

I don't think it's supposed to be easy to do hero/villian team-ups. THESE PEOPLE ARE THE ENEMY, REMEMBER?!

Concerning the new witch villian group. I know that after the Halloween event there was a brief stir to make them a permanent villian group (mostly, I think, because guys wanted to see more of curvacious witchs in wire frame outfits). But I have to ask, what sort of new and unique villiany could these witchs bring to menace the city with? What could they be other than a female version of the Circle of Thorns?

When you arrive at the tram platform in Idependece port you scan the crowd and spot those you have come here to meet. Max Magma is easy to spot. Even in Paragon city, his red cowl with double rows of mineral spines running down it stands out in a sea of heads. Metal band covered forearms are crossed over his broad chest as he talks to a red-haired woman in a navy blue buisness suit. This must be Pennington. Max sees your arrival and waves you over.

[Note: This thread is for members of the supergroup Ground Zero. If you are not a member of that group, please do not post on this thread. For those who are members of ground zero, welcome! This thread will hopefully let you 'meet' your fellow teamates that you might not see regularly because of playing at different times. This also can be a chance to do more roleplaying during an adventure then you might normally due to the cumbersomeness of trying to type and manuver your character at the same time. This is the first time I've done something like this; be gentle...]

A persistant electronic beeping stabs you in the ear, demanding you leave slumber behind and attend it. You groan and roll over in bed, blindly flailing at your night table while muttering dread implications about what you'd like to do to whoever is calling at this hour. You don't need this! You were up half the night rounding up a gang of Lost! The way your shoulder twinges as you streach it is a souvineer of last night's work. Your hand finally closes on a small metal object. You flip open the cell phone and say, in a tone of voice that leaves no room for doubt about what you think about calls at this time of morning, "What do you want?" At least, that is what the message was when it departed from your brain. By the time it left your mouth it had mutated into, "Whadda oo 'unt?" After a few seconds of not getting an answer your ears finally manage to nudge your brain with sufficent sharpness to make it realize that the beeping is still going on. Oh. Right. The OTHER cell phone. The one that was given to you the day you were granted your hero license.
Tossing the other cell to the carpet you pick up the beeping phone and manage to get your neurons aligned enough to say, "Yeah?" "Not a very heroic way to answer your phone", a rich female voice on the other end says with a teasing smile in its' tone, "I'll resist the temptation to say that crime never sleeps, I'm a bigger person than that." You're sure that there's a perfectly scathing reply you could make to that as if she'll just pause for about ten mintues to let your mind warm up. She does not give you those ten mintues though, "It's Laurie Pennington, I contacted your teamate Max Magma about a hot tip I had about that new group, the Council. He's on his way over and suggested that I contact other members of Ground Zero for additional help. A sensible percaution I think. The more people you have to watch your back the less likely you'll be caught be surprise at a bad moment; and there's no good moment to be caught with your tights down when the Council's involved! Anyway. Meet us at the Independence Port tram station in an hour okay? Ciao!" With that, you're left listening to a dead line.

Alpha Vector

Real Name: Derrick Walker
Age: 19
Occupation: Universtity Student
Legal Status: Born Citizen of the USA
Identity: Secret
Other Aliases: None
Place of Birth: New York City, NY
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: mother, Sarah Walker. father, Steve Walker. Sister, Jennifer Walker
Group Affiliation: None
Base Of Operations: currently Paragon City Unviversity
First Appearance: City of Heroes, Issue #1

History: Derrick was a student in the NY state U's computer science program. After the Rikti war factities around the country were contracted by the government to study salvaged and captured Rikti technonlgy. Professor Hoffman of NYU was contracted to study a sample of captured Rikti nanobots. Derrick was among the team of students put togther to aid Professor Hoffman. It was derrick job to help analize the software which directed the Rikti nanobots and help write the program which would direct the first batch of earth-made nanos.
After much hard work they were able to announce the first earth-made reverse-engineered nonbots had been made, the Alpha strain. Now came the time for testing the new nanobots. These prototypes were loaded with a generic "seek and correct all flaws" program and injected into cell samples to test their effectiveness and heal injury and curing disease.
Derrick was working late writing an improved program for attacking cancer cells when the professor burst into the room chased by two men. Hoffman crashed past Derrick; between getting a computer monitor to the face and a counter edge to the gut Derrick didn't notice the tiny jab of a needle.
Days later the papers were announcing the Professor's disspearance. Derrick coudln't help but notice that he was healthier and more vigorous then ever. He also woke up one morning and discovered that he no longer needed his glasses. But between worrying about the professor and interviews with investigators he didn't have time to worry about it.
Derrick snuck into the professor office in order to go through his flies, looking for a clue. He wasn't reading for long before he discovered he wasn't the only one with an interest. Black clad men like the ones he had sen that day when the professor was taken snuck into the office, shot Derrick, grabbed the files and fled.
Derrick sank to the floor, crimson oozing from his chest. However, is wasn't beaving as one would expect blood would. Instead of trickling downward or soaking is clothes it was speading to cover him completely. While the nanobots that had come to saturate his bloodstream busily worked to repair the internal damage and break down the bullet, other flowed outside, interlinked and formed a techno-organic armor shell to protect their host vector. Still others worked to alter the cellular structure of his bones and muscles and tweaking out his nervous system. Obviously Derrick's inablity to defend himself was just another flaw to be corrected.
The bad guys had gotten away and Derrick didn't have the files of the professor to tell him why the nanobots were taking radical actions that had never been included in their programming. He decided that his only option was to go the source of all the Rikti technology. The following semester he transfered to Paragon University.

Height: 6' 6''
Weight: 192lbs
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Black

Strength Level: Thanks to the nanobots' alteration of his muscle cells, he can lift weights of 6800 lbs with relative ease. In addition, strengthed leg muscles allow him to cover whole city blocks in a single leap.

Known SuperHuman Powers: Instantly summon forth a protective covering of techno-organic armor. He can also -reshap peices of the armor into sharp blades. Rapid regeneration which allows him a speedy recovery from injury as well as a resistance to a varaity of ailments. Additionally, by forming the tips of his fingers into hypodermic needles and injecting others with nanobots, he is able to temporarally confers his powers of recovery to others (is always careful to recall all nanos back into his body before withdrawing the needles). Generally hightened levels of health and endurace.

Abilities: A strong education in, and natural aptitude for, computers and mathamatics. Has also developed some skill as a hacker. Some education in sociology and history. Also kills the competition when the time comes to play Quarters at the bar.

Weapons: Techno-organic blades.

As he desended the stairs, Alpha felt a surge of excitement from being onto something important. The so-called Tar Men attacks had severely hurt the Skulls' operations in King's Row. Thus it was to no-one's great surprise that the Skulls' rivals, the Hellions, and decided to take advantage of their foes' misfortune and make pushes into their territory. Still, setting up a dyne lab in what was still really Skull territory was pretty ambitious. The Hellions had probably expended alot of resources getting this site and keeping it secure against the Skulls. If he smashed it, perhaps he could cause the Hellions to go scrambling the way the Skulls were now. The thought of both major street gangs of the city off-balance pleased Vector greatly. It would create many new opening to attack both gangs for someone watchful enought to spot them.

Vector reached the foot of the stairs and crept up on the door in front of him. Pressing up again the door he listened to the sounds of gruff words, the click of guns being loaded and cleaned, and the clink of poker chips striking one another on the table. "Hmm.. Confined space probably.. doesn't leave alot of room to get fancy.. I can do simple."

Three sharp raps sounded on the door. Lewis at the card table looked up, annoyance creasing the parts of his face visible above his bandanna. "Yo Hector, get that!", he said as he returned his attention to his hand. "Bad enough my game gets interrupted because Battalion thinks he hears something soes I gotta send someone to check it out! Then that mother has to come back just when about to win an' spoilin my concentration!" He fans out the cards in front of his face and thought, "Three of a kind and a pair, these punks won't know what hit them!", seconds before a balistic Hector hit him. Shoving the groaning Hector off of him Lewis looked up in time to see a figure plated in red chintin deflecting a brass knuckle punch from Denny with one arm and delivering a flurry of jabs with a fist the seemed to be a mass of blades with the other. Lewis got up as Denny went down, "____! Capes and cowls time! Ice this ______!" A brother swung his sledge hammer at Vector, only to discover that he was only holding half a handel at the end of the swing. A series of quick swipes from Alpha's blades and the punk his the floor seconds after the severed head of his hammer did. Several of the Bloods opened fire at him with their pistols, the bullets doing little more then scuffing the techno-organic shell that was a second skin to him. Vector surged forward on a short leap and landed in the middle of the group, a twisting whirlwind of flying feet and blades. Seeing his Brothers going down Lewis panicked and reached in the corner to retreve the shotgun despite the small size of the room. Alpha spun around at hearing the distinctive "ch-chunk" of a shotgun being pumped but wasn't able to didge in time before dozens of buckshot pellets tore into him. Shards of chintin flew off him, but even as Alpha lept into the air to deliver a jump kick to the gunner's face, nanobots were already rushing to the damaged sites to begin their rapid repair.

The door to the next room burst open as Lewis slid down the wall. Battalion, the scowl on his face a perfect match to the demon mask he wore and another Blood burst out. "What the f--" was about as far as the Blood got before Alpha hooked his foot under the lip of the overturned card table and kicked upward, sending the furnature flying through the part of the air the Blood was currently occuping. Battlion managed to dodge to one side in time to avoid the flying pine projectile. "I ain't afraid of you!", he growled. Flames began to flicker to life around the Hellion's fists, "I'm called Battalion, cause I bring the firepower!" Alpha rolled his eyes behind the lens of his faceplate, he supposed that the punk thought that was clever when he thought of it.

"Well okay then champ", Vector said brandishing the blades sprouting from the back of his hands, "let's dance!" Battalion thrust out one fist and a jet of fire spewed forth. Vector sidestepped to the right and kept coming. He jabbed with his right hand, intending to deliver a disablingly painful slice to the punk's arm, but the Hellion's arm blurred and grabbed Alpha's incoming wrist while the hand that had delivered the fire blast seemed to materialize around Alpha's throat without crossing the interviening space between. "You're nothing!!", the Hellion screamed, "I'll kill you!!" Alpha got a good look into the dialated, blood-shot eyes that blazed at him behind the mask. "Great", Alpha was able to think even as he fought the pain of being held by two burning hands, "I had to catch him just after he did a hit of dyne!" The Hellion hurled Vector across the room, the gangsters' drug enchanced strength causing Alpha to leave a crater where he hit the wall. Alpha leap back to his feet only in time to catch one, two, then three fireballs to the chest in rapid succession. Alpha slumped back again the wall, his armor blackened and blistered, the skin underneath seared. Battalion strode forward to finish the fight with a full strength blast at point blank range. "You're gonna make me famous.. hero!" The last word was punctuated with a laugh as he closed the distance, meanwhile Alpha was sending frantic mental signals calling forth the reserves of nanobots in his bloodstream. Battalion was sending almost over Vector when his laugh died in his throat, the blisters were smoothing out and the blacked areas were being re-claimed by vibrant red! Battalion began to raise his arms to fire but Alpha sprange forward like an uncoiling spring, thrusing both set of blades out and running Battalion through either shoulder. The two combatants were face-to-face, allowing Alpha to see the shock in Battalion's eyes as he tried to figure out why victory had slipped away. A crescent kick upward clipped battalion under the chin and pulled him off Alpha's blades.

Alpha Almost doubled over in pain as the adreniline wore off. He managed to keep enough presence of mind to tag Battalion and the other fallen Hellions with the mini-trnasponders that would soon teleport them away to the prison infirmery. Still the pain was slowly starting to reced, that nanobots that he shared his body with tireless repairing the damage the battle had done. He could only call upon his reserves of nanos for a quick surge of healing every once in awhile. Having just done so only minutes ago, he would have to make do as the nanos healed his burns at their usual rate.

"Now to see what they were up to", Vector thought to himself as he moved gingerly across the room and through the door Battalion had come in through. Inside this room he found all the usual chemestry paraphanalia one would expect in a drug lab, but then he looked to the far wall. There was a huge hole in the floor that extended through the floorboards, through the foundation, and into the ground below. Around the edges of the hole Vector found specks of a black sticky substance. "Oh no!", he thought as he ran over to the table to examine the equipment more closely. In one tube he found a tube filled with a black viscous liquid. A new variant of dyne. "Surely not even the Hellions could be so stupid and crazy as to try to.. what am I thinking? They could, they are, and they have. Obviously the tarmen came and went from this enterance point. The tarmen were long gone before some Hellion scout found this place and they decided to set up thier little expiriment using the traces the tarmen left behind, if they hadn't been I doubt their would have been any Hellions left here to fight me. That's why they risked setting up this lab in Skull territory, to be close to their source of secret ingredient!"

So absorbed in the contemplation of the contents of the vial was Alpha that he didn't sense danger until a tendril wrapped around his ankle.

A man sloached is way along the streets of King's row, his dirt-smeared coat had been green at one points, but had been turn a brackish grey long ago. He stopped across the street from a tenament building that had seen better days, but what part of King's Row hadn't? Floping down in a gesture of exaustion he drew his legs to his chest for warmth, he adjusted his ball cap lower over his face and laid the palm of his right hand up in front of him in the exectation of nothing much. The building across from him was indistquishable from the other tenament buildings around it, except for the bandanna wearing blood brothers that occassionaly looked out though the boarded up windows.
A man wearing the trademark demon mask of the Hellions walked up to the building flanked by his entourage of blood brothers. "Ah, the man himself", Alpha Vector thought to himself. His contact had warned him that the Hellions were brewing up some new variant of dyne. This place was just ne location Vector was keeping an eye on. It was undoubtable a dyne lab, but was it THE dyne lab? Battalion's presence here was a positive sign, a guy that high up in the Hellions was going to be out doing bagman work. Even if this wasn't the lab that was expirimenting with the dyne variant, Battakion would know if anyone would where it was. "I'll just have a little heart to heart with him."

The dishevled man stood up slowly and slouched in the alley. Once swalloed by the darkness he began to run, using strets and allies to circle around to the back enterence of the building, turning into an alley into the last streach he shead the ball cap and the grimy coat. A stranger who saw him then would be forgiven for being alarmed, after all usually when you see crimson pouring out of a guy's pores its usually a sign something's wrong. The red tide streaming over his face and hands lost it's resemblence to liquid soon enough. Each droplet put ot branches which connected with the searching baches from other droplets and wove together. Hard plates now covered his head and hands and were beginning to work their way up his arms and down his torso. It was almost like watching a time-lapse film of a city being build as millions of nanobots continues to march down his body linking up and filling in the gaps with organic tissue.

By the time Alpha Vecotr bust from the shadows and toward the front door he was encased in a lightweight suit of techno-organic armor. He took the first Blood Brother guarding the rear entrance with a jump kick, smashing his head between oncoming foot and unyeilding brick wall.Alpha had sprung into the air again by the time the othe Blood managed to realize what was happening and get a shot off. Vector landed behind the blood and sent a command down nerve pathways no normal human had. At his prompting, the nanobots convering his hands re-arragned themselves almost instantly causing blades to spring from the backs of his hands. The Blood brother whirled about, drawing a switchblade with his free hand. Vector arm flashed before him and the Blood dropped his knife, trying to cluch at the three bleeding lines on his arm and still hold on to his gun at the same time. Alpha flipped backwards, coiling like a spring into a crouching headstand before uncoiling explosively, flying into the startled Blood's face with both heels. The Blood made a meaty thud as he rebounded off the opposite wall and Alpha Vector sprang to his feet. With two flicks of his wrists he tagged the fallen goons with transponders and within a minute they dissapeared. By now they were materializing in the police station infirmery thanks to the mirical of reverse-engineered Rikti technonolgy. A supply of transponders had been handed to him on his first day along with his ID card and comm pad.

"That could have gone better", he thought to himself has he used a blade to slice the doorknob and lock seperate from the rest of the door. He had hoped to take both Bloods down without a fuss, he just hoped that the Hellions inside were as desensetized to a gunshot in the night as everyone else was in King's Row. The interior of the tenanment building had the smell universal to dives eveywhere, it reminded him of a combination of stale cigarette smoke and wet socks. He tired to walk by stepping down with his whole foot rather than heel first in order to minimize the squeeking of floorboards as he moved down the corridors. The guy coming down the hall was making no such effort. Vector heard him long before he saw him. The Blood had been order to make sure the guards in back were all right after a shot had been heard. His reward for his dilligence was an armor-plated fist to the temple as he rounded the corner of the hall. Alpha entered the stairwell he had seen the goon exit and climbed downward into the basement.