Mr_Grey

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She's living in Atlas park, bugging her daughter about giving her some grandkids.

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This AND directing Freedom Corps!

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“Over here.”

We all turned towards one of the corridors and Madam Rabinovich haltingly skipped into view, the blade once again confined within the cane and providing her with needed support. She beckoned with her free hand.

“Auer ran this way.”


[/ QUOTE ]

Oh... Thank goodness.

For a moment there, I was worried.

Why is this still going on? 40 pages, and I still don't see why it's such a popular topic. I don't get why everybody is torturing themselves over this.

I've seen the same points expressed over and over again by multiple people. It's growing depressing that so much attention is being paid to something so irrelevant, both to the game and to the world at large.

Just like an inflatable Troll balloon, the more attention we pay to this, the bigger (and uglier) it's going to get, but that doesn't mean it has anymore real substance.

Swimsuit?

Hm.

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The interplay between Rick and the Nictus isn't cannon...

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Not exactly canon. The developer explanation for the relationship still leaves room for interpretation for unique characters like this.

My own Warshade's relationship between the Human and the Nictus is actually quite similar to your depiction.

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I'll jump in on the open slot, bringing my main, Kittano as Vega.

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8D

Please tell me that's a Claws Scrapper!

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That was the main reason for choosing Vega

[/ QUOTE ]



YES!

Thanks, PKDauntless. Thank you, too, Eva.

I suppose if the Longbow Flamethrower troops only appeared in, say, Longbow bases, I could live with this. However, as Eva mentioned, they're EVERYWHERE. Seems suspect.

Grey's Army Update

I had to get this one in while the story was still fresh in my head.

Ryat99 and Cedric Grey deal with a Steel Canyon apartment building fire. A Hellion who fancies himself a demon king gives them both trouble and Cedric learns that he somehow still has powers. However, this can cause conflict when other, still-licensed heroes learn of his recent behavior.

This one's been bugging me for a while...

Is there a Geneva Convention in CoH World? I ask because of one glaring item that has bothered me since I've dealt with it...

Flamethrowers.

Flamethrowers are illegal under the Geneva Convention. It doesn't bother me when, say, the Council or the Sky Raiders are using them. It's what they do, they're bad guys.

However... When Longbow, a law-abiding and law-enforcing entity, starts using them, it sets my teeth on edge.

If there isn't a Geneva Convention in CoH-world, possibly due to the fact that super-powered beings who can spit fire breath are an almost regular occurrence, then I suppose I could live more easily with this issue. However, if there is one, then why wouldn't flamethrowers be included under the "no cruel weapons" portion? If they ARE, then why is Longbow using flamethrowers is they're supposed to follow and uphold the law?

It's irksome. It gives the Villains/Rogues ground to stand on when they justify themselves that the Heroes/"Vigilantes" are two-faced sycophants.

--Steel Canyon--

Cedric vaulted himself across the street, heedless of the people shouting for him to stop. He could hear children crying in that apartment building, so this was no time to stand idly by.

As he crossed the street, it seemed a mob of Hellion gang members had materialized to practically worship the horror they’d wrought in the burning building. One of them got in Cedric’s way and he kicked the guy in the chest, doubling him over backwards and tumbling into his friends.

“Get the cape!” a Damned Hellion shouted as fire erupted from his hands, “Burn it all!”

He received a shovel to his face for his efforts. Cedric shoulder-tackled another and yanked his submachine gun from him. Firing shots into the mess of red-orange outfits, he barreled into the door of the building.

Hold your breath, Cedric…

Squinting and crouching low, he made his way for the staircase at the other end of the hall.

---

Flying in circles over the burning building, Ryat99 made some calculations. He could locate the people Cedric had indicated, as well as Cedric’s form rushing into the flames.

“Crazy human,” the android mused to himself, “I would say he’s going to get himself killed one of these days, but I’d be wrong.”

Indeed, he wasn’t. His thermal imaging registered Cedric’s form rushing out of the heat again, this time on a higher floor. He was making his way to the first batch of civilians that needed rescuing.

“Well, time to do my part…” the machine muttered as he scanned for a good entrance point, “That hole in the ceiling should be perfect to prevent making an influx…”

A moment later, he’d crashed through a hole that had been scorched into the roof of the apartment building. As he landed, a cloud of coolant sprayed from his body and pushed back the flames.

“Fuel and heat…”

He aimed his arms down the hallway to the civilians he would be rescuing. The entire corridor was simply flooded with flames. A moment later, however, a more focused cloud of coolant was being pushed down the hall. Fire faded as it came in contact with the icy solution and soon the hallway was clear.

“The floor’s structurally unsound,” Ryat99 said more to himself than anyone, “Going to have to walk on the edges…”

Rocking his massive frame back and forth, he made his way to the room where a pair of panicked children prayed fervently for something to save their lives. A large section fell away underneath him, but with his feet planted on the beams that made up the base of the walls and the edges of the floor, he was able to keep moving along steadily.

“Hello in there!” he announced loudly, “My name is Ryat Ninety-nine, and I’m here to help! I’m going to be breaking the door down now…”

Forming a blade of ice with a careful swarm of nanites, he reared back and swung. The damaged door fell in easily, splitting in half loudly and violently. Some flames licked at his back and the big machine extended his wings to keep them from advancing into the room.

“AUGH!” the young boy screamed, “It’s a monster! A demon!”

“Um…” the big android’s deep voice rumbled quietly, “I already told you… I’m here to help…”

“I think he was talking about me.”

Turning, Ryat99 saw what appeared to be a fiery demon. It wasn’t like the ones that worked with the Circle. It seemed too human, and in fact was too human. A quick biological analysis revealed a 92% match to human physiology. It was probably just another meta human with fire powers, playing at being a demon to hang out with the Hellions, who of which he was dressed like, albeit a little uniquely as he wore a yellow vest instead of an orange or red one.

“You look like an ifrit,” the machine replied emotionlessly, “Brown, almost black skin, with a reddish tint… Tiny, spiraled, curling horns jutting from your forehead… Yellow, fiery eyes to match the flames wrapped about your body that don’t seem to damage your clothing…”

“Fool!” the meta human shouted, “You face the great demon king, Baal! I will melt your modern abomination of a body down to make the nails for my throne!”

“Really? That’s what you’re going with?”

“Kneel before me, mortal!”

“Um. No.”

Ryat99 took two wide strides down the hall and poked the fiery meta human in the chest. A jet of coolant sprayed out and wrapped about the foolish young man who called himself “Baal.” What a lot of people didn’t know about Ryat99’s coolant was that it was made up of the same nanite solution that made up his fluids and lubricants. It helped him make his armor when he vented it and it helped make weapons as he shaped it. In this case, he was encasing the rogue, deluded meta human in a block of ice. Most of the “ice” really was water, drawn from the local moisture in the air, but it could also be the nanite solution, which in this case it had to be, as there was very little water to work with.

Shocked, “Baal” stared dumbly at the big machine, his arms held up as if to protest his treatment at the hands of the heroic android. Ryat99 looked on impassively, his visor glowing brightly over his featureless voice emitter. Without a word, he poked the block and pushed it back through the hole that had collapsed through the hallway floor earlier.

“Baal” fell to the next floor down with an undignified scream that ended with a grinding crash (as ice tends to sound like). Turning back to the children, Ryat99 was a little concerned that they both still looked terrified.

“It’s alright,” he said softly, “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help.”

The children looked back at the burned out hole and Ryat99 followed their gaze. Looking back at them, he chuckled a little.

“He’ll be fine. You saw how he was on fire, right? Well, right now, fire’s bad. Ice is good. Ice will keep you from getting burned.”

The girl, chewing her lower lip, gingerly approached him. Her brother tried to stop her, shouting that they couldn’t trust “the big scary metal monster.” Ryat99 wasn’t paying attention, however, as he noticed smoke wafting up out of the floor of their apartment. He could also hear “Baal” behind him, clawing his way back up to the floor in order to get his revenge.

Uttering a hasty apology and withdrawing the ice from his arms and hands, he hefted up the children, cradled them to his chest, wrapped his wings about them and blasted off for the window. No sooner did he do this, than fire erupted in the apartment, engulfing the floor and walls in flames. “Baal” hurled a fireball after them, but it struck the window sill, causing an explosion to highlight their escape.

Spreading his wings, Ryat99 pulled the children away from his frozen chest and landed softly to let them gently scamper away once they were safely away from the building. They were terrified, of that he was certain, and part of it was about him. He didn’t look human, which he wasn’t, so that took away a lot of the comfort they could have felt.

Briefly, the android considered that he needed a human form, or at least a human face. It made sense, he did have an alternate housing configuration that utilized a humanoid face, but it looked like something out of a horror movie and the ocular units were all wrong and much too large. Still, he had people regarding him in Portal Corp as if he were like Citadel, so there was merit to the idea.

Until he had a human face, people would fear him. He wasn’t even a lunatic, like the eldest Grey child, who had just smashed out a third-story window with his work shovel and leaped from it with a young woman clutching to his muscled torso. Somehow, he landed without hurting himself, or the woman, by rolling as he hit the street. Hopping up with a cheer, and tumbling the girl into the crowd from the momentum, he didn’t seem to notice the Hellion walking up behind him. This was proven false when he ducked the baseball bat swing and whirled around to drive an elbow into the aggressor’s abdomen.

The baseball bat hit the pavement with a wooden clatter and Grey moved on to the next one. Heroes were gathering now, many of which were fighting the flames and Ryat99 joined them, taking to the sky to combat the flames above with his own arsenal of ice. Cedric, however, decided it was time to turn his attention to the people who’d started the fire. Left and right, he did battle with the punks. He was careful to use skills he hadn’t considered much since acquiring his axe, but were the difference between life and death now.

His Marine skills came back to the forefront, and with quick grapples and joint twists, he disabled and disarmed the thugs as they came at him. At first, they came one-on-one. When that proved futile, they tried to rush him, crowding themselves as much as they crowded him. Plus, he had some weapons, a baseball bat, some knives and a pistol, from his prior victories. The punks flailed and swung haphazardly at him, hurting their friends as they didn’t pay attention to what they were doing. In one hard swipe from the former tanker, the small semi-circle of punks tumbled to the ground.

The Damned at the doorway was about to throw fire at him. Without hesitating, Cedric dropped to one knee and drew the pistol he’d taken. As fire wrapped about the Damned Hellion’s hands, Cedric fired three times, once in the right hand, once in the left forearm, and once in the leg. The Damned dropped out of the doorway, screaming in pain.

However, another young man appeared behind him. He looked like a mix of a demon and a genie… And his expression was all-too serious for the ridiculously stylized Hellion outfit he was wearing. “Baal’s” disadvantage here, however, was that Cedric was taking him just as seriously as he was acting, unlike Ryat99, who was willing to let him alone on account of his stupid name.

“I will burn the flesh from your miserable bones!” he shouted in an inhumanly deep voice.

Cedric fired a round into the fiery man’s torso. The bullet stopped against a supernatural armor of fire, but “Baal” doubled over in pain. Realizing he wasn’t as tough as he thought, he turned instead to breathing fire at the former hero.

Cedric tossed the pistol aside as the flames reached him. He didn’t need the bullets exploding in his hand. Crooking his left arm, he turned away and crouched lower.

Ryat99 looked down in time to see his boss’s son get wrapped in flames. The torch continued for the better part of a minute, and the big machine worried that he would have some bad news to deliver.

“Cedric!” he shouted involuntarily.

Emotions were a new bit of creeping code in his system. He and his siblings were supposed to be emotionless, but lately had started to be happy, sad, angry… Right now, Ryat99 was feeling a lot of worry. He wasn’t so concerned for the building fire, a decent number of heroes had arrived and the flames were dying faster than the few Hellions left could restart them. However, Cedric was flesh and-

The flames from the breath of fire died down, and Cedric stood back up. Flames stuck to his roadwork outfit, but they were dying out. Casually, he batted at the fire and smothered the last of it. “Baal” stumbled backward a little, and the last thing Ryat99 saw was Cedric body-tackling the unique Hellion into the building. Some fire spewed out of the entrance, and for a brief moment, nobody knew what happened.

Ryat99 maneuvered himself back to ground-level and looked into the doorway. Some smoke billowed forth, along with ash-polluted water. A moment later, Cedric’s scuffed, stained boot emerged from under the smoke, followed shortly by the other as he walked his way out of the burning building with “Baal” slung over his shoulder. As he reached the doorway, he twisted around violently and smacked the Hellion’s back against the frame. “Baal” cried out, and Cedric suddenly looked very worried.

“Oh, I’m sorry, man…” he said disingenuously, “I meant to hit your head!”

And he swung the Hellion again, smacking his head against the other frame. One of the horns cracked and broke away, trickling a little blood out of the base of the break. If it hurt “Baal,” he couldn’t say anything, as he’d passed out from the blow.

-----

The police were gathering up the criminals and helping apartment residents file insurance claims. The children Ryat99 had saved were clinging, terrified, to their mother. They couldn’t take their eyes off the big machine, the girl apparently in awe, her younger brother in shock. The woman Cedric had saved was busy trying to straighten her hair in an attempt to get him to notice her. Unfortunately, he wound up distracted at that moment.

“Boss, how are we gonna handle the rest of the day’s work?” he asked.

“There is no rest of the day’s work,” Jonas answered, his form visibly shaken by the noontime events, “Go home… Do whatever… I’ll give your case worker the paperwork to cover this afternoon’s dismissal when I’m done with it.”

“Cool, thanks.”

“Cedric, you should be dead,” Ryat99 announced as the man started walking away, “Those flames… That fire… You should have died long before you saved that girl.”

“Well, I didn’t,” he replied dismissively, “I got lucky, I guess…”

“That wasn’t luck. You’re surrounded by an unidentifiable energy field. You should see the F.B.S.A. Magi and Elite divisions.”

“I knew it!” one of the heroes who helped stop the fire shouted, “You’re still acting as a hero! An unlicensed, super-powered hero!”

A thin man in dark blue armor marched up to them and pointed his finger in Cedric’s face. The former tanker seemed oddly amused by the behavior.

“Officer!” the shorter man shouted again, “Officers! You need to arrest this man! He’s acting as a hero without a license!”

“I’ll give you one more chance to turn around, walk away and learn how to look at law by degrees,” the taller man said quietly.

“Arrest him!”

“Now hang on,” Ryat99 rumbled, “This man didn’t kn-!”

“No, no, bug guy,” Cedric gently took the smaller hero by the head and spun him out into the street, “Let me handle this.”

Following the little guy into the street, he spread his arms out wide. Grey wanted the angry young man to be sure he wasn't trying to hurt him.

“What do you want, little guy? What did I do that was so wrong?”

“I already told you! You can’t go around acting like a hero without a license!”

Cedric almost laughed.

“A little scrap of watermarked paper, laminated in stylized plastic, doesn’t determine if I’m a hero or not!” he said with a little anger tingeing his usually smooth voice.

“But it’s what you need to do heroics in this city!” the younger man continued shouting.

“How so? Unlicensed people do heroic things in this city every day! That scrap you’re so worried about just means we can handle the extra violent stuff!”

“No!” the hero was still indignant, “No! No! NO! Officer! Arrest this man!”

“You aren’t my superior, boy,” the uniformed officer replied darkly, “I don’t know what your problem is, and I don’t see what this guy’s done that’s so wrong.”

“If you let him get away with this, it could set a precedent!”

“Max,” one of the hero’s companions, a young woman in a bright-pink, form-fitting spandex outfit and a blue cape pleaded with her friend, “I know you’re agitated, but this isn’t the time or place!”

“Look man, calm down,” Cedric tried to reason, “Take a breather and think this through. The only people that got hurt were the thugs that started the fire. Innocent lives were saved because of my actions! Is this so terrible?”

“No! You’re a murderer!” Max was growing less vehement, but still had something to get in edgewise, “I remember the story! You slaughtered those men in the streets!”

“Council soldiers. They were barely human, and only in the most open of biological definitions.”

“That’s not justification!”

“Nothing is,” Cedric shook his head disappointedly, “To a civilian who’s never faced death.”

“Come on, Max,” the young heroine whispered as she reached her friend, “Let’s go. We’ve helped out what we could, here.”

“This isn’t over,” Max said as he was led away, “I’ll be filing a complaint!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Grey shrugged and walked over to Ryat99, “Any chance you could fly me to City Hall?”

“Sure, hop on my back,” the big machine replied.

Ooh! Ooh! I'll throw Roland Grey into that, Kyo! He's a Trick Arrow Defender.

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I'll jump in on the open slot, bringing my main, Kittano as Vega.

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8D

Please tell me that's a Claws Scrapper!

The "Hive Mind" Bane soldiers only appear in one arc, and their reaction is similar to the 7th Generation Paragon Protector world on the Blueside...

"They're not like us! Destroy all not like us!"

No Bane arcs within the VEAT story. The leveling system treats it like it's just normal training.

Since you're really only getting access to Bane Spider abilities, it could be considered that you're not really a "Bane Spider," but a Soldier of Arachnos with the devices and training normally attributed to the Bane Spiders.

Whatever you make your character, Amahte, remember this: Bane Spider VEATs are pretty much Rambo for this game. If you don't understand, watch Rambo: First Blood, part II or Rambo, then you'll see.

Bane Spiders are to drool for!

NOOOOO!

We lost Blanka!

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Punch Out!

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PUNCH OUT!!

The ongoing saga of my main characters and some of my side ones in Grey's Army continues.

Randall reacts in a surprising way to the strange miniature bear stealing the steak he'd left in the base. He also has a use for the little bugger.

Meanwhile, Cedric engages in his first day of community service: helping fix potholes in Steel Canyon. He engages in a bit of heroic behavior philosophy with one of the other workers before all Hell breaks loose.

The room was silent. Kip almost dropped his bottle of beer into his lap while Cedric struggled to breathe. Sheldon and Cathryn merely looked worriedly from the miniature bear to the towering mountain of a man who was glowering down at him.

“Dad,” Cedric finally said, “Don’t punt him across the base…”

Randall leaned down and got his craggy face close to Barry. The pudgy animal seemed oblivious to whatever danger it was in as it licked the tanker’s nose happily.

“You like that steak?”

“Mrah!”

“You want more?”

“Mrah! Mrah!”

“Well,” Randy reached over and cupped his massive hands around the gudar in order to lift him up, “You gotta earn it! I can’t be having you little [turds] eating all the food in this place and pay for it with just a little tidying up! You got a good nose?”

Barry nodded vigorously and happily. While the humans thought Randy was being intimidating, the little bear could smell that Randy was more amused than anything. Besides, that piece of meat he’d eaten was about to go past its prime, anyway. The little critter thought it would be best if somebody ate it the way it was meant to be tasted.

“Smell this,” Randall waved a red rag under Barry’s nose, “I found it in the laundry room of my building a few minutes ago.”

“What is that?” Cedric asked.

“It’s a piece of cloth from a Circle robe,” his father replied, “Aren’t you about to be late for your appointment?”

“Nah, I got plenty of time. I just came by here to grab my canteen when I saw your steak was missing… I thought you were gonna flip out…”

“Life’s too short to sweat stuff like that. Besides, I kept forgetting it was there. I’d come in to get it, see some work I had to do, then it would slip my mind. I guess it was about ready to spoil, right boy?”

“Snffl-Mrah!” the little animal replied as the big man cradled him under his arm.

“Okay, boys, miss, I’m headed back out. I’ll see you later.”

“Bye dad!” Cedric called as he headed into the portal chamber next door, “Later, guys. I’m off to Steel Canyon to work on the road!”

“Later guys,” Kip hollered, then looked up at Sheldon, “So… You going to say something socially awkward?”

“You’re planning on making out with her and you’re trying to make me leave, aren’t you?” Sheldon asked, manipulating his voice into a high-toned murmur as he did.

“And you wonder why they liken you to that idiot on T.V.,” the scrapper cackled as he turned back to the televisions and hugged Cathryn close again.

“Don’t get used to it, Kip,” Sheldon returned to his usual even monotone, “I’ll be in my lab, making noise.”

“We’ll be in here, making more,” the orange-skinned girl giggled, “Bye-bye, Shel.”

“Stop short of having sex on that couch,” the inventor grumbled on his way out, killing whatever mood they had building up, “We don’t want to have to burn it.”

“Aw, you’re no fun,” Kip mock grumbled at his friend’s retreating back.

----------

--Kings Row--

Randall rapped on the door when Barry was sniffing at the foot of it exclusively. The thin old man who answered was hardly what the big man was expecting, though.

“Hi there,” Grey grunted, “I’m Randy, the building’s superintendent.”

“Hello,” the old man said calmly, favoring the big man with a warm smile, “There’s nothing wrong with my apartment. At least, I haven’t noticed anything.”

“Well, then you mind telling me why my fuzzy little friend here is telling me I can find the own of this at this residence?” Randy tossed the scrap of robe on the floor in front of the old man, “And by the by, this apartment’s not supposed to have anybody in it. Don’t know how you’ve been here all this time, probably some magic mumbo-jumbo, but I know who’s in my building. You ain’t here.”

“Oh…” the old man’s eyes flashed green and he frowned at Barry, who was growling and bristling at him, “What the Hell is this little monster?”

“That’s my privileged information,” the big man pushed one of his thick fingers against the old man’s forehead to get him to look back up at him, “And it ain’t relevant to your current situation anymore. What’re you doin’ here?”

“I was sent to keep an eye on vigilante movement in this area…” the old man’s voice was rasping now as he shut down his illusory enchantments; behind him, his well-furnished apartment warped and wavered before reverting to a dusty abandoned chamber, “Not ones like you, Mister Grey. You’re pretty ‘obvious.’ I was meant to ferret out the ones that like to hide their real identities behind crude masks…”

“Well, now this obviously angry vigilante is going to bore your skull out…”

“With your thumb?”

“What would the fun in that be?” Randy asked with a frightening smile.

The wizard seemed horror-stricken.

“What? I was talking about using my pinky…” and Randy waved his hand in front of the old man’s face, finishing the wave by poking him in the head with the little finger on the end of his hand.

The wizard stumbled back and snarled. A bruise was forming on his forehead and his green eyes were starting to emit green fire. He raised his arms up in a manner that kept them in front of his chest, parallel to each other with the fists just under his chin (called “the Horns of Power”) and lightning started to crackle between his forearms.

Before the two could do battle, though, Barry leaped through the air and tore right through the old man’s form. A large gash was torn out of the wizard’s hip and he fell to the floor. Dust was tumbling from his body as the ethereal energies holding hi m together faded away. He seemed to be keeping his vision locked on the strange little abomination that had ended his false life before everything went black. Barry merely chewed the bit of sweater he’d torn free and stared back defiantly into the inhuman eyes.

“Good job, Barry,” the tanker grunted as he kicked the remains apart, “But next time, I want to take the [jerk] alive. They just come back later, usually gunning for revenge.”

“Mrah?” the gudar didn’t seem to understand, but dropped the scrap of sweater and pressed against Randall’s leg.

The big man chuckled and scratched the tiny bear behind his ears.

“You did good. Let’s get you something to chase down that horrible dusty stuff.”

----------

--Steel Canyon--

Cedric arrived on the scene with a bright smile on his face. The other workers, both normal contracted street builders and a few other community service hires (not all of which were on judiciary sentences like Cedric), looked at him worriedly before the foreman arrived.

“Okay, folks,” the foreman grunted, “Got some new people, so let me introduce myself. I’m Jonas Grand, and I run this crew pretty simply. You do right by me and I’ll do right by you. Now, I’m sure you’ve all heard that we’ve got a former hero in our little group today, so, let’s have a round of applause for Cedric Grey. He’ll be working with us until his court order is up… In about five or six years.”

“I might get time off for good behavior!” Grey chortled.

“Right. Well, our job’s simple. We fill potholes. The truck’s coming around with the fresh asphalt, so everybody grab your vests, helmets and shovels, and we’ll get cracking. We’re working in the Bronze Way today, not far from the precinct there, so be on your best behavior, parolees. I’m sure Cedric can tell you they don’t mess around in that precinct!”

“No they don’t,” Grey was already pulling on a bright vest and hard hat, “But they’re nice people, too.”

As they worked, they talked. Cedric found out that most of the people he was working with were involved in less-serious crimes, like petty theft or vandalism. Of course, the conversation eventually came to Grey. When they found out he was assigned this job despite being acquitted of multiple murders, they were shocked and slightly scared.

“Relax!” Cedric waved off their concerns, “You know how the Council is. Those idiots had it coming.”

“Yeah, but… You murdered them!”

“I killed them, yeah,” he shrugged, “And their organization, their whole organization, is responsible for numerous atrocities throughout the city, including murder, fire bombings, and more than a few kidnappings… Like what happened to my baby sister. I figured it was time they realized that a jail sentence isn’t the only thing they have to fear from us when they cross the line.”

“But you took the law into your own hands,” one of the normal workers, a rather cute red head named Victoria, complained, “Statesman himself said that’s not what you’re supposed to do!”

“Statesman gets to live past eighty and keep his twenty-year-old physique,” Cedric countered, “And nobody has a problem with the sort of violence I mete out when they see it in the movies.”

“Right on, brother,” a young, dark-skinned man, Sean, cheered the former hero on.

Cedric looked askance at Sean. He was another of the parolees on the job. He’d been busted for a street fight involving some Hellions and his brother. It seemed the young man was looking for some kind of justification for his actions.

“Now, I’m not saying I was completely right,” Grey continued as he shoveled some more asphalt into a hole, “I shouldn’t have been slicing and dicing incoherently. I should have been beating the Hell out of them with my own two hands…”

“Incoherently?” Foreman Grand laughed, “How does somebody slice and dice incoherently?”

“Simple,” Cedric held up his shovel to demonstrate, “You swing the axe about… Then you shout out gibberish and snippets of phrases without really getting your point across. It helps if you’re not hitting anything normally vital, like shoulders and thighs. The damage I did, though… Hoo boy…”

“You talk as if you enjoyed it,” Victoria said darkly.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. And I wasn’t wrong to attack those jerks… And I wasn’t wrong for killing them… I feel I was wrong taking the whole thing public and trying to make the streets run red. That was too much to ask.”

“Of whom?” the woman continued to be indignant.

“Of everybody. I took my grievance public and started by making an example of those idiots… But nobody remembers the ‘why’ of it, they only remember what I did and focus on it. Oh, it’s so terrible that I killed people who live every day to victimize civilians like you; yet, if you had the same opportunities and the same situation, I bet every one of you would have done the same.

“While I agree with that, Grey,” Grand grunted as he slapped another batch of asphalt into another hole, “I have to also point out that it’s a slippery slope. Revenge can make a person see things in a darker light…”

“The world’s as bright to me today as it was before then…”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Yes it was,” Cedric countered, “I know exactly what you meant and my metaphor is in keeping. The world still has all the same luster as before, and I maintain my same ideals. My ideals just happen to include bloody retribution for those who wrong me and my own.”

“But Christ teaches us forgiveness,” Victoria was starting to look quite shaken by the taller man’s diatribe.

“I won’t get into my feelings on that,” Grey almost growled, “Save this. Teaching and doing are two different things. Life doesn’t work like the Book tells you, and the Book has its own problems in getting its lessons straight. Forgiveness works when you have nobody to turn to except God or the gods, which usually means the situation is well out of your hands. But when there’s a life to save, I would expect you to give your all to save it.”

“It’s easy for you to talk,” the redhead walked over and jabbed her finger into Cedric’s chest, “You had some sort of magic protecting you! Normal people can’t dodge bullets!”

“Hey now!” Grand shouted, “Calm down, you two! Vicky! You want to take a break?”

“No, Jonas, I’m fine…”

“Take a break anyway. I’ll talk to them…”

Victoria leveled a dark glare at Cedric. Oddly, the tall man looked impassively at her and shrugged. When he was displaying anger earlier, it wasn’t at her. Cedric had always disliked religion in its shapes, but not its philosophies. The problem was extricating the two from each other, which most practitioners of faith found to be a wholly abhorrent approach to theology.

“Look, you need to calm down,” the foreman gasped exasperatedly, “Vicky’s a nice girl, but you can’t go insulting her like that…”

“She’s the one attacking me,” Grey replied calmly, “I’m expressing my opinion and my philosophy to defend myself when I don’t even need to. That’s already been done for me. If I really wanted, I could be in court right now, fighting to have this community service repealed. Still… I’m not going to dilute how I look at things to spare her feelings.”

“Well, watch what you’re saying about religion, then,” Jonas warned, “That crap you said about getting the lesson straight can be seen as an attack, and I don’t need that!”

“Right,” Cedric nodded, “Right.”

Jonas glared at Cedric, narrowed his eyes at Sean, then left to talk to Victoria. Sean walked up and clapped the tall man on the shoulder.

“Yeah! You showed that self-righteous-!”

“It was right of you to fight to protect your brother,” Cedric interrupted, “But I don’t need a cheerleader for an argument.”

“Wait… I didn’t even get to tell my story…”

“Sean York, twenty-five. Convicted of ‘Disturbing the Peace.’ First time offense, relegated to community service.”

Cedric turned his communicator off and clipped it back to his belt. Not everything from his sanctioned vigilantism days had been confiscated when they took his license. Right now, M.A.G.I. was back to studying his Praetorian Axe, trying to figure out how the Soul Drinker enchantment worked and how Cedric the Gray had altered it. The other stuff, his outfits, trophies or other gear, had little-to-nothing to do with his heroics, so they let him keep it.

“I know you feel like you’ve still got something to prove, man,” he explained, “But trust me. You’ve done enough. Let other people fight their own battles now.”

“What about you? What have you got to prove?”

“I’m not proving anything anymore,” Grey chuckled as he went back to pounding asphalt into potholes, “I’m getting this job done and moving on to the next one. In the meantime, I’m reapplying for my F.B.S.A. license and physically training for when they finally do let me fight again. Otherwise, I’m good.”

“But you were arguing with Vicky…”

“Yeah… That started with me trying to allay your guys’ fears that I’m a threat to ya, but it just got out of hand. Seriously, my lines of life are drawn, I don’t cross them.”

“So… You’ve got no problem with killing criminals?”

“They’d have to give me a reason, a really good reason,” Cedric pointed at Sean, “A few punches, keying my truck’s paint job, or taking some money from me? Nah. Not worth a person’s life. Killing a friend of mine? Kidnapping a family member? These things deserve the most severe punishments. They’re things that don’t deserve leniency, I don’t care what the excuse du joir is.”

Sean seemed to understand that and nodded. They went back to working, this time talking about sports. They were comparing college basketball teams when Victoria and Jonas got back. She still seemed shaken, but Cedric apologized and offered his hand to shake.

“I don’t mean to disparage your faith,” he explained, “And I don’t want you to think I’m going to come after you. That’s not me. That’s not what I do.”

Victoria shook his hand, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she went back to working on a pothole with Jonas. Cedric sighed and went back to working with Sean.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly for the few hours to lunch after that. They were discussing who would ride with who to which restaurants when the world suddenly exploded.

The apartment building across the street erupted in flames. Glass scattered all over the ground and there was screaming. Hellions were rushing the streets like they owned them, shouting “Fire it up!” and “Let it burn! BURN!” Cedric knew the cries well, but he also knew others.

He could hear people shouting from the upstairs floors. People were trapped in the fire! Reaching for his communicator, he clicked a button to call everybody in Grey’s Army currently on patrol.

“This is Cedric Grey! If anybody can hear me, I’m in the Bronze Way district of Steel Canyon! There’s a fire over here and people need help! I need help!”

“I’m on my way,” came the even-toned voice of Ryat99, “Where are you in the building, Cedric?”

“I’m not in it, yet,” he shouted as he started running across the street, “But I’m about to be!”

[ QUOTE ]
I'm in.

Chun li for me.

And since Rasta and Grey are playing their signature characters, I'll be Sooner, unless you need me to be someone else.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, come ON! Sooner is totally Cammy!

8D

I want to throw in Randall Grey as Zangief!

What is WITH this week!?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So.... how about that movie, then?

[/ QUOTE ]


I knew that was coming.

Still in limbo waiting on a frenzied voice to whisper life into one of its roles.

[/ QUOTE ]

Words... Can't express... The RAGE I feel...

My Infinite Well of Patience is running dry...

*starts looking up the number for the Department of Population Control*

Hey, it took a while for that GM to do the damage he did!

It cost me a HVAS, but I was able to whip another one up in short order! Then we gave that monster what-for!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


My first thought upon seeing the Dimensional Guns?

"Venkman! Don't cross the streams!"

[/ QUOTE ]

Been playing the new Ghostbuster game?

[/ QUOTE ]

No. I just was a fan of Ghostbusters.

You know what else? Reichsman looks like M. Bison.

Honestly, I would picture this as being a stylized in-zone teleport, hardly a drain on your system resources beyond what they normally would go through when Recalled. Besides, even WITH travel powers, getting across some of the larger zones can be exceedingly tedious.

However, one thing I'd like to point out is that there is a lack of a "in-zone ferry" for this idea. Nerva Archipelago and Talos Island both have islands far-removed from the "zone proper," and there's no way a bus or taxi cab could get your character to those locations. They also lack current docks in those regions, though those could always be thrown in.

Frankly, this isn't much different from the elevators in Mercy Island and Grandville. *Click*-*Vwoosh* Hundreds of "yards" cleared in an instant without the hassle of overshooting the jump into violent enemies.

[ QUOTE ]
There were also the 4 (not sure if they were EBs or AVs) in the bubbles around Reichsman...I believe they started attacking with Reichsman at 75%, 50%, 25%, and 25% again. The dimensional gun thing was pretty cool too.

[/ QUOTE ]

My first thought upon seeing the Dimensional Guns?

"Venkman! Don't cross the streams!"