How do you really fight? (Challenge, Stopgap)
By
Abalest,
Posted on: 2005-01-05 23:20 in Roleplaying
Sure thing lady! This will give a BIG insite.
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Tick-Tok ran quickly across the rooftops, jumping from one to the next. He landed silently next to a warehouse. Tick-Tok reached to hit belt and turned on his cloaking device.
"Ninja time" Tick-Tok giggled to himself. He cut a hole in the wall with a small amplified beam of electricity. Tick-Tok snuck in and looked around. The Council soldiers were carrying crates from a truck to a plane.
"New parts! Joy is me!" Tick-Tok said to himself, dreaming of soon completing his custom Titan. Tick-Tok scanned the room and picked out the leader. He aimed then fired, taking the leader down in one hit. The other soldiers were now franticly looking around wondering what took their leader out.
"It's time..." Tick-Tok began out loud. He flipped into the air as he took off his cloaking device.
"To party!" Tick-Tok yelled aloud as he began throwing caltrops at the feet of the enemies. He blasted here and there and when the warehous seemed rid of enemies. He jumped to a box and looked inside.
"Ooh! a power unit, this will be great with those custom arms!" Tick-Tok giggled in glee. Then he got hit in the back. A larg robot stood over him, it was an old wolfpack mk2.
"You got to be kidding me" Tick-Tok said. Tick-Tok flipped back.
"goodbye" Tick-Tok sneered as he shot out a thunderous blast. When the smoke cleared, He was gone again and so was the one box with a power supply.
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I'm gonna love this story you are making Albalest, I'm in it!
=3
Enix looked up at the Babbage standing in the distance. He then flew forward as his feet lifted off the ground and quite literally flew towards him.
"Alright you mechanical monstrosity you will be cleansed!!!"
Enix's black tanktop, jeans, boots, and hair suddenly changed into that of his Guardians metallic armor, sky blue with white arcane writings upon it. Reaching the hulking metal horror he unleashed his inner strength and held one arm outward stabilizing it with one hand like the barrel of a gun.
"EAT THIS! LINEAR CANNON!"
From his extended arm fired a white and blue blast of etheric starfire hammering into the beast. The metal roared under the stress and Babbage's attention turned to the 6 foot tall Guardian of Ether. From it's massive hands flew bolts of electricity, Enix nimbly closed the distances dodging as many of the bolts as he could, Taking a respite on his way closer to the creature while simultaneously throwing blasts of starfire its way. Upon reaching the end of the gap he cocked back his fist as it charged with power and swung it onto the thigh of the brute. The explosion of power damaged the leg and Babbage raised its two hands as twin arcs of lightning spouted forth downard towards the hero. Enix lept back in response dodging the Lightning bolts and held his hands outwards as starfire spewed forth hammering into Babbages chest. The deadly dance continued between the two of them like a new age david and Goliath, both were drawing to their end as Enix stood up after an assault of lightning blasted him backwards.
"Alright time to end this..." Enix muttered as he unleashed his inner strength for a second time while focusing. He leaned once again, planting his feet, into the Linear Cannon position and let the powerful blast of Ether followed immediately by a concentrated beam of starfire, finishing up with one large powerful blast of power that sent the Monstrosity reeling, landing on its back, the things servos grinded to a halt and the being was no more... for now.
Enix fell to one knee breathing heavily trying to regain his stamina after the massive metal robot had fallen and stopped functioning.
It shows Enix's reliance on the channeling of Starfire through his body to accomplish his powers, but in doing so (as shown in the end) takes his physical stamina, making him tired quickly, and needing to "catch a breath" often.
Bump
The Hero's name is Mr. Insidious. He was thrown into a mental institution at an early age for schizophrenia. As he grew up however the drugs did nothing to reduce the number of times he heard the voices. When he turned 18 the voices became more coherent and they told him a great many secrets. The most interesting of which was that he had a portal to a realm of pure dark energy in his body. Instead of making him a dark brooding figure, the newly dubbed Mr. Insidious found this to be an excellent turn of events. He utilized his newfound power to escape from his now unnecissary imprisonment and took to the streets of Paragon City where he could indulge in his darker side without fear of legal retribution, by cleaning up the streets of Paragon City.
Since he came here he was overjoyed to discover he had developed a fan following. When he found out that people actually liked him he traded in his old hooded cloak and baggy clothes for a much more fashionable spandex outfit in black with blue magical glyphs on it to help him channel that which was inside of him.
He has a very jovial but twisted sense of humor and loves nothing more than a good fight with lots of pain dished out on both sides.
Here is a brief story involving him.
Insidious was blitzing through Brickstown as he often did when he got bored. The rush of speed when he ran still made him a bit giddy, dark energies pumping his legs far faster than they ever went before he learned this trick. He was enjoying his new spandex costume. It made the speed seem that much more exhilarating than his old hooded cloak did.
He passed by several Freakshow tanks unloading something from a truck. The crime did not so much offend him as the challenge enticed him. These tanks always provided so much entertainment. He stopped, blitzed back to their position and dove in. The tanks didn't even realize he was there until he was putting fist after fist into the one holding the biggest box.
The Freak didn't know what hit him but he did know that whatever it was, it was corroding his armor and it was below a rather heavy box he was holding. He slammed the box down hard into the pavement in front of him making a sound like a shattering television set and grinding metal only to discover that whatever had been hitting him from the front was now behind him and slamming it's fist extra hard square into his back.
By now the two other freaks had realized they were under attack and they rushed toward the interloper.
As soon as all of the enemies had gotten into melee range Insidious Focused on the dark energies around him and drained all three of them of everything he could, then he smiled, knowing that now that he had replensished his energies from theirs that this would be an even shorter fight.
As the first tank turned to face his opponent his two friends proceeded to lay into him as much as they could. They hit him with their mallet shaped hands and sliced with their blades.
Insidious liked the feeling. The crushed right arm healed almost instantly, The pain hurt at first but the healing that harnessing the dark portal in his body afforded him felt quite good. Almost addictive. The cut across his back was a bit deeper so he focused on repairing that damage quickly so he could go back to pounding.
The freaks pounded at him again and again. Sometimes he dodged out of the way, sometimes he would take the hit. All the while he belted out punch after punch using the energies he generated to corrode their metalic bodies with each swing. Finally he was down to one opponent.
The tank looked nervously at his fallen comerades, they had not gotten up but it didn't look like they were about to. He began to run. The goods they had stolen was not worth this.
Insidious hated it when enemies ran in the middle of a good fight. He pulled out the pistol he had stolen from a crey scientist. He had seen these things slow down enemies and freeze their feet to the ground, it was worth a shot. He aimed for the feet and fired. It succeeded in slowing the brute but did not stop him. Insidious sighed disgustedly with the "toy" and sprinted past the tank and summoned tentacles from below his feet to hold him fast. That did the job. He made note not to rely on such cheap equipment in the future and finished the immobilied foe. Unlike the other two this one twiched back to life, but Insidious was ready. He had already removed the enemies hands and was standing on his chest preventing him from getting up.
"Now little man. Unless you want to experience a whole new world of pain I suggest you point me to your hideout. I want a REAL fight this time."
The freak gestured with the remains of his right arm "We bez hanging in the warehouse three hunnerd yards thataway."
Insidious smiled a big grin, "Thanks honey, you're a peach." and slapped a teleporter to him to send him to jail.
Insidious cracked his knuckles, this was going to be a good day.
Hello, all. I'm glad I didn't promise the first part of the Highlife Story by Friday, but the more flexible 'something'. So, I issue a challenge (to yourself, really) as a stopgap measure.
The theme here is "How does your hero really fight?", with the implication being that starting from the basic powers, how do you think your Hero fights and expands upon those powers?
There is a caveat: You have to write it in one sitting, in the text box, without benefit of spellcheck or polishing. Simple, right? If you feel that your browser will crash, feel free to copy to notepad or a similar simple text program.
This exercise is just something I do to help me put down ideas when I'm trying to think through a situation.
Feel free to come up with new applications for powers, create new powers within your set, and just generally be awesome.
While there are no prizes, constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.
Finally, the potential for me to ... ahem... 'learn' your fighting style for the characters I'll be using in the Highlife Story is also beneficial, as it could help me get a handle on how you speak and react.
Of course, an example is in order, so I'll begin.
~~~~~~~
An unmarked delivery truck pulled to a shuddering halt in front of a similarly unremarkable warehouse sitting, unsuspiciously, by the Talos Island waterfront. A moment later, the loading bay door rumbles open, and the truck vanishes inside. Later still, when the door reopens, the truck emerges and drives away.
After the truck turns a corner, Power Drain casts her ghille cloth aside, pulling herself up the near-vertical outcropping by one arm, the other holding an overly-large multi-barreled rifle with scope trained squarely on the warehouse door. Her greatly enhanced hearing picks up the truck as it turns onto the ramp leading back to uptown Talos. Power Drain pulls herself slightly higher, then begins to drive her feet against the outcropping, pushing her back from the truck, then moving forward at a run. Had she been her old self, she wouldn't have been able to move so quickly. Of course, had she been her old self, she wouldn't be so tall, strong, or even carrying a gun. She'd still be just another maid in the service of the Abalest Family.
The speed Power Drain reaches during the swing is enough to propel her high into the air, her altered reflexes granting her time to roll forward, twisting her body to line up the landing.
The truck driver sees the following: the road as it passes a patch of grass and shrub, bright pink hair and a large yellow plus and stylized lightning bolts against a black background.
He then loses conciousness as the driver's side window shatters, followed instantly by a high-velocity red bag impact to the side of the face. Slumped over, the Council marksman doesn't see the shooter run alongside the truck, jam the rifle onto the brake pedal by bracing it, barrels up, under his chin.
He doesn't see a thin arm slip past to turn off the motor... What he does see, as he comes to, is a woman in the driver's seat, pillaging his ammunition supply. He tries to protest, but his hat has been jammed in his mouth and his arms have been bound with the severed remains of the passenger-side shoulderbelt, the seatbelt itself holding him to the seat quite securely.
She looks up, smiles, and waves with her fingertips, taking the clips and magazines, leaving the guns behind. She opens the hood, leaving the marksman only a thin sliver of viewable area. From what he could see, she attached jumper cables to his battery, then left.
Power Drain was hungry; the truck's battery was barely a snack, but there was much more in the warehouse. The stakeout had been almost unbearable, particularly with the streetlights just begging to be broken and drained until the breakers triggered.
The problem with the batch of nanites that had rebuilt her was their immense energy potential; they stored electricity very effectively, had converted her body to run off electrons, and made her almost constantly seek another 'meal'.
But she wouldn't trade her new self for anything.
Power Drain jumped off the outcropping across from the warehouse, her intended tumble to ease the landing failing as her vision dimmed... She needed to eat soon. Staggering slightly as she made her way to the door, she pulled an electrical charge to her finger and turned the lock to slag, bypassing the hidden keypad lock and the alarm. Nearly asleep now, she could hear the sounds of Zenith mech and hoverbots, and that was enough to keep her awake as she slipped into the all-too-innocent warehouse.
Too weak to rush in, Power Drain lobbed one of the bullets she'd taken from the marksman around the corner, licking her lips as the noise of servos announced the approach of an investigating mech. Hidden around the corner, a high-caliber slug chambered, Power Drain waited... waited... and blasted the exposed neck of the first mech that stepped into the room. With the head removed, the lines from the power core were easy to reach, and by pulling them out, she could place the source and ground between her lips, pulling power from the robot as its motions stilled. She liked the mechs; the Fifth Column and Council robots, based off good german engineering, were very efficient, "tasted" clean, and always had a lot of power in their cores. She'd yet to meet Vandal, but she could not help but think of an old man in an apron and chef's hat...
Draining the dregs from the system gave her enough energy to move on into the warehouse. She smiled. This was about to get fun.
Stepping out from behind the corner revealed a hoverbot facing away from her. Rather than opening fire, Power Drain jumped onto the hoverbot and pounded the cover off with the butt of her rifle. The commotion attracted another pair of mechs, causing Power Drain's eyes to sparkle with delight.
Observing that close range combat might be a bad idea as the opponent seemed quite competent at pounding through heavy armor, then acting quite vampiric. It was a bad choice; only running would have saved the mechs from the suddenly-flung hoverbot, a good hundred pounds of dead weight smashing the pair to the ground. Their fates were quite predictable once Power Drain's heel rested on their sternum and a sniper round cleanly removed their flailing heads.
This was why she'd chosen to wait for the truck. All these mechs were new, freshly charged, and had just been delivered to this council base. There had been five other trucks that day, and now, the base was a buffet. Enough to last for a week, if she was lucky.
The loss of four signals had triggered the alarm, and now the base came to life. The lights went red, human soldiers pouring into view, taking up firing postitions.
Power Drain groaned; Humans weren't any good for her needs, and they...
A shouted command started the barrage of bullets from the gattling guns. She was exposed, and couldn't jump back behind cover in time.
She hit the dirt, pulling the defunct hoverbot chassis up as a shield. But she hadn't escaped. Hot lines down her back and side indicated torn flesh and 'bleeding' of silvery liquid... Nanorobots. The air crackled and fizzled, her sight dimmed again as the nanobots pulled themselves back to her wounds and worked to seal them off. Material provided by several green mineral disks kept her from scarring, and by the time that the makeshift barricade had stopped ringing with ricochets, Power Drain was ready to go. She rolled out to the right, and fired. She rolled back behind the chassis, rolled right again, fired twice, and retreated behind the downed hoverbot. Moving out from behind cover only briefly kept her safe as she shot out the lights, one by one. With the corridor in darkness, the bright pink hair and yellow marks on her costume became much less visible. The darkness was only temporary as the council tried to see by muzzleflash. But none of them thought to look up, where Power Drain crawled along the ceiling, her entire body magnetic by the motion of the charged metal streams of her blood.
They did look up when the light returned, brighter than they could recall. They looked up, and Power Drain dropped into their midst, hair straight out in all directions, body glowing white with accumulated charge arcing between her appendages and the broken lights.
A thunderclap signaled the end of the fight. Discharging her aura of electricity left a group of comatose soldiers struggling to breathe through smoking ventilators. Only the leiutenant in charge of the base remained standing, but that was fixed by Power Drain kicking a gattling gun's trigger and cutting the man's armor to ribbons. A rifle butt to the gut dropped him.
After that, the rest of the warehouse base was relatively devoid of humans. She'd hoped that the trucks had shipped in more robots, but after only four more Zenith Mechs could be found, she settled for the generators and the funds from the strongbox in the command center. All in all, a successful night...
Next night in King's Row, Power Drain hung upside down from a high tension line, absorbing the electromagnetic radiation and peering through the sniper scope at a large power core that the clockwork drug towards scaffolding. She licked her lips, and fired.
~~~
Now, there are a number of problems with this:
One, it loses 'oomph' because it drags on so long.
Two, the restriction on polishing makes it hard to incorporate all the elements I had wanted, like mentioning Power Drain is banned from entering Terra Volta.
On the up side, it gets across why she is doing this, sets her apart from what she's forced to be in the game, and uses the electricity secondary in a somewhat unique way.
Overall, I'm not happy with this. But that's the point of the exercise. You write what's in your head, and then you look at how it can be made better.
Anyone else want to try?
My Motto: "Debt is merely another Goal."
"Wow Abalest--you manage to start a discussion even when you ain't given a topic" -Ghostman
Abalests on Infinity:
Miss Fulcrum
Dark Soul Golem
Power Drain