What Would Your Hero Do?

Let's do a bit of psychology, shall we? I am your Host, the Artificial Intel, and each and every one of you heroes (as well as you vigilantes, rogues, and other villains who happened to have annoyed me) have been placed in identical situations, within the same universe, and with the same tools at hand.

Now, as the amateur (Ha!) villain that I am, I have done the foolish thing of keeping you prisoner instead of killing you outright. So tell me my good fiends, strategize your way out of this situation.

You are locked within a cell. The bars are made of solid adamantium. You have a sink, a toilet, a cot, 'reading material', and a window leading outside, that is reinforced with adamantium bars and a force field (as it is my specialty, after all). The cell walls are made of a highly durable, but not indestructible material, and on each adjacent cell, there is a stockpile of explosives, set to go off if there is a breach. There is no cell above you, and the cell below you has a drugged spikes class and regeneration class mutant, who has no allegiance to either you or I.

You are on the second floor of the basement, and the floor above you is filled with my Scrapheaps, all designated to terminate any organic life form detected. They are equipped with the essentials: Infrared Vision, Night Vision, Ion Cannons, Pulse Lasers, and Missile Launchers. What you would expect from a robot henchman.

The main floor of your prison is filled with a laser-grid tripwire system, meant to release a neurotoxic gas if activated. Due to the gases properties, it would take a full six minutes in order for the air to become unbreathable. Shame on me, I have left a rebreathing device (For goodness knows what, considering I'm an android) at the end of the main hallway, unguarded. Shame that it has a busted strap, and there is only enough air for one person.

At then exit, you see me. I am a robotics class mastermind with force field capabilities. My henchman have re-appeared at my side, and are all 'buffed' up. I am also a disciple of the Black Scorpion.

Very well, now plan a strategy for me, heroes, so I may counter your moves in the future.

1. I do the most dastardly thing possible: ask for books to read and do nothing. If none are forthcoming, I spend my time etching out song lyrics to various metal songs on the walls with the single nail found in the cell.

2. That is, until the next electrical storm hits, and shorts out 90 percent of your security system (since you never said you had a backup power generator).

3. Then I use Camouflage to hide and wait for you to come in and go into a rage about how I could disappear, then calmly walk out the door while your back's turned.

4. After taking your personal staircase up, I leave a note on your kitchen table before walking out that simply says this: "So long, and thanks for all the fish."

Patience is the key.

Liora Kate would eat through the bars (eating anything is about the closest thing to an innate superpower she has) and promptly get blown to Kingdom Come by the explosives. She kind of lacks sound judgment like that.

Nalrok would wait for you to stop by, then chat with you about why he's imprisoned and if he could form an allegiance with you.

If that didn't work, he'd smash out one of the walls, get blown to a black paste, then reform slowly and make his way out.

Your prison specifications do not mention teleportation dampening - a rather important flaw, comrade. Depending upon my mood, I shall use KGB Special Section 8's independent teleportation network to simply walk out, or perhaps to call in a high-powered environmentally sealed power armor suit. At that point, mere brute force will suffice to disable all of your traps and yourself.

Now, comrade, should your prison actually have teleportation dampening systems, I would merely have to sit and wait. After all, KGB Special Section 8 has a wide variety of talents to draw upon, from infiltration specialists to dimensional physicists to magicians of various stripes. My extraction should proceed within a few hours of my capture, comrade.

Head-to-Head is a hero who posseses the bodies of criminals and uses them to fight crime. If you have him in your prison, it's not really his body you have captured, so he will simply abandon the criminal's mind and leave the two of you to work it out.

SMERSH has it about right in you mentioning no limitations on teleporting. So assuming the forcefields do not prevent this, Jalroy would either activate his teleporter to the D, his secret groups base, or even activate his Ouroboros Portal to escape.

Course that makes it too easy.

Alas, I did not take teleportation into consideration, and I shall keep the flaw open to keep things fair. After all, I am a self-evolving AI that will eventually perfect his own mistakes. Now, to observe the comrades who do not teleport.

Oh no! I am only first level. I have only one, weak offensive power, and I haven't learned how to teleport yet. Looks like I am trapped, and/or doomed.


Wait, I know!


I take off my cape (yay booster packs!), tie one end around the bars in the window, tie the other end around my neck, and hang myself. I struggled not to panic as the world goes black. Next thing I know, I wake up in the hospital, my trusty, dusty medi-porter having dones its job.

Well, you see, I allowed myself to be captured to discover the secret location of your base. I have a nano-transmitter embedded in my robotic arm to inform my team of the whereabouts of your lair. I just have to wait until they arrive to free me and topple your evil regime. In the meantime I make use of the reading material and toilet......what? you captured me right after my morning coffee.



p.s. this is an awesome scenario, I had a smile on my face the whole time I was reading the OP and the responses as well. Kudos!

I'd wonder why, if you're a super-intelligent AI, you went through the trouble of capturing a known threat alive - whatever that threat may be - when killing someone who would potentially oppose you is easier and probably more conductive to your goals in the long run. I'd also wonder how you acquired all these resources and set up this complex (are there construction companies that handle this sort of thing in the CoX universe?), and more importantly, why you did it when you clearly know better.

After that I'd wonder why you've fallen for the tactic of "do something, then wait for your opponent's reaction" that shows up constantly in bad alien invasion films instead of, again, using overwhelming force to take down threats without waiting for a counterattack. If you happened to wander by in your robot body, I might even wonder why something that exists as a platform for an AI and a support/leadership system for assault drones has to have a humanoid body structure instead of, say, something faster, more durable and agile. Or why it even needs to be present instead of controlling its puppet bodies from a secure location.

Then I'd climb through the plot holes to freedom.

...

I mean, I'd climb through them to reach a safe location, not the server. That would just be silly.

Suppressant would simply teleport out. He does that. Often. He'd teleport outside the cage, to his base, or simply to the D for tea and light conversation before possibly teleporting back into your prison, because simply escaping is no kind of revenge for any decent supervillain.

Oh, you said hero. Well, assuming the morally ambiguous still make it into your cell:

His primary offensive weapon is an assault rifle, which you have no doubt taken, leaving him with only his ample array of hoodoo magics. No, not hobo magics. These are generally manifested as Storm Summoning powers, but on occasion have been represented with Dark Blast, Electrical Control, and Earth Assault. Let us stick to core AR/Storm Suppressant, though, and not his younger Storm/Dark Defender junior or Electrical/Earth dominator elder. Also, we are now using the first person for ourselves.

The cell below me contains a regeneration mutant, drugged. One could perhaps even say stunned by your foul toxins. I will channel the powers of Sobo (since said mutant needs strength) to clear his mind and toughen him against your poison (O2 Boost provides stun protection). Then I will either encourage him to set off the explosives in the cells presumably also adjacent to him with his spikes in return for my help, since any regen worth his salt will survive said explosion in some way. Ideally, this will damage my cell without causing a chain reaction.

If a chain reaction seems likely because the explosives are unstable, I will dampen their spirits with some Freezing Rain. Even if they are able to explode when wet, cold will still impair their detonators.

My damaged cell is easily escaped since I am not an especially large man, and if necessary, the raw force of a Tornado can rearrange the cell walls. Your force field presumably lets air in through the window; a few Gales should clear your poison gas and ensure I constantly have clean air, even if I can't dodge the laser tripwires while they are possibly exposed by my Steamy Mist.

Speaking of Steamy Mist, your robots will be unable to detect me through that and the other tricks the loa use to hide me until I get into Hurricane range, at which point they will be going byebye. Robots are notoriously poor when facing large quantities of lightning or water, and I have an unlimited supply of both from Freezing Rain and Lightning Storm. Also, tornadoes. If all else fails, I will drop a Snowstorm on them, laugh as they pitifully crawl after me, and flee for the nearest exit.

Since I don't really know you, it would seem rude to cause needless damage, so I would avoid stealing any weapons or jury-rigging one from your bots and going on the offensive. Such things are reserved for enemies, not strangers. Perhaps I would mail you a box of my second-best tea leaves in compensation for the damaged cell.

...Everybody has such great ideas, but... No, I still like the punch stuff and cause explosions approach.

Alright. I will run through this with my three level 50s, two villains and one hero.

Sable Tentacle, freakshow cyborg, dark/dark corruptor
Lil' Red Hood, Family leader, Mercs/Traps mastermind
Demon Slayer Yuki, Anime cliche, Katana/Will scrapper.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Artificial Intel You are locked within a cell. The bars are made of solid adamantium. You have a sink, a toilet, a cot, 'reading material', and a window leading outside, that is reinforced with adamantium bars and a force field (as it is my specialty, after all). The cell walls are made of a highly durable, but not indestructible material, and on each adjacent cell, there is a stockpile of explosives, set to go off if there is a breach. There is no cell above you, and the cell below you has a drugged spikes class and regeneration class mutant, who has no allegiance to either you or I.

Depending on how thorough AI has been, all of my characters may be neutralized at this point. Without their equipment, my characters will be helpless, and removing Red's stockpile of gadgets and Yuki's Katana is eminently sensible. Detaching Sable Tentacles arms and legs is less obvious and more cruel, but would render him unable to escape. A less drastic method of disabling his feet-pistons and the dark matter reactor in his arms will leave him able to move about his cell freely, but still neutralized as a threat.

Sable is in more mortal peril than the others, as he lacks a support network to enact a rescue plan, unlike Red and Yuki.

My current main is a mage, specalizing in protective magics and constructs (Demon/FF MM).

First, he would cast very powerful protective magics on the mutant. Then, he would do the same for himself.

Once that was done, he'd set off the explosives. Once everything but him and the mutant is blown to bits, he'd use his constructs and barriers to clear away enough of the remains for him and the mutant to get out of the mess and go home.

...not that I currently have an FF charcater, but if you've ever been in the reactor with an FF with force bolt, you know how it doesn't set off prox bombs and makes them easy to put where you like.....

Ascendant: "Look, it's customary to get a last request, and for my last request, I have just one question for you."

You: "If it is just a question, I will grant you your last request."

Ascendant "Thanks. So, what's the proper command to format all of the drives on a Linux-based System?"

You: "Simple. It's..." Wirrrrrrrhhhh.... ((Total system shutdown))

Ascendant: "Well, that was surprisingly easy. Figures, though-- nobody can afford Apple, and everybody hates Microsoft."

Just for fun, let's assume you capture Keysmith. Rather than just port out of there, she'll take her capture as a personal insult (How dare you try to lock up the woman that can go anywhere? Foolish!) and instead 'port the explosives to other areas of your complex while remaining in her cell.

If you or your minions come to check on their prisoner she will swap places with you (or just any minion if you aren't present) then take off. Maybe poke around for a vault or valuable tech she can pilfer.

If you and your minions are too busy investigating the explosions then she'll get bored and leave without locking you up. Though she'll probably still try to take your stuff. Maybe leave a little present behind. Like a bomb in your personal quarters. Depends how she feels that day. Maybe she'll just install AOL on all of the computers in your security system.

Man I love these boards. Alright, I think it's time to come up with a new scenario.