*snicker* Really, really loudly and brightly dressed (but perfectly coordinated) flamenco dancers (including awesome hats) by the door with HUGE beating sticks of bamboo!

*grins apologetically*

*clears throat*

Carry on.

Hehehe! Nice one, X!

I toyed with the idea of Gayle not recognizing the time bubble at all, but she really is smarter than that. She's seen Sheena's effects often enough to recognize what the bubble is doing. Gayle has also been pulled out of time on a few occasions. Still, she has no idea how her powers could defeat that. She will now begin wracking her brain to see if there is something she or the other team members can do....

No oxygen for the third-eye guy! If Mentalian has lungs, they will be useless at this point. Gayle has had more than enough, now that Ment is directly attacking Whipcrack. "Hamsterball of the Gods" is up next, in case he shows no reaction to the "You Take My Breath Away" maneuver. (X probably remembers this one from "A Wing and a Prayer.")

Fair point here Des, but this is an attempt at a psychic attack, not an automatic one. You're doing it again.

This one's not such a bad time, but you've gotta get out of the habit of godmoding other people's characters.

Halae wrote:

Fair point here Des, but this is an attempt at a psychic attack, not an automatic one. You're doing it again.

This one's not such a bad time, but you've gotta get out of the habit of godmoding other people's characters.

In hindsight, a psionic is a pretty bad choice for a first RP: the line between the attack and the reaction is super blurry, but I try to approach it as attempting to place these thoughts, they don't automatically land.

Well, I wonder if that roar's going to make the heroes respond to the actual situation at hand, rather than just Mentalian.

I'm going to wait for everyone else to respond before having Scaleback move in on that psychic pressure.

I mean he JUST teleported so it'd be a bit much to have him go again, I think I'll just have him fall back more. The idea was to get him out of the fight so the focus can go back on the villain who should have a name by now :)

I'm assuming the prisoners aren't in the same room, otherwise they've been in huge danger :p I'm guessing they're off-site already. Which would add tension as at least one player wants him super dead, but he can't give the location if he's a pile of guts.

But I'm hoping this'll drag out some more :)

Aww, and I thought it was so cool :p

Earlier some troops got massacred by a mind-controlled heavy gunner, leaving a gory mess. So "red pools" refers to the pools of blood left over.

Mentalian's psionics are color-coded on his third eye: violet light refers to overload attacks and heavy telekinesis.

Kartanian wrote:

I think I need an update on the villains from X before Gayle acts again. (Noted that Mentalian has already escaped the vortex.)

That's what i'm waiting for too. I need to know how they respond to the rather overt threat of Scaleback all up in their business.

Xselcier, it would appear you've missed providing any sort of response to my post.

Quote:

He sprang to his feet, ready to intercept either of the Other Bad Guys if they got past Scaleback. "Getting out that way isn't going to happen, camaradas. Maybe you should tell us where you put the prisoners, get some credit with ¿los federales?

I envision it as the duo is far west, scaleback is near the center, stingray just entered the entrance to the south, and gale is center-east.

Thanks! she's not really in a healthy frame of mind right now, but I've been where Scaleback is before, and it makes you a great fighter while it lasts. Kinda sets your body into overdrive for dealing with the problem at hand, but she's going to be exhausted once this is over.

desviper wrote:

shrugging off the rage impulse I guess :p

Not quite. This is more along the lines of a rage overload. When you hit a brain with too much of an emotion (Remember, Scaleback was hella pissed even before the rage enhancement), it starts shutting down to avoid damaging itself with all of that chemical. This is where fugure states come from, or the idea of "getting so angry you come out the other side". He hit her into such a state that while she's thinking straight again, her thought process is covered in spikes and CANNOT be moved unless she's physically restrained. She'll kill 'em, since that's the efficient way to handle things, even if it's not what she would have done normally even when super angry.

I'm assuming Whipcrack is behind and to the opposite side of the leader, well out of crossfire.

Details on the black spear if it matters, it's made of condensed carbon, so it's hard as diamond, but very hollow. If it missed, I'd imagine it'd lodge pretty far into the wall. If it hit, it'd probably bore a hole right through.

S'all good :)

*waits patiently*

It's fine! Just gotta poke the bear every once in a while to make sure things are still moving along.

For the record, the link I made in the post is for an example of what a gator sounds like growling as a mating call. Scaleback herself isn't thinking about that, and is more leaning on the kind of growling a human does when completely enraged, but channeled through a crocodilian voice box.

Gayle gives Whipcrack her best shot at protection and movement.

Technically, Scaleback should be strong enough the get her claws through the protective shell of air to separate Whipcrack and the chronomage, but she'll have to catch and pin them down, first. This is like trying to grab an ice cube from a puddle of water--it just skitters away from you. Pointy claws won't help much, because the shell itself is slippery, but getting the "package" into a place where it can't go anywhere will then allow careful strength to penetrate, or brutal strength to toss it around willy nilly.

This might give Whipcrack an opportunity to do something, but with Ment's despair and lethargy attacks, that's an open question. I am not sure how much mental protection Whipcrack's psi strands provide. My impression from previous posts was that this would be substantial, but... *shrug*

Well, hopefully Ment's attention isn't on Ment...

I'm suggesting an [b]Out-of-Character time out[/b] at this point.

[b]Problem:[/b] We have a roleplaying thread where the story has progressed from the initial setup in the harbor to the partial defeat of the chronomage's human trafficking operation, and then to a side scene, and then to the principal villain's lair. Along the way, we had a powerful villain with competing motives introduced into the hero team. The fight against the principal villain has been finished, but our extra villain is now and has been the focus of the story. Simply continuing the improv roleplay technique we have been using may push forward a potentially frustrating and pointless in-character continuation of the heroes vs. Mentalian. Instead of doing that, [b]I suggest we decide how this ends before we continue writing out the roleplay.[/b]

[b]Things we probably should include in the decision:[/b]
- Does Mentalian get to kill the chronomage as revenge for destroying the artifact thingie?
- Does Mentalian escape?
- Do any of the key villains (chronomage, his assistant) escape?
- Are the people held by the principal villain rescued, okay, and released?
- Do any heroes suffer important long term damage or effect coming out of this battle?
- Is the current scene the end of this thread? (Epilogue and wrap-up excluded.)

[b]As a way of making the decision[/b] about how this ends, I suggest the following:
1. Each player makes a suggestion in this OOC thread and we discuss those.
2. If we come to a consensus decision, great. Then we move forward and write the remaining roleplay toward that agreed-upon conclusion.
3. If we do not reach a consensus decision, Xcelsier makes the decision as the thread owner and "GM" for this story. He explains his decision and we write toward that conclusion.

[b]Remedy:[/b] While I expect that we will be comfortable coming to a decision (probably by consensus) and abiding by it, if we don't have consensus and X makes the decision, and if someone then writes a post that runs counter to that decision, then the rest of us will ignore the post, pretending it doesn't exist.

Xcelsier? It's your story. Does this work?

In other news. that was a beautiful bit, Kart :)

Des: No, Stingray had gone into that room to see about getting the people in the cryo chambers out and safe. But when the chronomancer, Whipcrack, and Scaleback came in, they didn't seem to see Stingray, so I figured he had gone behind one of the stacks of units, or behind a row of them. His experience underwater leads him to try to get vertical separation whenever possible, so he went over a stack instead of around to get a line of sight. And with Mentalian using his TK on the chronomancer, I figured he was in line enough to see from the back of the room. Then Stingray moved forward to join the others.

Kartanian: I'm going to vote with Des on this, it seems to be the best compromise. But Stingray will be pounding at Mentalian's defenses, hoping someone can get an incapacitating blow in on Ment before Stingray has to ramp up the current beyond what Ment can survive in order to protect the chronomancer.

Sorry, didn't know Mentalian had other sense to target with.

I'm fine with however the group decides to handle it. I rarely go into a scene with a specific outcome in mind.

Sorry if I made him seem so much as to make it not fun for you :( I try to balance hard enough to be a challenge to overcome, but not overly frustrating. Might be a similar problem over in Convergence....

Edit: also, I thought a TK squish was within a reasonably powerful generalized TK powerset, but I can see it being through walls to be another level.

I guess he opened the door? I won't feel bad about the deus ex machina escape then :p

Good thing Stingray isn't relying on impact to hurt Mentalian. ^_^

LOL! That was the tumbling cyclone that failed. Gayle couldn't catch Mentalian in it.

The important thing here is that the shield is physical, so the air bubble will help more than if it was pure energy.

I will reflect that accordingly. Thank you for the detail!

Kartanian wrote:

The important thing here is that the shield is physical, so the air bubble will help more than if it was pure energy.

I will reflect that accordingly. Thank you for the detail!

Ahh, yeah, these umbral weapons are tangible, not made of dark energy :)

I figure that with his hands on either side of Scaleback's head, Mentalism will make a decent target. But his attack against her should go off before Stingray reaches him.

Also, with the scales, I figure a lot more power will go through Mentalian than through Scaleback.

Okay, here are some assumptions on which Gayle's actions are based:

1. Ment's "blast away the debris" was a circular effect to knock the cloud of stuff surrounding him far enough away that it ceases to be a thing. This would be a good 5 meters, at least, and require what we used to know as a PBAoE telekinetic burst or sphere. That's a good way to deal with this kind of interference. While he was in the cloud, he could not visually target anything, period. That's the intent of the technique.

2. Ment can activate flying without thought as a telekinetic power. No problem there; everyone can pretty much use their movement and travel powers in conjunction with other actions, and he did it AFTER blasting away the debris.

3. Now having a clear line of sight to Gayle, the TK wave attack is an invisible, fast, cone of force. (Des' description of the wave really doesn't match what I saw in the Avengers vid, though. The mentalist there whose name I'm forgetting just uses advanced TK to simply make magic happen. Des described Ment's attack as a wave to knock Gayle up into the ceiling, instead of a grab and slam like the vid appears to show.) I'm assuming that the intended effect is a slam-and-drop, as described in his post. That means that the TK wave does knock-up, and that's it. Gayle's not losing her flight because of this, and Ment doesn't have concentration to try to grab and hold her. (see next item)

4. Scaleback's attack that disrupted Ment's movement is happening at the same time the TK wave hits Gayle.

5. Mentalian actually does take some time to recover his equilibrium from the hit and disrupted movement, putting Scaleback in position to hit Ment again AT THE SAME TIME that Ment is doing his "downward dropping monkey" maneuver. Remember, here, that Ment has to completely change his orientation in the air to control his body and hands, position himself, target Scaleback, drop his TK flight, and activate his attack power all at the same time. Tricky, given that he's just been knocked about a bit.

6. Gayle, Scaleback, Stingray, Whipcrack, and Overdrive can all move and react as quickly as Mentalian. (Caveat: Overdrive could be sipping a soda and watching Tumblr vids while all this is going on, IN ADDITION TO moving the captives. A speedster's individual hits aren't hard, but the trope works because there are a LOT of them.)

7. Stingray's attack will immediately follow Ment's new attack on Scaleback, as Fordain notes in the post.

8. Gayle's response could come at the same time that his drop attack on Scaleback occurs, but will actually happen simultaneously with Stingray's attack, because I'm seeing her as slowing up and being knocked around by the TK.

Taking some advice, I'll give people time to react to his incapacitation before he's whisked away.

No pressure to feed Galrithius's ego with curiosity, if no one bites he'll leave. The ghost is intangible though, so you'd need some special anti-transdimensional ghost stuff to attack him.

If you say so, I find it a cheap Deus Ex Machina :p

I mean I guess it can't get more classic than greek theatre, good point :p