"FOOL!! I shall CRUSH you to a fine red pulp! Bards will sing of my victory in this battle! Your name will be FORGOTTEN, save as a story to scare small children, and as a word to mean the lowest FOOL who will soon meet a painful end! Your entrails will lay about thy broken body and your last thought will be a silent PRAYER for either something so sweet as mere PAIN or for the gentle release of DEATH to take you from the WRECKAGE that I will work upon thee!"
Tesla handels the life-size ping-pong of the whirlwind with some amount of aplumb. The flight of his Coil suit, and the learning that comes from many, many failed experiments with reverse-gravitons allowing him to remain in the air without fear or fail.
But his eyes go wide as he sees that Stopwatch has no such conditioning, and flies over, commanding the gravitons to reduce their jealous grip somewhat.
Using the soft-hand of reverse Gravity to give Stopwatch a soft landing.
The flames engulf Tesla as his lack of mobility gives him no easy exit from the fire. But the heat crashes against his aegis field as the tide upon the ever-living rock, and a deepening frown is the only effect.
As the woman Audrey transforms and viciously attempts to maul Guardian, something inside Tesla seems to lock into place.
"I see now that I have been in error. I have played with you too softly, too gently. 'Tis only the lash of the whip that you people understand. Very well! 'Tis meat that you are taught this lesson by me, rather than allowed to persist, and so perhaps awake a force of greater import and more terrible cunning than myself.
So too, this is an opportunity. Few targets upon the planet can withstand the FULL POWER of my inventions. But you...you can take it.
You see...I live in a world of cardboard...."
The werewolf Audrey is thrown violently from the ground, the Earth rejecting her very footfalls.
Upon the apex, Tesla does not deign to keep her suspended, and the ground rushes up to reclaim her.
Thrown upward with Str 50. For every 5 steps above [Her weight = Heavy Load], that is one step up on the progression table. Hence, if she weighs 200 lbs (heavy load of Str 20), she is thrown upward 100 feet. ...that's fine if you want to cap the falling damage at the PL's max. =3
Tesla's eyes go wide as Stopwatch falls under a flurry of super-speeded blows. "Nooooooooooooooooo!"
A mechanical ray pops out of his suit and attaches to his fore-arm. He swivels about switches his energy-ray from 'absorb' to 'provide' and a pleasing orange light leaps out and baths Theodore's form.
Alt power Healing at range for: Healing:5d6 ⇒ (3, 6, 2, 5, 2) = 18
Tesla's A-TAC highlights the marble-man and turns in place. Slowly. "Twould seem the source of our attack is located. And none too covertly. We must be cautious."
Tesla's face, normally a sublime embodiment of calm and intellect, contorts into a mask of rage as he floats to within a 50 foot hypotenuse of the villain.
"Normally this is when I would council you to show prudence and take a calmer course. Indeed, I recall when last we met you were neck-deep in floor and I begged unto you to stay quite calm and all would over.
Alas for me, you did not follow my advice.
And recent events have given my wisdom pause. Persons such as you, if treated with gentleness, only regard such boons with recidivism and villainy. This I have learned.
Alas for you.
You like breaking the law. Let's see how well you like breaking the law...
OF GRAVITY!!"
Tesla gestures his hand up and a million million gravitons repulse MarbleMan up, up, up, 50 feet above Tesla.
As the foe involuntarily hovers, Tesla's blast pistol is placed in his hand by a holster-arm. "You've seen this before. I told you to play nice and I'd not use it. Now you will tell me who attacked my building, or your usefulness will be at an end."
Tesla sights down the gun, oblivious to any other reason or motivation.
As the appliance crashes into Tesla aegis field, the sky is lit up as ions are displaced in the ensuing mad dash to dissipate the AC's delta V. Despite the shield's best efforts, a sharp corner cuts into Tesla's soft skin, and he starts bleeding slightly.
As the shield refills from embedded capacitors, the A-TAC program spins up the discernment turret, and sensors begin collecting data in every known dimension, their readings coming up on his HUD.
Tesla brightens at Atticus' pronouncement. "Ooo! That's a great tagline. I call dibs on the name. That...that is what the hip cats are saying these days, aren't they.
But, no. Blasters plus force-fields is supposed to equal _no_ explosion, unless something goes wrong. -That- explosion was caused by terrorists. Terrorists that don't even have the good sense to take credit for it and which I've been unable to find. Hence the ringing of the building with cameras. If it happens again, I at least want to know who did it so I can track them down."
Tesla, surprisingly used to the telepathic's mind-talk, replies, 'Hmm? Ah, a moment, if you would. Hrmmm, yes, now I just move this, select this, double-click here, aaaaaand, yes, okay, I can see you on camera 37. Yeah, I'll buzz you in and just check in with Jean--erm, ah, Megan. Lovely girl, good filer, but can't find a keyboard with both hands.'
Huh. Y'know in all the excitement I just plumb missed that post. But you would seem to have the right of it. Um....well, Tesla's the kinda guy to either totally not notice that, or not think anything of it. 'Huh. Her eyes are moving. That's probably just REM state. Well, time to get back to the shop.' =p
Tesla finishes installing the last of the 360-coverage cameras around his buildings (he can do it quickly because he's flying. He cranks his illusion up to "Bird" and lets fate reap what it may) and checks his phone as he's heading inside.
He's all thumbs on the keyboard, but he recently discovered how yo use the Voice app, so he just talks out his text. >>>I'm about to start shooting phase-blasters at a force-field. Wanna help?<<<
Tesla spends his daylight hours still working for the success of his eternal business, but after the books are balanced and the bills paid, he pours over reams of data, searching for any clue as to the terrorists involved.
He spends some time in seedy bars, buying drinks and acting like an ignoramus, nodding and yelling at the latest sportsing matches. After a while he starts asking if anyone knows anyone who can blow up a building good, so as he, a totally normal, not super-powered average Joe, can get back at a former employer, because you all know how mean and evil all those self-starting, hard-working entrepreneurs are. Like Thomas Edison.
As Reece clambers on to his Tesla Coil(tm) exo-skeleton, Tesla starting gliding along in the indicated direction, but he keeps a sharp eye, swerving to pick up any affected candy-eaters that he sees that are also along the indicated route (+/- 40 degrees of vector).
I can fly and keep my field up. Guardian, climb on my back and hang on.
Atticus, follow us. As I scoop up berserking children, do...your...thing...and see what you can do. Hopefully we can counter whatever joo-joo they've done before things get out of control."
Tesla's jaw drops at the scene unfolding. That such creatures could conceive, think about, produce, and then execute so heinous a plan is beyond him.
His sympathy for the cultists hanging to their floating weapons leaves him, and the pair are given back to the Earth. Left to the fate of the natural laws that they sought to corrupt.
Tesla darts over to the four children and quickly lifts them up, 100 feet into the air.
"I...I'm not sure what to do now. I...I can't take them with me.
...
Guardian, can you telekinetically pull the children with me? Any amount of horizontal force should suffice. And...and then we could scoop up all the...um...all the Affected?
Either that or I can have a break down and slink into a corner and just start crying. Your choice, really."
Oh my. Specifics! Well, I just read the power, and I guess I have control in a 50' radius. Assuming that Tesla flies 50' off the ground, then I could get the van 100' up. Not planet busting. Seems fair.
As Tesla gently hovers in the air, controlling the van, the hubris of the two cultists that pop out and fire at him is impressive, to say the least.
As the bullets ricochet harmlessly off his force-field, he feels a sense of kinship with them. They dare to look certain death in the eye and fire guns at it. Good for them.
Of course such a move costs them the truck. Tesla selectively allows Earth to reassert her motherly hold on it and the vehicle falls to the ground in the natural order of things.
He also allows gravity to reassert itself on the two cultists. But their guns, those remain aloft. So they'll perfectly safe...assuming they can hold on.
This should make them more reasonable to deal with. And hopefully they'll learn a valuable lesson: You can mess with Death, but don't f+@$ with Nicola Tesla.
Tesla nods, and, never one to need to be told to display his devices more than once, concentrates his anti-gravity-field around the van, cancelling its pact with the Earth to forever bring it down, and evicting it from the good graces of its ability to travel down the road.
He fluctuates the field slightly so the van don't simply fall upwards, certainly doing mortal damage to the passengers, but he'll try to make it reach the ceiling of it's hover as gently as possible.
But not too gently.
The van probably weighs 3 tons (6000 lbs) which is well under my Heavy Load.
Hovering in the air next to Guardian, Tesla frowns at the fleeing truck. "Well, I certainly can make that truck float in the air. Would you judge that a prudent thing to do?"
Tesla peers at his phone, then announces, "It seems that one of me employees may be able of attempting such a feat as you describe. He just sent my an electronic letter saying, 's|-|uR, I can t0tes help U n008s 0ut if eye can 4cc355 ur l33t teKX0rZ. T|-|3N we can t0tes pwnz0rZ teh L4MEZ cameras.'
I...have no idea what it means, but I conjure that it is an offer of assistance.
The man is on salary so you can cease your worrying that I'd have to pay him overtime. I know that was my first concern."
Tesla cocks an eyebrow at Atticus. "And what, pray tell, makes you think I know a whit about teh Haxx0rz? I am a professor of -physics- my dear boy, not some witless Millennial sleeping in my mom's basement, working from home and typing a board of keys endlessly for both work and pleasure."
Tesla, despite himself, returns to his phone and starts searching "How to Hack traffic cameras."
K (Technology):1d20 + 10 ⇒ (3) + 10 = 13
He also sends a company-wide email asking the same question.
Gather Information:1d20 + 10 ⇒ (11) + 10 = 21
The subject might raise eyebrows at other companies, but given that the mission statement of the company is to "Twist the Laws of Physics until they Scream" as long as the email itself doesn't set anything on fire, most won't give it a second thought.
"So...the city is about to be mind-controlled by an obsolete cult that managed to get everyone to eat their cursed candy?
That is...actually quite brilliant. But now that we know our quarry..."
Tesla again buries his nose in his phone, researching Barrik the Glutton, guessing that any "rumors" about the idol may now be treated as fact. Or at least more than just fiction.
"I have no idea," Tesla responds to Reece's inquiry about candy distribution. "However, I think that Jeanine--"
Nicola stops talking, and a shadow crosses his face.
"Erm, ah, I mean, some others, from the shop, may have some idea."
Tesla gets out his phone and his thumb becomes a blazing data point scrolling through screens and texts.
"I'll even go so far as to google 'free candy' and see what comes up."
"I am not able to 'drag' anything--I merely allow them to either fall down, as normal, or fall up, as abnormal.
I can however attempt to immobilize it while you place restraints on it, and then alleviate the weight while someone else pushes the floating ex-corpse out.
Will that suffice?"
I think, technically, it's not "zero G" but "negative G". As in, he's falling upwards. In fact, I think, technically, I'm supposed to assign damage. Or something. I assumed it didn't matter, but I can look that up, if you want.
"Alright, the fellow is immobilized," Tesla mumbles as the zombies "lands" on the ceiling. "If you're going to do something with the fellow, now is the time. Else I'll let him fall and we'll be done with the unnatural monstrosity."
"Do NOT turn that thing up to 11! It's run by a zero-point nuclear generator to charge capacitors with the destructive power of three sticks of dynamite. Setting 7 is more than powerful enough for most mortal needs."
Tesla takes Stopwatch's statement in earnest and strides out purposefully into the middle of the floor. "An ye hath wished for him to live, so shall it be." The zombie finds itself spurned by the Earth as one rejects a faulty suitor, and the gravitons working upon it reverse themselves, flinging the thing upward in mocking jest of the natural order of things.
If it weighs less than 25000 lbs, it's thrown upward until it hits the ceiling.
Tesla nods. "Gratitude for the offer of assistance. I may...make use of that, before long.
But to the task at hand...are we going loud or soft? I would deign to begin clearing an entrance so that the dark of a building uncontrolled does not play against us...but you people have some odd priorities against collateral damage, so I must needs make certain we are all on the same page at the start."
Nicola approaches Atticus when he hear's his request for a weapon. "Do not trust those primitive slug-throwers the masses use. Here, you may borrow mine."
It looks like Tesla pulls a large blaster pistol from out of his sleeve.
"This is a Tesla TeleTap Mk III. I'm a passing good shot with it, but I have other tools at my disposal, and I promise it will serve you well in the confrontation to come."
Tesla is still brushing dust off himself when he answers Theodore, "Some craven with a bomb exploded the wall I and my secretary were standing near, and didn't have the courtesy of leaving any clues or so much as taking responsibility. While 'tis said that money can't buy happiness, I'm certain it can buy piece of mind in the form of 24-hr security guards that I'll now by forced to employ if I want to ensure the safety of my employees.
...
But no matter. Thanks to the fat of my intellect none were killed, which makes this threat before us the one of greater import.
I suggest we use the loading dock, since this entrance will no doubt be watched. Do not concern thyself about the locked doors back there...gravity is an uncaring mistress.
Either that or I can lift us all over to those windows in the northeast corner. Which would you rather?"
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!1!" Tesla screams into the uncaring high-altitude air. "Oh confound! The villains strike and dissipate into nothingness! This is almost as bad as the eternally conniving Edison striking at my righteous work, but at least he had the decency to hide behind unjust laws, rather than simply leaving, letting none even take credit!"
His rage, having no target upon which it might spend itself, quickly dissipates, and he turns his healing ray upon himself.
t3h HEalz:5d6 ⇒ (4, 5, 6, 6, 6) = 27
He floats back in to the building and makes a call.
'911 Emergency.'
'There's been an explosion at the Tesla Building. One female victim, stable, unresponsive. Target area is secured.'
Tesla begins contacting all leaders in all sections, and tries to get some damage control, and makes sure there aren't any other victims.
Tesla experiences one moment of concentrated boredom, and in the next moment all hell has broken loose. He takes pause to freak out unto insanity, and then his blood turns cold and the world descends into an ordered list of priorities, recommended actions, and possibilities of success.
He presses a button on his wristwatch and his armor bursts out of a nearby closet, homing in on his body and it's endless interlocking plates joining and converging to cover him in gadgets and steel.
Unthinking of his own safety, he flies down to where Jeanine lays, and inverts gravity upon the debris crushing her, enabling him to easily lift it off her prone form.focuses his healing ray on her.
Then he turns a knob on his Fatigue ray, transforming it from something that saps the internal mitochondria of energy, to a ray that breaths new life into the basic cells of the body.
lvl 7 healing:5d6 ⇒ (1, 3, 6, 3, 3) = 16
The safety of Jeanine thus seen to, the force field flickers to life and he hovers out of the hole in the side of the building, scanning for assailants. "Who would DARE attack Me? HERE? In my Place of Power!?" he calls to the air, daring the forces of evil to make themselves known and clash upon him openly.
His wounds still plague him, the adrenaline coursing through his brain causing him to forget his mortality for the moment.
Correct. Currently Tesla sees no reason to abode with the other members of the team. Not when he still has a company to run.
Tesla glances at the recent sales figures, nodding to himself. Despite the team's obvious discomfit at his mercantile usage of his company's name, the added exposure has certainly had a positive affect, especially on on-line sales. He makes a mental note to work that in more with any future interviews. He might even re-configure is Illusion to feature his website in blinking neon pink.
Tesla idly wonders to himself. "Wasn't Guardian suppose to make payment for services rendered? Jeanine, did that ever come through?"
Tesla steps up to the microphones, a bright, warm, smile beaming on his face. "Lo! Once again Tesla's Band of Righteous Heroes has saved the day! Lo, though this city is besieged with many, MANY forces of vile wickedness to rival the evil of Thomas Edison himself, the TBRH is of course quite glad to have been in the right time and the right place to swing in to action and save the hostages, as well as to deny the wicked thieves the property they were unlawfully after, much like the wicked Edison has absconded with many of my patents and rights of property to which I am rightfully due.
So fear not! Unless you are an evil-doer then fear much! For always the tools, people, and personalities of Tesla's Band of Righteous Heroes are hard at work keeping the city safe. Safe and busy, with many objects of labor saving and entertainment available at TeslaToys dot com, at a site of the interwebs near you!
Sign up for the newsletter and get a 5 percent discount off your first purchase of 100 pounds, or 120 dollars!"
Tesla flies off, back to HQ, convinced that he has wowed the local persons and done some of the good Pee Are that his Pee Are guy is always talking about.
Posting to all my games: I'll be leaving for a family vacation this Wednesday, and my posting will be spotty until I get back Monday. Feel free to bot me as needed. =)
As the chunks of concrete come flying, Tesla turns just in time to target them with graviton waves, and the deadly debris dips downward, crashing into the floor well short of his person.
"Now isn't everyone glad that I asked about collateral damage? Especially now that some of the villains have entered the 'too dumb to live' category?"
Tesla extends his hand, and graviton field extends out. But this one is personalized, and designed to only detect and retard iron molecules. No matter how small.
Whatever passes for blood in Marble Man's lifeforce finds itself groggy and thick, like molasses in February.
Ranged attack, Fatigue:1d20 + 5 ⇒ (10) + 5 = 15 If hit, make a Toughness save DC 15.
