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Create-A-Hero RPG GM, Blue Bringer of BWAHAHA!
STATUS: A Perpetual Motion Engine of Anxiety and Self-Loathing 1 yr ago
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1 yr ago
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A Perpetual Motion Engine of Anxiety and Self-Loathing
Bio
So there I am, in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, looking for one thousand brown M&Ms to fill a brandy glass, or Ozzy wouldn't go on stage that night. So, Jeff Beck pops his head 'round the door, and mentions there's a little sweets shop on the edge of town. So - we go. And - it's closed. So there's me, and Keith Moon, and David Crosby, breaking into that little sweets shop, eh. Well, instead of a guard dog, they've got this bloody great big Bengal tiger. I managed to take out the tiger with a can of mace, but the shopowner and his son... that's a different story altogether. I had to beat them to death with their own shoes. Nasty business, really. But, sure enough, I got the M&Ms, and Ozzy went on stage and did a great show.
Most Recent Posts
M A D I S O N S Q U A R E G A R D E N
Present Day | Manhattan, New York
“What did you do?!” Ted heard through the Comm-link. He was back at the tower after it had started making some curious new noises.
“I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! What makes you think this was me!?”
“Vhat did you do!”
“Look! It-- It wasn’t me! It got an outside ping! It was sent a new command from…” Ted brought up the Command List from System diagnostics, triangulating, triangulating… “Four Freedoms Plaza, Madison and 42nd! Wait-- Four Freedoms Plaza..?”
“Well, shut it off!”
“I can’t! Just like I made this tower the master signal for the drones, they’ve locked me out and made their signal the master and locked me out for this self-destruct function!”
“Well, why didn’t you take command of that function here too?!”
“Because I didn’t know that function even existed!”
“Really? A self-destruct setting? You didn’t know a self destruct setting existed? Because that’s pretty much Super Villainy 101.”
“Ja. Ja, zat’s pretty much Super Villainy 101, Beetle.”
“Alright! Don’t gang up on me! I’m learning on the run here!”
Ted sighed, flop-sweat dripping.
“Vell, can you disarm it manually?”
“I could, but I’m just as likely to blow us all to Hell in the process. Probably more likely, if this thing has any kind of hidden tricks or booby traps. Which-- I mean, you said Super Villainy 101...”
“Get away from there, then, if you can’t do anything about it!”
The two acrobatic superheroes back-flipped away from their rejoined combat with deranged, infected civilians. Spider-Man, web-lined back up to the rafters, sweeping through to scoop up the Blue Beetle once more on the wa through. Nightcrawler teased the mob, teleporting back a few metres at a time whilst the pair swung away, before one final ebony puff of smoke saw him teleport with the pair up to the rafters.
Ted saw the dark blue metahuman land on a handrail, on the catwalk they were on, but that was where everything turned bad. An energy blast hit Nightcrawler in the back and sent him dropping onto the catwalk. Ted and Spider-Man hurried over to his side, as smoke and an acrid smell rose off of his back.
“You get one chance to walk away.” Stryfe’s voice was loud and clear, the exaggerated baritone drowning out the din of the frenzied crowd. “I suggest you take it.”
“Take him.” Ted turned and said to Spider-Man. “Pick him up, and swing him to hospital. It’d take me too long.”
“What? And leave you to the Tin Man’s angry brother?”
“With him down there’s only the two of us left who know that there’s a little girl circling the city in an experimental, all-but-invisible aircraft. Besides, I can tell by your voice. You’re a kid. It’s bad enough I let you tag along this far.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll figure something out. I always do.” He tried to offer a confident grin to the Spider-Man, but the closest he could get was an expression that looked strained, pained, and frankly somewhat constipated.
Spider-Man gently scooped up Nightcrawler, and swung away, through a gate on the opposite side from Stryfe.
Ted gingerly got up, and dusted off his suit.
“So what’s it going to be? Are you getting out, are you coming down here or am I blasting you up there?”
Ted stretched out his leg on the hand-rail, before swapping sides and stretching out his other leg, stalling. “Hang on, hang on... I’m coming down.”
He walked to one end of the catwalk, then turned around and walked back the other way.
“Just a minute. I’m looking for a ladder.” He kept walking across.
“Look, just… just use the web-line.”
“Oh sure! You’d like that wouldn’t you! Fall and break my neck before I can come down there and hand you your ass!”
Ted walked back to the middle. “It doesn’t look like there’s a ladder.”
“Just use the web-line!”
“No! I’ve-- look, I’ve got my own little grappling hook in here.” He said fumbling around his belt. “Aha! There! Told you. Just let me get down there and, let’s see…” He clipped the hook on the handrail, and gingerly stepped over pulling to test it would take the weight.
“Oh you’re kidding me…” Stryfe said, watching the Blue Beetle slowly winch his way down from the ridiculously high rafters.
“This is as fast as it goes! But I’m coming! Here I come! You’re gonna get yours, buddy! Just you wait! I’m--” The Beetle stopped in mid-air, twisting around on the line.
“Oh, wait! That’s the winch, it does this sometimes. It’s a safety precaution for when the line gets too twisted, give me a second I’ll twist back and-- Ah! There it is! You’ll rue the day you messed with the Blue Beetle! Your uppance is about to come, sir!”
The Beetle continued to slow winch down, before stopping three metres before the ground.
“Hup! It’s done it again. No wait, the light’s flashing. That’s not the safety mechanism, I’m out of line. Huh… Maybe I SHOULD go back up there and come down the webline…”
With a blast from his gauntlet, Stryfe severed the grapple line and Ted fell the last three metres landing flat on his back on the hardwood floor.
“Ah! God.Damn. That one hurt. Right on my coccyx. Right on the bone. Ah. Time out! Ah, Damn it...” He rolled on the court for a few seconds, before whining at the villain. “My grappling hook’s stuck up there now? Well that’s just great! How am I supposed to get that down?”
“No. More. Stalling.” Stryfe echoed.
Ted gingerly got to his feet. His mind continued to race. Here he was, a regular guy, with a bad arm and broken ribs from his fight at the Expo. What did he have left in his bag of tricks? Bring the Bug into it? That magnetic plate would sure come in handy with tin-man here. But he meant it before when he spoke to Spider-Man. He wouldn’t risk that little girl’s life. He had ‘Plan B’, but when he thought up that it was more with the little drone bugs in mind, not some monstrous guy in another suit. Even if it did work he’d have to get in too close to try and make it happen. And that was a big ‘if’.
So here he stood. A grown man, battered, broken and bruised, and armed with what was ostensibly a modified hairdryer. Right after it looked like he was actually going to get a girlfriend. He used to joke about exactly this sort of situation. The world never letting that come to pass. Sorry Tora, date night’s been put on… ice. Huh. That one liner actually works. Heh. Ha Ha...
“Bwa Ha Ha! BWA HA HA! BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!” Ted started laughing to himself at his own joke.
“Pitiful. And thus without a flicker another meta-flame is extinguished.” Stryfe raised his gauntlet towards the blue fool.
“Human.” Beetle corrected. “And don’t take yourself so damn seriously.”
The man in the suit was taken aback, by his comments. He almost seemed to stumble backwards at Ted’s revelation. Checking he heard correctly, before quickly trying to re-gather himself.
“Wh--what?”
“I said, don’t take yourself so damn seriously. Now are we doing this, or what?” Ted quickly drew his B.B hairdryer. Stryfe re-raised his gauntlet...
...just in time for Wonder Woman to sweep in from the side and punch the metal meta-villain into the stands.
“Ohthankgodforthat… Ohsweetbabyjesusonajetski… OhhhIthoughtIwasgonnadiethere…” Ted uttered, looking up to the sky and patting his body down all over, checking for blast scorch marks.
“Hurry! Get out! I’ll take care of this… Stry--!” Wonder Woman yelled, just before a gauntlet blast sent her hurtling out an exit. With Stryfe ominously in pursuit.
Ted quickly ran up the stairs and out a different exit, not needing to be told twice.
Four Freedoms Plaza. That’s where he had to go. Fortunately, he knew the layout since he’d been there once before, a much younger man. When he first met Reed Richards.
Comrade Carrot...
With Muchos Help from @DocTachyon We Proudly Present...
M A N H A T T A N , N E W Y O R K
Present Day | C’mon man, pay attention. Manhattan New York
"Hell of a lot of fighting considering the Rangers aren't even in town..."
Hup, let's back up a bit. We're not up to there yet...
The webline pulled taut. The dark blue X-Man caught the line, and with a single flash of flexed muscle, the Spider-Man hauled the pair to safety on the hull of the strange aircraft, the Bug. He then performed the same trick he had earlier to swing himself up there too, finding Nightcrawler still doubled over panting from exhaustion.
"Zhanks for zhe assist!" Ted heard a german accent filtered through the Bug's internal speakers. Then, two clangs of a costumed fist against the battle plating.
"Open 'er up, Beetle. Believe it or not, blue's in this year."
The Blue Beetle opened the hatch and began to pull his craft up to a safer altitude, as Spider-Man seemingly sluiced his way back into the Bug whilst Nightcrawler acrobatically dropped in, his tail swinging, as he reached up to help the small girl safely drop into the interior.
"Introducing the astonishing..." Spider-Man paused for a moment. "X... Guy? And guest."
"Nightcrawler." The X-Man offered. He extended a three-fingered hand. The little girl he had brought with him fussed at his side, wringing her hands and slowly venturing out to see the rest of the aircraft.
"Well, you two sure know how to make a guy feel self-conscious about just slapping on some blue spandex and calling himself the Blue Beetle. Look at you two. Going the extra mile."
"Spandex?" Asked Kurt, "Zat is vhat you vear?"
"Well, no. But what I actually wear would be too wordy and you'd miss the bite of the joke. Sometimes it's best just to roll with it and not think about it too much... speaking of which, we're coming up to Madison Square Garden now. I can have the Bug circle on autopilot with Little Miss Innocent Bystander New York City 2019 here, whilst we three go take care of business in the House of Perpetual Knicks Sadness. How's that sound?"
The Blue Beetle tapped at some buttons on the console as he got out of his seat, he set a circling flight pattern over the city below and one of the monitors changed to a regular kids TV feed. He cut some of the displays to the horrors of what was going on far below. Ted lowered the drivers seat and put the little girl in it, manually adjusting the seatbelt restraints.
“There. Now you’re tucked in all safe. Aaaaaand you get to be in charge of your own airship. So long as you don’t touch anything. DO NOT. TOUCH. ANYTHING.” The Blue Beetle emphasized seriously. “You’ve got your tv, you can see where you’re going, you’re in charge!” His smile returned.
“So long as I don’t do anything…” The girl noted, with one eyebrow cocked in suspicion.
“Exactly. When I get back you’ll be all primed and ready to work in politics. Or as a CEO somewhere.”
Suddenly the kids network flicked over to another singular face, filling the tv. “Citizens, please remain calm. SHIELD has established a safe area at the United Nations Headquarters. We have taken over the Emergency Services, and will send operatives to try and rescue you from danger. Please dial 911 and we will get to you as soon as possible. This message will now repeat.”
Ted flicked the channel over for another kids channel.
“Citizens, please remain calm…”
“...SHIELD has established…”
“...--fe area at the United Nations He--...”
The Blue Beetle furrowed his brow. The last thing he needed was this girl to be worked up into a greater and greater panic being strapped in and forced to watch Captain America dwelling on the situation at hand. Earnest and sincere as he may well be.
“You know what? Forget TV. You’re in charge, remember?” He changed the monitor display from the TV to the assortment of towers surrounding New York that were active. “So you can be a big girl and watch us fix this thing, and you can be our Eye-In-the-Sky. Here.”
He slid open a drawer and removed three earpiece telecommunication devices, giving one to the girl and tossing two to the others.
“That way you can talk to us and tell us what’s happening.”
“What about yours?”
“Mine’s already fitted in the cowl.”
“Can I call 911 with this?”
“You don’t need to call 911. The heroes are already here.” He smiled reassuringly.
She cocked her eyebrow suspiciously again. "Do heroes usually sweat this much?”
“I don’t know.” Ted shot back. “Do grateful rescued little girls usually bust chops this much?”
Neither of them knew it right then, but in the weeks to come Ted would come to understand that the answer to that particular rhetorical question was “Yeah, more than you might think.”
"You ever get that you have a gift with children?" Spider-Man said, eyeing the windows as The Bug drew close.
"Oh, all the time. I have so many plaques I had to start throwing them away." The Bug swooped through the air and descended on Madison Square Garden. It was alight with red and blue neon and long panes of glass stretched around its circular body. Throngs of people washed in and out of it, two waves of bodies clashing at the entrance.
"Are ve sure zhat ve can get through zhat?" Nightcrawler asked. He fidgeted with the breastplate of his costume.
"No, but I guess we're gonna try anyway." Ted attached himself to the sky-wire and tugged against the connection point on his belt, wondering if that sounded heroic.
Spider-Man pressed the key designated for opening the hatch and deploying the sky-wire. The hatch began to trundle open. "Anyone have any inspiring words? I left my phrasebook in my other pants."
"Vhonce more unto zhe breach." Nightcrawler said.
That was way more heroic...
Spider-Man web-slung his way to the ground far below, Ted dropped in on his Sky-wire and the Nightcrawler made his own dramatic entrance as puffs of ebony smoke dispersed at distant interval from the Bug towards the ground, before a final burst on the ground saw a twistng dark blue metahuman nailing raging citizens with an assortment of acrobatic kicks, clearing a safe space for the other two to come to ground.
Spider-Man hit the ground and bounded forward on legs coiled like springs, bowling over rows of oncoming combatants and propelling himself forward with webline after webline. Nightcrawler vanished in a burst of black smoke and seemed to flicker across the battlefield, taking down civilians and sweeping legs as Spider-Man pirouetted in the sky. Ted jogged forward and thought that maybe twenty minutes on the treadmill every day would be a good idea.
"Hup!" Ted pulled himself over the turnstile with his good arm as Spider-Man launched past him and burst through the Garden's glass doors, with Nightcrawler on his heels. Ted hauled himself up and forward, sprinting through the doors and nearly slamming into Spider-Man and Nightcrawler who stood before him, surveying the stadium.
“Whoa…” The three said in unison.
A small tower edifice was set up at center court, protected by two armed guards. But it was what surrounded them that prompted their reaction.
Dozens. Perhaps as many as a hundred… perhaps even slightly more, average janes and joes brawling all around them on the court. As vicious as earlier on the street.
"Hell of a lot of fighting considering the Rangers aren't even in town..."
“Is it just me, or do ze vones vith ze guns not seem at all bothered with ze idea of ze others even trying to hurt zem?”
“Huh. I think you’re onto something there.”
Suddenly the little girl broke in far too loud over the comm-link. “I think the one at the Park stopped working. The little blinking light has gone out!”
Ted cycled throught the displays on his visor until he got to an overlay of the tower map. Spider-Man scrapped for his phone. She was right.
“Thank you very much. You’re being very helpful.”
“I knew phone-a-friend would come in handy.” Spider-Man said over the line. They heard a giggle and then things went back to radio silence.
"If you two can keep them busy, then I should be able to get down there and check out what kind of hardware they’re rocking.” Ted said, reaching into his belt and pulling at a USB drive attached to a cord which was filled with Hack-and-Crack tools.
The gesture was far less impressive than Blue Beetle had hoped, as the other two looked on with uncertainty. Nightcrawler scratched the back of his head with his tail.
“Oh, come on! We just jumped out of a custom aircraft which I made myself, which is currently circling on auto-pilot! You think I can’t do this!?” He whispered hoarsely.
“I don’t know… There vere a lot of loose vires everyvhere in there…”
Spider-Man eyed the gun-toting goons, who were just beginning to notice them.
"We better get a key to the city or something for this... At least a commemorative keychain." Spider-Man launched forward and hung a webline off the rafters, swooping over the obsidian tower.
"Viel glück, Herr Beetle." Nightcrawler said as he stepped forward, vanishing into a plume of smoke.
Gunfire erupted enmasse from the goons guarding the tower, peppering the ceiling with bulletholes as Spider-Man dodged between support beams and launched balls of webbing down at the guards. Nightcrawler supported him, creeping up from behind in ghostly flashes of purple as he ripped assault rifles from hands and disappeared as quickly as he had come.
Spider-Man dove from his perch while the gunmen searched for their teleporting assailant. He had barely kissed the ground before he was moving again, launching through the crowd and lashing out with kicks and bursts of webbing. "Hurry up, BB! I'm allergic to lead!"
"Vell, zhey seem to be allergic to X-Men!" Nightcrawler erupted from the floor in a wave of smoke and caught a gunman in the stomach.
Ted saw his opening and raced over to the tower, his shoes’ squeaks echoing as he crossed the hardwood basketball court. He slid unnecessarily over to the tower, took off a cover panel which revealed a display monitor and auxiliary ports for the device. The Blue Beetle jacked in his USB and quickly got to work on cracking the tech. A few seconds passed as he tried various things before he found a way in. The display monitor started regurgitating code at a rapid pace, scrolling down the monitor.
“I’m in!” He alerted the others through comms.
“Ja wirklich??? I mean, Vell Done! Now hurry up and turn it off or self destruct it, or somezing!” Nightcrawler’s voice came through, muffled presumably from physical altercations.
“I don’t think that would help, unfortunately.” Beetle said, trying desperately to keep up with the code.
“What do you mean?” Spider-Man called through, backflipping over a small mob, before webbing them to the ground.
“They’re semi-autonomous. They’ll just look for another signal. Another tower. They’ll pick up a faint tertiary signal, divert and resume full control once they’re in close enough proximity to resume primary signal.”
“So what now..?” Spider-Man asked, thwipping away.
“Well, gimme a minute to see all of what I’m working with...”
Ted kept his thoughts silent, that he wished that Murray Takamoto could see what he was looking at. Murray was the real cyber-wiz at K.O.R.D. Ted kind of just tinkered in his free time and muddled along, figuring things out as he went. What he needed was an anchor, something that he recognized which he could--
“I’ve got it!”
“What?” The pair of acrobatic, scrapping heroes said in unison.
“This string of code here. I’ve seen it before. Air traffic control use it. For T.A.C beacons and automated flight paths.” Ted’s excitement grew.
“You can remote deactivate all of the towers at once? End this?”
“No. But I think I can--” Ted paused in mid-thought.
“Vhat?”
“How much do you two want to be heroes..?”
“I don’t like the way you’re asking that question, Blue…” Spider-Man said down the line, his breath steady as he was taking a short rest break on top of a backboard, whilst deranged civilians floundered around beneath, trying unsuccessfully to jump up to where he sat.
“I can’t shut the others down. But I can limit the damage. Change the battlefield. I can set this tower as the ‘master’ signal. Bring it all down on us here. It will leave the other towers less defended. Just the goons with guns. No more crazy civilians or hideous nanodrone swarms anywhere else. Because they’ll all be on their way here. You heard what Captain America said, they’re working on taking the other towers down. We can make that easier for them. And limit the number of people geting infected as this sprawls out across all of New York...” Ted spoke earnestly down the comm-line.
“And kill us?”
“Not necessarily,” Ted said with probably not enough optimism to sell the idea, “we buy them time and monitor the way they’re taking down the other towers. The second they’ve taken down the last one, we disable this one and it should end all of this.”
“Are we going to be able to take down the tower, once we’ve brought all of the swarms, and all of New York’s infected civilians down on ourselves, fighting in this little box?” Spider-Man asked.
“...”
“Do it!” Nightcrawler said. “I vill not have zhis plague spread any furzher across zhis city in zhe name of mutantkind!”
“It’s done.” Blue Beetle said.
“Why not?” Spider-Man said. “We’re already having a Hell of a party here, it’d be rude not to invite everyone.”
“Just give me a second… Cap left a message for us. So, I’m just going to leave an invitation for everyone else… and done.” Ted typed rapidly, then put his USB back in his belt, and dropped the cover panelling back into place.
“Now get me up and out of here, before they see me and tear me to shreds.”
Spider-Man swept down, and grabbed the blue garbed hero, before shooting a web-line for the rafters far above.
Suddenly all of the towers across New York City began printing reams of paper, and flashing a message across their internal display screens.
“Yoink! Got your swarm! BWA HA HA! Take out the other towers and come on down! The Blue Beetle, Spider-Man, Nightcrawler and Marv Albert Live from Madison Square Garden! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!”
@Hound55
So am I waiting until the s2 app..?
No, I was just meaning what I have already done with them would have been clearer and they were going to be listed as supporting characters in the next season.
These 2 posts deal with Hank and Jan for established continuity there:
5. “I just realized this is the most I’ve been able to speak to a fellow scientist’s wife or girlfriend at one of these events without either her eyes completely glazing over, or outright running away and going to talk with Tony Stark instead…”
6. “Yeah, you know how it is, Hank. All these kids out there these days… All hopped out of their gourds on... Fizz.”
5. “I just realized this is the most I’ve been able to speak to a fellow scientist’s wife or girlfriend at one of these events without either her eyes completely glazing over, or outright running away and going to talk with Tony Stark instead…”
6. “Yeah, you know how it is, Hank. All these kids out there these days… All hopped out of their gourds on... Fizz.”
Hank and Jan's established and pretty central with what I have coming up in season 2.
I'd have had an updated season 2 app up, but I've been pretty busy with the event/crisis stuff.
I'd have had an updated season 2 app up, but I've been pretty busy with the event/crisis stuff.
The supporting character tab is subject to change per anyone's objections/any conflicts with established continuity/anyone's future plans that I don't wanna mess with. That said...
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