Icons
Quickstep: Comparison of solo systems
It's worth mentioning that I did not correctly understand stunting powers until surprisingly recently. I had the roll-for-Gadgets-or-Magic thing associated with regular stunts. So that misunderstanding continues for the first five or six solo adventures.
Heroic Icons version
Scene 1
The alarm sounds, and we discover chaos
Suze was comparing reports. Not the actual fibre samples (Kittrick kept the actual work to himself or one of his trusted associates; she was not to be trusted with putting carpet fibres on a slide and photographing them, oh no). She was looking at the images and compiling differences and it was, really, deathly boring.
That was when the alarm went off. Suze recognized the alarm because her introductory seminar had been recent. Kittrick popped his head into the lab and said, “I’m checking on that. Remember the comparisons have to be done by five.” Suze smiled and waved.
Once he was gone, she finished the reports: it was only an hour of work so she finished it in less than a minute. She looked around, made sure no one was watching and jogged to her home at a subsonic speed for the costume she had hidden there. Fortunately the alarm was ringing on the far side of her apartment, at the base library.
On the way there was a soldier who had somehow caught his sleeve in the breech of his rifle. And then another had fallen and knocked himself out. How curious, she thought, and went into the building.
A string of accidents led to the high-security research room. She paused long enough to pluck a security pass from one of the librarians standing frozen nearby, then open the door. It took long enough to open that she was able to give the pass back.
She had to stay below the speed of sound here: there were actual books here, some of them hundreds of years old and fragile. At the reading desk was a...dinosaur?
Not quite: a dinosaur head, yes, but male, with a camouflage suit from the neck down and a messenger bag. He held a...stun gun? And a librarian was carrying books to him.
She downshifted to normal speeds.
“Your library privileges have been revoked,” she said. She was proud of that line. Pithy and appropriate.
“Oh, a superhero! Heavens!” To the librarian he said, “They always show up. Don’t stop getting me the materials because this will only take a minute.”
“You’re mocking me,” Suze said as Quickstep.
“Not just you; everyone like you, really,” he said, and spun around. His tail (tail?) hit her on the side and knocked her against a bookshelf against the wall.[1]
“You have nothing on the aliens?” he said to the librarian. “Fine. I’ll try someplace with higher security.”
At least, that’s what she thought he said, because there was some kind of fluid dripping into her ear.
She tripped three times before she got up and three more before she got outside.
By then there was no sight of a dinosaur-man wearing camouflage.
Scene 2
Research, but we’ll draw in super-school, except I’m thinking something closely related. [2]
The base was near a small city, and she started a search pattern from the centre and spiralling outward. She found nothing. Of course, she thought, even if you’re a thousand times faster than normal, without the right insight, you just hit the dead end a thousand times faster than normal.
The dinosaur look must have been a disguise. If there were an actual dinosaur person running around, she’d have heard about it.
Wouldn’t she?
I mean, I am in a relocation program because of my “incident.” They must want super-folks to communicate with each other.
Mustn’t they?
Soon her search took her outside the city, and out here, she could let go and travel full speed. Here there wasn’t anything that could be damaged by the sonic boom.
What was that?
A cactus looked wrong. She memorized the location, finished the circle around town, and came back to examine the cactus.
She poked the cactus, carefully avoiding the spines. She peeled off her glove and then poked it again with her bare hand.
It felt wrong. She darted off, poked a different cactus to make sure. Yes. They were different. (Glove back on.)
Now that she knew what to look for, she could see a line of the strange cacti, stretching the equivalent of a block or two.
She took off to see what the other end was like, a moment before the laser hit.[3]
She knew it was a laser from the way the sand smoked.
So the cacti are fake. Where’s the laser beam coming from?
She couldn’t tell. It was a pencil-thin beam of light, and all she could tell was that it came from that hemisphere instead of this hemisphere.
Time to use a brute force approach.
It had to be coming from something; she searched until she found an appropriate rock in the right place. The cacti — the fake cacti — were in a valley between two low hills, and the rock was on the side of the hill. From here she couldn’t see the city; the hill blocked it. [4]
Assuming the laser had come from this rock (or bounced off the rock; it had shiny places where lasers could bounce), she examined it for access. After all, it had to be artificial too.
Even if you don’t have a door, all you need is a seam, and someone jamming a Swiss Army knife at it about a thousand times a second. It eventually falls apart.[5]
The laser was ugly, a box about a hand long and three fingers wide, on a moving arm that let it aim out the portal that used to be there.
Writing on its side showed that it was government issue.
She couldn’t get down the hole from which the arm extended, but now that she knew—
She heard the sound of a vehicle, but she still had time to run the length of the fake cacti and figure out a probable perimeter.
The vehicle was an ATV of some kind. There were two occupants, with military bearings but civilian clothes.
She didn’t want to wait, so she climbed in the back of the ATV. If they were hostile, she could escape easily.
“So? Lasers? Military grade government issue?”
The driver started and the ATV swerved on the rocks. The other man said, “Well, if you hadn’t found us, we’d have only ninety-eight problems. You can call me Conner.”
“First name or last?”
The ATV kept moving to the rock.
“It’s what you can call me.”
Great, she thought. A hard ass.
“How much do I have to tell you so you’ll leave us alone?”
“A lot,” she admitted. “I’m the original elephant’s child.”
“This explains why you were in the blast radius of the tau generator.” [6]
“Which—I’ll remind you—was not supposed to blow up.”
“True that.” He thought.
“Gift me with your thinking,” she said to him, when she was tired of waiting.
“I’m wondering how likely you are to come looking again. Waiting for us to get somewhere must be terribly boring for you, so there’s a chance that you’ll get busy with something else and not bother us again.” He looked at her. “Maybe a supervillain. Y’all attract them like beer and bugs.”
“I have only ever met one supervillain.”
“The dinosaur guy?”
“Okay, two supervillains. I meant the estivator from the explosion.”
“You've only been a superhero for...six weeks?”
“You have to take the average over my whole life. It’s much more tolerable that way.” She had a thought. “You decide. I’ll be back in a moment.”
It took her a little longer: though the tracks of the ATV were distinctive, rock surfaces meant the trail disappeared for a bit.
The ATV hadn’t moved far at all by the time she climbed back in.
“Underground base, powered by the military base, so you’re probably military. How come you have an underground base?”[7]
“Claimed from a supervillain and repurposed.”
“That’s what a supervillain would say. Was it from Dinosaur guy? Like, he wants his base back? The one he got from the aliens he was going on about?”
“Not at liberty to say who, but not him. You didn’t...search the base.”
“I didn’t want to wait for someone to open a door.” She didn’t tell him that someone had left a door open, but it led into an elevator. Those things were awful.
“I thought you could just...vibrate through things.”
“Once. By accident,” she admitted. “I look on the bright side. I can run at Mach 1,” she said. “That’s pretty darn fast.” She could run faster, but she limited herself to subsonic speeds.
“Good to know we have some kind of security.” He held up a hand. “I’ll save you the trouble. You’re not the only one who was affected by the tau generator explosion.”
“Go on.” Faster, please.
“The generator explosion was a block farther than anyone calculated it could be. You were actually inside, illegally—” She rolled her eyes then realized he couldn’t see it behind the goggles. “But outside the restricted area was a nursery school.”
“Oh, no.”
“Eleven children, three of whom have already shown ENAs.” She knew the acronym from her time in the hospital: Extra-Normal Abilities.”
“Their parents—”
“Are also there.” He shrugged. “But we don’t know what they will do next and these parents need help. We had this base from a seizure, so...”
“But it looks like aliens.”
“Every secret government base looks like aliens.”
“Lasers.”
“Secret. Government. Base.” He sighed. “Besides, they don’t kill, they just ionize a section of skin or clothing and make it possible for us to track you until you heal or discard the clothes. Most people think it’s a bug bite.”
“How would that work? I can’t make that make sense.”
“You run at Mach 1. You make no sense to me.” He sounded like a man used to not being questioned. With a sigh, he opened his pocket and pulled out a phone. “Burner phone. Our number is loaded.”
“Aw. Is this what rich boys do to girls they just met?”
“So we can contact each other.”
“Well, you’re not my usual type.” She took the phone and sped off.
Hey, I can almost always have the last word.
Scene 3
Don’t recall; I accidentally deleted this line.
[8] Until she could master the art of passing through things or up things, she couldn’t search the entire area for dinosaur guy, because she could be stopped by a closed door or a high wall.
She went home, changed clothes, put her costume in the wash, and made dinner in her Instant Pot.
I should get three of these.
By the time she was done, evening stretched ahead of her like an eternity.
Search again? Or—
She hung the wet costume to dry, dressed in the other.
I’m so glad I made two costumes. Running around in my underwear waving the costume to dry it does not appeal.
Conner was willing to let her come over. The kids were great.
And then on the way home, she heard alarms.
The evening was shaping up to be pretty good.[9]
A building on fire. Excellent.
Not that the fire itself is excellent.
The alarms were automatic. She broke a window to get in and quickly searched for people. She found one man unconscious, carried him outside.
She’d never been in a museum of Freemasonry before. Once she had waited the exceedingly long time it took to make sure he was still breathing, she went back into the building.
Flames were slowly licking up one of the bookshelves.
She thought, What do fires need? Heat, fuel, oxygen.
She started to windmill her arms. [10]
The air started to rush from the room. The flames flickered and died out—
She slowed her arms, and the flames bloomed again.[11]
She speeded up her arms again and the flames died down again. Had she just not tried for long enough or—
Ah, there was a device. She kept her arms moving, then swept it up and moved fast to get it out on the lawn, well away from the unconscious man.
Once that was gone, she was able to put out the fire easily enough.
A book had been burned first; most of the inside was gone but some of the binding had survived.
A Treatise On the Mysterious Visitors
Well, that sounded wholesome. She checked the walls quickly to see if one of the other books was a primer on anal probing.
No, but the Freemasons had books on some freaky stuff.
So why would someone want to burn a Freemason library?
Who would want to burn a Freemason library?
Dino-guy? But he was looking for info on aliens.
Someone else?
Scene 4
We need to encounter the villain again, so this scene will do that. [12]
She had just popped the smoke-smelling costume in the laundry when there was a knock at the door. She reached over and touched the hanging costume (dry!) and hid it in her room. She put on a bathrobe and checked her face for soot.
Dirt clearly outlined her goggles, so she took a long moment to wash her face and then answered the door.
“Hi,” said the woman standing in her hall.
“Hi. You’re a librarian.”
“May I come in?”
“Yes, of course. Sorry.” Suze stepped aside and back.
“Cadence Gerber.”
“Suzanne Poole. You knew that. Sorry.&lrdquo; She smiled. “I was going to shower. Can I help you?”
“Yes.” She looked around. “Just making sure you’re not hiding a clique of grad students.”
Suze laughed. “I’m not. I could barely fit a brace of grad students in here, let alone a clique.”
“A brace? Oh, my.” Cadence leaned against the door, making sure that it was shut. “So you might have heard there’s a superhero in town. It’s been the talk of the base.”
“I haven’t been around. I don’t...have a lot of friends yet.”
“I saw her. Speedster. Fast.”
“And?”
“Well, she’s about your height and build.”
“…And?”
“And you read about twenty books a night. I thought maybe you were hiding grad students in here, but since you’re not, I figure that you’re the superhero.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Really?” Cadence reached into her purse and pulled out an object, tossed it at Suze.
Suze fought hard not to shift into overtime as it flew through the air. She mostly succeeded, except for getting her hand in place to catch it.
It was an apple.
“Because I can catch an apple?”
“I thought you’d do speedster-y things.”
“Oh. Do you want something to drink while I go put on clothes?”
“No, I can go. It was a stupid idea. I just needed someone to talk to about this dinosaur guy and I figured you were probably the speedster.”
“Well, I’d love to talk — but first I need to put on actual clothes.” And hide my costume.
Cadence asked, “Do you have beer?”
“Do I have beer? Hah.” She opened the door to the fridge in the tiny kitchenette. “In fact, I do not drink beer, so I have five left over from my housewarming that need to be drinked.”
“Drunk?”
Suzanne grinned. “I was figuring it was like hanged and hung, that they had two different meanings.”
“They don’t. But I’ll have one of those beers.”
Suzanne handed one to her. “I hope that's a good kind. I’ll go get dressed. You pour me a red wine while I’m doing that. There’s a bottle on the counter.”
In her bedroom Suze took a moment to better hide the clean costume, and then threw on sweats.
“All right,” she said, “I’m ’satiably curious. What did you see?”
“Sorry — I already finished one of your beers. The thing is, I was on the front desk and I didn’t notice him when he came in. I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed a dinosaur; I’m doing the dinosaur display, for goodness’ sake! But I wouldn’t notice a guy in camo.”
“So he changed?”
“I think so. I know he didn’t have a tail.”
“So he was wearing camouflage fatigues.”
“Right. Wouldn’t look out of place.”
“But you have to sign in to get on base. So there’s a record of the name he used.”
“I mentioned that to them.” She waved her beer bottle. “The investigators. They were talking to everybody.”
“Well, not me. But I was in my lab.” She rolled her eyes. “Doing paperwork.”
“Anyway, the first thing I know is a dinosaur guy is asking me about aliens.”
“Aliens?”
“Yeah. Like we’re Area 51 or something.”
“You’re sure it was the same guy?”
“Yeah. He was wearing the wrong kind of fatigues. The patterns were wrong (they changed them a couple of years ago); he was wearing surplus.”
“And he’s asking about aliens?” asked Suze.
Cadence nodded. “And Freemasons, but mostly aliens.”
“Freemasons?”
“Yeah. About a third of presidents have been Freemasons. Washington, both Roosevelts and Truman.”
Suze slowly swirled her glass of wine and watched the legs appear. “Wasn’t Truman president when Roswell happened?”
“Roosevelt. No, sorry, FDR was dead by then. Truman, you’re right. Why?”
“Dino-guy was asking about Freemasons and about aliens. Roswell is aliens and it took place while a Freemason was president. Maybe he thinks they’re connected?”
Cadence shrugged. “The other thing I noticed (but they wouldn’t listen) is that people didn’t have bad luck stuff happen to them until he whacked them.”
“Was it the tail?”
“Nah, he punched the first guy, before he had a tail, and that guy had his laptop explode.”
“Maybe that’s his other superpower. Besides being able to look like a dinosaur.”
“Sure, if you like a compsognathus,” Cadence said, “but I would have preferred a dimetrodon.”
“The display explains the dinosaurs but why do you know about aliens and Freemasons?”
“Why don’t you?” Cadence grinned. “I work reference.”
“You have a very cool job. I am doing paperwork.”
“My job is the definition of paperwork. And you get to work with the hunky blond guy. That’s got to be worth something.”
“Kittrick?”
“I don’t know his name. Blond, about six feet tall. Kinda beaky in the nose but going away, you can see that he’s got a great—” Cadence made a cupping gesture.
“You like Kittrick?”
“To look at. I don’t know him.”
“Ugh. He’s an ass.”
“Well, yeah.” Cadence grinned. “Sorry.”
“I’m sorry he’s an ass, too.”
Cadence started to laugh. “I gotta go. Tomorrow the dino display gets a pterodactyl.”
“Your life is thrilling.”
“Ain’t everyone can handle this level of responsibility.” She stopped smiling. “Thanks for letting me talk.”
“No problem. I’ll even buy more beer for you.”
“Deal.” Cadence put the bottles on the counter and went to the door. She paused. “Sorry I thought you were a superhero.”
“Hey, we all have to be a superhero to someone.”
Scene 5
Heroic Icons: Setup Rolled 4: New GMC. Ulterior motive: Time to see the villain again. [13]
She slept like a normal person. Thank goodness, because she didn’t want to contemplate a life where she slept for an hour and then had seven more to kill. Evenings alone were hellish enough.
An hour before work, she got a video call on the secure communications app. It was Major Copeland.
“Yes?” she said.
Even though it was only mid-morning there, he looked and sounded fatigued. Okay, more fatigued than usual. “You went faster than the speed of sound.”
“Only outside the city limits.”
“You don’t know how to control them yet. This time the force was estimated at 12 pounds per square foot.”
“How can I learn to control them unless I get to do them?”
“Just...don’t do them until I can find you a practice zone. I have a complaint here from a Colonel Conner.”
“It was his last name. What’s his first?”
“Patrick, but the point is they had to replace glass equipment all through their base’s exterior. —Do not explain to me who Colonel Conner is because I am not cleared to know.”
“I didn’t know there was a base there. And then they shot at me, so fair is fair.”
“I am reminding you to stay under the speed of sound. You do not know where the secret bases are; you’re always at risk of damaging something.”
“Got it. How close are you to retirement?”
“Still four years, three months, six days to go.”
“You need to get a desk job.”
“This is a desk job.”
“Or—wait, hear me out—tell Kittrick what I can do so he gives me real work. Or at least lets me do the scut work faster.”
“He’s not cleared. He’s a civilian contractor. Hell, if you weren’t actually you, you wouldn’t have clearance to know about you.”
“You sound tired. Usually you don’t say ‘Hell’ until the afternoon.”
“I’m okay. Found any friends?”
“Librarian. Cadence Gerber. We could be friends.”
“It’s important to make friends, Suzanne.”
“Call me by my old name. Just once.”
“No. We’ve been over this.”
She said, “Poop.”
“Make friends or I’ll assign you a therapist.”
“Met a dinosaur.”
“I know.”
“How do you know and I don’t?”
“I have connections.”
“Dish.”
“We don’t have a name or a real picture. Shape-changer. He messes you up when he hits you, they think. Mostly a thief. According to this he’s mostly retired.”
“He?”
Copeland shrugged. “Shape-changer. Who can tell?”
“But he’s in this area now?”
“Shape-changer. Who can tell?”
“So did someone hire him?”
“I got to go. My 10:30 is here.”
“Who else is relocated? Would I know them?”
“Goodbye, Suzanne. No sonic booms.” The screen went dark.
Scene 6
Heroic Icons: Rolled 5: Old GMC. I’m taking that to mean the villain. I mean it. How will we encounter X-Filer again? 5, 6: Images of a fist and a sneaky rogue with a knife. I can make that mean X-Filer. Honest.
She threw work clothes into a knapsack and got out the costume, then went to the Freemasonry museum.
Clearly the fire department had been here. The incendiary device was gone but there was still a mark where the man had been. She ducked pasted the restricted area tape and found the window she’d gone in before, moved the cardboard and got in.
The place still smelled of smoke. The bookcase by the fire had been emptied.
But there was no indication in front of someone hauling out boxes of books.
The back door was unlocked. But it did not have tape in front of it. So presumably it was locked when they put up the tape, so there was no need to put tape there. The back had an actual grass lawn, which was irresponsible in a desert environment but was lucky for her: There was a deep footprint there. Like someone had been carrying a heavy box, for instance.
She took a photo of the footprint using her Swiss Army knife for scale. Just her camera phone, but she hoped it would be enough. Odd shoes with distinctive mark on the sole. [14]
Hmm. She looked from a lower angle. From here she could see the wet footprints, drying in the early morning. If she had come at lunchtime there would be nothing.
The footprints went to...a van, looking by the placement. The area was primarily residential; two houses could see this alley. She found a sheltered corner and switched clothes.
The first house had no one home but the second one had a For Rent sign out front. A young mother answered the door with a baby in her arms and a toddler holding the pocket of her sweatpants.
“I’m Suzanne Poole. I’m just trying to find out if there was a car or van over there.” She pointed at the alley beside the museum.
“Alma Mudge. When?”
“This morning.”
“Oh, no. No, I didn’t see anything.”
“You keep the place very clean.” Nothing was out of place. It hardly looked like the home of a family with two children.
“Thanks. Because we’re trying to rent it. Make some extra income, you gotta keep it clean to show.”
“Do you mind if I look around? I’ve got a place on the military base and I’m thinking of moving into the city.”
“Aw, you look busy,” said Alma Mudge. The toddler stayed at her side, attached to her.
“Oh, never too busy for something like this. Here, I’ll take the baby for a minute so you can lead the way—”
“No, no, I just got her to sleep—”
Suze swooped down and picked up the toddler. The child’s hand stayed attached to Alma’s sweatpants and its arm stretched like a floppy noodle.
“Whoops,” said Alma. “Are you an alien too?”[15]
The baby and both arms flowed together to be one arm, the child became a forearm of Popeye proportions. Suddenly Suze was facing a gorilla, and a gorilla who was trying to hit her. [16]
And missed. Suze cursed herself for giving her real—er, current—name; she couldn’t give herself away as Quickstep.
She backed away as fast as she thought a normal person might and dashed out the door, shutting it behind her. [17]
She moved around the corner, changed and zoomed back; she wasn’t going to let this person away again.
He/she/it wasn’t there. Instead, there was a Roomba sitting on the floor.
A big Roomba that hadn’t been here seconds ago. [18]
The trick she had done with the fire last night—all she needed to do was deprive the ex-dino-guy of air. She started to whirl her arms —
The Roomba sprouted legs and was suddenly a large spider, scuttling across the floor and up a wall. It leapt from wall to wall, wrapping her in thread, then pulling the thread tight. [19]
She stepped out of the thread before it tightened and tripped her, and brought the wave of air down to knock the spider off the wall. [20]
He smashed against the floor and turned into a man.
She took out the burner phone and called Conner. He was closer.
“That dino guy, he’s right here and unconscious. I fought him as a Roomba and as a spider.” She listened to him for a moment. “It was tougher than it sounds.” She gave the address.
Then she left a message for Copeland. “Hey, can you call work and let them know I’ll be late? I kind of made an enemy and I have to wait for the soldiers to pick him up.”
Mythic version
Now, with Mythic ...
Same set-up, same characters, same environment, though I have no idea what will show up. I’m keeping any “lore” I’ve established: Conner and the nursery school exists, though I might be choosing a different emphasis this time. I will start with the same beginning, so until the dice rolling starts, it’s the same text.
I’m using the Action-Adventure version listed in Mythic Variations; it seems the closest to a comic book.
- The minimum Chaos Factor (CF) is 5
- Double rolls (evenly divisible by 11) on the Fate Chart always result in a random event, no matter the current CF
- The adventure focus table is different, and adds the Action! event.
Scene 1
Mythic: CF 5 Modify? 10 (no) The alarm sounds, and we discover chaos
Suze was comparing reports. Not the actual fibre samples (Kittrick kept the actual work to himself or one of his trusted associates; she was not to be trusted with putting carpet fibres on a slide and photographing them, oh no). She was looking at the images and compiling differences and it was, really, deathly boring.
That was when the alarm went off. She knew the alarm because her introduction was recent. Kittrick popped his head into the lab and said, “I’m checking on that. Remember the comparisons have to be done by five.”
Suze smiled and waved. Once he was gone, she finished the reports: it was only an hour of work so she finished it in less than a minute. She looked around, made sure no one was watching and jogged to her home at
a subsonic speed for the costume she had hidden there. Fortunately the alarm was ringing on the far side of her apartment, at the base library.
On the way there was a soldier who had somehow caught his sleeve in the breech of his rifle. And then another had fallen and knocked himself out. How curious, she thought, and went into the building.
A string of accidents led to the high-security research room. She paused long enough to pluck a security pass from one of the librarians standing frozen nearby, then open the door. It took long enough to open that she was able to give the pass back.
She had to stay below the speed of sound here: there were actual books here, some of them hundreds of years old and fragile. At the reading desk was a...dinosaur?
Not quite: a dinosaur head, yes, but male, with a camouflage suit from the neck down and a messenger bag. He held a...stun gun? And a librarian was carrying books to him.
She downshifted to normal speeds.
“Your library privileges have been revoked,” she said. She was proud of that line. Pithy and appropriate.
“Oh, a superhero! Heavens!” To the librarian he said, “They always show up. Don’t stop getting me the materials because this will only take a minute.”
“You’re mocking me,” Suze said, as Quickstep.
“Not just you; everyone like you, really,” he said, and spun around. His tail (tail?) hit her on the side and knocked her against a bookshelf against the wall. [21]
“You have nothing on the aliens?” he said to the librarian. “Fine. I’ll try someplace with higher security.”
At least, that’s what she thought he said, because there was some kind of fluid dripping into her ear.
She tripped three times before she got up and three more before she got outside.
By then there was no sight of a dinosaur-man in camouflage.
Scene 2
Mythic: Research, and figuring out what just happened Super school? Rolled an event: PC Negative (Create plans) CF: 7
The base was near a small city, and she started a search pattern from the centre and spiralling outward. She found nothing. Of course, she thought, even if you’re a thousand times faster than normal, without the right insight, you just hit the dead end a thousand times faster than normal.
The dinosaur look must have been a disguise. If there were an actual dinosaur person running around, she’d have heard about it.
Wouldn’t she?
I mean, I am in a relocation program because of my “incident.” They must want super-folks to communicate with each other.
Mustn’t they?
Soon her search took her outside the city, and out here, she could let go and travel full speed. Here there wasn’t anything that could be damaged by the sonic boom.
...Except that golf cart. It was a jolly yellow and there was a driver and a passenger. Both were festooned with gear that spoke of a militia, and beards from Duck Dynasty.
“Hey!”
She slowed to a stop, went back to them. “You’re a superhero,” said the one with the salt-and-pepper shorter beard.
“Sure. You want an autograph or something?”
“Something. I need you to come with us.”
Quickstep said, “I don’t think so.”
He held up what looked like a flare pistol. [22]
She reached out and pushed the gun to one side, holding it there. He let her take it and suddenly the gun acted like a stun-gun. [23]
She couldn’t even scream; she slumped to the ground, unable to move a muscle.
The driver quickly hog-tied her with zip ties he produced.
The driver threw her into the back of the golf cart.
They weren’t wherever they were going by the time she was alert again but still very tired.
“Tommy there says you can’t pass through things. I hope that’s true. We mean you no harm.”
“Then why stun me and...tie me up?” Words were an effort, though it was getting better.
“To make you come along.” He shrugged. “You had already said no.”
Well, I did say no, but it is still kidnapping. [24]
Could she escape?
Maybe. But what did they want? If she managed to vibrate out now, then she’d never know.
On the other hand, she could just ride with them, figure out how to phase out, and get that stupid expression off Tommy’s face. [25]
There! She had to concentrate to do it, but she could do it on purpose. At least for her wrists.
That took her maybe five minutes: an eternity. She had to wait the same length of time before the golf cart stopped.
“There!” said the salt-and-pepper one.
She lifted her head. “Looks like an expanse of desert to me, but with a fence and No Trespassing signs.”
They both shook their heads and Tommy’s smirk reappeared.
“Government land, here,” said Tommy. “What do you think they need it for?”
“We want you to recon, to look around. We’re pretty sure that’s an alien site, like Area 51.”
“But different,” said Tommy.
“Still got aliens, though.”
“You’re sure?” she asked gently.
“Our people have seen some strange things
here.”
“After a dozen beers?”
“You’re making fun of us, just like the sheriff.”
“Never.” You’ll never know, I hope. “What do you want me to look for?”
“Evidence!”
“Look,” said Tommy, “everybody knows that trouble finds superheroes like burrs find a dog with a long coat. So we figure if you go looking over there, something’s got to happen.”
She sighed. The golf cart ride had made her late, so she was absent anyway. There wasn’t any harm in checking the ground out.
“Sure.” After getting boundaries from them, she took off. [26]
From outside the fence, she could see a number of damaged cacti that indicated some kind of explosives had been used recently. Firing range?
And here, too far from the road for the Beardo Boys to have gotten, there was a section of chain-link fence with the bottom bowed out. Like someone had escaped.
Where one person escaped, another can go in, she thought.
She poked the dirt with her toe. It was dry and compact and left only minimal footprints. She debated it for almost a second and then slipped under the fence.
First: Damaged cacti. They were lining impact craters.
So far, might have just been a firing range. Except...one big crater had a glassy green substance in it that might have been trinite.
So powerful (possibly nuclear-level) explosions happened here. She upped her speed to the edge of the sound barrier. It took her nearly five minutes to cross the big property at that speed.
There was a farmhouse with a big vehicle shed and half a dozen smaller sheds. About a dozen ramshackle sheds were scattered apparently randomly about the property.
This was private property, so she wasn’t going to in any of the buildings. Unless there was cause, of course. She might be a superhero, like she had told Tommy and Not-Tommy, but just having superpowers didn’t mean you were immune to laws, and she was already trespassing. [27] [28]
Okay, it was a violation of privacy, but one of the doorframes on a shed was sagging, so there was a bit of space. She peered through it; at least this wasn’t a living building—
That was odd. She couldn’t see inside. The building looked ramshackle but it was light- tight.
So it was not a ramshackle old building? What was it, then?
Curiosity got better of her. She tried the door.[29] [30]
The building was dark inside. She flicked on her little flashlight; it didn’t provide much light, but now she knew better: she’d carry a better one in the future.
The building had a hole in the floor.
Not a Graboids-burrowed-this-tunnel hole, but something square. Like an elevator shaft without the elevator.
Welcome, said the voice in her head.
“...Hi?” she said aloud.
Now that you’re here, you might as well look around.
“Thanks. Is this my psychotic break or are you real? Who are you?”
She got the impression of a chuckle.
We are the aliens.
Scene 3
Mythic: Setup: Welcome to the aliens. CF: 7 Modified 10 (no) PC Negative (Usurp opposition)
You watch a horror movie and you say, “I would never be so stupid as to go into a hole in the ground on the say-so of a disembodied voice.”
...But you never really know until you’re in the situation.
She checked her watch. She had been at this for fifteen minutes. Tommy and Not-Tommy hadn’t set a time limit but she probably had another ten plus five to get back.
Okay. Hole in the ground it was. But how to get down? [31]
The corners weren’t sharp on the hole, but the material was fused in some way, producing the greenish-glass-like material she had seen before that was possibly trinite. If she moved fast enough in a spiral, she could probably get down.
She gave herself a little distance to pick up speed and started down. She had her little flashlight on in case there was an elevator on its way up.
There is no elevator, child.
Well, calling her “child” put a serious damper on the possibility of love blooming between her and the disembodied voice.
I shall keep that in mind.
She felt embarrassed but continued descending.
There was in fact no elevator. The hole opened directly into a tunnel lit by some kind of phosphorescent paint or lichen. It had a blotchy edge to it, and the tunnel was wide enough for four people to walk abreast. It was long enough for her to take measurable time to cross, and then it widened into a room filled with equipment and two people: one of indeterminate sex and no body hair on a slanted table, hip-deep in the equipment and a scowling sasquatch of a person standing in the corner.
Do not be concerned by Atomalk. He always looks like that. I am Ruwin. He pronounced it “Rue-win.” Forgive me for not standing.
“You’re a dead body.”
Not quite, and with luck not for a long time. Now that you have seen me, Atomalk will take you on a tour.
“I don’t actually—”
Please.
Atomalk bared his teeth and started moving: not as fast as Quickstep but still as fast as a car.
She followed him, watching him as he moved. She became sure that if he ran flat out, they might be the same speed.
The complex was large but it was large rooms linked by longish tunnels. Rooms were furnished with a combination of the ancient and the modern; equipment was either off the shelf or unrecognizable. They passed a dozen others: half would have been presentable in a hospital emergency room, and half were candidates for display in a less-enlightened time.
They did not see everything: there were doors, and some of them stayed shut.
When after a minute they arrived back at Ruwin, Quickstep said, “That’s lovely, but why? Why show me?”
You are a superhero, are you not? That is what you told the others.
“Yes.”
We need help. We need to be protected until I am healthy.
“And how long will that be?”
I am nearly better. A century or less.
The knowledge fell into her mind. They had come to earth because Ruwin was gravely hurt and he needed to recover. (The first part had been re-corporating himself, which did not sound good.)
In the meanwhile, some of their members had left to get help. In this last century, those members had to be rounded up before they could leave.
She (as Ruwin explained) came into contact with the odd and the unexplained. If she found information about the lost children of Ruwin, she should attempt to bring them in.
Oh, and stop the armed force gathering even now on their border.
“What?”
Tommy and Not-Tommy had not been alone, and when Quickstep had not returned instantly (that being their idea of what a speedster did), they summoned their group.
“How long has it been?”
Twenty minutes since you left them. I cannot clear that many minds.
“You clear minds?”
When necessary to preserve the secret of our existence. If you did not agree to help us, I would have cleared your mind.
“We will talk of that later. Now I have to figure out how to get out.”
Atomalk can throw you up to the top.
She looked at Atomalk, who did something like a smile.
“Let me try my way first.” [32]
Her way took multiple attempts, but if she didn’t try, she wasn’t going to learn. At the fourth, she heard Atomalk mutter something but she ignored him. Two more attempts later, she had enough speed and she shot up the chute.
Scene 4
Mythic: Goal: Stop the militia. CF: 7 Modified 8 (no) If necessary: Inquire goals
They had already flattened the chain link fence. She made a quick count as she approached — twenty-six people gathered. [33]
“Hey! It’s private property!” She found the center of the group where she could talk to them. She didn’t want to lie but she had promised Ruwin that she would try to stop the invasion.
“We thought they’d got you!”
“I’m fast, Tommy, but I’m not that fast. It takes time to search the whole property. And if I slow down to talk to someone, that happens at normal speed.”
“But they’re locked tight!”
“Of course they are. They have folks like you trying to get in!”
“And what about the blank times that delivery people have reported?”
“Look, I went through the whole property. Not a government base.”
“It must be something else, then.”[34]
“It’s a family and they have a reason for staying out of sight. Some of them don’t look pretty. But it’s just a family. Your guns are over there. Go home.”
Slowly, muttering, they sorted through the guns and headed home.
She knew that wasn’t the last she would hear of them.
Scene 5
Mythic: Again: search for the dino guy. CF: 7 Modified: 2 (interrupt) If necessary: Care balance. Sheesh. Got to try and bring it back somehow.
About mile three hundred she noticed some chafing around the band of her sports bra. She had never spent so much time in the costume before, and clearly there were some bugs to be ironed out. She had found nothing yet so she headed home.
Showers forced her to slow down, so she showered and threw a dinner in the microwave. Then she sat down with the sports bra.
It was worn out. A day like today was the equivalent of a year of jogging, and the elastic was gone.
She sent a text message to Major Copeland, her Superhero Relocation contact. (It was midnight there; no reason to call.) She had two more sports bras, so it wasn’t urgent-urgent, but the sports bras she liked were about a hundred bucks a pop, and if she was going to be buying two a week, people were going to notice.
Aw, hell, the shoes were starting to go, too.
She washed the dirty costume by hand and hung it to dry. [35]
There was a knock at the door.
“Hi,” said the woman standing in her hall.
“Hi.” Suze recognized her. “You’re a librarian.”
The woman nodded. “May I come in?”
“Yes, of course. Sorry.” Suze stepped aside and back.
“Cadence Gerber.”
“Suzanne Poole. You knew that. Sorry. I was going to shower. Can I help you?”
“Yes.” She looked around. “Just making sure you’re not hiding a clique of grad students.”
Suze laughed. “I’m not. I could barely fit a brace of grad students in here, let alone a clique.”
“A brace? That's serious.” Cadence leaned against the door, making sure that it was shut. “So you might have heard there’s a superhero in town. It’s been the talk of the base.”
“I haven’t been around.”
“I saw her. Speedster. Fast.”
“And?”
“Well, she’s about your height and build.”
“....And?”
“And you read about twenty books a night. I thought maybe you were hiding grad students in here, but since you’re not, I figure it’s you.”
Suze's heart sped up. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Really?” Cadence reached into her purse and pulled out an object, tossed it at Suze.
Suze fought hard not to shift into overtime as it flew through the air. She mostly succeeded, except for getting her hand in place to catch it.
It was an apple.
“Because I can catch an apple?”
“I thought you’d do speedster-y things.”
“Oh.” She handed back the apple. “Whether I’m a speedster or not, can I get you something to drink?”
“No, I can go. It was a stupid idea. I just needed someone to talk to about this dinosaur guy and I figured you were probably the speedster.”
“Well, I’d love to talk —” She automatically shifted into overtime when she slept, so she got a night’s sleep in five minutes. Nights were long.
“If you’re insisting... Do you have beer?”
“Do I have beer? Hah.” Suze walked into the tiny kitchenette. “I do not drink beer, so I have five left over from my housewarming that need to be drinked.”
“Drunk?”
“Drank. I was figuring it was like hanged and hung, that they had two different meanings.”
“They don’t. I’ll have one.”
Suze handed Cadence a beer. “You pour me a red wine while I’m putting some stuff away. There’s a bottle on the counter.”
In her bedroom she took a moment to better hide the clean costume.
“All right,” Suze said, “I’m ’satiably curious. What did you see when the alarm sounded?”
“Sorry — I already finished one of your beers. The thing is, I was on the front desk and I didn’t notice him when he came in. I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed a dinosaur; I’m doing the dinosaur display, for goodness’ sake! But I wouldn’t notice a guy in camo.”
“So he changed?”
“I think so. I know he didn’t have a tail.”
“So he was wearing camouflage fatigues.”
“Right. Wouldn’t look out of place.”
“So there’s a record of the name he used getting on to the base.”
“I mentioned that to them.” She waved her
beer bottle. “The investigators. They were talking to everybody.”
“I was in my lab.” She rolled her eyes. “Doing paperwork.”
“Anyway, he came in and the first thing I know is a dinosaur guy is asking me about aliens.”
“Aliens?”
“Yeah. Like we’re Area 51 or something.”
“You’re sure it was the same guy?”
“Yeah. I eventually noticed that he was wearing the wrong kind of fatigues. The patterns were wrong (they changed them a couple of years ago); he was wearing surplus.”
“And he’s asking about aliens?”
“And Freemasons, but mostly aliens.”
“Freemasons?”
“Yeah. About a third of presidents have been Freemasons. Washington, both Roosevelts and Truman.”
“Wasn’t Truman president when Roswell happened?”
“Roosevelt. No, sorry, FDR was dead by then. Truman, you’re right. Why?”
“Dino-guy was asking about Freemasons and about aliens. Roswell is aliens and it took place while a Freemason was president.”
“The other thing I noticed but they wouldn’t listen is that people didn’t have stuff happen to them until he whacked them.”
“Once he grew the tail?”
“Nah, he punched the first guy, before he had a tail, and that guy had his laptop explode.”
“Maybe that’s his other superpower. Besides being able to look like a dinosaur.”
“Sure, if you like a compsognathus, but I would have preferred a dimetrodon.”
“The display explains the dinosaurs but why do you know about aliens and Freemasons?”
“Why don’t you?” Cadence grinned. “I work reference.”
“You have a very cool job. I am doing paperwork.”
“My job is the definition of paperwork. And you get to work with the hunky blond guy. That’s got to be worth something.”
“Kittrick?”
“I don’t know his name. Blond, about six feet tall. Kinda beaky in the nose but going away, you can see that he’s got a great—” She cupped her hands.
“You like Kittrick?”
“Just to look at. I don’t know him.”
“Ugh. He’s an ass.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m sorry he’s an ass, too.”
Cadence started to laugh. “I gotta go. Tomorrow the dino display gets a pterodactyl.”
“Your life is thrilling.”
“Ain’t everyone can handle this level of responsibility.” She stopped smiling. “Thanks for letting me talk.”
“No problem. I’ll even buy more beer for you.”
“Sorry I thought you were a superhero.”
“Hey, we all have to be a superhero to someone.”
Copeland called about the text message the next morning. “Apparently we have to talk about...women’s undergarments.”
“Bras, Copeland. Brassieres. Sports bras.”
“Yeah. Those. What’s wrong with yours?”
“They wear out. I put them through the equivalent of six months of work if I do something for most of the evening.”
“How can you spend most of an evening at anything? ”
“Searching, Copeland. Anyway, if I need to buy a new bra every week, it’s going to look suspicious. Even if I switch up where I buy them; the town isn’t that big, and people will notice all the delivery trucks coming in.”
She could picture him rubbing his bald forehead the way he did when he was uncomfortable or nervous. “I think I can get clearance to ship you fifty. Is that good for a year? Fifty?”
“I don’t know. Probably. Maybe.” She felt badly for him. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll talk to one of the engineers. Maybe she knows something we can use instead.”
“I’d be willing to be a guinea pig.”
“Okay. I’ll get on that. Good—”
She cleared her throat.
“What?”
“Don’t you need to know my sizes?”
“Text them to me,” he said, in a tone that conveyed aren’t-we-done-yet? “Good-bye.”
She laughed and suddenly wished she could tell Cadence.
Scene 6
Mythic: Again: search for the dino guy. CF: 7 Modify: 10 (no) If necessary: Vengeance project
Work crawled by. Investigations on a military base rarely required a forensics team, so the team on the base handled the larger area, both the larger military area and the small city nearby.
Today Kittrick had assigned her the task of organizing the firearms database. They had received new software in the last year, but the ballistics information was still in physical files. They were like the FBI that way, Suze thought ruefully. The time-consuming part was image scanning: she was limited by the speed of the flatbed scanner. It took thirty seconds to scan each image, and each file had between two and eight images, depending on how thorough the original investigators had been.
There were about two thousand files jammed into the storage space: a hundred were model files for different makes of guns and ammunition, and the remainder were case files. At five minutes a file, that was over two months of working days. For someone without her gifts, it was years of work.
Was Kittrick hazing her or isolating her where she would never see anything? Or was this something you gave the new employee while you figured out what she could do?
On the other hand, it took her only seconds to do the actual data entry for a file while the images were scanning, which left her between one and five minutes to do something else.
Like design and build a feeder for the pictures she had to scan. By the end of the day, she had something that should work to scan images all night, cutting her time to a third.
And for the next three weeks, no one would be looking at her working.
When work ended, she sauntered out of the building, leaving the scanner running in a locked office.
Copeland was as good as his word: she got notice that boxes had been delivered to her, and she picked them up before supper. [36]
After supper she could search again.
The only thing she knew about the dino guy was that he cared about aliens. The militia she had met also cared about aliens so there might be some connection there.
Why hadn’t she thought of that yesterday? Just busy? Or mental control by Ruwin? That was a disturbing thought: that what she had done in or near the aliens was not her own control.
Assume there was a connection that Ruwin was trying to keep from her. Did that mean that Dino Guy was one of the lost children?
No, that didn’t make sense at all: Dino Guy was trying to find information on the aliens, not re-join them. Unless he was trying to find information on them to re-join them.
Except on the third hand, Ruwin could read her mind and he’d have told her if Dino Guy was an alien....
Okay, so Dino Guy came to the base looking for information about aliens. Why here? Why not actual Area 51 or the SETI Institute?
Theory: He started there. He had gone through the obvious things and they eventually led him to this area.
Which, in one sense, was good work, because she had just discovered actual aliens in the area.
Dozens of small cities must have supposed alien sites; this one just happened to really have an alien site. And he had finally come here.
She went to the library, said hi to Cadence and said, “Something led Dino Guy to think there was an alien connection in town. What?”
Cadence looked at her. “You have not been here long.” She shook her head. “Well, there are the stories, of course. We have a bookshelf dedicated to it; I’m sure you would have gotten to it in time.”
“I’m sure.”
“And of course the Alien Days celebration in October winds up with Halloween.” She looked over at one of the other librarians. “Not as big as the UFO festivals in Roswell or Oregon, but big locally.”
“I never saw any place like the Alien Cafe or something.”
“This.” She went to a rack of brochures and pulled one out. “You weren’t looking here, clearly.”
“This base?”
“Like Area 51, we are a hub of extraterrestrial activity.”
“No wonder he came here.”
“Sure. I’m sure the cops have all of this. Two or three places are supposed to have, oooh, aliens. There’s a property outside town that’s got suspicious bomb craters, so they obviously have aliens, this base is where the debris is hidden, and the Chamber of Commerce just approved a plaque where the alien was seen.” She saw Suzanne’s facial expression and said, “I’m surprised you haven’t gotten to any of this. Too busy with Air Movement Dynamics and Their Implications for Crime Scene Investigation.”
“In fairness, I alternated that one with a Regency romance.”
“Still brought it back the next day, speedster.” Then her eyes widened at how Suzanne stiffened. “I’m kidding. I didn’t mean you were— Hey, we dispose of books that haven’t been borrowed in two years. Can I give you a list of ones that are close to the date? In case they seem interesting to you?”
“Sure. I gotta go, buy more beer for you.”
“Whew. Glad to know another invitation might be coming my way. By the way, how do you like the pterosaur?”
“Nice add. What next?”
“Got a flock of velociraptors. The whole thing isn’t quite period — an eight-year-old comes in and reminds me — but it’s close.”
“Good luck!”
She slipped on the costume and headed out to search. She figured she would start at the center of town and work her way out.
There was a plaque showing that there would be a plaque. Quickstep circled it a few times and then stopped to read the preplaque.
“Hey,” she heard a man say. “Aren’t you that new superhero?”
She turned and found that the man’s ear had shot forward like a tentacle and just missed her face. [37]
She ducked under the ear and punched him solidly, then moved off to look at him from across the street. [38]
“I just have to hit you once,” he said, and suddenly he was the cartoon road-runner, across the street and pecking at her. [39]
“Meep-meep!” he said.
She had learned from her previous experience not to stay in melee combat with him. She backed down the street, easily moving backward.
“Meep-meep, your ass,” she muttered, and started waving her arms. What she wanted was to pull him closer. [40]
He zoomed toward her and she flung him over her shoulder, just at the edge of town. [41]
He changed form again, becoming a giant armadillo this time, and burrowing into the ground.
Digging, he was easier to hit, so Quickstep darted up to him and hit him multiple times. [42]
He was half-buried now, and if she didn’t do something fast she wasn’t going to be able to even hit him.
Air flow dynamics! She remembered reading about air flow patterns that produced serious cooling. The cooling might reduce his ability to absorb her blows.
She started the air pattern and then shot a pair of blows to the cold area. [43]
His tail dashed up but he missed her, and then he dug deeper. [44]
At the speed he was going, he would be covered soon. She had only one more chance. [45]
The armadillo slumped and turned into a man. Clothes reappeared, and she sighed.
It took only a second to call Copeland on the second any-hours number.
“Can you call the proper federal authorities for me? I’ve got a shape-shifter here and I don’t know what to do with him.”
[1] ICONS: Because I really want this to hit, he activates his “Surprise!” Quality to add +2 to the test for improved effort; she gets a Determination Point, so it’s 12 vs 10: Moderate. Not a stunt; it’s just his usual Strike power, and now she has 5 Determination Points.
[2] Heroic Icons: Does she find out who he is? No, but she discovered something else.
[3] ICONS: The defensive extra means that she’s difficulty 8 to hit, even with pluses for attacking by surprise, and the base’s security systems have a 5: Major failure for defense system (5+4+2 vs 8+6, or 11 vs 14).
[4] ICONS: There’s a rock with a Good disguise but she has Good Awareness. She activates “Eye for Detail” to get Improved Effort, and gets a Major success (9 vs 6). 4 DP.
[5] ICONS: Spends Determination Point on a retcon: she has a Swiss Army knife. That leaves her with 3 DP. (I think it makes perfect sense that the speedster travels with a Swiss Army knife....)
[6] ICONS: Tip of the hat to the various tau things in ICONS products. Original concept by Dan Houser, I think.
[7] ICONS: This is an area where I think curiosity is getting her deeper into trouble, so I’ll give her a Determination Point. She’s up to 4 DP again.
[8] Heroic Icons: What’s the set-up? 4, 3: Complication. I think I’ll just roll 1d6 on the 3-4 part of the chart for these.
[9] Heroic Icons: Is it X-Filer? No, but... But what? Rolled a 2 and 6, some kind of research or book learning and an illuminati eye-in-the- pyramid.
[10] ICONS: Stunting Air Control to starve the fire of oxygen, using the “Eye for Detail” Quality to activate it.
[11] ICONS: Complication: accelerant and something to keep the fire going.
[12] Heroic Icons: Another alarm about X-Filer? 3, 5: Old GMC. We haven’t got that many GMCs, but let’s try someone who didn’t get a name last time.
[13] Heroic Icons: How will we encounter X- filer again? 6, 3: Images of a hammer and a megaphone. Construction? Noise? Or X-filer calls people in? Sonic boom?
[14] ICONS: She activates her “Eye for Detail” quality and spends the Advantage on Inspiration.
[15] ICONS: X-Filer doesn’t have Transform: Humanoids; that was a stunt, so Quickstep gets a Determination Point. 3 DP.
[16] ICONS: Suze knew this was coming; that’s why she grabbed the kid in the first place. X- Filer gets 5+5 vs Suze’s 8+6, or 10 vs 14. Major failure.
[17] I CONS: For Initiative, Quickstep gets 5+4; X-Filer gets 5+3. Quickstep goes first.
[18] ICONS: She uses a DP and the “Not soon enough” Quality for Advantage, and uses that Advantage to stunt Air Control.
[19] ICONS: X-Filer tries a Binding attack that comes with being a spider. He gets 5+1 to attack; she gets 8+4 for defense, for 6 vs 12.
[20] ICONS: A test of Strength/Wall-Crawling against her air telekinesis. She gets a massive success (8+5 vs his 5+2). Have to check for stunning: Her 8+4 vs his 5+4 is 12 vs 9, or a Major success; it knocks him out.
[21] ICONS: Because I really want this to hit, he activates his “Surprise!” Quality to add +2 to the test for improved effort; she gets a Determination Point, so it’s 10 vs 10: Marginal. Not a stunt; it’s just his usual Strike power, and now she has 5 Determination Points. The Marginal is enough for the Probability Control to affect her.
[22] ICONS: She goes for a grab. A grab is lower of Prowess or Strength, so she gets 5+3; he gets 4+2, for a moderate success. It’s a gun, unharmed by their combined strengths. (In retrospect, she should have stunted Improved Effort.)
[23] ICONS: The gun has Shooting 4 and Aura (Stunning) 6 (limit on Aura: single use) vs. Str. Basically, it’s electrified, 12 vs 8.
[24] Mythic: Will they release her after? Unlikely (they’ve already resorted to kidnapping), but...yes. They will. Who are they?
[25] ICONS: Activate the “Not Soon Enough” quality for an Advantage, spend it on stunting Phasing from Super-Speed. DP: 4
[26] ICONS: She gets 9 (5+4) vs 7 (3+4). She spots something.
[27] Mythic: Is there a security system? Likely. No. The implicit answer is that this is not a secret base.
[28] ICONS: One last Awareness check, using her “Eye for detail” quality to generate an Advantage. That’s 9 vs 6 and DP down to 3.
[29] ICONS: Sounds like curiosity getting her in trouble again. Here, have a Determination Point: back up to 4.
[30] Mythic: Is it locked? Very unlikely...but it is unlocked. Clearly this fits in with the “No security systems” thing. 22: It is unlocked. Crap. Now I have to figure out what this place is.
[31] ICONS: Use Curiosity for an advantage to stunt surface movement. DP: 3
[32] ICONS: Don’t want to spend a Determination point this time, so I’ll use a Maneuver and roll Super-Speed against a Surface movement rank of 8. In fact, I fail for the next four attempts, and then manage. Fortunately, I am kind to myself and there is no cost for these failures.
[33] ICONS: I don’t want to stunt Fast Attack and try for 26 grab maneuvers, so let’s stunt Telekinesis Burst and call it “moving so fast...” A Determination Point to activate the Quality “Not soon enough” and spend the advantage on Telekinesis Burst. A stunt for a second advantage (activating “Eye for Detail”) and use it for +1 to Strength, so it’s a 6 vs 4 for the grabs. 6+4 vs 4+3 is Major success, so every gun is gone. DP: 1
[34] ICONS: One determination point left, so Improved Effort on a willpower test to convince them to go home. Average Willpower for the crowd is 3. Hers is 4. She gets 4+2+3=9; they get 3+6=9. Marginal victory. I’m going to give it to her because she took all their guns.
[35] Mythic: What about Cadence? Her reasons for showing up are still the same. Does she show up again? Likely: 41 (yes) In a bit of laziness, I am going to cut and paste her encounter from the earlier session.
[36] NOTE: I have just spent several hundred words on things that have no effect on the story or the adventure, but they make the world of the adventure more plausible for me. If this were an actual story, I’d cut them, but they’re not: this is an adventure where I’m trying to figure stuff out and explain it to myself. So I know it’s not paced particularly well.
[37] ICONS: Thank goodness her super-speed has Defensive: He gets 5+6 and she gets 8+4, for 11 vs 12.
[38] ICONS: She hits (Prowess 6+6 vs 5+2) but she’s only strength 5, and his rubbery body soaks that up.
[39] ICONS: He misses (Prowess 5+5 vs 8+3), but he now has stunted Super-Speed 5, and she gets a Determination Point. She now has DP: 2.
[40] ICONS: She tries a maneuver to generate a rank 6 Air Control. Super-speed 8+6 vs 6+2; she creates the advantage and activates it, bringing him closer. With luck, he won’t be able to move inside the rank 6 vortex.
[41] ICONS: He just wants to aim for her, but he’s not quite strong enough, even though he’s in the shape of a bird: 5+1 vs 6+3.
[42] ICONS: Now she’s stunting Fast Attack 8, for two extra attacks (Prowess 5 and 3). Any extras will be added to damage. The two extra attacks hit and miss (5+3 vs 5+2 and 3+2 vs 3+6); she gets a +1 to add to damage, so she does 1 Stamina total.
[43] ICONS: This is creating Trouble, making his Damage Resistance not work. Since I’ve artificially introduced a time limit, no point in trying a Maneuver. So she spends a determination point to activate her Eye for Detail, and spends the advantage to disable his Damage Resistance for the page. The Fast Attack gets divvied to Prowess 6 and 2; again it’s one hit and one miss. So that’s +1 to damage, but without Damage Resistance, he takes 6 Stamina, for a new total of 4 Stamina. DP: 1.
[44] ICONS: His Prowess 5+5 vs her 8+3 is 10 vs 11. Whew.
[45] ICONS: Creating Trouble again, and Fast Attack is still there. DP: 0 Fast Attacks both hit (6+5 vs 5+3, 2+6 vs 5+2) so that’s +2 damage to the main punch, which hits (6+3 vs 5+4) with a marginal attack, but +1 of the 2 gets to turn this to a moderate attack, and +1 damage, for 6 Stamina.
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