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Post by Dead Sidekick on Jan 26, 2012 16:16:17 GMT -5
ooc: Solo, Ferine, Vendetta, and Shockwave are in this scene
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Friday morning, October 23, 2009 10:00 am EST; Angel Towers complex
After Glitch and Maximillian Pride are released from their holding cell, over the course of several hours they explained that HYDRA-controlled Life Model Decoy androids posing as Paladin Institute agents had brought them here to try to decrypt a mysterious government database on mutant superpowers in order to facilitate creating customized "Kick" drug variants capable of imparting specific superhuman powers into the user. That government database remains uncracked. Glitch claims "part of it" is still in his head.
Maximillian Pride apologizes for his deception in not telling Shockwave, the only hero present that had met him at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that he was a board member and financier of the secret Paladin Institute that this cell of HYDRA had infiltrated and began pretending to be, and that the REAL Paladin Institute would cut their losses and not get involved in rescuing him to preserve their centuries of secrecy. At any rate, with the heroes in possession of the the Angel Towers complex and Bartholomew Jacobs' strange artifact, it was likely just a matter of time that something, either HYDRA's infiltrators or their replicas of teleporting "heroes" and "villains" would make a play for reclaiming it, all to keep Bartholomew Jacobs' insidious resurrection spell on track. The heroes had 8 days to stop it.
Pride continues to stress that these furtive and conspiratorial intrigues are all symptoms of the Fractal Magic involved in the spell to ressurect Bartholomew Jacobs from the dead, and as the spell grows in power as Halloween approaches, it could potentially begin to re-write time and reality itself to see Jacobs' return to life. He laments that five of the amulet-keys of the seven needed to activate the portal were already in place, though without Jacobs' Formorexian grimoire, there was no way to tell if the amulet keys were placed correctly. Basically it was wheels among wheels - Jacobs' spell was pulling the strings behind HYDRA pulling the strings behind their replacement LMDs infiltrating criminal gangs and government agencies pulling the strings to create more chaos, a "Murder Machine" already churning, that would spit out its unspeakable horrors upon the Earth on Halloween night. "The Devil," Pride quipped, "is always in the details. We need that book to stop this."
Pride laments the loss of Oldschool in the hero's last battle, and is also dismayed to find his assistant curator Felicia Bifrost was a member of this crazed monster-mutant gang called the Faces of Fear that was stirring up chaos in New York City's criminal underworld. He checks over Flashdance, still comatose on a gurney and connected to life support systems, without injured legs. It was obvious that sometime between the sleep induction attack at the homeless shelter and the battle at Hammerhead's Roaring 20's club last night, Flashdance had been replaced in the group by a HYDRA LMD.
The chaos in New York City was self-evident. Anti-mutant hysteria on the streets and in the media was at a fever pitch, carried on the backs of stories of teleporting monsters that could attack at anytime, anywhere. And specifically, Shockwave, Solo, Vendetta, and Ferine were being inaccurately reported alongside the Werewolf By Night, the Frankenstein's Monster, the Brothers Grimm, Dansen Macabre, and others as being "mutants" involved in the deadly and dangerous "Faces of Fear" terrorists, and were being hunted by police and federal law enforcement. Tales of public assaults upon costumed superheroes were filtered in to the breaking stories along with repeated reports of vigilante terrorist Frank Castle aka the Punisher's recent escape from Ryker's Island prison.
The degree of mistrust between society and superhumans was growing. A televised press conference involving Spider-Man, Daredevil, Power Man, Iron Fist, Moon Knight, and Black Widow, all swearing to bring down the "Faces of Fear" gang (Shockwave, Solo, Vendetta, and Ferine mistakenly included) nearly erupted into a riot until Captain America joined the other heroes in stage and soothed the crowd with a patriotic speech about how America will never fall prey to fear.
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Post by shockwave on Jan 26, 2012 17:13:34 GMT -5
"Great, this is just what we needed. The LMD's are definately a problem, probably a lot bigger problem even than what's being reported. It's been getting to be a bigger and bigger problem for quite some time, but I didn't expect it to explode this big this fast."
"On another topic, I'm not sure I'm a fan of my newly appointed position of turning the general populace against super heroes. The press is almost as big an enemy as the criminals. Wonder if LMD infiltrators are the ones who turned this story on end."
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2012 18:48:38 GMT -5
"Well either way we will need this book, so it seems we are back to square one, atleast a bit smarter who the enemy is.", He looks at Glitch and Pride,"Do any of you know where the book was last sighted, so we can have a starting point? We need to move fast, because the number of allies is shrinking and we are getting more enemys, inlcuding the good guys!", Solo really was worried that it would get worse before it got better.
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Post by Dead Sidekick on Jan 27, 2012 5:42:20 GMT -5
"Great, this is just what we needed. The LMD's are definately a problem, probably a lot bigger problem even than what's being reported. It's been getting to be a bigger and bigger problem for quite some time, but I didn't expect it to explode this big this fast." "On another topic, I'm not sure I'm a fan of my newly appointed position of turning the general populace against super heroes. The press is almost as big an enemy as the criminals. Wonder if LMD infiltrators are the ones who turned this story on end." Glitch seemed distracted as he tussled his poofy glam rocker hairdo nervously as his eyes seemed to spark up with the glow of television static, and the scene displayed on the wall's "window" 3-D holographic representations of what's outside the Angel Towers building changed to a somewhat cartoonish caricature of the New York skyline. Flooded with water to the tops of nearby buildings until the water line rose to cover the "window." Large fish swam by, fleeing Star Wars' Boba Fett in flippers scurrying after them with a lawn mower. Glitch's eyes fade back to normal as the computer generated hologram window's scene returns to an exact representation of what's really going on outside. "Sorry about that," Glitch says sheepishly. "These HYDRA clowns left quite a lot of expensive computer technology around here. I'd love to explore it all." Clearing his throat, Glitch says, "I'm only marginally aware of America's android replacement infestation problem. That was crazy stuff with that UFO on the White House lawn back in the Bush administration, huh? Got the various intelligence agencies, SHIELD, the Checkmate teams, all in a tizzy. I guess it was bound to happen with Doctor Doom leaving his dupes around for study." Glitch spit the words "Doctor Doom" from his mouth in a decidedly hateful fashion. "You figure out how to make an indistinguishable robot duplicate of someone, and all of a sudden every intelligence agency and terror group in the world all want them for infiltration work. Then they replace all the world leaders with 'droids just in time for Ultron version 666 to pop up. It's madness what the world is bumbling along into. Too many exploitable vulnerabilities. You're worried about the media? I grew up in Latveria where Doom's paranoia rules and 5 out of 10 hummingbirds are an automated security drone." Glitch seemed chock full of conspiracy theories, and not all of them seemed implausible enough to dismiss. "Before I got caught here, I was tracking some Shaw Industries tech coming out of Finland while stowed away on a cargo ship. Curiousity got the better of me, so I peeped into a cargo container with my cyberpathic powers. It was some kind of giant robot. A mutant hunting robot. Anyway, long story short, I had to jump ship to keep from getting caught, and I came here to take a job to crack this database, mostly as a cover while I was trying to get back on the trail of this Shaw Industries mutant hunting robot. That's when all hell broke loose and I figured out these 'Paladin Institute' guys were actually LMDs." Glitch let his words sink in for effect. "And the bastards now have an LMD of me out there somewhere, just like they do of your friend here..." he says, pointing to the comatose Flashdance. "It's the greatest hack ever, and if it didn't suck to be on the shitty end of it, I'd be wanting to take credit for it." "Well either way we will need this book, so it seems we are back to square one, atleast a bit smarter who the enemy is.", He looks at Glitch and Pride,"Do any of you know where the book was last sighted, so we can have a starting point? We need to move fast, because the number of allies is shrinking and we are getting more enemys, inlcuding the good guys!", Solo really was worried that it would get worse before it got better. Maximillian Pride says, "The book was last seen last Saturday. before it was stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I'm afraid I've been out of the loop for the past week, since HYDRA agents abducted me and brought me here. They were trying to set a trap for you all, using a duplicate of me as bait. Something happened, and the LMDs turned to dust. Like they did again last night." ----- ooc: The heroes were meeting with a faux "Maximillian Pride" after the battle with the Dreadnoughts when they all crumbled to dust earlier. ----- Glitch pipes in, speaking to Pride, "You were only locked down here a few days. Try a month on." Glitch grumbles, but apologizes. "Sorry, I'm a little on edge and grouchy when I'm hungry. Anyone got any cheese crackers?" And in his skittish ADHD fashion, Glitch darts from topic to topic and realizes something and turns to Solo. "I haven't reported to Sable in a month. I wonder if that LMD copy of me did..."
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Post by shockwave on Jan 27, 2012 10:54:36 GMT -5
"We have to come up with some way to tell who is real and who is not. As far as I see it, we can divide everyone into three, maybe four groups. We have real beings. We have LMD's. We have projections of real beings. And we potentially have projections of LMD's. We need to find some way to figure who how to tell which type each type is, incognito if possible. For all I know, any one of us could be an LMD or a projection here as well, which really makes planning next steps difficult. If you'll pardon me for a moment..."
Shockwave holds his arms in front of him, emmitting a series of ultrasonic soundbursts, rotating at the waste to aim around the room.
---OOC: I'm going to try to take ultrasonic readings of everyone to see if I can get a sense of who has skeletal structure, who is metalic or plastic, and who has new structure at all. (I'll spend karma up to successful stunt.)
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Post by Vendetta on Jan 28, 2012 11:47:51 GMT -5
Vendetta waits for Shockwave to complete his scan then he says "this is all well and good, but we still have no idea wether you are one of these illusions or LMD's, and we still dont know where to start on getting this damn book."
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Post by Dead Sidekick on Jan 28, 2012 16:19:52 GMT -5
ooc: hold for a bit as I collate all Karma gains and usage during Chapter 9-10.0 and get us back on a fully accounted system. ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png)
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2012 15:30:40 GMT -5
to Glitch,"Maybe we should contact her"
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Post by Dead Sidekick on Jan 30, 2012 23:50:00 GMT -5
ooc: Is Ferine still with us?
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Ferine
Gd(10) Member
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Post by Ferine on Jan 31, 2012 9:53:53 GMT -5
OOC: I am here just been sick and running to doctors.
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Post by Dead Sidekick on Jan 31, 2012 14:33:11 GMT -5
OOC: I am here just been sick and running to doctors. ooc: sorry to hear that. I'm recovering from a stomach flu thing that made me puke up everything I've eaten since 1978. It was awful. Get well soon!
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Ferine
Gd(10) Member
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Post by Ferine on Jan 31, 2012 14:46:34 GMT -5
Ferine being fairly new to the team remains quiet as Shockwave scans the group. She thinks what animal power would help her determine if Shockwave is "real" or imposter.
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Post by Dead Sidekick on Feb 1, 2012 7:20:00 GMT -5
ooc: To Ferine's keen senses, she would smell a "human" underneath Shockwave's armor. Not having any experience with LMDs though, this isn't out of the ordinary for her. An LMD would smell "human" to her as well, but...Shockwave pans over the gathered people in the room with a pulse of ultrasonic sound, taking readings of everyone present and comparing them against known LMD configurations in his armor's acoustic forensic database, searching for specific giveaways that would differentiate a human from an LMD based on his prior discoveries at SHIELD during the nightmarish HYDRA "Secret Empire" LMD infiltrations that have caused so many intelligence and national security agency headaches and shakeups under the "Janus Directive" enacted by the Obama administration to curtail it. Ferine, Vendetta, Glitch, and Maximillian Pride scan as organically human, with no mechanical resonances consistent with known LMD models. Solo and the comatose Flashdance also scan as organically human, save for micro-circuitry implants in their bodies, none of which are consistent with any known LMD models. ooc: these are their built in teleportation circuits, freak out if it's in character to do so... ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png) Glitch's eyes light up with that strange television static effect as he looks over Shockwave. [Ultrasonic scan running]
[Search parameter: All known LMD models]
[None detected - scan complete]
[.....]
[unauthorized I/O interface]
[Command line interpreter error]
[Active virus scan deactivated]
[9|_17(|-| 0|\||_1|\|3]
[9l17CH 0nL1N3]
[Glitch online...]
[ ;D ;D ;D ]
[Acoustic Forensic Database File Directory search]
[File found: Black Eyed Peas - Rock Your Body / Skrillex Remix]
[Playback mode]For a few moments, from the palms of Shockwave's gauntlets is emitted the Skrillex Dubstep remix of the Black Eyed Peas "Rock Your Body." ooc: pl.st/s/808117777 ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png) Glitch begins a goofy dance for a bit, but stops himself as he breaks his cyberpathic mental merge with Shockwave's armor. The music stops playing as well. [System rebooting]Glitch looks at Shockwave with an appreciative grin. "You have the largest MP3 collection known to mankind in there, don't you? SHIELD's acoustic forensic database? How in the heck did you hack that? I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!" Glitch shoots a sheepish grin at Vendetta and Solo. "so I like to have fun when I'm stressed. Shoot me. Er, don't. C'mon Solo, let's go see if we can get Sable on the horn." Maximillian Pride wonders aloud, "What should I do? If I'm listed as missing, it may be a good idea for me to alert the authorities that I'm alive and okay. Unless they think you all are my kidnappers?" ooc: coming later this week, a handy dandy health and karma scoreboard...
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Post by shockwave on Feb 1, 2012 16:25:17 GMT -5
Shockwave pulls pulls back when his armor seems to leave his control, staring at his gauntlets for several seconds after Glitch releases him. Then realizing what Glitch has just told everyone, he slow raises his head, trying to figure out how to handle the situation. Alright, don't panic, don't panic. How did he do that...and looks like the cat is out of the bag. If this goes any farther, shield will be on to me for sure."
Shockwave scowls at Glitch under his mask, "I'd appreciate not letting anyone know about the forensic database. Even though I'm one of the good guys, I really don't think they would like that getting out, especially when they don't know it's out. If word got out, I'm sure many others would also like to get thier hands on the information. It will help with identifying LMD's. They are easiest to pick up when damaged, but I think I might be able to sense them even while working. Unfortunately, the alalysis is pretty complex, so I can't really be using the armor for anything else...so I likely won't be pointing out LMD's in the middle of a fight unless someone damages one. Projections on the other hand, seem to react to ultrasonic pulses."
Shockwave wonders what to do with Pride. "A couple sides to this. On one hand, might be better for you if you are still missing, that way nobody has incentive to make you go missing again. On the other hand, if it got out you've been rescued, maybe some positive press could counteract some of this mess that's been going on today. As far as us being your kidnappers, they've blamed everything else on us today, so wouldn't expect any different on that. You may want to at least quietly let your family and associates know you are alright."
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Post by Dead Sidekick on Feb 1, 2012 16:46:14 GMT -5
Glitch says to Shockwave, "That database is impressive, I don't care how ya got it. I'm more impressed with the S.T.A.R. Labs Ultra-B processor you got running the show in there. That's big bucks. Ever thought about upgrading to the Ultra-C processor? It doesn't handle artificial intelligence matrixes long term, but to run what you've got going on in there... man... you'd open up a whole new, faster world with the right coding..."
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