Freedom City Champions #1!

[pesukarhu]

Jake was just getting off an extremely unhelpful call with Steve Phelps, his union rep, when his phone blared out the emergency warning signal. He fumbled to turn it off, still mentally grumbling about Steve. Probably a flash flood watch or something.

I mean, if Steve doesn't really care, that I guess I could do whatever. And I did tell him, so it's not like he can pretend that I didn't give the union a fair warning. Maybe I'll do it, just to see what happens, I bet he wouldn't expect that. It'd tear the guys apart, though.

Then he glanced down at his phone and actually read the alert. Oh, that sounds bad.

He turned on the TV and switched to local news. Oh, that sounds really bad.

Cops down? I gotta go help.

With that, he left his phone on the table, grabbed the backpack that had his goggles and hoodie in it, and headed out. First a few blocks to a quiet alley he'd scoped out the other day, double-check no one's around, a quick-change, then a leap up to the rooftop. Pretty soon he was bounding from roof to roof, heading for the waterfront.
 

[RedRajah]

"Yeahit'sMa'atgottacallyabacksorry!" Feeling the pang of guilt as he hung up on Myra and jammed the phone in his pocket, Thomas only grimaced as he quickly ducked into an alleyway. With the news of the shootout, Gadriel was already urging him to let loose with the incantation. Still, the young musician made sure the alley was, in fact, empty...

 

"መልአክ እፈታሃለሁ መልአክ እሆናለሁ"

 

...the slate grey wings unfurled to their full grace and Gadriel sighed, returning to this reality once more. He looked skyward and, with one mighty flap, the angel was airborne again. In the mental space once held by Gadriel, Thomas began giving the directions to the waterfront.

 

...looks like there's a couple of choppers too in the area we gotta watch out for -- news AND cops. More gunmen...wonder if they're with the thugs from last night...?

"They will be questioned after they are captured..." was the growled response.

 

 

[coreal]

 

Paul Petrovski

---

Paul grimaces, an emergency alert would almost certainly mean more bad traffic somewhere because some bridge, tunnel or highway is shut down.

He taps his phone to let the alert message play, then after the bare bones version he hits up the local news app, maybe they'll have more. At least this order he's dropping off is close and not on the other side of the cordoned off area. He gets the early part of the update, then has to jump out and run up to a doorstep, take a photo, tap tap tap... and as he's walking back to the car he hears Ms. Feng's plea "We need you now!" and it echoes in his head as he hops in and he thinks for just a moment.

He sets his working zone to the other side of the warehouse area, puts in that he's relocating, so that he doesn't get offered gigs yet. And then he starts driving towards the warehouse area, to get conveniently stuck in nearby traffic so he can pull over and wait out the incident without burning gas. And leaving a thin veneer of legitimacy over why he was heading straight towards the danger.

And his final thought was to worry that it was middle of the day, hopefully Michael is not about to rush in and do something stupid. Like Paul likely was about to do.

 

 

[Jedaii]

Riverside Warehouse, 12:39 p.m.

 

Vendetta, Grigori and Ironworks:

 

Grigori arrives first from his downtown visit, and he hears the soft whine of Vendetta's mecha-electronics as the armored hero descends to the same building rooftop just across the street (north/above) the map! Before they can interact they hear a loud "THOOM!" as Ironworks lands on the back of the rooftop!

Automatic gunfire explodes repeatedly from across the street as the gunmen continue their assault on the beleaguered FCPD officers! Officers attempt to return fire with their handguns, but they're clearly overwhelmed! The FCPD helo swerves down and across the street to slow and whip around above the heroes - they can see a rifle-wielding officer peer out the open hatch down at them in surprise - then the helo streaks back across the street, turning sideways to give the door-gunner a better shot! A steady rain of ammunition ricochets across the entire area shattering windows as both criminal and cop fire, quickly reload and resume firing in wild abandon!

The heroes can clearly see two wounded officers - one being the senior Sergeant they met last night: he's nearest the warehouse, prone and crawling on one elbow slowly back to the other firing officers, a handgun in his bloody hand!

Looking down a block away, the heroes can see the FCPD perimeter: several cruisers, cops, a news van, reporters and a large crowd kept at bay but refusing to leave see the heroes arrive -- and the crowd ERUPTS in celebration, jumping and cheering and pointing at the heroes!! Amy Feng points in the heroes' direction also while saying something frantic into her mic! The other news helo sweeps wide and comes to circle over the rooftop where the heroes have arrived, a daring cameraman leaning out to capture live-footage of them!

Assembled for the first time since last night, the superheroes all glance at each other ---

Edited July 18, 2023 by Jedaii (see edit history)

[pesukarhu]

Ironworks back and forth between Vendetta and Grigori. "Oh, hey. Um, I guess you guys are doing this too, huh? In for a penny, in for a pound."

He shifts a bit awkwardly. "Well, I'm going in, see if I can get a wall between the Sergeant and the guns. Any better ideas, let me know quick."

[Papa Bear]

Vendetta 

Seamus McDougal, Secret ID,  Character Sheet

---

"This doesn't mean we are a team." Seamus growls through the amplified voice modulator that allows his voice to even be heard from inside the helmet. He looks over the heroes from the night before. He'd been so focused on the gunman that had taken DeAndre hostage, that he only remembered seeing them there but not really anything they had done.

Vendetta turns his visor toward the one known as Ironworks, the first to have said something. "Good. Protect the officers. Provide a distraction. I'm going to see if I can find a way inside that building and attack them from behind." He says, then clicks back on his cloaking field. He'd wondered why he'd even turned it off and allowed anyone to see him in the first place... but then, he also wondered why he was here. The tweaks he'd planned for the next version of his battlesuit had barely been started. They would not be ready for... a week, if he was lucky. However, getting inside that building and attacking the gunmen from behind would give them something else to think about other than the officers. The cops seemed to have superior position, with the gunmen surrounded, but insufficient numbers to take advantage of it.

Seamus saw the squad car to the south by the dock with an officer taking shots at someone, or several someones, behind the main building. There was a lot of the area he couldn't see but he believed that officer might be out on a limb there. Flying up to get a little bird's eye perspective, he moves toward the squad car. He was pretty sure there would be a door in back there... and if not, there were always the windows.

 

---

---

 

Vendetta moves south toward the cop by the squad car on the dock.

[Jedaii]

The Riverside warehouse shoot-out, 12:39 p.m.

 

Vendetta:

The hero soars from the adjacent rooftop across the street and over the warzone at the front of the warehouse to the rear riverside area! He sees a cop crouched behind his cruiser exchanging gunfire with a gunman at the warehouse rear entrance using the building for partial cover! Just beyond the side-street behind the warehouse is Wading River, and the FCPD helicopter streaks overhead towards the river, then banks and sails back past the hero to circle over the front of the warehouse! The cop and the gunman are roughly fifty feet apart with bullets striking the warehouse and the police cruiser as both combatants smartly manipulate their available cover!

Edited July 20, 2023 by Jedaii (see edit history)

[pesukarhu]

Ironworks shrugs. "Whatever. I'll go make some noise."

With that, he takes a running leap and jumps to the upper-left corner of the shipping warehouse roof. Once he lands, he lets his body shift fully to metal. He figured it's safer to make big jumps in mostly-normal flesh, since he's less likely to just go through the roof if he hit an unreinforced spot.

Once there, he peers over the edge, trying to gauge the distance to the forklift below.

OOC detailsHe's targeting the upper-left corner of the shipping warehouse roof, above the two gunmen, by the forklift.

This is a noncombat move, so he's at half DCV, IIRC.

Multipower on move, so he has a 40m x 4 = 160 m possible move.

[RedRajah]

Who does this guy think he is, barking out orders like that?! What if they've got hostages?!

Thomas' sharp tone was a far cry from last night's assault, where he was practically begging the angel to let the armored vigilante to take of things and not get in his way. Gadriel briefly wondered if this was how Thomas was expressing grief over Jordan Dare's death. Still, his host had a valid point about possible innocents caught in the warehouse...

 

...and so, Grigori took to the air. If the armored man wanted a distraction, he could certainly provide one. And hopefully provide enough cover for the officers to withdraw their injured members in the meantime.

 

"MARAUDERS! SURRENDER OR BE JUDGED!!!"

The voice of the divine warrior rang out like a clap of thunder as he flew up and between the cops and the warehouse, hopefully high enough to not endanger either the cops or the helicopters -- but fast enough to avoid any gunfire.

 

OOCBuzzing in from the right, wanna say at 2x speed (dunno if that would be NCM or not). Lemmie know if I should make a combat piloting roll for Grigori for any sort of evasive maneuvers. Looking to fly high just enough so that any mook still able to fire won't hit the cops.

[Papa Bear]

Vendetta 

Seamus McDougal, Secret ID,  Character Sheet

---

From his position, Seamus unloads on the gunman, dialing the intensity of his mega-blasters down some so that he's less likely to kill the man, realizing that he's probably just a normal warehouse worker disgruntled by some union/company dispute.

 

---

---

 

OCV 9, +3 invisible (12), -4 DCV = +8, +11 base = 19 or less to hit

Dialing the Attack damage down to 6d6 from 10d6 so hopefully wont do too much body damage if these guys are just normals. He doesn't have his stun only version yet (that was supposed to take a week to 'fix' and I believe its only been a day).

7 body damage total

Edited July 26, 2023 by Papa Bear (see edit history)

[pesukarhu]

Ironworks looked up as Grigori swept past. Well, that'll get everyone's attention, at least.

First things first, let's make some cover.

He focused his will, or whatever it was that he did when he did this sort of thing. It felt to him like he knew that metal was already there, somehow close, and he just nudged it into actually being where he wanted it to be. And where he wanted it to be was a big wall between Sgt. Jackson and the gunmen.

OOC: BarrierCreating a barrier, between the cars and the forklift, roughly from the left edge of the forklift to the back of the parked car, providing cover to Sgt. Jackson from the four gunmen closest to him.

OCV is 8, DCV is 3 (hex), so this is a 16- roll.

Wall is 6m long, 4m high. 7 DEF, 8 BODY.

[Jedaii]

Riverside Warehouse, 12:39 p.m.

 

Vendetta:

Just as the gunman gets perfect aim on the crouched cop, Vendetta unleashes mega-blasts on the crook striking him with a brilliant energy barrage that sends the incapacitated criminal sailing backwards into the warehouse nearly forty meters where he crashes into a large crate!

The stunned policeman looks around in vain trying to see where the blast came from ...!

 

Ironworks and Grigori:

As gunfire rips across the area, the black pick-up truck near the downed officer begins to shake - then the metal warps and stretches like taffy groaning as the vehicle windows shatter during the transformation - as the reformed metal had become a tall and wide metallic barrier defending Sgt. Jackson! The gunmen's deadly onslaught simply ricochets off Ironwork's craftmanship!

 

Grigori and Ironworks:

As both gunmen and policemen stare at the truck-turned-barrier, Grigori streaks into the fray commanding the criminals to surrender! They all look up at him in speechless amazement - then all six front-door gunmen bolt from their positions back into the warehouse! For the moment, most of the shooting - except for a conflict on the side of the building - had ceased ...!

[pesukarhu]

That worked, he guessed? He hadn't been expecting the wall to pull metal from the cars around it; that hadn't happened before. Someone was going to be pissed, despite him trying to be careful, with all the media fuss going on.

He had been planning to just jump down on those two guys by the door, but they weren't there anymore, and he figured that jumping now would just make him a target for all those guy in the warehouse. He was not looking forward to that. I mean, he felt like he was pretty tough, but it's not as if he'd been shot up before. Plus, no one was shooting at the cops anymore, so that was done.

Well, stairs it is, then.

 

Ironworks turned away from the edge of the building and ran over to the staircase, forcing the door open as he headed down. That probably made a lot of noise, but he doubted that was a problem right now. If the door was stuck, he just pushed his body denser until he could get through.

OOCI'm not sure how to do this. He'd like to go through the door fast, not sure how much casual strength he needs for that. If it's more than he's got now (55/2), he'd crank up his density further until it didn't feel like much resistance (up to 70 STR).

[RedRajah]

Grigori scowled. Of course the criminals would rather hold tight than surrender. Were they not willing to kill? He moved to fly after the metal manipulator--

Whoa, one sec, Gads -- we need info here! Remember the whole "do these gunmen have hostages?" question?! Ask the cops first -- please!!

 

--and then the angel appeared to grunt to himself, then nodded curtly. He turned to look at the nearest cop. "Saer officer, what is the situation here? What goods does this building hold and are there innocents inside?"

[Papa Bear]

Vendetta 

Seamus McDougal, Secret ID,  Character Sheet

---

Seeing the confusion on the officer's face, Seamus turns off his cloaking field for a moment. "You have officers down. Use your cruiser. Help them get to safety." Seamus says then reactivates the cloaking field and flies forward toward the gunman shooting around the corner.

 

---

---

 

OOCThe power doesn't say its a half phase action to turn invisible, but the action chart says its a zero phase action (and turning visible to talk to the cop)... so, I can move/fly closer to the next baddy while turning invisible and blast again? I'm OK with attacking next round if I'm misremembering how that works... it has been so long since I've gotten to play champions.

Seamus will do the same thing, attack-wise, as he did last round. OCV 9, +3 invisible (12), -4 DCV = +8, +11 base = 19 or less to hit plus reducing his damage output.

That's 7 Body (again) to the new gunman.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Jedaii (see edit history)