WWYCD: Earth: Battleground Zero

[wcw43921]

Your character(s) are called to respond to a massive disturbance at a large open-air plaza. When they arrive on the scene they find two squads of soldiers in distinctive, fully-sealed armored suits (which are unfamiliar to you) firing energy weapons at each other from opposite sides of the plaza. Innocent civilians try to escape the line of fire, but the soldiers are heedless of anything between them and their targets. Police who fire upon the soldiers will be fired upon; should you attack, the soldiers will return fire, but will teleport away should they find themselves overmatched. As you investigate, you find that there have been numerous such incidents around the world.

 

 

If you want to find out what's going on, check out the Bait & Tackle column in Knights Of The Dinner Table #119, for that and some other nifty plot seeds written by me.

 

[Great Beyond]

Re: WWYCD: Earth: Battleground Zero

 

All of my characters - the same response, getting the innocents out of the line of fire is A1 priority, then getting the cops to hold off attacking. Once all the squishies are out of danger, then proper attention could be paid to the combatants.

 

Great Beyond would probably go with her top shelf attack: Blizzard, a 12 phase 12D Area Effect EB with all kinds of armor piercings and double knockback (or in this case, knock down) to put the kibosh on the fight. Hopefuly this would be enough to knock the wind out of their sails (cause it'll almost certanly knock her out of the fight for sure). If she has anything left and they start beaming out - throw a couple of entangles out and hope that the teleport system is gestures based. Hopefuly between the blizzard and the entangles, they'd have someone to talk to after the fight and find out what the hell is going on.

 

Natasha would be must more stright forward - as the troops begin teleporting out, she'd shrink to super tiny and hitch a ride with one of them to wherever the hell they were going. Once back at headquarters, she turns it off and contiunes the beatings until someone gives her an answer to what the hell is going on.

 

Where to go from there of course depends on whats going on.

[Sundog]

Re: WWYCD: Earth: Battleground Zero

 

Terminus is firmly of the opinion that one should be pro-active in situations like this. He'd have The Edge conduct concentrated attacks on the combatants, with the intent of rendering one or more unconscious, and once he has a prisoner, go all out on the remainder to make them leave. Then they can interrogate the prisoner at their leisure.

[Robyn]

It's all done with smoke and mirrors

 

Innocent civilians try to escape the line of fire' date=' but the soldiers are heedless of anything between them and their targets.[/quote']

 

Heedless, you say?

 

should you attack' date=' the soldiers will return fire, but will teleport away should they find themselves overmatched.[/quote']

 

Kaja's choice is practical, if somewhat callous toward the civilians; since the soldiers don't seem to care whether they hit an innocent, but aren't specifically aiming for them either, he voluntarily enters their field of fire, centers on the largest group of civilians (probably just the middle of the plaza, since everyone is running around like crazy, constantly changing position) and releases a cloud of spores. This may convince the soldiers to relocate to the far side of the plaza (nearer the enemy forces) so they can continue engagement (or the soldiers may be able to "see" through the "smoke", sigh), but more importantly it will prevent the civilians from seeing what is going on around them (the sound of battle and being kept "in the dark" may frighten them, but at least they won't have to see it coming - he can give them that much).

 

Meanwhile, over the mind link, he'll be seeing if anyone can do a mirror-like wall to reflect the energy blasts back at the soldiers (you did say they were heedless, right? ).

[Metaphysician]

Re: WWYCD: Earth: Battleground Zero

 

Microman II: Alert the Sentinels, firstly. Unfortunately, Microman has no good way to deal with large groups, so until the rest of the team gets there, he sizes back to full size and overtly blasts both groups, trying to draw their attention. This likely means he gets knocked out, unfortunately, but at least they ( hopefully ) won't be shooting at the bystanders. If the team is on-site, though, then he probably also shrinks and hitches a ride on a teleport escapee, if possible.

 

Diomedes: Another character who can't do much to large groups. If his group is present, he probably focuses on getting the bystanders to safety, and directing the others. On his own, he disarms one soldier, starts shooting the others, and hopes the distraction doesn't get him killed.

 

Jack Frost: This guy, OTOH, is made for dealing with large mook groups. Entangles for the soldiers, and ice barriers for the bystanders. They probably won't be staying for long, but hopefully, one of the others can track their teleport.

 

Hermes: This could actually happen in his home time, believe it or not, given time travel weirdness and the vague possibility of space invaders. First reaction would be mass disarms ( a particular trick of his ). They after both groups find themselves without any guns, they will probably teleport away. Thankfully, there are plenty of NPCs who can trace teleport signatures. Oh, and Hermes definitely reverse engineers the blaster rifles. ;-)

[Robyn]

Re: WWYCD: Earth: Battleground Zero

 

This likely means he gets knocked out' date=' unfortunately, but at least they ( hopefully ) won't be shooting at the bystanders.[/quote']

 

My understanding was that they aren't shooting at the bystanders, they just don't care where the stray shots go if they miss (their targets, the enemy combatants).

[Spidey88]

Re: WWYCD: Earth: Battleground Zero

 

Phidippus: Evacuate civilians at top speed. Assuming noncombatants are clear, multiple grapple-line disarms (with the capability to do as many as 6 at once, and a high enough OCV with it that some should work on the first go), followed by the same tactic on the soldiers themselves. 45 STR, 36 DEX, 10 SPD, clinging, extra limbs and several inches of limited stretching (via the grapple lines) should hopefully take a few down quickly enough via martial throws/grabs to get them to flee pretty quick. If the combination of unconciousness and the grapple lines stuck to them is enough to keep them from teleporting away, then some quick removal of the gadget responsible for the teleporting is in order, followed by some (supervised) questioning by some of his more (ahem) persuasive teammates...

[wcw43921]

Re: WWYCD: Earth: Battleground Zero

 

My understanding was that they aren't shooting at the bystanders' date=' they just don't care where the stray shots go if they [i']miss[/i] (their targets, the enemy combatants).

 

Correct.

[Zed-F]

Re: WWYCD: Earth: Battleground Zero

 

Soulbarb: Tricky. Demonic-empowered Fast Brick with some stretching powers (launchable barbs/grapnels.) Soulbarb does NOT like showing her face in public; the civilians are likely to be more frightened of her than of the soldiers. She can't effectively fight that many opponents when not in hero ID, though, so she might have to bite the bullet on that one if people are in danger of getting killed. If she does, some of her stretching powers let her take down small groups of mooks quickly and efficiently, so long as the civilians aren't right in amongst them. (Explosive Cone HA) She'll be able to knock a number of them out before the remainder teleport away. Once the civilians are not in life-threatening danger, she'll disappear, more interested in figuring out who those guys are and how to stop them from endangering more civilians than arresting them or sticking around for the media. Unfortunately she's strictly a street-level heroine so if this is a global problem, she may be out of luck.

 

Sylph: Area effect selective entangle. Gotta love it. She has few problems with mook-level opponents. They might be able to teleport away, but hopefully UNTIL will be able to follow up on their teleport signature. She also will have trouble investigating a global-scale problem without help from someone like UNTIL -- not that she's much of an investigator to begin with.