"We fight for justice and HAVE NO PANTS!"
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"Cool, I can summon beer!"
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"We need to get Avalon (the Knight of Faerie) to learn some modern smacktalk. This 'blackguard' and 'cur' stuff isn't cutting it. You know, stuff like 'Thou momma art so fat ...'"
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(Brick holding a car over two prone VIPER Agents)
"If you vanna see me unpimp dese agents, let me here you say 'vot'."
Other PCs, in unison: "What!"
*KRA-FUNCH*
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"So, was my research fruitful?"
"Dude, why are you researching fruit?"
*slap*
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"Pardon me, guys, I gotta go defrag my brain."
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"I want to move my sister into the base, where she'll be safer."
(Table-Wide Stare)
"What?"
GUPRS Fantasy. The PCs are at the closing of a Tournament, and they have just been hired by the Queens champion when the the anouncements begin.
Anouncer: And to Stewart DeLancey, the King awards one of his prize mares.
Doomed PC: Not the Queen!
Queen's Champion: *Quickdraw sword, critical hit, location 5 (head), result 3 (instant death), quickdraw hankerchief (I kid you not), wipe sword clean.* (Everything the Queen's Champion did was in a single GURPS combat round. i.e. 1 second.)
Okay, it was a rather complicated situation, but I'll try to explain as briefly and as simply as possible.
The team of which Dr. Anomaly is a member encountered a person who was a time traveler who said he was "stuck" -- he couldn't get a "lock" on his "home" time anymore, and he feared that meant his future no longer existed; he said he'd consulted many experts on time travel but none of them could help. The team member who encountered him suggested that he trying talking to Dr. Anomaly who, as a scientist and a mage, might be able to bring to bear abilities (or combinations of abilities) that other experts couldn't, and what did it hurt to try?
In the investigation and discussion with "Mark" (the time traveler) that followed, we discovered that as far as the universe was concerned, he simply didn't exist...no instrument could detect him, magic (and magical beings) couldn't interact with him or see him, even though he could physically interact with his surroundings, the laws of physics and magic, when applied from outside himself, didn't "stick." He was a powerful psionic, and we figured out that he didn't exist, not really...and the only reason he seemed to exist was that his own incredible force of will could make the universe interact with him, if he forced the issue, but outside forces couldn't.
It was eventually determined that the reason he couldn't get a "lock" on his home time was that he wasn't from this universe, or any alternate timeline or parallel universe...but from the universe that would come into being after our own eventually ceased to exist, many tens of billions of years hence. The reason our universe didn't "acknowledge" is presence was because at a very fundamental level, he didn't match up with the fundamental constants, etc. that had stabilized in the first few microseconds after our Big Bang. What was worse, though, was that a bit more thinking, theorizing, etc. led to the realization that he was, in essence, a man-sized bubble of quantum state zero...no quantum signature at all. This is an inherently unstable state, and if something happened to destabilize him...the collapse of the "bubble" that he represented could tear a very large hole in this universe. It was decided we needed to "weave him in" to this universe, and quick, before something happened to destabilize him.
We decided to do this by using nanobots to "swap in" matter of our universe in place of the 'matter' making up his body...carbon atom for carbon atom, oxygen atom for oxygen atom, etc. Theoretically, when we were finished, he would exist because he'd be made up of "stuff" from this universe, and the danger would be averted. This was all complicated by the fact that he was a very advanced, genetically-engineered person, with his own live-in colony of nanobots (for wound repair, etc.), much more advanced than those to which we had access, that tests showed would combat (and easily destroy) the "invading" nanobots we needed to use.
Eventually we came up with a way to do it, and started the process of replacement. In so doing, however, that made the possibility of him becoming destabilized a lot greater...which led to our universe, at least in the immediate vicinity, starting to have a "quantum fizz" in the timeline, as the future...or even the existence of a future, miliseconds ahead of the current moment...became very uncertain. The main way this manifested, at least as far as the characters were concered, as a sort of burning/itching in our heads as reality was starting to come apart. Dr. Anomaly, probably because of his INT of 40, was hit especially hard by this and was having a difficult time holding his concentration on the procedure.
The last major hurdle came when the matter in all of "Mark's" body except his head had been successfully swapped for "local" atoms; the problem there was that "Mark", as a very powerful psion, still had his self-conception rooted in where he did (will? would?) come from, and that was preventing us from being able to swap out the atoms that made up his head/brain.
One of our team, Scarab, is a multiformer themed on the Egyptian pantheon, and changed to its Anubis form, because among other things the Anubis form is a mentalist, and was going to try and pry "Mark's" psionic focus into the here-and-now. Despite the urgent need to try and scratch the itch inside his head, Dr. Anomaly realized that given the power of "Mark's" mind, that was almost certain to fail...but there was a sure-fire way to grab "Mark's" attention, and really focus it on the here-and-now, and make him want to be here, in this universe, and not in a place that didn't yet exist. Dr. Anomaly yelled "No, not Anubis! We need Hathor, and now!"
(Hathor has been short-hand described, in a Stargate episode, as the Egyptian equivalent of the Goddess of Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll. Scarab's Hathor form, among other things, has a 30 PRE, 30 COM...with +30 PRE, Only vs. Men, and +30 COM, only vs. Men. )
Anubis immediately changed, manifested as Hathor, in all her glory...and completely sans clothing of any sort. It grabbed "Mark's" attention, alright, focused him well-nigh instantly on the here-and-now, and in the next few seconds the replacement process was able to be completed successfully.
The "I'm glad my brain is itching" repeated phrase came from Dr. Anomaly, who unfortunately happened to be looking at Anubis when he called for Hathor, which meant he was looking at the all-too-naked Hathor who manifested a moment later. Now, Dr. Anomaly has nothing against good-looking women, even naked ones. The problem here is that Hathor is an aspect of a team-mate of his, he has no desire for any kind of "complications", and seeing Hathor that way, very deliberately exerting her influence-on-men to the fullest extent (on emergancy overload, you might say), gave him all kinds of thoughts that, for his own peace of mind and team harmony, he shouldn't be having, and desperately did not want to have, regardless of what his body's reaction said!
So, to try and drive that image out of his head, instead of fighting the terrible itching inside his skull, Dr. Anomaly focused on it, embraced it, tried to use it (unsuccessfully) to scour the image of Hathor from his mind, and was repeating the "I'm glad my brain is itching" almost like a mantra to help him focus on the itch rather than on Hathor.
A few seconds later, when the process was completed, the horrible itch went away as the "quantum fizz" in the timeline died down, as there was no longer a chance of a quantum collapse...and Hathor mercifully manifested some clothing and "turned down the wattage" on her PRE & COM.
So there you have it. I'm sorry it was that long, but that really is the shortest I felt I could give the context and have it make sense. (Then again, I never have been very good at condensing things when I write.)
Cenobite reacted to CrosshairCollie in Quote of the Week from my gaming group...
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