Post by Eurydice on May 26, 2007 22:45:42 GMT -5
((From a semester's worth of quoteage from Mutants and Masterminds, Metrocity villains campaign. Oh, we were silly. Players were DK, Penny, John, Andy, and me))
Oswaldo, destroyer of worlds and newly self-proclaimed mayoral candidate, surveyed his territory—at the moment, a cheap, dusty table in an alarmingly cliché abandoned warehouse in the heart of Metro City—with moderate satisfaction. True, the company was somewhat substandard, plebeian, even, and the décor was dismal, but nevertheless, future-mayor Oswaldo was feeling fat and sassy. It was going to be a good day. He inhaled deeply, savoring his own, glorious musk.
“You smell like funny. Stop doing that.”
Mightily offended, Oswaldo the great one turned to face the speaker, a ten-year-old girl with bright pigtails, freckled face, and a small robot dressed like a green dog sitting faithfully at her side, studying his tiny metallic feet with intent wonder. The girl was curled up in the large chair whose cracked leather belched dust and asbestos, watching him with narrowed eyes over the top of the sketch pad she had propped up on her knees.
“Young Scribble,” began Oswaldo with stern countenance, furrowed brow, and fists on hips, but before he could say more, a black and orange paw reached up from the sketch pad, clawed the air, and retreated slowly, and future-mayor Oswaldo decided that he would not be able to fulfill his mayoral duties should a very bitey if somewhat cartoonish tiger leap off the page and disembowel him. And regardless, Oswaldo knew that he did not have to press the issue, because his odor was charming and of the sort that drew men to his side with thoughts of loyalty and defending him in battle, and women to his bed with thoughts of being naked and sexed.
Or perhaps this hard-to-define allure was a result of the omnipresent mind control force he sent out from his massive cranium, but no matter.
Oswaldo, destroyer of worlds and soon-to-be overlord of Metro City, sat back.
Invader Scribble, destroyer of Cross-Town Elementary and sorceress of the sketch pad, sat back.
“I am made of green!” said the robot, helpfully.
A tall, stocky, undead Russian known only as the Red Butcher emitted a grunt of distaste at the small annoying thing as he downed a handle of vodka. “Why exactly are we here?” he rumbled in a voice one would usually reserve for James Bond villains.
“That shall not yet be revealed,” cried Mary Sue, princess of the cat people, friend of Elves, and bringer of light, as she tossed an errant strand of sparking golden hair out of her heart-shaped face, “for one of our ranks is not yet here.”
The Russian grumbled something unintelligible and began rooting through his pockets. He sought the leftover tea that he had saved from lunch, which he did not find, something that his aunt had given him which he had never quite figured out what it was, which he also did not find, and a very small radio, which he retrieved, crushed and battered but working, from his back pocket. He set it on the table in front of him and raised an eyebrow at it.
Incomprehensible mumbling, static, whiny emo rock, fanatical preacher, static, static, static, “—back to our rebroadcast of the Metro City Orchestra’s ‘Best of Tchaikovsky’. Please sit back and enjoy the ever-popular ‘1812 Overture.’”
The Red Butcher shifted his hulking, decaying form to sit back in the chair, before promptly kicking the radio clean across the room as Vivaldi’s “Spring” came piping weakly over the little speaker.
“A flying radio!” squealed the robot, before the Russian’s undead foot sent the aforementioned robot flying after the radio, bouncing off the corner of the ceiling and landing on its head.
“Good sir,” said Oswaldo, destroyer of worlds and slayer of lackeys, “kindly show restraint, or I shall have you evicted from the premises by my personal security force.”
“We are your personal security force,” rumbled the undead Russian.
“Point.”
“You hurt Gir!” yelped Scribble, looking appalled.
“Let’s not fight about it,” said Mary Sue amiably.
“I am saving the world with arpeggios!” said the hippie who walked in with arm triumphantly raised, wearing a tie-dye wife-beater, a wicked-looking guitar, and a slightly-too-small loin cloth.
“Pants ON!” shouted Scribble, screwing up her eyes and covering her face with her sketch pad for good measure. “Pants ON in my presence!”
“Thad!” Oswaldo exhorted cordially. “Thank the deity with which I have no particular holding or faith you’ve arrived! We can get started now.”
“Good,” said Mary Sue, tossing her golden mane, color-changing eyes flashing beautiful annoyance. “Let’s get this over with; I have other important matters which need doing.”
“Like Mr. Speed?” muttered the Russian.
Mary Sue sighed happily, and her eyes took on a dreamy haze. “Mr. Speed…”
The hippie whose name was Thad had halted and was now staring intently at his upraised hand. “I have fingers…” he whispered reverently. “And they’re beautiful…” His other hand had reached up to scratch his very muddled head until he realized that this same hand also had fingers to be studied in depth. “But why?... Why are there so many of them?”
Clamping a large hand around Thad’s forearm, the Red Butcher pulled him down into the seat next to him, a creaky wooden folding chair which promptly broke and left the hippie examining the newfound wonder that was the floor. The robot toddled over to help him admire the concrete and splintered wood.
Oswaldo, holder of attentions and frightener of small schoolchildren, cleared his throat and prepared his eloquent voice box for speech-making. “Gentlemen,” said he, “and ladies—”
“Ladies,” said Scribble, “goes before gentlemen.”
“Stop touching my leg!” she added.
The intrepid Thad suddenly found his awe-inspiring fingers on fire and hastily withdrew them from where they had been poking the buttons of Scribble’s overalls. He had hoped that the right combination might lead him to a higher understanding of the universe, but, he supposed, that would just have to wait. Unfortunate.
“Fear not, fair Scribble!” exclaimed Mary Sue, leaping to her feet and drawing her katana with an impressive swish. “I shall protect your honor!”
Thad poked the katana experimentally.
“I,” said Scribble, “can protect my own, honor, thank you very much.” The stripy paws again sprang forth from her sketch pad and perched menacingly on the edge of the table. “Also,” she said, sitting up cross-legged. “He wasn’t attacking my honor. He was attacking my pants.”
Oswaldo nodded in a commanding manner to those who were still paying attention to him—at the moment, the robot called Gir, who didn’t necessarily count, as he was looking at mighty Oswaldo from under the table—and tried again. “It has been some time since we have been assembled, my occasional allies, but I feel certain that I can rely upon you for the job I have in mind.” And if you all die, he did not add, I will have eliminated several major ties to organized crime that might have been problematic for the background of a mayor to be, so it’s win-win, really.
“A quest!” exclaimed Mary Sue.
“Indeed,” said Oswaldo. “One which shall aid my unchallenged rise to power, where I shall rule as king.”
“And I shall be the princess,” said Thad, who was braiding his beard and checking his progress in the reflection of Mary Sue’s katana.
Oswaldo ignored him. “As you are doubtless aware,” he continued, “there is a presumptuous rabble of buffoons in Metro City who are opposed to my mayoral candidacy…”
“You’re going to be mayor?” gasped Thad, pausing mid-braid. “That means you’ll have, like, duties and things. That’s pretty sweet.” He nodded at nothing in particular.
Scribble looked doubtfully at Thad and then at Oswaldo. “Isn’t Thad your running mate?”
“I AM NO ONE’S RUNNING MATE!”
Oswaldo sighed. “You’re my running mate.”
“I am Oswaldo’s running mate,” Thad said meekly, chastised.
“As I was saying,” Oswaldo continued, “there is an injudicious, ignominious faction that does not wish to see the sun rise on my illustrious mayoral career. In my near-infinite wisdom, I thought that…”
“You thought,” rumbled the Russian, squeezing his knuckles one by one, each one cracking like the finishing blow to a felled redwood as it crashed to the ground, “that we would be best to take care of faction. I recommend explosion.”
“Yes!” said Thad. “Kill them to calibrate our nuclear weapons!”
Silence reigned.
“And then,” he added, “after the explosion process, we can begin the healing process.”
Oswaldo ground his pearly white molars, his patience wearing thin. “No one is killing anyone before I get elected! Jesus Christ!”
Mary Sue, who had been long silent, was stroking her chin thoughtfully. “Surely,” she said, wisdom and epic awesomeness eking from each strain of her mellifluous voice, “a fellowship would be called for in this quest that you seek to fulfill, if indeed it is to be… fulfilled.” She tilted her head slightly, velvety furred cat ears flicking back.
“More or less,” said Oswaldo.
“Groovy,” said Thad.
“So,” rumbled the Russian. “What is plan?”
And Oswaldo told them. It was an exceedingly well thought-out plan, a plan of cunning, of adroitness, of derring-do. There were tunnels to be dug, locks to be picked, hazardous chemical materials to liberate, and nuclear warheads to obtain. He could almost see it all playing out in front of him, so clear was this vision. This plan would be one of legend, one which superheroes would speak of in a fearful whisper for years to come, one which evil toddlers would hear their parents singing to them in lullabies so that they might grow up to be properly evil. There were risks, to be sure, but each one had been carefully considered in calculations and permutations that were only possible via the great brainpower of Oswaldo, destroyer of worlds and killer of unskilled poets.
A swelling of satisfaction filled Oswaldo’s mighty chest, such a swelling as could only be achieved when in the noble pursuit of evil plot-making. He wiped a tear of pride from his left eye, the one he occasionally considered selling in order to obtain the wisdom of the ages, and brought himself back from the vision of explosions, dead bodies, and thunderous crowds cheering his name.
He looked out over the table for the approval of his comrades.
Thad was huddled in a corner, mouth slightly ajar, eyes glazed, hands defensively swinging his guitar at the bright orange tiger with haphazard stripes that Invader Scribble had called out of her sketch pad and now sat astride. Mary Sue was urging both of them to put aside their differences and be friends again, interspersed with incomprehensible bouts of Elvish which, Oswaldo guessed, were either impotent spells of calming or expletives, and he strongly suspected the former, as Elves were generally too sissy to curse. The Red Butcher, ignoring them all, was engaging in all manner of facial acrobatics as he tried to pick up the local radio station with his brain, head tilted slightly. And Gir was hugging Oswaldo’s leg.
Exasperated, Oswaldo sent out the psionic equivalent of a bitchslap, a mighty mental beckon that would not be refused, drawing his four companions scrambling back to their chairs, looking disoriented.
“Sorry,” said Thad. “What were you saying?”
Oswaldo sighed. He didn’t even remember, really. “Never mind.”
Oswaldo, destroyer of worlds and newly self-proclaimed mayoral candidate, surveyed his territory—at the moment, a cheap, dusty table in an alarmingly cliché abandoned warehouse in the heart of Metro City—with moderate satisfaction. True, the company was somewhat substandard, plebeian, even, and the décor was dismal, but nevertheless, future-mayor Oswaldo was feeling fat and sassy. It was going to be a good day. He inhaled deeply, savoring his own, glorious musk.
“You smell like funny. Stop doing that.”
Mightily offended, Oswaldo the great one turned to face the speaker, a ten-year-old girl with bright pigtails, freckled face, and a small robot dressed like a green dog sitting faithfully at her side, studying his tiny metallic feet with intent wonder. The girl was curled up in the large chair whose cracked leather belched dust and asbestos, watching him with narrowed eyes over the top of the sketch pad she had propped up on her knees.
“Young Scribble,” began Oswaldo with stern countenance, furrowed brow, and fists on hips, but before he could say more, a black and orange paw reached up from the sketch pad, clawed the air, and retreated slowly, and future-mayor Oswaldo decided that he would not be able to fulfill his mayoral duties should a very bitey if somewhat cartoonish tiger leap off the page and disembowel him. And regardless, Oswaldo knew that he did not have to press the issue, because his odor was charming and of the sort that drew men to his side with thoughts of loyalty and defending him in battle, and women to his bed with thoughts of being naked and sexed.
Or perhaps this hard-to-define allure was a result of the omnipresent mind control force he sent out from his massive cranium, but no matter.
Oswaldo, destroyer of worlds and soon-to-be overlord of Metro City, sat back.
Invader Scribble, destroyer of Cross-Town Elementary and sorceress of the sketch pad, sat back.
“I am made of green!” said the robot, helpfully.
A tall, stocky, undead Russian known only as the Red Butcher emitted a grunt of distaste at the small annoying thing as he downed a handle of vodka. “Why exactly are we here?” he rumbled in a voice one would usually reserve for James Bond villains.
“That shall not yet be revealed,” cried Mary Sue, princess of the cat people, friend of Elves, and bringer of light, as she tossed an errant strand of sparking golden hair out of her heart-shaped face, “for one of our ranks is not yet here.”
The Russian grumbled something unintelligible and began rooting through his pockets. He sought the leftover tea that he had saved from lunch, which he did not find, something that his aunt had given him which he had never quite figured out what it was, which he also did not find, and a very small radio, which he retrieved, crushed and battered but working, from his back pocket. He set it on the table in front of him and raised an eyebrow at it.
Incomprehensible mumbling, static, whiny emo rock, fanatical preacher, static, static, static, “—back to our rebroadcast of the Metro City Orchestra’s ‘Best of Tchaikovsky’. Please sit back and enjoy the ever-popular ‘1812 Overture.’”
The Red Butcher shifted his hulking, decaying form to sit back in the chair, before promptly kicking the radio clean across the room as Vivaldi’s “Spring” came piping weakly over the little speaker.
“A flying radio!” squealed the robot, before the Russian’s undead foot sent the aforementioned robot flying after the radio, bouncing off the corner of the ceiling and landing on its head.
“Good sir,” said Oswaldo, destroyer of worlds and slayer of lackeys, “kindly show restraint, or I shall have you evicted from the premises by my personal security force.”
“We are your personal security force,” rumbled the undead Russian.
“Point.”
“You hurt Gir!” yelped Scribble, looking appalled.
“Let’s not fight about it,” said Mary Sue amiably.
“I am saving the world with arpeggios!” said the hippie who walked in with arm triumphantly raised, wearing a tie-dye wife-beater, a wicked-looking guitar, and a slightly-too-small loin cloth.
“Pants ON!” shouted Scribble, screwing up her eyes and covering her face with her sketch pad for good measure. “Pants ON in my presence!”
“Thad!” Oswaldo exhorted cordially. “Thank the deity with which I have no particular holding or faith you’ve arrived! We can get started now.”
“Good,” said Mary Sue, tossing her golden mane, color-changing eyes flashing beautiful annoyance. “Let’s get this over with; I have other important matters which need doing.”
“Like Mr. Speed?” muttered the Russian.
Mary Sue sighed happily, and her eyes took on a dreamy haze. “Mr. Speed…”
The hippie whose name was Thad had halted and was now staring intently at his upraised hand. “I have fingers…” he whispered reverently. “And they’re beautiful…” His other hand had reached up to scratch his very muddled head until he realized that this same hand also had fingers to be studied in depth. “But why?... Why are there so many of them?”
Clamping a large hand around Thad’s forearm, the Red Butcher pulled him down into the seat next to him, a creaky wooden folding chair which promptly broke and left the hippie examining the newfound wonder that was the floor. The robot toddled over to help him admire the concrete and splintered wood.
Oswaldo, holder of attentions and frightener of small schoolchildren, cleared his throat and prepared his eloquent voice box for speech-making. “Gentlemen,” said he, “and ladies—”
“Ladies,” said Scribble, “goes before gentlemen.”
“Stop touching my leg!” she added.
The intrepid Thad suddenly found his awe-inspiring fingers on fire and hastily withdrew them from where they had been poking the buttons of Scribble’s overalls. He had hoped that the right combination might lead him to a higher understanding of the universe, but, he supposed, that would just have to wait. Unfortunate.
“Fear not, fair Scribble!” exclaimed Mary Sue, leaping to her feet and drawing her katana with an impressive swish. “I shall protect your honor!”
Thad poked the katana experimentally.
“I,” said Scribble, “can protect my own, honor, thank you very much.” The stripy paws again sprang forth from her sketch pad and perched menacingly on the edge of the table. “Also,” she said, sitting up cross-legged. “He wasn’t attacking my honor. He was attacking my pants.”
Oswaldo nodded in a commanding manner to those who were still paying attention to him—at the moment, the robot called Gir, who didn’t necessarily count, as he was looking at mighty Oswaldo from under the table—and tried again. “It has been some time since we have been assembled, my occasional allies, but I feel certain that I can rely upon you for the job I have in mind.” And if you all die, he did not add, I will have eliminated several major ties to organized crime that might have been problematic for the background of a mayor to be, so it’s win-win, really.
“A quest!” exclaimed Mary Sue.
“Indeed,” said Oswaldo. “One which shall aid my unchallenged rise to power, where I shall rule as king.”
“And I shall be the princess,” said Thad, who was braiding his beard and checking his progress in the reflection of Mary Sue’s katana.
Oswaldo ignored him. “As you are doubtless aware,” he continued, “there is a presumptuous rabble of buffoons in Metro City who are opposed to my mayoral candidacy…”
“You’re going to be mayor?” gasped Thad, pausing mid-braid. “That means you’ll have, like, duties and things. That’s pretty sweet.” He nodded at nothing in particular.
Scribble looked doubtfully at Thad and then at Oswaldo. “Isn’t Thad your running mate?”
“I AM NO ONE’S RUNNING MATE!”
Oswaldo sighed. “You’re my running mate.”
“I am Oswaldo’s running mate,” Thad said meekly, chastised.
“As I was saying,” Oswaldo continued, “there is an injudicious, ignominious faction that does not wish to see the sun rise on my illustrious mayoral career. In my near-infinite wisdom, I thought that…”
“You thought,” rumbled the Russian, squeezing his knuckles one by one, each one cracking like the finishing blow to a felled redwood as it crashed to the ground, “that we would be best to take care of faction. I recommend explosion.”
“Yes!” said Thad. “Kill them to calibrate our nuclear weapons!”
Silence reigned.
“And then,” he added, “after the explosion process, we can begin the healing process.”
Oswaldo ground his pearly white molars, his patience wearing thin. “No one is killing anyone before I get elected! Jesus Christ!”
Mary Sue, who had been long silent, was stroking her chin thoughtfully. “Surely,” she said, wisdom and epic awesomeness eking from each strain of her mellifluous voice, “a fellowship would be called for in this quest that you seek to fulfill, if indeed it is to be… fulfilled.” She tilted her head slightly, velvety furred cat ears flicking back.
“More or less,” said Oswaldo.
“Groovy,” said Thad.
“So,” rumbled the Russian. “What is plan?”
And Oswaldo told them. It was an exceedingly well thought-out plan, a plan of cunning, of adroitness, of derring-do. There were tunnels to be dug, locks to be picked, hazardous chemical materials to liberate, and nuclear warheads to obtain. He could almost see it all playing out in front of him, so clear was this vision. This plan would be one of legend, one which superheroes would speak of in a fearful whisper for years to come, one which evil toddlers would hear their parents singing to them in lullabies so that they might grow up to be properly evil. There were risks, to be sure, but each one had been carefully considered in calculations and permutations that were only possible via the great brainpower of Oswaldo, destroyer of worlds and killer of unskilled poets.
A swelling of satisfaction filled Oswaldo’s mighty chest, such a swelling as could only be achieved when in the noble pursuit of evil plot-making. He wiped a tear of pride from his left eye, the one he occasionally considered selling in order to obtain the wisdom of the ages, and brought himself back from the vision of explosions, dead bodies, and thunderous crowds cheering his name.
He looked out over the table for the approval of his comrades.
Thad was huddled in a corner, mouth slightly ajar, eyes glazed, hands defensively swinging his guitar at the bright orange tiger with haphazard stripes that Invader Scribble had called out of her sketch pad and now sat astride. Mary Sue was urging both of them to put aside their differences and be friends again, interspersed with incomprehensible bouts of Elvish which, Oswaldo guessed, were either impotent spells of calming or expletives, and he strongly suspected the former, as Elves were generally too sissy to curse. The Red Butcher, ignoring them all, was engaging in all manner of facial acrobatics as he tried to pick up the local radio station with his brain, head tilted slightly. And Gir was hugging Oswaldo’s leg.
Exasperated, Oswaldo sent out the psionic equivalent of a bitchslap, a mighty mental beckon that would not be refused, drawing his four companions scrambling back to their chairs, looking disoriented.
“Sorry,” said Thad. “What were you saying?”
Oswaldo sighed. He didn’t even remember, really. “Never mind.”
