Drunkard's Walk Forums

August 3, 2011

Martha Clark was nervous. Her magnum opus was nearing completion, but she felt some small dissatisfaction at how she'd gone about it. Instead of
culturing her own strains of handwavium, she'd stolen some from the old worker's quarters. As her creation had proceeded, she found herself doing
shadier and shadier things to get the materials. She clutched the small coffee can and eyeglasses case to her chest and dashed back to her workshop.

Inside, superhero posters lined the walls and figures of various female superheroes posed along her shelves protecting her graphic novels and DVDs, while a
desktop computer displayed the log-in screen for the Lunar Edition of City of Heroes™. A rack of costumes sat forlorn in the closet, as time had been unkind to
her. Her once stunning figure had long ago abandoned her after the traumatic pregnancy and miscarriage which had left her barren. To chase away the spectres,
she had leapt at a chance to come into space and had participated in the construction of Kandor like so many of its citizens. It had helped for a while, but
the excitement and wonder had slowly faded.

She wanted her glory back, when she had been one of the Cosplay Queens of the Texas SciFi/Comics/Anime convention circuit. She wanted the power over those
attracted to beauty back. And since diet and exercise didn't seem to work, she was going to have to take drastic measures. She'd heard about Wave
Convoy and AC Peters' successes, and of course she'd heard about Biomods. Martha was going to get, if not exactly her old figure back, a powerful new
body. Ignoring her answering machine and its blinking messages light, she hurried over to her carefully hidden work table and the figure underneath the sheet.
Dramatically flinging the sheet back for no reason other than it looked cool, she revealed her creation.

The well-formed female figure was clad in a tight blue shirt and a red miniskirt. A shield familiar to millions of comics fans was centered in the correct
position on her chest, and a lovely face with a mixture of Caucasian and Asian features was framed by wavy golden hair. Kara Zor-El, or Supergirl, lay still
and unmoving on the table. It had taken many painstaking hours to create her, etching circuitry diagrams for a speed engine and a force field generator onto
the bones of a custom carbon-fiber skeleton and working out the full biomimesis necessary to make an "Armitage III"-like android body. The sensor
package alone had gotten her so far in debt to Don Antonio that he wouldn't lend to her anymore, so she'd turned to one of his fellow Mafia Fen, Don
deLeon. He had provided her with whatever she wanted, because he thought she'd figured out how to get handwavium to produce a weapon that would actually
HURT people in any way. But, in a fit of blue hair syndrome, she'd Doc Browned him. All of the stolen handwavium strains that had gone into her creation
made, in Martha's opinion, "Supergirl" into the closest thing to an actual Kryptonian possible. And Kara was going to be her new body once she
figured out how Wave Convoy had managed the meat to robot transition.

Gervasio had told her that this latest batch of handwavium had been stolen from Stellvia. She didn't know how the note to "Use Glasses!" would
help her make Kohran's kaboomite, but since so many Stellvians wore glasses, maybe the goop did something useful to them. She ignored her apartment's
phone as it rang and dipped the glasses into the can of goop. In a fit of whimsy, she put them on "Kara's" face. Seeing nothing happen, Martha
got up and pushed the hidden button to hide her workshop. She picked up the phone as the panels shifted around.

"Hello?"

"Hola, Señorita Clark," the cultured voice of Gervasio Faustino deLeon purred. "How is my Kaboomite
coming?"

Martha began to sweat. "It's going as well as can be expected. I'm trying all of the materials you've gotten me, but I keep coming up with
dead ends."

"Sí, 'dead ends.' Es verdad." His voice grew cold.
"We're going to have to show you how seriously we take this. Open the door, puta."

Martha's blood ran cold as pounding sounded on the door to her quarters. She turned to her kitchen in terror as the door burst off its hinges, and sagged
as she realized there was no escape from deLeon's goons. As they dragged her off, she wondered what would happen to her incomplete creation.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

Innnnnnteresting... All I can say is, "Is there more?" ^_^;;

With that title, you have to ask?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Ah, poor, misguided de Leon... stealing some of Stellvia's handwavium, thinking it'll help him make kaboomite...

(After all this time, Stellvia is one of the few places that still has a large supply of undifferentiated handwavium instead of a custom strain of some sort, and kaboomite is 100% hardtech... but Noah doesn't advertise either of those facts.)

Good story - I look forward to seeing more!
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Heh. The only thing Gina and Ben would wish that guy is some missiles up the tail-pipe. Their first brush with 'death from above' came from a group of his goons who were supposed to be trying to 'recruit' them, or at least disable the Bullet Boy Express and use her for their own drug-running.
The next time they had such a run-in, Benjamin and Gina used the same run-and-hide tactic, but that time they had the head-light coil-guns mounted with SAPHEIDS-DPD rounds - Benjamin's own design. The Happy Camper is indeed a viable tactic if your foe is unfamiliar with the with the area whereas you know every little knook and cranny.
They didn't even know what hit them. *Wicked Grin*

And now for something completely different... I think I've come up with a way to create (something like) heat vision without breaking The Rules. Offered
for criticism, consideration, and possibly a contribution to Kara:

There are some medical procedures, mostly used in cancer treatement, that use a wave of microwave radiation to destroy malignant tissue without requiring
surgery. The problem with the first-generation technique was that it also destroyed healthy tissue on the microwaves' path. The second generation uses two
microwave emitters, each delivering a less-than-fatal dosage, that intersect at the malignant tissue. The cancer gets a fatal dosage from the combined effects,
while the tissue around it doesn't.

Now, take those two emitters, miniaturize them so they'll fit behind cyborg eyes (using the eyes' lenses for focusing - handwave the lenses as
necessary), and give them a 'waved power supply. You probably won't have much range - 10 meters at most, I'd guess - but you'd have an attack
that (slowly) heats whatever she's looking at.

(No, I don't intend to use this in-story. That's why I'm offering it here...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Author's note: /Text/ will indicate Kryptonian with, obviously more detail than has been released by the website author]

August 4, 2011. 0559 UTC

Kara woke groggily, blinking at the slight distortion in front of her eyes. Raising her hand, she pulled the glasses from her face, clearing her vision, and sat up. "/Rao blast it, Kal, I TOLD you I'm not going to use a secret identity.../" She trailed off. This wasn't the Fortress of Solitude.

"/Where am I?/" She looked around the room and discovered that she was in what could best be described as a mishmash of Terran artists' perceptions of what a Kryptonian workshop had really been like, with a touch of the Batcave added for good measure. A preliminary scan with her x-ray vision indicated that the various computers shouldn't even work, yet she could "hear" the data running down the switch ways with the telltale squawk of Terran fuzzy-logic processors, with just a pleasant enough tone that she could tell it hadn't been made by LexCorp. She looked at the monitors and was disturbed to see a laser-precise image of her physical form in rotation on a screen. Her fears weren't eased by the "Kryptonese" usage of Kryptonian writing to transliterate English.

"Human reproductive compatibility: optimal," she read. "Subject should be capable of surrogate motherhood of embryos fertilized in vitro... /Okayyy, JUST a bit creepy. Let's see if I can get out of here./"

[to be added to...]
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

Great Krypton! Also. Does she do autographs?

Quote:There are some medical procedures, mostly used in cancer treatement, that use a wave of microwave radiation to destroy malignant tissue without requiring surgery.

Actually well in keeping with original source -- in stories published circa late 50s-early 60s, Superman's heat vision evolved out of his x-ray vision.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Quote:Actually well in keeping with original source -- in stories published circa late 50s-early 60s, Superman's heat vision evolved out of his x-ray vision.

I gotta wonder how the timeframe on that compares to the marketing of the microwave oven, now, Bob.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

Microwaves first came out in the 40s, as I recall -- but they were the size of refrigerators. Without actually doing any research and relying only on my own
memory, I seem to recall the golden age of the microwave starting in the 1970s.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Quote:Actually well in keeping with original source -- in stories published circa late 50s-early 60s, Superman's heat vision evolved out of his x-ray vision.

And the current crop of "makes it look like you're naked" body scanners use passive microwave receptors... Yes, this is paralleling the canon, isn't it?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

After judiciously using her yellow sun-enhanced senses, Kara was relieved that she didn't have to punch through the walls to exit the room, as she was becoming embarrassingly familiar with "collateral damage." She was a bit concerned to see all the superheroine kipple in the next room, however. She was even more concerned to see the door off its hinges and the signs of struggle in the kitchen. She scanned the room and found the telephone. Hoping she had the correct number, she dialed 911.
Minutes later, after a small squad of people had arrived and began forensic processing of the scene, she was escorted to the street by a middle-aged Terran woman wearing what Kal had referred to as a "Men in Black" uniform. She started a bit at the words "Kandor Police" on the doors of the antiquated black-and-white groundcar. Following instructions, as she didn't want to cause too much of a scene until she knew exactly where she was, she entered the back seat and applied the primitive safety harness.
As the vehicle began to move, Kara did a perfunctory scan and noticed that the vehicle seemed to run on an internal combustion engine, but it seemed to have several electronic devices in the interior, and more of that odd "Garbage Tech" liberally applied to the working parts... The groundcar pulled out from under the various skyways connecting the buildings, and she looked up to spot a dome, and beyond it, a starry sky prominently displaying the blue, green, and white swirl of Earth.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll