Marvel: 2011-07-15 - Game Play

Stark is currently hiding out here, and ordered Jarvis to bar the door! He has dumped his shoes near the entrance door, and hugs a couch pillow as he sits on the couch. A sports game is on. "No more board meetings...no more board meetings...." He's playing it up for pity, but you can likely guess that because both of you have known Stark for so long.

She-Hulk, wanders in, "No more pre-briefings...no more pre-briefings..." Then she grins at Tony. Oh, the horribly evil woman. Or maybe she's actually being sympathetic, in her own big green way.

"Earth's mightiest heroes, defeated so easily by meetings with other people," Ethan chuckles as he steps into the room. He's in civillian garb at the moment, relaxing today. Running a quick telekinetic comb through his hair, he moves to a chair to sit down. "So, long day for you guys?"

Stark scowls at She-Hulk, "I'm going to gnaw your face off." And he snaps his teeth playfully at She-Hulk. "They aren't people, they are /board members/! More intimidating and frustrating than supervillains," he growls out.

"Lawyers are worse," Shulkie notes, sounding remarkably cheerful as she moves to sit down. "Long day, yes. I'd rather go out and beat up villains.

"So challenging to deal with scary monsters we can't just hit really hard," Ethan muses, leaning back. "Think board members and lawyers are bad? Try comic fanboys on new release day or right after a company announces a change. "

Stark stares blankly at Kinetic. He's a computer geek, not a comic geek. "I have a S-HoloBox we can hook up and play. A new martial arts combat one that readst he moves of the participant for combos ands tuff. It's experiemental. Want to test it out?" Yes....change of subject, cause Ethan just lost him on that one. It's too...normal.

"Sure. I don't have anything better to do unless there's a supervillain attack. In which case, we finish the test later." She shrugs a bit. "Lawyers are still worse."

The blank stare gets a shake of the head from the artist. He leans back with a smile, quirking a brow. "So it's motion-sensitive? How accurate is it picking up moves?" he's curious.

Stark snorts, "They keep pressuring me to go back into weapons manufacturing for fast money." He grumbles, "Want to strangle them." He gets up and heads to the television to start pulling it out and hooking things up. Thank goodness for wheels on the entertainment system. Anyway, he will be busy for a few minutes. "You know the Avenger's ID card that uses interactive Holograms? Same thing, soft light tech with fine detail motion sensors. This has been out for a bit, do you need an S-HoloBox for Christmas Ethan?"

"Want me to zap 'em in the head?" Ethan's joking of course. "I suggest bringing a Nerf gun with you to the next meeting and just pelting them with foam instead of strangling," the blond adds. He listens to the information on the game and seems pretty impressed. "Oh, so now Cap can kick our butts in the game as well as in the gym?" he smirks. "It's been out for awhile but I work part time in a comic shop. My income doesn't exactly line up to 'buying expensive video game consoles'," he points out.

"Cap kicks most people's butts," Jen notes. "It's what he does. I'd pay to see a spar between him and Logan." NOw that WOULD be a lot of fun to watch, wouldn't it.

"Point taken. Christmas it is." Stark finishes hooking the game up and pops in the game. He then gets the television turned on and turned to the right channel. "Alright, I'm going to set it for three players, and you just select your 'square'. Plenty of room in here to be doing this."

"I'm gettng better at lasting longer against Cap without my powers. He doesn't beat me nearly as badly anymore," Ethan replies with a laugh. "Logan and Cap sparring could be interesting," he nods, standing up. He nods, picking the nearest square and stretching.

"That would be interesting. I can hold up to Cap, but then again, he trained me well." Wait, when was the last time those two sparred? "Anyway, let's get started." He picks up the controller (wireless) and selects a few items, and suddenly the three 'grids' are there. Stark sets the controller aside and enters the first grid, and holo-controls pop up in front of him for continued select of characters. He selects...amusingly enough, Black Panther. All the old Avenger members are in the game. Sweet!

She-Hulk proves her arrogant and egotistical nature. She picks...herself. Isn't that so typical of the green goddess? Flexing a little, she steps into the second grid. "Black Panther, Tony?" she says, amused, but clearly not unhappy with him.

Ethan lets out a thoughtful noise as he looks through the characters. Eventually he just picks one of the random villains that looks interesting. "This should be fun," he muses, glancing at his teammates.

"Ya, got to show off that I know more than just tech, you know?" Stark grins at that. "Black Panther has his tricks though, you have seen what his claws can cut through. And his enhanced reflexes are great," and go well with his own enhanced organs. "Now, you can choose different levels. Like, you can choose easy where you only have to lean backwards like this," and he shows you, leaning a good quarter of the way back, "to do a backflip, to difficult which actually requires you to perform a real backflip. To dodge, you can just step back, or lean back a touch. To more intricate moves. It will sense what you do. Difficult is...insanely difficult for even me," he admits. "It's trained combantant level. But that's why there are three levels." He selects difficult for himself, wanting to make it difficult on himself. He then leans down and quickly removes his socks, tossing them away, and removes his jacket, tossing that away, and his tie, and unbuttons the top few buttons of his shirt. Oh ya..., he's getting comfortable. "She-Hulk, you will need to experiment in the test phase for settings, to determine how much superstrength you use for how fast you swing. If you got a better way to establish that, let me know." The tester phase is entered when difficult setting is selected.

The tester phase runs each person in their own segment through a few tests, and yes...you get to see Stark perform a backflip, lunges, and other moves to establish the full 'movement range' of Black Panther...matching it to the player. Stark is going to be sweating majorly after this.

"Or tournament level. Which we'll see. You know how serious some of those video game kids are." She-Hulk is fiddling with her own settings, then going through the tester routine. Of course, this should mean that THIS character is accurate. Likely why she's doing it.

"Yeah, Black Panther is a lot tougher than people give him credit for," Ethan remarks. He frowns at the difficulty settings and sticks to the middleground until he gets used to things. He discards his shoes quickly, outer shirt joining them moments later. He runs through the tester phase, smiling when he gets a hang of the movements. "This is pretty cool already."

"Alright, let's pick a setting, though if you later want to test out the storyline, we did use one character I thought would be flattered as the big bad guy. Kang the Conqueror! A little honor thing for getting the Avengers together," he states with a bit of humor. "I'll risk him sueing me, cause I'd love to punch his lights out!" Back on track. "The Avengers have to fight against all sorts of villains, to try and get to Kang the Conqueror in the Arena, and save the world from domination. Pretty straight forward with dramatic smack talking," he adds with humor.

"Kids just want to smash things with a game like this," Shulkie points out, flexing. "Guess I'm just a big kid at heart."

"Please try not to antagonize the time-traveling despots more than we already do by existing," Ethan remarks with an amused smile. "These villains new? Not sure I've ever heard of or seen any of them," which confuses him since he likes to stay informed with at least basic info. "Fightning games and beat-'em ups never need much story," he adds.

"They are all original. I didn't feel like pissing off anyone else, and because the villains would live in /our/ timeline? There were lawsuit concerns," Stark explains. "And hey, it's how people see superheroes, no matter if it isn't the entire truth." He selects 'Arcade' and goes through the settings, selecting one in a prison. "Remember if you want to walk or run, do so in place. Running just requires the higher rise of knees, and if you run really fast, lean forward while doing so. Walk is just the simple rise and step of your feet like marching in place without raising your knees high. I really need to get some sort of multi-directional treadmill thing to operate with this, but one that will stablize and lock in place when feet are not resting on it so if someone does a backflip, they don't die." He chuckles.

"Huh. Makes sense," Ethan replies, nodding along to more explanation. "I don't know, I think people will end up killing themselves even without the treadmill. It's physical activity after all," he adds. "Moving parts will only complicate that," he chuckles.

"Liability's what he has to worry about. Okay." She jumps up and down, lightly. "Dang, you have the leaping set a bit over-sensitive, Tony!" Oops. Her avatar just went over the nearest building.

"Damn, I like complicated." Stark then laughs, "You are just really strong," he advises She-Hulk. "That's a high jump for a normal person." The prison scene is nearby, with walls, nearby buildings, the prison facility, etc. It takes place outside...as She-Hulk discovered. It's a free for all, but of course, the system still ahs teh supervillain breaking out of jail. Poor Ethan. Stark starts moving his knees up and down running along and he twists his body, going into a skid as he changes direction, but sliding the toe of his foot about to 'turn' the hologram reader that is about him. An interesting little trick to make it more 3-dimensional. He is then jogging in place and does a jump, right toward Kinetic's supervillain, hands reaching out with fingers curled as if claws to try and catch him!

Ethan can't help but laugh a little when virtual She-Hulk goes flying. He glances at the arena and makes an impressed little noise before he gives a few basic jabs to the air for warm up. As the Black Panther goes leaping for his character, Ethan has the virtual villain lift his hands and fire off some generic fireballs.

She-Hulk cracks her knuckles, advancing on both of them. "Now, boys, this isn't very nice at all." Uh oh. She's remembered that there are no rules. She can attack EITHER of them. Or both. Or knock their heads together. Watch out!

"Whao?!" Stark twists his body, and moves with surprising quickness. Then again, Iron Man has moved with that surprising suddenness as well. His health bar only goes down very slightly. "Evil distance attacks." Stark moves low to the ground and pretends to push off with his hands to take a major running, he then leans up into the air again, and kicks toward She-Hulk's face. The fact one sees Stark moving about similar to Black Panther should be impressive unto itself since he is doing the difficult level. And the moves he does IRL are only slightly less impressive than the ones in the game. And hey, he has claws on his boots too!

"Hey, I'm good at distance attacks," Ethan laughs. He's impressed by Stark's movements but he's quickly distracted by smashings. He takes a bit more damage, playing a more 'glass cannon' type of character. While the virtual pather and She-Hulk fight, Ethan's character hangs back and starts to charge something up.

Fortunately, she still has her invulnerability. At least her avatar does. "Let's test that we have the durability right!" she calls, cheerfully. She knows it's just a game. She's still going to beat Tony up. If she can hit him. He's doing pretty dang well pretenting to be T'Challa.

"Ack!" But the characters are meant to be able to hurt each other, just She-Hulk takes a /lot/ more work to get her health level down. But she's slower than T'Challa just like in reality. Stark keeps dodging and moving about, and works to keep She-Hulk between him and the fire ball villain. Stark is good, he must have had practice with moving in the three-dimensional direction, slipping the tip of his toes out to turn the screen without even thinking about it. He sends a claw attack to She-Hulk's left thigh as he actually does a short tumble (one roll), and gets back up. He can't do more than one roll forward, becuase he would be out of his 'fighting cube', same with a backflip, he can only do one unless he is really good about doing them in place without moving backwards. The limits of the game system verse reality.

"Heads up," Ethan declares, his character launching a larger beam attack since he had time to charge. He's taken note of the toe-movements and makes use of them.

Yes, but SHE isn't taking damage. So she's fighting her usual way...not bothering to dodge unless it's something big, like, say, that massive beam attack. Which she doesn't *quite* dodge. Ack...that's a few health points lost there!

Stark as T'Challa moves with She-Hulk, avoiding the beam, though he isn't unhurt. The beam has a radius that people can still get hurt by being withing a certain range of the beam, just not very much. He curses, "Haven't fought this villain yet." He then decides to leave She-Hulk alone for now and runs toward Ethan, but goes to the right of him, leaps up and grabs a building with his claws. He then kicks to the side as if kicking off the building, and leaps down toward the villain from above! Attack from flying feline!

"Okay, that was awesome," Ethan laughs, tossing the standard fireball towards She-Hulk. He looks up as Tony-Challa comes running his way and starts tossing those fireballs his way. The attack from above is a surprise one and it sends the virtual villain sprawling and health points plummeting.

The small sacerfice that Stark takes in health points is minimum to what Ethan's villain takes. He then raises a claw to finish the job when suddenly....the lights flicker out for a second, and then come back on when back-up power comes on. "What the...," Stark looks confused. The game is over for now in either case. "I'm...going to investigate that." He starts to head out to find Jarvis, even has his cyberpathy starts to reach out for what is going on.

Ethan frowns at the lights flickering. His eyes flash blue and a similarly colored light passes over him, civillian gear shifting into his costume as it goes. "Let's see what's going on then."

Stark leaves the room with Ethan, leaving She-Hulk to grrr over the game, as she was still in the lead health wise.