This one was thrown together quickly at the end of a busy week. I had tinkered a little with the Flower Child NPC because I liked the name in a cheesy/goofy kind of way, so I decided to throw him into the mix here to flesh out Caustic‘s little band a bit more. I did take the opportunity to hit one major plot point I’d been planning on, and to start weening players off their reliance on BusyBody to soak up damage for them.
BusyBody shows up at HQ for a weekly meeting and announces she’s pregnant!
“Apparently I was, er, more human than usual while my other selves were regenerating, and, well, <blushes> nature took it’s course after nature took its course, I guess. Anyway, doctors say the baby looks healthy so far as they can tell, but I’m on a strict no-superheroing regimen until further notice. I didn’t know I was pregnant when I used my powers last time; it doesn’t seem to have hurt the baby but I don’t want to take any chances. I’ll still come in and help around the headquarters, though, and come to the weeklies. Can’t keep me away!”
Phone rings; it’s Starks: “We’ve got a situation at the Smyrna Correctional Facility. Caustic’s floating head sidekick made a new friend and they showed up to break out her and her crew. With her help the inmates have rioted and taken over the place. They’ve taken hostages and she says she’ll release them if you show up for a rematch in the main courtyard, and I figure if you can beat her again – or at the very least provide a distraction so a SWAT team can get in – we can put this down quickly. A couple of squad cars should be pulling up right about now. Grab what you need and they’ll get you there!”
<This is basically a big open-space fight – no cover(etc), map just needs to have a big oval-ish area fenced in with vine growth. Caustic & her previous companions are there, joined by Flower Child, who has been mind controlled by Jaggoleth over time. Starks will offer to join them inside, but remind them his movement is limited & he’d be in danger. Flower Child’s power is at ½ because he’s still recovering from creating the hedge wall.>
How it played out
As it was pretty much designed to do, this turned into a no-holds-barred slug-fest that eventually reached the point where three ragged D-Listers were still standing against Dredge, who they’d largely ignored in favor of taking out easier & more damaging targets first… so he was still in decent shape. Aria ended up using her emotion control power to calm him down, at which point he revealed that “Me no like all this fighting – do it because Caustic and her floaty head say they take care of Dredge. No want to stay in jail either – they no let Dredge out of big fish tank!” (He’s kept in a thick plexiglass enclosure he can’t ooze out of.)
Aria decided to press for Dredge to be assigned to some kind of rehab facility instead of a straight-up prison. She’s successful in doing so and now visits him a few times a month to see how he’s doing. (This twist was unexpected even by me, but I plan to use it in the future…)