Issue 1 Downtime

"Computer!" Will said, walking into the danger room. "I'd like to set up a new program, see vu play. Full dynamic programming and alien technology and general awesomeness, can you do that for me?"

((open))

"Affirmative." The room's robot voice replies. "Loading William Stanton profile. Calculating initial combat rating. Please specify the desired scenario: Obstacle Course, Combat Simulation or Full Scenario?"

"Give me the works, computer. Turn all safeties down to minimum levels, and lock the program into running until it completes. Every time I beat the opponent, crank it up a notch in difficulty, yeah?"

"Affirmative."

With that the room shimmers and turns into a street somewhere in London, complete with a handful of thugs who seem to be rioting and smashing in windows.

"Stop, in the name of the law!" Will laughed, jogging forward and trying to grab one of the thugs by the collar.

"Bugger off!" the man responds, along with a fist aimed roughly at Will's face.

Will ducked under the fist, and drove his own into the man's gut. "Come on, now, that's not a way to treat a nice guy like me, right?"

The man has the air knocked out of him and staggers back as two of his friends step up wielding a metal pipe and a bicycle chain.

"Oh, did your bicycle break, and you're looking for a replacement? Then you should really come back when the shops are open, you know. You get better service that way," Will said, grabbing the guy he had punched and trying to shove him into the other two dudes.

The guy with the chain suddenly finds himself being tackled by his own buddy, but the pipe-wielding guy takes the chance to lash out at Will while he's distracted.

Will took the blow in the shoulder, the force staggering him a little, but no serious damage being done. "Alright, that does it," Will grumbled, wrapping his other arm around and around and around the thug. "You're going into time-out."

"What the..." is the last thing the thug manages to get out before he's wrapped up. His buddies, eyes wide, turn around and run. The thug struggles faintly but there's not a hell of a lot he can do.

"Assessment complete. Adjusting Difficulty."

The whole room flickers although nothing actually seems to change. Except the thug Will has wrapped up suddenly seems to be a lot stronger. And also wielding some kind of combat knife, judging by the fact that he manages to cut his way out of Will's coiled arm. The man is now wearing a red and black body suit as well as a mask that looks like a mix between ski-goggles and futuristic gas-mask. He takes one look at Will and throws his knife at him with surprising speed.

"Woah!" Will said, trying to dodge. He mostly got out of the way, though the knife thudded and stuck in his arm.

"Nice mask, creep. Hides your ugly face," he said, throwing an experimental kick that came in at a bizzare angle.

The man raises his arm and blocks it, though it does force him to abandon his advance in favor of twisting himself around.

"Take that!" Will said, smiling, following up with a fist to the jaw.

Night Thrasher is fast but not fast enough to avoid the punch. On the other hand he doesn't seem nearly as staggered by it as one might hope. Between his mask and his enhanced stamina he just kind of takes it on the chin and powers through it in order to try and sweep Will's legs out from under him.

Will lept over the sweep, and tried to kick him in the face. "This is the part where you fall down!"

Night Thrasher turns his shoulder into the kick and stumbles back a couple feet from the impact but stays up. "Do you always talk this much?" he asks, pulling a telescope baton from his belt and trying to side-step Will while aiming a strike at his knee.

The shot hit Will's knee hard, but will let his joint pivot with the impact--he had to resort to more shifting, as this was a stronger foe.

"No, but I let myself blabber when I'm against a weak opponent," he said, trying to do an (overly elaborate) spin kick to the back of NT's head.

He didn't expect his opponent's joint to give in this much and is caught off-balance, taking the kick to the head and going to the ground. He catches himself mid-fall and rolls to the side to get away from Will before jumping up and dropping into a fighting pose. "If you're trying to distract me it won't work."

"Keep telling yourself that," Will said, as he flung himself, shoulder first, into Night Thrasher, increasing his mass as he did so.

Night Thrasher is thrown back and has the wind knocked out of him as Will's increased mass pins him to the ground. He's far from knocked out though and throws a jab at Will's side, a discharge of static electricity sparking into Will as he makes contact.

Will staggered back, his side rippling and losing cohesion. The quipping stopped, as he lashed out with a kick designed more to gain some separation rather than actually knock the guy cold.

"Didn't like that, did you?" the man manages to get out, regaining his composure after staggering back from Will's kick.

"Your conduct, sir, is positively shocking," he fired back, though not with the same air of levity as before.

Keeping his distance, Will started throwing punches, extending his arms out to triple his reach, to avoid taking another shock.

Unfortunately that gives Night Thrasher more time to react to each one and he begins to advance on Will while quickly weaving through his punches, trying to get close enough to land one himself.

Backing up to try to keep his distance, Will looked around--not quite frantically, but in a hurry.

Seeing the lead pipe that the previous muggers had dropped when they rezzed out, Will reached with one extra long arm to grab it, attempting to smash it into Night Thrasher's side.

Apparently not too big on self-preservation he twists around and throws a punch at the incoming metal pipe with his left hand. His armored glove takes some of the impact but his hand still goes kind of limb. In turn though his punch discharges into the metal pipe and, expecting the shock to travel down Will's arm, charges him with his shoulder.

The shock does indeed go down the pipe through Will's arm, sending it rattling back towards him like a rapidly-rolled up set of blinds. The distraction and lack of mobility is enough for Night Thrasher to deliver a shoulderblock to Will knocking him down to the ground.

Wheezing as the air is forced out of him, Will aimed a kick at the man's crotch.

More body armor lessens the impact but still, a kick to the crotch hurts and he stumbles away from Will. He seems like he's retreating, running at one of the storefronts and throwing himself through the window, disappearing inside.

Will took a second to gather himself, and then cautiously headed out in pursuit. "This is only delaying the inevitable..."

It seems to be some kind of sports supply store. Various balls, running shoes, golf clubs, that sort of thing. For now Night Thrasher is nowhere to be seen though that changes quickly when Will steps around a corner and right into the end of a deadlift weight being swung at his head.

Will just managed to duck under the weight, diving backwards into whatever rack or setup was there to get out of range again.

The weight instead smashes through the corner and takes a huge chunk out of it. Night Thrasher hefts it back up with some effort and moves in on Will, bringing the weight to bear again to just smash through the rack.

...but when the rack collapsed, Will wasn't there. The collection of workout pants fell to the floor, with Will nowhere to be seen...

Night Thrasher rests one side of the weight on the ground and looks around, trying to figure out where Will could have scampered away to.

From behind, one of the scattered pairs of athletic pants silently rose up, shifting back into Will...

And he laid a heavy iron arm to the back of NT's head and neck.

Night Thrasher stumbles forward and falls to the ground but manages to catch his falls with one arm. He let's himself fall to one side and rolls around, aiming a kick at Will's knee before he has a chance to follow-up.

Will lept over, though the kick still made contact with his foot, knocking him off balance.

Making the most of it, Will tried to come down hard on NT, increasing his mass as he fell.

Night Thrasher rolls out of the way of Will coming down and cracking the floor. When he comes back up Night Thrasher is hauling the weight back up alongside him, hefting it onto his shoulder before bringing it back down on Will.