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 Post Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2010 3:23 am 
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Even as he gets into Avery's car, Buck is thinking over what he'll need to find...

Helium balloons, for a start...

Normally, you can find almost anything at the city dump; as long as humans throw it away, it's there. (Hardly ever in working order, but for a good engineer that's just a matter of time. Though time is perhaps a little short now...)

But helium balloons are probably a bit of a stretch. For helium balloons, one would probably need to go to a party supplies store.

There's one not too far away.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2010 8:17 pm 
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Location: Currently on expedition.
Buck explains his plan as he weaves his way along the road towards the party store, explaining that it will only be able to stop one strike. He also describes how he thinks whoever it is is making and targeting the lightning.

"The average lightning bolt contains about a terawatt of power, which is quite alot. Now, if he was using the city's power grid, that amount of draw would be noticed, and very likely investigated. Most places that routinely use that kind of power have their own generators to provide it, so as not to brown out the city, and to keep the place running in case of wide spread power failure. As his first target was a power station, I'm guessing he's doing the same. Since it appears that he can only strike once every few hours, I'm guessing that it takes awhile to recharge his capacitors, which would be quite large, add to this the need for a large, powerful, and most importantly, noisy generator, he must be located somewhere remote, otherwise the neighbors would have noticed all this, as well as the lightning. Which brings me to the second part of my musings. To generate the bolt itself, I believe he is using God's Own Tesla Coil. Again, bulky and noisy when discharged. to achieve his uncanny accuracy, he is probably using a very powerful laser with peak power over one megawatt per meter cubed, again drawn from capacitors. This level of power results in "Bloom", the ionizing of the atmosphere, resulting in a highly conductive plasma, like a wire without the wire, along which the Tesla Coil is discharged, giving the appearance of lightning striking. However this has drawbacks: the laser would rapidly diffuse, loosing power, and decreasing accuracy. The laser also only works in line of sight. Together this means that in addition to being located in an unpopulated location it must also be located in relative proximity to both the power station and city hall, and have a good view of them as well. So, if we can find an unpopulated, highly elevated region located in reasonable proximity to both the power station and city hall, then we have a good shot at finding our Lightning Bug. Any questions?"

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 Post Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2010 9:53 am 
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Location: The land of crazy drivers
Kip, driving along as Buck explains, nods his head.

"Yes. Where are we going?"

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 Post Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2010 12:49 pm 
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The constant "WRRRRRRRR" of the car changes into a "WRRRrrrrrrrrr..." and the little red battery light turns on.

The good news is that they're only a few metres away from what advertises itself as "Your complete party supply store!"

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 Post Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2010 4:11 pm 
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"Curses! Well at least we saved some time by taking the car, and maybe we can find some place to charge this thing up while we shop. After we have the balloons, we'll need about five hundred meters of ultra fine copper thread. Since I don't feel like pulling apart old electric motors so I can unwind the coils, our best bet would be to head for a sewing store. We'll need about four bobbins."
Buck hops out of the car and begins looking around for a place to charge it up, or at least a good place to hide it.

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 Post Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2010 4:39 pm 
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There's plenty of places to hide the car, but not a single good place to charge it.

There's also a very nice display of helium balloons inside the store. (There's also a helium tank and several hundred uninflated balloons). Even it the car was charged up, how many helium balloons can you tie to it before it lifts off?

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 Post Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2010 5:04 pm 
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Buck hides the car, and heads into the store, thinking of how to get the car running again, and how the devil to transport enough balloons. It's tricky... but it just might work.

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 Post Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2010 10:23 am 
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Kip follows Buck, his eyes roving over the supplies. If this is truly a party supply shop, they likely have batteries for the car as well.

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 Post Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2010 5:18 pm 
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It takes both of them to push the door open far enough to get in (and they're lucky; this door is fairly light). They do not, however, in the process, push it far enough to ring the little bell; with the result that the person looking after the shop doesn't even lookup from the comic book in which he is engrossed.

The shop looked small and unobtrusive from the street. But once inside, it opens out to a vast vista of party goods. Aside from the helium balloon display in the shop window (with the helium tank and whole boxes full of uninflated balloons) there is everything and anything a party could possibly want, arrayed on vast, glittery shelves. There's an entire aisle full of nothing but party hats, in every shape, size and style imaginable; there's those squeaky things that you blow and make them squeak; there's maybe a thousand different ways to make a festive noise; there's inflatable bouncing castles packed in boxes, there's water slides, there's paper plates, there's festive tablecloths, there's chocolate fountains (Just Add Chocolate And Plug In!), there's hundreds, thousands of CDs of party music, there's even a full sound system packed in one particular very expensive box.

In the battery powered side, there are roving spotlights (Batteries Not Included), there are speakers with blinking lights that will flash to the beat of any music played through them (Batteries Not Included), there are desk fans with blinking lights along the blades (Batteries Still Not Included), and there are hundreds of different objects whose only function is to make some small movement in some entertaining way (such as the little toy consisting of two mice that constantly dance in a circle around each other).

Batteries are sold separately. There are AA batteries. There are AAA batteries. There are D batteries, there are 9V batteries.

Avery's car takes size C. There's a size C battery shelf. There's a note on it. It says "Sold Out; New Stock Expected Tomorrow."

Which is rather surprising, given that nothing in the store takes size C batteries...

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 Post Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2010 5:33 pm 
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"Hmmm. No C batteries. Shouldn't be a problem, just have to wire a bunch of AA's together, or better yet, D's. And the more we bring, the more ballast we have, the more ballast we have, the more balloons we can tie to the car. The only difficulty now, is getting the balloons outside. Any thoughts Kip?"

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 Post Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 4:01 am 
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Some experimentation will show that a single helium balloon is enough to carry Buck, Kip, or both to the roof of the store and force them to climb down the shelves to return to ground level. When you're that small, ballast is a lot more necessary.

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 Post Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 4:35 am 
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Buck wanders into the back and finds that this place has the perfect loading dock. It's large enough to keep several cubic meters of balloons, and the car while they work on it, with a large enough door to allow ease of exit when they're ready to go.
spend one fate point.

"Eeeexxcellent..."
Now to get some fresh batteries for the car, so he can wheel it around back.
Newtons, Newtons, how many Newtons?

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 Post Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 11:19 am 
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Location: The land of crazy drivers
Kip carries what Buck directs him, hefting heavy objects with the help of his companion.

"You know how we're going to get all this stuff to city hall? Safely?"

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 Post Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 1:47 pm 
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*theme music starts playing*

The real difficulty here is time. The base difficulty for transforming a car into an airship over the course of an afternoon is +3; modified by ready materials on hand (-1) and the small size of the passengers (-1) which makes getting into the air easier. This leads to a base difficulty of +1.

The more Buck beats it by, the faster he can get done.

Skill: Engineering: +4 Roll: -2 Total: +2

Beating the roll by +1. This allows him to finish rebuilding the car in a few hours. They don't have a few hours.

See the OOC thread...

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 Post Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 2:04 pm 
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"We're not going to have enough time to do everything by the book! Guess, Buck, guess! Tie stuff on, make a guess and fix it in the air. We need to get there in time!"

Kip starts grabbing gear and handing it to his companion.

"We do this all the time! Let's go!"

Quote:
Moxie and a swift paw will save you. Spent 1 Fate point.

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