Mr. Big critiques Pyrepower's plan

By request, I am going to seriously address the recent posts from Pyrepower about hero capture. Disregarding her highly questionable motives for engaging in such activities, let's review the important points that the caper highlights:

1. Knowledge. Her target was analyzed for weaknesses (like breathing) and those weaknesses were exploited.
2. Motivation. In "Full Metal Jacket", Gunnery Sergeant Hartman points out what "one motivated Marine and his rifle can do". The trap was laid and sprung with precision.
3. Completeness. From baiting the trap in multiple ways, to springing it, to following up, every phase of the plan was accounted for.

That said: yes, the plan was amateurish overall. But you know what? She baited the hook for two amateur heroes. She's playing at the level she's at, and knows her limits.

That was the good news. Here's some further commentary.

Fire vs. speedsters. Hurricane Hal did a very nice guest spot awhile back, and talked about the slipstream that speedsters can manipulate. Being able to ignite your whole body on fire, especially in an enclosed space, is a great counter not just against being attacked, but against someone who breathes. If necessary, Pyrepower could quickly overwhelm any oxygen-dependent speedster. But she should absolutely know beforehand if her opponent needs to breathe.

That said, you can still pit your control over fire against their control over the slipstream. If you win, they're going to painfully burn their hands if they attack you. This is a risky thing to gamble on, and you shouldn't count on it as Plan A. In this case, she didn't, but she might have.

The necessity of a custom pit trap. Digging a new trap was probably a waste of time, if a suitable candidate location could have been found. Maybe one was searched for, maybe not. Maybe digging it was just an exercise in power control. But being able to control the location of your caper - and just as importantly preventing a search of "likely locations" by the authorities - is itself a smart move.

The expendability of lairs. Pyrepower's personal lair should now be considered compromised, and I hope she fully realizes that. Any hero she takes there should be assumed to be wearing a transmitter, recorder, or similar equipment. Even if they're unconscious, or there's radio jamming in place, the technology exists to narrow down the location enough that a determined search could find it within a day or so.

Guide update from Pyrepower: how to successfully use misdirection when capturing heroes

HEE HEE HEE you haters.

As an addendum to yesterday's guide for capturing hunky speedster boys, I want to talk about misdirection. Stage magicians use misdirection all the time. Mr. Big says politicians do too. So why can't I?

First, let's say that ENTIRELY HYPOTHETICALLY you plan to capture some superheroes, and you put your entire plan up on a forum that you know heroes have been reading. Heroes like Kid Cumulus, who wrote in and tipped off the boss.

Second, let's say that the hostage scenario is pretty obvious. I mean, come on, Mr. Big had me watch a series of Republic serials and basically said "don't be that stupid".

Third, let's say that you assume the hero will try to escape the trap when you aren't looking. So what do you do? You have to be there the whole time.

So I went through Mr. Big's movie collection. He has like a billion DVDs or something. And I happened to notice "Saw". Spoilers, people: the killer is in the room the whole time.

So let's say, again hypothetically, that I am the hostage at the bottom of the pit. Sure enough, he's immediately wary. That's when the charges I set at the top of the pit go off, and he's blown in. I could tell him there's a real hostage, and I have photos and his driver's license and everything to prove it. But I know from experience that he needs to breathe and I don't, so instead of that nonsense, I flooded the pit with gas. Down he goes, trussed up he gets (remember, I am pretending to be tied up, so there's all this chain laying around), and I measure out an injection of anesthetic like the boss taught me. No sense taking chances.

Next stop: the lair! Well, a lair anyway, not the boss's lair. What do you think I am, stupid?

HEE HEE HEE

Guide update from Pyrepower: how to capture superheroes!

Hee hee hee.

Pyrepower here! Mr. Big is still away. So I'm writing the guide still!

Today is our ENTIRELY HYPOTHETICAL methods for capturing two hunky superhero boys: The Philly Fleetfoot and Rail Runner. By sheer coincidence both are speedsters, so we will be using the same tactics against both.

First, we consider weaknesses. What are they observed to be weak against? Well, neither can get out of a really deep pit, so we have something. We need a pit! What do we have for powers? Well let's say fire manipulation. Rock would be really tough to get out of, and the melting point of most silicates is about 1200 degrees Celsius. Super awesome trivia note! The Space Shuttle's tiles can absorb about this much heat without burning your hand.

Next, test that you can produce that much heat by obtaining a sample of rock and burning it with your powers. If this test fails, think of a new plan.

Let's assume your test is successful. Bring along a stopwatch so you can tell how long it takes to slag the sample. Divide that time by the volume of the sample, then multiply by the volume of the pit you want to dig. Assume 20' by 20' by 30' deep.

Next, you need a spot where you can dig this pit uninterrupted. Check a map of your area and find some good ambush points. Like an abandoned subway tunnel. Your digging puts out an awful lot of heat and light.

You want a hostage. Obtain one, tie him up, then put them at the bottom of the pit. They must be tied up securely so they can't escape. Put a rope ladder at the top of the pit. When your hero shows up, they'll see the ladder and go "cool, a ladder" and try to unfurl it to the bottom. They'll see that the hostage is tied up, and figure out that they have to go down and help him out. So your rope ladder should be set up to give way the second they get down there. For example, radio-controlled explosive bolts in the rock.

At this point, you should have your very own superhero. Now you need to make an appearance. Tell them that if they untie the hostage, you'll lower a rope and pull him up as long as the hero stays in the hole. Escort the hostage out (blindfolded so he can't lead the cops back to you). That gives the hero some time to start feeling depressed and stuff, so when you show up he'll be more willing to go along with whatever, y'know, you happen to think up next.

I think it'll work!

Hee hee hee.

Movement powers: phasing

Probably the best known user of phasing powers is the hero Covenant, and I can't interview that guy. So here's some speculation and second-hand information.

Important note for active supervillains: contrary to reports, I believe that the Icons member Diver does not have phasing powers, despite her attempts to cultivate the impression that she does. Apparently it's all an illusion generated by her light and invisibility powers, so don't be fooled!

Phasing

Phasing is the act of moving through solid matter without disturbing it - basically, you're a ghost. I was looking for a better name for this, because supers with phasing would have to be called phasers, and this isn't Star Trek. Oh well, screw it.

This is one of the more subtle powers, because not everyone has an opportunity to see you do it. If you are able to phase (I'm not saying phaser here, people!), and you can get away with not revealing it, try not to - it makes a fantastic trump card.

Defenses against phasing

The physical basis for this power is poorly understood. The Transhuman Capability Catalog tentatively calls it a subclass of electromagnetic control, based on the theory that the super is flooding the atoms of his body, and whatever he's passing through, with enough energy to move their electrons into higher orbitals and give the Pauli principle room to work. There's some quantum weirdness past this point which I don't feel qualified to discuss.

This opens the door to some sort of anti-phasing defense, though. Some sort of metamaterial where electrons are already super-charged, or a macro-molecule (a large carbon nanotube for example) where the atoms' electrons are already in a fixed energy state, might resist phasing. I'm not aware of anybody that has actually deployed this sort of defense, but if you hear of one, let me know.

Moving and other considerations while phasing

In general, people don't worry about falling through the floor while phasing. Their bodies develop a mechanism to push off of nearby atoms electromagnetically while in the phased state, and their subconscious mind takes care of doing what their conscious mind seems to want. They can walk up or down stairs, "climb" through solid material, then step out onto a solid support.

From the interviews I've read, people have described it as feeling like swimming. Virtually every phasing-capable super (still not saying it) has developed an adaption for breathing, and some have shown adaptions to high-pressure conditions, the way aquatic supers have.

As a defense mechanism, phasing isn't perfect. It takes effort and energy to maintain the phased state, so weaker users (not saying it...) must still defend themselves from bullets and such in the usual way - by not getting shot. Stronger supers can just stand there and let the lead go through their bodies.

I have yet to see a battle between two such supers, so I have no idea how their powers will interact. That said, I'm sure it'd be interesting.

Movement powers: super-speed

Speedsters are an odd lot. Their powers are misunderstood and sometimes controversial. To set the record straight, I've asked veteran villain speedster Hurricane Hal to talk about this. I've done some editing of the text, with his permission.

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Hey all, Hal here. Mr. Big and I go back a few years and I was very flattered to be asked to talk about what I do. And what I do is run! Let's talk about speedsters:

We don't think radically faster than most people. Super-speed isn't time acceleration. Instead, we're moving our bodies faster. This is a combination of force control, muscular adaptions to moving very fast, and alterations to the nervous system. Our subconscious minds do process motion at super-speeds, but there's plenty of evidence that it happens thanks to the myelin substitutes you'll find in speedsters' brains rather than some kind of time-related power.

We don't perceive things at higher rates. Let me see if I can describe what it's like. When you fire a gun, you take aim, you track your target, but the bullet is off and doing its own thing the moment you pull that trigger. Now instead of a gun, imagine that the bullet is your body. You aim your mind at an objective by focusing on what you want, where you plan to move, whatever, and you commit to it. There's a brief moment of disorientation and it's done. Sometimes the subconscious will do its own thing - speedsters can and have dodged bullets without thinking about it, for example. But we notice all these things after the fact.

We don't send up huge currents of air around us - though we can. Most speedsters have a limited amount of control over the air surrounding their bodies, enough to keep us from being burned alive by friction. We create a slipstream effect that puts the air back where it was once we've gone past. Skilled speedsters learn to use this control to guide the slipstream laterally and create a huge gust of wind as we go by.

We don't age quicker or eat more. Some speedsters might develop a large appetite, but research shows that it's mostly psychosomatic. Their bodies feel the calorie burn and produce feelings of hunger. As we get more used to our powers, those cravings fade. A lot of speedsters I know don't even eat food except as a hobby - our bodies metabolize something else.

Obstacles in our path can still kill us. Someone asked me if I could run through walls. I said yeah - if I wanted to die! You've still built up a tremendous amount of momentum and delivering it to a solid object will very definitely hurt. That said, the slipstream will divert things like water vapor, so I don't die if I run through a rainstorm. If it would hurt you to run through something, it'll hurt a lot more to run through it faster, plain and simple!

Super-speed punches don't work like you think. Speedster fans like speculating about a super-fast person who could run up to a target and punch them, claiming that the momentum will do a lot more damage. Yeah - that works! Unfortunately the damage goes both ways. Newton's Third Law of Motion still works, and you'll break your arm. So let me tell you the secret to super-punches.

Linear momentum is a vector quantity, calculated as p = mv. That's mass times velocity. For example, say that you (a burly 100 kg) sprint (5 meters per second, or about 11 mph) at me and punch me. Your momentum is 100 * 5, or 500 kg m/s. The dominant factor is your mass, no duh. Big men have been kicking sand in the face of the macs at the beach for millennia, everyone knows this.

But instead of punching me with your fist, say that you're a speedster using your slipstream control to punch me with air. You push the air forward just before you connect. The mass of a cubic foot of air is about 0.03 kg, which at the above speeds is negligible - 0.03 * 5 is 0.15, orders of magnitude less. It's a breeze. But you're not moving at that speed, and you're not just moving air normally. I can reach Mach 10 with a good punch, and the slipstream effect is another order of magnitude in effectiveness. That makes my momentum calculation to be 0.03 * 34000, or 1020 - twice the punching power of our typical man at a sprint! And I can do that several times a second. Yes, I can tear through rock and steel without too much effort if I want to. And by the way, the slipstream works on water too, which is a lot heavier than air.

My advice to people interested in fighting hand-to-hand as speedsters is "don't" - there's far more effective uses of your power in combat. But if this is your thing - and it is incredibly flashy and intimidating if you can do it - then I strongly suggest learning a martial art that focuses on fast strikes, so you can build up the necessary muscle memory to do it at super-speed. American Kenpo, Kajukenbo, and Baguazhang all teach fast hand strikes. Wing Chun is a great style, because of its fast strikes, but also because the style works with relaxed muscles and that's how speedsters operate.

----

Mr. Big here again. Thanks for the contribution, Hal!

Discovering a hero's secret identity

Some of you wrote in about my comment on Illumina and "the usual people" trying to discover her identity. This is as important for villains as heroes, so let's talk about what sort of information people use to discover a super's identity.

Face recognition software

This is a pretty new option for me, though kids these days are familiar with it. When I was growing up, computers were a toy for academics and big companies and the military. These days you can keep one in your pocket. Similar oldie villains should really wise up to what's going on in this space.

Basically, there's face recognition software developed by people like Facebook and Google. And there's dedicated groups of super-hunters who do nothing but snap up old high school yearbooks and so forth, scan the photos, and upload them to a central server to be analyzed by this software. They compare pictures of known supers to the database, hoping for a match. This has gotten a lot easier with Google's image search feature, where you can just Photoshop a mask onto someone's yearbook picture and see if you get any hits.

Since everything you put online tends to stay there in some form, you can probably be found if you've ever had a civilian Facebook or something similar. Just let this be a warning if you were thinking of starting a page: never put your real face up there, ever.

Activity Triangulation

As I wrote in my guide on Lair placement and size, a supervillain's lair can be traced back to them if it's at the center of their sphere of activity. The same goes for superheroes. I talked a little about this on my article on Stage 2, but it holds true to a lesser extent for more powerful supers.

The general rule is that the more powerful your movement abilities, the harder it is to triangulate you. There's an adrenaline junkie named Exodus who's doing time in Riverbend maximum security. He can go anywhere in the world, because he's a teleporter. The only reason he's in jail is to impress the mundane prisoners with his exploits, and score points with prison gangs by smuggling things in for them. Supposedly he's got a whole stockpile of stuff buried in an abandoned mine - odds are good that they will never, ever find his real base.

You can start by getting a map of the city your hero is in, and getting a supply of pins and note cards. Start tracking sightings on the map. Put a pin onto each sighting's location, along with the date and two times - as accurately as you have them - for when there was an incident there, and when the hero responded to it. Once you have about three dozen data points, look at the data you have. Start drawing connecting boundaries on your map - "always takes at least 30 minutes to reach these spots", for example - and try to draw narrower and narrower circles as your data collection gets better.

If necessary, create incidents of your own. The ideal incident will be one which the hero feels compelled to respond to, and at times when the hero is likely to be in a familiar place - i.e. the place you want to track down. Only you know your own hero enough to determine these things, but in general, a couple hours after a major disaster or combat is the most ideal time to rouse a hero from their lair. You can set up an incident on the boundaries you drew earlier, to test the validity of your assumptions about travel time.

Tracking devices

These aren't useful for a lot of reasons, so don't rely on them unless you already have the expertise to use them professionally. Here's the problems:

1. Like clothes, a tracking device is usually a lot less durable than the super you attach it to. If he's got flame powers or something, it's going to be trashed well before you ever get a line on his home base.
2. Most villains don't know how to follow a radio signal properly.
3. Of those that do, many can't keep up with a fast-flying super.

Some villains have better luck with burst-transmission tracking devices, of the sort used to track animal migration patterns. Companies like Telonics make devices that use GPS and the Iridium satellite network which could be used to track someone almost anywhere in the world. Finding a way to attach one of these to your superheroic nemesis without alerting him is left as an exercise for the reader.

Military groups like the Grasscutters are fully equipped to utilize these methods. They have tiny transmitters that they shoot onto their targets, along with a topical anesthetic mixed with DMSO to neutralize the sensation of the transmitter after the initial hit. If the super is busy fighting, he may never notice it.

Life at Stage 2

Earlier in the guide, I recommended that you be at least Stage 3 to embark on a life of villainy. Some people just can't wait, and many up-and-coming villains will be fighting Stage 2 heroes. So let's talk about life at Stage 2.

Everyone reading this guide should remember what it was like growing up. Broken bones would set themselves. You'd do better than your peers at school, in sports, and so on. You were better looking, faster, stronger, and generally more awesome. What I want to talk about is the people who don't make it to Stage 3. These are the kids who avoided getting into a life-threatening accident, the ones who didn't take a bullet or get in a car wreck or whatever.

The basics of Stage 2 heroism and villainy look pretty similar. You'll see some common points:

• Body armor. Yes, you won't permanently show bruises or suffer from broken bones, but do you really want to be hurt to begin with? Of course not.
• Exploitation of mundane advantage. Know all those brooding vigilantes of the night? They work at night because it's an advantage that serious powers can usually cover. They encourage a fearful reputation because it's an advantage. Vigilantes with guns are effective because guns are effective. A good Stage 2 super knows how to leverage the environment and his available resources.
• Secret identity. Some Stage 3 and up supers don't bother, but a day job is still a necessity at Stage 2. They still have to eat, sleep somewhere, and so on. That means money, and that means a job. If they were lucky enough to inherit money, that money is still legal and aboveboard and leaves a trail.

Remember that Stage 2 makes for superior physical and mental traits. Stage 2 supers are typically successful in their chosen field - business, politics, or whatever. A lot of villains who are being harassed by a Stage 2 vigilante have gone after especially successful members of their community, with mixed results. On occasion, a villain has even kidnapped their nemesis and didn't even realize it.

Don't count on being able to identify your target through injury, either. A lot of villains have tried this. They'd break a specific bone or leave a scar or something. Two days later, the millionaire industrialist they suspected would appear at a charity ball, free of any such injury. Word to the wise: even at Stage 2, supers heal quickly.

Some villains say it's bad form to know a hero's secret identity. Others will firebomb their nemesis' home given half a chance. You have to figure out how you feel about this yourself, mostly because karma can come back and bite you hard if you cross this line. All I will say is: if you need a trump card, this isn't a bad one. Just don't play it until you're out of better options.

Tactics for fighting against a Stage 2 hero:

• Wear him down. Sure, if he's armored, weaksauce attacks may not seem useful. You want quantity, not quality here. Eventually he'll get tired, or frustrated. Even if his body is capable of going on, his heart won't be in it.
• Negate his advantages. Look for the things he leverages - darkness, fear, whatever - and commit crimes at times and places where those are not helpful to him.
• Network. Most Stage 2 supers are similar, as mentioned. This means most villains who fight them will have a common collection of tactics for dealing with them. Talk to your fellow villains - if you can - and find out what specific advice they can give you.
• Timing. With a secret identity, a Stage 2 hero won't be able to fight crime 24/7. Try to get a sense of his schedule, if he keeps one. Plot his appearances on a map of the city, do crimes in different parts of town, and look at his response times. Hopefully you'll be able to narrow down his location.

I've got my own specific advice for specific heroes I've fought, but I'm saving that for the premium guide. Sign up today to pre-order "Mr. Big's Playbook"! I'll have Paypal links up soon, promise.