Modern day Earth.  Super-powers are a thing.  Very small community college.  It's been a whole week since the last big headline.  Godzilla roundhousing the latest eco-threat into orbit is old news by now.

Timothius is in the basketball court on some of his free time, currently sitting on the bleachers drawing, but ready to get up and play if needed. He spots a couple friends and smiles brightly at them.

"This isn't volleyball," Joey says, dribbling onto the court with a basketball, "Don't think you can spike the ball into the hoop."

Hinata shrugs.  "It's a sport.  I'm an athlete.  I'll take you down!"

  Matt is basically just hanging out with Tim, at the moment.  He previously was more on the 'have to fight the football team' end of the school sports spectrum in highschool.

  Now it's more staying out of it to avoid the instinct of slam dunking without leaving the opposite side of the court.

Timothius giggles from the banter and yells out, "Just be good sports and you'll both win!"

Timothius shows Matt his drawing of Matt. "How's this?"

Joey smiles at Timothius' comment and nods.

Hinata anime-faults with a comical screen-shake and crashing sound.  "He sounds like motivational poster," he thinks.

The two begin playing one-on-one.

  "Well, you got the expression just right" Oh no, already with the 'no face' jokes.  Granted the audience doesn't know that yet, because we're too lazy to describe this character the players already knew.

  Hopefully neither of the B-Ball Boys know chaos dunks.

Timothius chuckles from Matt's comment. "People do say I am good with expressions..."

Timothius cheers for both of them between drawing and chatting with Matt. Since it is one-on-one, he decides not to hop in. Though if Matt decides to join the game, Tim will if just to even things up.

Fun times are had!  Suddenly, several flying books flap into the room!

"Victims!" one of the books says.

"They will make for good slaves, yes!" another answers.

The books attack!

(( Everyone roll your defenses, please.  ))

  "Why do books need slave-blargh"  Matt gets a hardcover corner upside the head, and retaliates by swiping one of the books out of the air and [b]tearing out it's spine[b]... Which stops sounding impressive when you remember it's a book spine (even if a magical, Evil book).

Timothius meeps and cringes. "What gives? Why are you attacking us? Leaf us alone!"

One of the books attacking Timothius uuuuugs. "Book punn!" and wobbles to the ground before closing.

The other book says, "Booklyne! I will avenge you!" and bat-bats Timothius on his head with several book-flaps! "Ow!"

Hinata and Joey both get whacked by the books attacking them.

"Someone should teach these books a lesson!"

Hinata spikes one of the books into another, defeating them both!

Joey can't think of a good pun, so he slams one with the basketball.  The ball takes it out, ricochets into another, and defeats that one too!

"Well that was weird.  Wonder what gives?"

  "Evil books want slaves for some reason. So now we need to go beat up an evil library or something, I don't know.  Maybe follow the sounds of flapping pages and people screaming about papercuts."

  Matt checks one of the fallen books for a table of contents.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:02, Thu 13 Oct 2016.

Timothius finished off his second attacker by grabbing the book and closing it. Seems to dispel it. He looks flustered and unsure how to proceed. But he turns to the others. "Commere and lemme heal you all..." he concentrates and heals his friends.

Just a moment ago, they looked all scary and stuff.  But soon the books return to looking ordinary.  Just before the enchantment faded, Matt caught a glimpse of something written on the pages in a scratchy scrawl: "Isn't it obvious why a book would want a slave with hands and such?  Ugh.  Such a bad pun it hurt..."

"Thanks for the heal," Joey says with a smile, "I wonder if we'll be given some kinda reward for dealing with this."

Hinata grins at him impishly.  "2 to 2.  I'll beat you next round, though!"

  Oh that's right. Books are ironically terrible novelists.

  Well, that's WHY sorted, leaving where and how much to punch it before it apologizes.

Timothius gives Hinata a bro-hug and Hinata heals to full. "Health first. Game second. Don't want you saying Joey won because you had a bruise and he didn't."

Timothius glows some, his healing pretty much infusing himself, Hinata and Joey back to complete health. He then goes back to the books. "We need to find out more about this attack... or if there really is anything more to read into this." more book puns

He looks down at one of the books. "You know, if you needed a hand, you could have just asked. No need to enslave people over it." and now the puns about hands.

"Thanks, Timothius!"

In come some more books!  These have belts and stuff that wiggle about like tentacles!

"What messy students!  See how they mistreat their textbooks?!"

Hinata sweatdrops.  "Those aren't our..."

"Destroy them!"

Joey blinks.  "Ok.  You're on, Hinata.  I'm totally winning this if only 'cause I can't wait to shut these things up."

  Matt is attacked by more belts than a Final Fantasy art portfolio!

  Matt's lone inhuman extremity doubles as a sharp object though, so he just slices them away.  "Something something overdue joke."

Timothius says, "We are your book ends." he grabs the one near him and slams it shut before weighing it down with the two books that came before it. "See?"

Hinata does a fancy volleyball move to dodge the book tentacles then follows up with a double-fisted uppercut.

Joey laughs at Timothius joke.  "You're under arrest!  Let's read 'em their rights and throw the book at 'em!"

His book collapses!"

"Three to two."

Hinata grins competitively.

  Joe buckles belts from book A onto the ones from book B.

  "Where were we? Oh right. Time to vandalize the library."

Timothius says, "Why go to the library? The books are coming to us. But I guess it is as good a place to start as any."

No healing is needed, so Timothius just begins heading to the library with the others, if the others head that way.

Sure enough, in the library, the group finds a massive monster book with arms!  It is busy with casting a spell on a large history text.

"So you've found me.  No matter, I shall finish you off myself!"

It slaps it's hands together, making a harmful explosion of sound!  KABOOM!

  Matt is beginning to find this all incredibly silly, if still dangerous.

  He stomps on over and just snaps one of the book's arms clean off.  The severed arm blasts him with it's wand looking thing before going limp.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:12, Thu 13 Oct 2016.

Timothius heads over to the book and says, "You evil books haven't been very open... You only have your shelves to blame for all this. It's time to hit the books!"

The book slaps Timothius. "Bad kitty!" "Ow!"

The powerful thunderclap knocked the other two guys back!

"You fools have no idea wha..."

Hinata leaps into the air then spikes the book into the floor!  It stops moving!

"Three three!  A tie!"

Joey chuckles.  "Alright."

  Matt kicks the book while it's down, because we can't be nice all the time.  Or most of the time. We're pretty sure it's at least a net gain though, usually.

  "So is the moral here that books are bad and we should stick to TV?"

Timothius says, "Don't read too much into it, Matt. Everything can be good or evil. Let's see... 13 books attack us when millions of books have served mankind to great effect; I think we can safely say books are good."

Timothius picks up the book to examine it, getting a pitying expression. "What got them doing this, though? I'd have been happy to help..."

Joey thinks on it.  "Perhaps it is metaphoric of the effort required for learning.  We as students must contend with books in order to rise to greater heights of power.  Since knowledge is power."

Hinata sweatdrops.  "I liked Matt's moral better."

The boss book does not revert to a more mundane looking book.  It keeps all of the original lettering and arm.  The title reads, "I Hate Puns.  The story of an extra-dimentional librarian who went mad and put his mind into a book.  By The Mad Librarian."

  "...Should I be concerned that I find this explanation perfectly sensible?"

Timothius stares at the book. "...let's pick up the books and tell the school librarian about this."

He picks up the boss book and the arm Matt removed. "....come to think of it? I missed my opportunity to tell the book to be quiet since we're in a library."

Hinata shrugs.  "I'm not concerned."

Joey smiles.  "We saved the day!  At the very least, this should earn us extra credit!"

The librarian steps in and blinks in some surprise.  "I thought I locked...  Hello.  How can I help you?"

She stares at the book in bewilderment.

  "Hello. Please do not turn yourself into an evil book, like this librarian apparently did."

Timothius says, "We got attacked by flying books, books with belts for tentacles, and then came here to the library to find this book casting spells with its mechanical arms. Apparently, my puns hurt all the books that were after me."

The librarian reasons, "It was funny because it was true, and the truth hurts?"

Hinata slow blinks.  Joey points at the book.  "Just read the title."

The librarian smiles at Matt.  "No worries.  Becoming a book isn't on my bucket list.  Good work stopping those evil books, all of you!  You should be rewarded!"

  "I'll settle for not having to clean up after the mess"

Timothius asks, "So we really dealt with all of them? There aren't people throughout the school complaining about book attacks?"

"I'll check."  The librarian confirms with the dean that there are no other attacks reported.

"You need to set your expectations higher, Matt," Hinata suggests.

Joey headshakes.  "Sounds realistic to me."

RAWR! CHAPTER II! Second test is GO!

---

And so the next day was a day off from school. The group of buddies who hit the books together are hanging out and on their way to their favorite pizza place when a little remote control car comes driving up to them with no apparent controller in sight...

Joey head-tilts and ear-pirks in curiosity.  "Hello?"

Why would Matt go out for pizza when he can't even eat? SOCIAL INTERACTION! (Also people are more willing to let you sit around without ordering if you still put something in the tip jar).

Just because it's that kind of life they live, Matt peeks down via ponytail of doom to see if there is a tiny driver inside the car.

The little car beeps at the group a few times, rolls back and forth and then drives off.

Hinata says, ".....huh. Cool. I want one."

Timothius says, "That was a nifty little car..."

Upon seeing Joey follow it, Hinata and Timothius decide to follow also.

And it is ok... Matt can still taste pizza.

Joey's looking around for the owner.

"Must have a camera inside for whomever is controlling it.  Or they're well hidden somehow.  Either way, I'm hungry.  So not going to go too out of the way to satisfy my curiosity."

  "Understandable, but I figure it probably didn't drive all the way across town as much because that would be a waste of the drivers time as anything."

  Oh my god this car is so tiny WHY DID I THINK RUSH HOUR WAS A GOOD IDEA!?

A bunch of shopping carts come out from behind parked cars and slowly surround the group as if an approaching gang. Timothius looks around and starts giggling. "This is... interesting."

Hinata says, "Are we about to get attacked by normally inanimate objects again?"

Joey skews his lips.  "Hello.  We were just on our way to grab pizza but this little car had us curious.  So we followed it for a little bit.  So uh..."

  "I swear I will tip you over and leave you out in the rain behind the house that always steals shopping carts if you hassle us."

The carts do not seem to care and RAM everyone! Timothius dodges, but Hinata, Joey and Matt all get a little hurt! Timothius' dodge causes a cart to ruin another cart and get lightly dented itself. It rattles and shakes in annoyance.

Joey grabs one and tosses over at one threatening Matt, destroying the one and damaging the other.

Matt's kick only manages to dislodge the advertisement bumper from the cart that smacked him in the shins, alas.

On the bright side, it didn't last very long thanks to Joey's upper body strength.

Timothius oofs as he gets rammed, but flips the cart upside-down! Its wheels roll for a bit before it just stops moving. "Why are these things after us?! Are we some danger magnet?!"

Hinata tries to hit a cart, but the cart dodges.

   Despite already taking hits and the implied mortality having hitpoints means, Matt opts to break off one of the wheels of a cart closer to Joey than himself.

  "I'd hate to say yes, buuuut... yes?"
This message was last edited by the player at 05:47, Sun 16 Oct 2016.

Joey continues to try fending off shopping carts.

"Maybe we should get that looked into."

Timothius puts a hand on Matt and Matt's bruises almost completely vanish! "Well whatever. Let's just make sure we get through this and then call the police or something."

The cart that was about to go down bumps Hinata to make him fall inside, then wheels off!

  "Well, a police car has been in plain view of this whole thing without reaction. So, not very optimistic about their response."  Joe points to the cop car on the map with one hand, grabs a cart with his headtail, and overhand swings it down in front of the fleeing cart like a goalie net.

  ...Hinata probably got only one more bruise than before, two, tops.

Joey smashes a couple carts in the process of trying to toss one in the way of the one wheeling off with Hinata!  He then runs to try and catch up!
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:11, Sun 16 Oct 2016.

Three cars, including the suspiciously quiet cop car, suddenly turn and ram the group! A hover car approaches and tractor beams Hinata!

Timothius jumps, wing-flaps, and drops onto the car's hood with a literal drop-kick! Hinata kicks at the hover car, doing some damage, but at least he isn't hurt yet.

  Matt similarly leaps towards a vehicle, but for the purposes of landing on it, staying there, and latching himself onto the hovercar.

  "Note to self. uphold previous petty threat to shopping carts."

Joey tumbles over the hood of the car that tried to hit him, deftly opens the car's door, and hops in to try and wrestle with the wheel!

"Keeping your word is a good thing."

Timothius says, "Protect and serve! You call yourself a cop?"

The words seem to be giving the cop car second thoughts.

Hinata takes Joey's example and hops into the nearby car to wrestle it. It wrestles back.

---

Impatient GM is impatient! When the heroes finish with the cars, a giant mecha appears and screams in a nerdy-sounding scream! "You annoying jerks!" he has the stuffed-nose / snort / etc nerd voice. "Just stop resisting already and lemme kidnap Hinata!"
This message was last edited by the player at 06:40, Sun 16 Oct 2016.

What we learned:  80 hp will make a boss last only 3 rounds or so.

Numbers matter a lot.

Need to name things something other than HP, damage, dodge, and so on.  Otherwise the concept of "attacking" with puns will be lost on players.

Swarms of minions take longer to take down than 1 big boss.  Giving enemy 1st go in initiative helps make fights feel more exciting.

Option to kill pieces of giant mecha to reduce the damage it does.

Damage is added up rather than subtracted from a max hp total.  GM decides when enough damage has been done. (Laser edit:  damage adding up would only be of any use on single target/body part bosses. because bleed over damage was made such an important part of your system so far)

DM gives multiple choice flavor options for a "hit" that players can pick from.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:22, Sun 16 Oct 2016.