I have ini.
I play my characters and then when my opponent plays his he lays puppetmaster and upon laying him he activates him to make my character useless.
seems that activating a character would be "attacking" for lack of a better term and since I have the initiative that is taken from me.
How does the timing of activating work?
If he uses Puppetmaster and I decide to exhaust Shocker can I activate him and have him exhaust puppetmaster?
Are we both exhausted at that point? If my exhaustion goes on the chain first would he exhaust first but then he could activate before exhaustion anyway and my guy would be exhausted anyway.
UGH
Thanks for the help.

Players may play effects whenever they have priority.

That includes using activated powers.

However, before the generated effect can resolve, the opposing player receives priority giving him a chance to play effects of his own.

What you cannot do is interfere with a player's decision to play an effect since you do not have priority.

In your situation, Puppet Master is already exhausted and his effect is on the chain by the time you get a chance to respond.

Using a payment power is not attacking. You can use a payment power anytime you have priority and there are no other restrictions. Activated powers are a subset of payment powers and follow the same rules.

No, when your opponant announce an effect he must fully play the effect including paying all cost. Exhasuting PM is part of his cost. By the time you recieve priority to play Shockers power, PM is already exhasuted. In short, you can not stop someone from paying a cost if they are legally allowed to play the effect.

In both cases you would still have to exhaust a ready character you control if you still had one. Puppet master targets the player, not a specific charcter.

You can exhaust a character to activate their ability whenever you want as long as you meet the time stamp. As long as the card doen't say something like "do this only during your attack step" you are free to activate whenever you want. I'm not 100% familiar with eiter card but you can respond with an exhaustion attempt of your own.

It seems to me that the rule of first in last out would imply that since your effect went on the chain second it would resolve first there by making them have to ehaust a character before they can pay their cost thereby having no way to pay the cost of triggering the effect.

Costs don't use the chain. Nor do you announce an intention to pay a cost.

They are paid immediately, with no passing of priority.

EFFECTS are completely the opposite, however.

This is not true. You can only activate a character to put an effect on the chain when you have priority. You cannot do it at any time. If the player with priority activates Puppet Master, PM's effect goes on the chain. Then the player with priority can keep playing more effects and add them onto the chain until he decides he wants to pass priority to the other player. Now, it is important to note that none of the effects that he has played (including Puppet's ability) have resolved when he passes to the other player, so now the other player can play effects that negate the first players effects and so on.

Once the primary player exhausts Puppet Master he has paid the cost of using Puppet Master's effect. This cannot be taken back. The effect is on the chain. The only thing that can be done by the other player when he gains priority is that he can play an effect that negates Puppet's effect.

By the time the player with Shocker gets priority Puppet is already exhausted to pay for his effect. Using Shocker's effect will do nothing to stop Puppet from activating.