Avenger Assembled

"My interest in discussing my secret off-campus girlfriend with you is not very high, Dave," said Ashley frankly. Then she smiled tightly at the kid and said, "But I think that solves it. You know some things about keeping secrets, I know some things about keeping secrets...and that, as they say, is that." She made an elaborate show of dusting her hands off, then carefully rose to her feet, perching on the edge of the thick branch. She looked down, seemed to contemplate her chances, and suddenly leaped - making a perfect three-point landing on the ground below without so much as a stumble. Davyd distinctly heard her say, "Hah, still got it!" before she headed off.

Okay, what skills are you using for your investigation? Roll em once you know!

Eira opened her eyes and looked at Dreadnaught - a flat, unfocused gaze that for a moment seemed to be looking right through him. "I am fine," she whispered throatily, disengaging herself from the cockpit's rear control panel with a faint hiss. She looked the part-time Freedom Leaguer over, up and down, before she walked back to Synapse's position. "The welcoming party is ready for us at the airfield. Kay is with them. The pilot estimates a landing in 20 minutes." Her speech was clearly articulated as she spoke to Lady Farrington, her slight Swedish accent thicker than ever. She folded her hands behind her back and walked back down the plane's central corridor, not looking up as the bad Spanish of the pilot came on the speakers to tell the passengers much of what she had just told Synapse. The only sign of any inner emotion was the way she cracked her knuckles, chuck-chuck-chuck, as she walked without actually looking at the families of refugees now eagerly peering out the windows. The weather was warm and sunny, the sky blue, Rurland a half-built silvery network approaching fast, for those who peered out the sides, a strange imposition amid fields and forests. Those with superhuman senses might hear a fascinating radio bubble as they approached, a storm of rapid transmissions like the patter of rain, a volume that was vigorous but not necessarily unpleasant. When she found Mette, she looked the older woman over and said softly, "We just need a Norwegian now, hmm?" Her Swedish was posh, there was no other word for it - if she was dressed like someone at a free outdoor concert, her Lidingö accent sounded like someone who owned the venue and half the town besides.

June 1, 2020 There had been much negotiation about how Vanguard would arrive in Rurland. Air travel to the new nation was heavily restricted, particularly in the wake of the single Russian military intelligence drone flight over the region (which had resulted in the addition of nearly a hundred pounds of machine parts for the new nation.) But the big teleporters built into Poliske's old administrative building, the ones that the intrepid journalists had used for their visit to what Americans in the know mockingly called "the Reservation", those had their downsides too - nobody was particularly interested in having their molecules broken down and reconstituted by machines built and controlled by Talos. So instead a compromise arrangement had been reached, and Vanguard (plus their guest member) had flown in from London on a surplus passenger plane loaded with human refugees taking shelter in the arms of Talos - mostly Venezuelans who were on the second leg of a flight from Bogota, needed technical specialists with families and children. They'd been flying over Belarus for an hour now and were approaching the former exclusion zone, and the heavily jet-lagged refugees aboard were waking up and nervous. They were a mixed bunch, mostly in surplus clothes, wary of the foreign heroes, and from the sound of things ready for where they were going - at least emotionally. Eira had not socialized, at least once it was clear no one on board required her immediate assistance. Up front in the pilot's compartment, she'd connected directly to the plane's computer network by means of a curling dataspike from the bottom of her sleeve and remained largely quiet during the flight from London. Dressed in a bulky brown sweater and worn-down jeans, she was a bit overdressed for a Ukranian summer - but with her hair dyed black, could have blended in almost perfectly with the refugee crowd.

Doktor'd! Angelic 4PP Skills: 3PP Perform (Dance) 8 (+8) Sense Motive 4 ranks Powers 1 PP Add the Subtle PF to her Flight

"Oh honey, Ah can forgive you anything when you dance like _that_."Ashley didn't do more than roll her eyes as Judy lip up at Leroy's kiss, embracing him quickly before she moved out with him to reunite with Kam and his date. "But honey, you told me-" She glanced at Leroy, then at Robin, then at Ashley, then took Leroy's hand before she said, "Ah think you owe _me_ a dance, honey," she said to Leroy, pulling him back onto the dancefloor with a grip that was inexorable despite the way Leroy easily outweighed her. - With her hand firmly gripping Pan's (perhaps a bit too tightly for comfort!), Eira took advantage of the distraction caused by Leroy's spectacular debut to slip into the crowd and away from Casanova and Toxin. Once they were through she released Pan's hand and looked around, her eyes wide. "...we need to blend in," she said suddenly, "the Charleston!" She began to dance a passable Charleston, in time with Pan if not quite up to his level - and suddenly leaped up and with just a faint ripple in the air around her began dancing right up the walls of the speakeasy. She grinned, her hair not so much as out of place as she hit an angle parallel to the floor, and kept moving as she cocked her head towards the punch bowl. A few people were applauding, and other people were trying out mixing powers with their dancing - quite a show was shaping up out there!

Angelic signaled her receipt of Salvo's message with a short binary beep, then returned to her labors. "Will need access to your civilization's information network. Hard-ported." With the fiber optic coils held tight in her fist, she began wrapping them around the table in the room, letting out just enough so that she could keep the cable taunt everywhere she wrapped it like the beginnings of a field coil. She looked from Salvo to Miss Grue, then from Xiaolin to her pile of collected parts, then put her hand to her chin and closed her eyes for a long, perceptible moment. When she opened them, she was smirking, but said nothing as she went back to work - at least until she asked, "What would your mother make of us?"

Eira shot a look at the weeping android girl - and then looked back at her work. She took the length of fiber optic cable she'd pulled and wrapped it around her left hand, tight, her long fingers pale, then set to work with her other hand with some of her salvaged gear. As she worked, she said out loud a word in an obscure dialect of Galstandard that nobody used anymore but that Sharl Tulink had taught to his pupil and his adopted niece. In English, adopted for the standard scientific scale, it would have meant - 300 Megahertz. Once they'd matched frequencies, Eira began transmitting staring at her work all the while. They can hear us. Protocol?

"Hmm..." Judy looked around again, her frown deepening. "He gave his word to me, though, and Leroy is very good about keeping his word. Unless something came up." She sighed, something she seemed to be able to do without a deep inhalation, and gave her friends by the punch bowl a beauty-queen smile. Kam and Elizabeth had both seen that look before - it meant something was up. "Ah'll go see if he's outside waiting for us, or something. Nice to see you, Robin! Ah love your arm, that silver is gorgeous." Her compliment was sincere; whatever she knew about Robin, it wasn't how she'd gotten the arm. With that she turned and headed away, tracing a faint glow behind her as she went, followed by Ashley - who had dressed for the occasion too, in a pinstripe suit and fedora that looked straight off the set of Guys and Dolls. - Eira didn't stop to say much to Micah or Astrid, though she did shoot the other girl a quick, tight-lipped smile as she slipped her arm inside Pan's. She was warm against him, her generators turned up, but didn't seem to mind. Once they were outside, she whispered throatily, "I have the projectors and the drones, as well as the - other agents." As they joined the small line of students heading inside the building, she looked him up and down and commented, "Silver, red, and green. We are ready for Christmas." She giggled, then smiled quickly at him. "That looks good on you." Somebody hit them from behind - not a deliberate blow, but a bump firm enough to get their attention without actually getting the chaperones looking at them. "Well well well, if it isn't Peter Pan and Robot Girl." Debonair in a blue suit that matched his dark complexion, Sebastian Shields might have been handsome, if not for the edge to his smile - and might have been likable, if he treated other people as being worth his time. Eira had found out about him from her observations of other girls - and by reading social media. "I'm surprised you would show your face around here, Katastroff." "Well you know, if I need to use the toilet, I'll make sure to let you know," Eira sneered at him. That made Sebastian snarl, before his date put a hand on his arm. Charlene Hart wasn't in a period outfit, other than the hat perched on her protective suit's helmet. Neither Eira nor Pan knew Charlene very well. Toxin, who wore a full-body suit at all times to avoid poisoning people from her toxic aura, didn't socialize much. "They're not worth it," she told Sebastian, her voice slightly muffled by her costume.

The road wasn't an easy one - after all, it wasn't a road at all. But Veronica kept her bike on the path, avoiding any need for transportation by Legatus. Which turned out to be a good thing! They'd gone perhaps a half-hour's bike ride into the hills when they found another track of the great robot, this one a deep pair, as if the great mechanical man had come down like a meteor strike. But now there were footfalls along the way too, a path leading them deeper into the woods - and finally, to their target. The Centuritron sat atop and among what looked like a recent landslide down the side of a larger hill, grey stone and torn-up plants scattered freely and about its massive shoulders. With its legs folded up out front, its arms high at its sides, the overall effect was as if it had come across this spot of land and stopped to rest. (But that was surely impossible for a non-sentient robot?) It looked rather like the Lincoln Memorial - if Lincoln had been a giant mechanical man of brass and steel, and if its throne had been carved from rock and debris. There was little suggestion of the Centurion about it now - except for the great golden breastplate around its midsection, and the distinct, ragged cape that lay wrapped around its shoulders like a shroud.

Danica - as you bed down that night, you'll be able to realize that wait, you know where the girl is staying around here - we passed the America's Best Value Inn where she started her first recording on the way into town! @HGM, roll 'em if you got 'em!

"We should look into that tomorrow," agreed Eira. "I do not like hero-chasers, they make life difficult. Her gear was too good for some random Youtuber with a Patreon. If she knows something about the crocodile....I think you are right again, Danica." It wasn't _exactly_ a begrudging admission. With no more immediate clues to be had, and a mystery to keep wrestling with, the group headed back to the hotel. The girls had been booked in a room with two queen beds, and Eira was happy to give Danica access to both as she set herself up in the room's office chair. "I will be sitting here, all night." She turned and placed her hands on the desk and a silvery cord snaked out from under her arm, burying itself in the wall outlet not being used by the coffeemaker with a distinct snik. "I am not asleep but you can talk or make noise." And with that, she closed her eyes.

Angelic Eira looked Mia up and down, a serious expression on her face. She was less pierced than Mia had ever seen her, with only long silver earrings (tipped by cubic zirconia) in her ears as her only facial jewelry. Her hands were folded behind her back but she was visibly bouncing on her short heels, a nervous energy in her pale blue eyes as she evaluated Mia, putting her gloved hands on the other girl's arms with a firm grip. "Good. Everything fits." She smiled at Mia, pewter lips over white teeth. "You will do well." She grinned, then cocked her head briefly, seeming to look at nothing in particular. "Adam and Pan are here." She swallowed, then turned back to her desk. There she found a necklace, silver and long, with a simple hydrogen atom as its symbol. It hung low on her chest as she looked at herself in the mirror - then she headed straight for the door. She opened the door, looked at Pan, and her eyes widened. "Hello," she said in a throaty whisper, her accent distinctly thicker as she offered her hand to him. "I think we have a...'date'?" she asked, a smile on her face. - "Hi Kam, Hi Liz," said a voice from nearby. Judy Smith's blue dress was daring by her lights, clinging to her curves like a silent film star even as it reached from her neck to the floor. "You must be Robin," she said with a cheerful smile for Kam's date. "Howdy, Ah'm Judy Smith." She frowned, looking around the room. "Isn't this great?...Have y'all seen Leroy? He said he was going to meet me here but Ah haven't seen hide nor hair of him. Ashley and I even went out to look on the fake street outside." Sure enough, he appeared to have disappeared from the spot on the floor where they'd spotted him earlier, disappearing into a small group of jitterbuggers.

Eira has opinions about meat and murder (she is opposed to both). Judy has opinions about food and can look at it without being too sad now.

Eira dropped to the floor with a distinct boom, making a three-point landing. She still held cables from inside the screen in her hand, having pulled loose what felt like a substantial amount of fiber optic cabling before Xiaolin's arrival. "You should not advertise your cybernetic nature so baldly before strangers," she told the other girl in a hiss as she began working on her salvaged components. "It is imprudent."

One of Eira's friends from school would have gotten at best "I am fine, don't worry about it" and at worst "Mind your own business." Dragonfly, Ghost Girl, or Miss Americana would have gotten a full confession - Citizen most likely a wordless hug. What Erik got was a soft but firm "I do not need help like that. I am not -" She didn't finish - but she did open the bathroom door. A normal teenage girl would have been fighting back tears, or had let them free - but Dragonfly's little marvel hadn't been normal in any time since Mara had first brought her over to meet VINCE. She'd folded her wings back inside her torso, and changed her pretty flapper dress into a more sensible black tanktop and shorts. She looked at Erik with pale blue eyes and asked, pain curdling around the edges of her voice. "Why is it so easy for - you?"

"Oh, I'd use something tougher than a sharpened stick for that, buddy, let me tell you. As for my sister, Judy has enough to deal with. She's got senior year, college, Leroy..." Ashley sighed softly, almost imperceptibly. "The last thing she needs to worry about is me and who I'm dating." She smiled thinly at Davyd and said, "I am out to her, if that's what you're wondering. I'm the one who got her involved in the Claremont GSA back when we first started, even." She looked off into space, hand under her chin. "Judy is...someone who has seen a lot of things fall apart in her life. Her faith is the only thing that's held her together." She shrugged, then added, "Farua's not a cop, by the way. She works in, ah, development."

"Good. Pretty sure you've already gotten the shapeshifter ethics class or whatever, so I'll just say you were right." She sighted down the sharpened stick thoughtfully, then trimmed off some of the edges. "Be yourself, and that's who people will want to be with. Girls or otherwise. That's going to be a lot sweeter than anything you get all, you know, dolled up." When she was done, she looked down at the wood in her hands thoughtfully before she tossed it to Davyd. "Catch!" She pointed with her knife and said, "Tree's blessed. Lot of magic people on campus, going way back." She smiled fiercely. "Might need it if you run into any more vampires."

Ashley's mouth curled in a smile. "Smart boy." With the bark off, she began whittling the limb she held down to a point. "So how about you?" she asked. "If that girl at the club, back before everything blew up, if she had liked what you were laying down, if she'd invited you back to her place, what was the next step?"

"I'm fine," said Ashley, which was true enough. "I've had some run-ins with Summers, but I can handle what she puts down." She was less sure of that, and took the opportunity to break off a small branch and begin stripping off the leaves, the wood making a faint but distinct crack. "I like girls," she said with a shrug. "Don't think I've ever hidden that." Well that was true enough too, even if it wasn't in quite the way Davyd would have thought. She cracked open a pocketknife and began stripping off the bark.

Ashley looked at the tree and with a deep sigh climbed up it. It was by no means the first time she had climbed this particular tree but it had been over a decade. So she took her time, feet finding each branch with surety, testing her weight as she went. Up inside the tree's branches, she found a big fat branch that let her look at Davyd without being within arm's reach. There weren't many leaves on the trees at this time of year but that suited her just fine, the branches wrapped around them both like the bony fingers of a wooden fist. Once up in the tree, she gave the boy a questioning look and faint shrug.

Done. - Fox So it turns out having the world get turned upside down and fall on you is a lot of work! Sorry about that. GM and Ref points to Angelic or Watchdog, depending on who needs it more [Ref point to Sea Devil, after discussion. - Fox] Angelic: Strange Like Me New to Freedom Nordic Training Day Intergalactic Sightseeing Spring Break Phone a Friend Wait till the World is Mine The Eagle Flies Alone Watchdog: Cosmic Love Meanwhile Survival Class GMing Tropical Hideaway

All right, let's do this - Give me Notice checks - and then Computers/Current Events/Streetwise checks, depending on what's on your sheets.

Still waiting, @endwaar

Eira grumbled a bit but helped both Danica and Yves find Zuumer420's channel on Youtube and other streaming services, obviously impatient to get them there as quickly as possible. Zuumer420 turned out to be a pretty girl of indeterminate race, her skin a few shades lighter than her braided brown hair, her blue eyes wide and ingenous as she spoke with brightly painted lips. Something looked a little off about her bodily proportions; not quite inhuman but looking as if she'd had a substantial amount of plastic surgery, especially given her habit of filming herself while running. It was hard to make any immediate conclusions about who she was from her narrations, perky talk about "Zuuming" all over the country to see the sights "and be seen!" (the perkiness seemed to be what annoyed Eira more than any of her talk about her reddittors or her refrain of "remember to like and subscribe, Zuumers!") It was hard to tell where she was from, her voice the sort of breathy "late-teen-early-twenties" voice that could have belonged to any other streamer. It was hard to tell how she was making money short of the usual monetization and merch usual to people in her profession. She seemed to be something of a hero chaser, from her video titles talking about Emerald City, Freedom City, Vibora Bay, and other hotspots of heroic activity in the United States. Pablo came by with their orders to find them all watching on their devices except Eira; a good waiter, he left their food with just a few questions if there was anything else. Eira gave him a _look_, but returned to her watching when he was gone. "Tomorrow morning," Eira suggested in a breathy whisper as she stared off into space, "we need to find that crocodile."