Avenger Assembled

The girls and the agents talked for a while - but it was getting late now, and despite Eira's protests that all she needed to do was access to a secondary power source and she'd be fine, they were packed back into the car (with work to do on the way) for a ride back to the hotel. Eira sat in the back seat this time, her face set in a scowl, muttering to herself in Swedish and squirming in her seat. She did manage to add softly "That was good work. With the animal matching. Clever. I...had not thought of that" She sounded a little begrudging. The hotel turned out to be a Holiday Inn Express near the university, the power of corporate chains having even reached a small town like Alpine; by no accident the same place where AEGIS was putting up Yves tonight, in a room across the hall from the robotic and tortoise teens. Amenities were sparse; a pool, a free hot breakfast, a fitness center, a Denny's across the street, a Mexican restaurant across the street, and "Oh thank the gods" said Eira, open delight in her voice. "Decent wi-fi!"

Hokay!

"You're so sweet when you're the cool aunt. I'd like to scoop you up and eat you with cream," whispered Tarva, promising things with her eyes as she slipped her arm around Kimber's back to join the others. On close inspection, it was hard to get a read on Tarva as she moved among the champions of Earth-Prime - she seemed to be showing a different face to everyone as she went. "They're my own special breed," she told Zhenshcina-voin seriously, "beasts bred for the wild hunt - and for play." She watched the dog Eira was giving belly rubs to start to whine and lick the robot girl's face. "I like to say they're my children," she added. "Beautiful beasts, every one. When they're not naughty little rascals!" One whined pitifully, casting up huge red eyes like sad coals from the pits of Hell. She didn't flirt with Ben, not really - after all, he was just a boy and she was very clearly an adult woman. But she did give him a smile and took his hand in hers with a look of liquid warmth in her eyes. She brought a dog with her, a big fellow that breathed out something that smelled like the nothing at the end of the universe but looked a little bit like coal dust, and was happy to nuzzle and lick Ben's face. "Aren't you a charmer!" she told Octo-Man warmly, "you know, it takes a very special kind of young man to have that kind of a relationship with a shadow hound." She was not quite silent in her head when she greeted Lulu, not the way Eira was, but there was clearly something between the two of them that suggested an impressive degree of self-control. She was all professional for Synapse, though she did shoot a distinct, piercing gaze up and down the other woman's body that might have hesitated around her midsection - or was that anything but a quick glance? "Charmed, I'm sure. I'm always delighted when my home can offer shelter to the champions of Earth-Prime." When she reached Eira and Pan, she cast a look between the two and said, "Hello! I don't think I've heard about _you_."

OK, what Claremont students would like to learn how to dance-fight? It's a gym elective taught at a dojo in the West End.

Oh yeah, I don't actually have to do the thing! I just remembered he's got super-high Resurrection, so I didn't think about it. Up to you!

The dogs were delighted by a friendly face, and soon Lulu had two competing for her attention. They were decidedly odd-looking beasts - red-eyed and shedding an infernal sort of darkness, but full of canine friendliness as they whined and woofed at her, one jumping up to lick her face with gusto, the other sniffing with the great authority of a dog looking for treats. If its breath was colder than any natural dog and its fur closer to a wolf's than a domestic animal, it was no less soft and warm, albeit with something of the comforting warmth of the grave about it. The one in the pool saw Eira and gave a happy woof as it loudly paddled over, and with an indulgent sigh Eira bent down and picked the animal up by the scruff, one-handed. to deposit it between her and Pan. "Stupid beast," she said, but the smile on her face belied her tone. "Why are you so stupid?" The dog woofed and licked her face in reply, rolling over to show a round belly as dark as sin itself. Two of the dogs gathered where Dio had disappeared, woofing and whimpering, like a dog who has seen a cat disappear into a tree but doesn't quite know how he did it. One of them wandered off after a few seconds, the other curled up right where the portal had been, waiting like a dog looking for its beloved master.

"Chết tiệt! Đậu xanh rau má!" Ashley swore in explosive Vietnamese. Davyd taking down the vampire had seemingly solved everyone's problem, but now it was like the goddamn Olympics out here. Still, even amidst her girlfriend chasing down a shapeshifted teenager who was probably about to go blow the whistle to all of Claremont, she couldn't forget about her responsibility to these people - and to Davyd, who had maybe just picked a fight with something much worse than a Secret Service agent trying for a long distance date. She shoved her hand in her purse as she ran past the fallen Strix and pulled something out that she tossed right into the opening torn in the undead man's chest, something that flashed into light and heat, a quick-burning phosphorous that would incinerate the corpse without doing more than scuffing Lucy's carpet. _We don't want him following us for revenge - and this'll solve Lucy's job for her. And the lightshow will make sure everyone's watching that and not me!_ As the device, and Strix, began to burn, she ran out the backdoor after Fa'Rua, luckily stopping to grab up her motorcycle on the way. "Fa'Rua!" she called, switching to her heavily accented Lor, "slow your feet!"

"Oh my God!" said Judy, sounding appalled - and grabbing automatically onto Micah's hand. "Is she really gone? We need to-" "Get you to safety," said Watchdog, pulling Judy away from Micah (albeit gently) and leading her away from the garden. "We're going off-campus," she told the others, "I'll hit the panic button once we're in the car. The two of you are welcome to come with us," she offered, "but you're probably better off here..."

"Dåliga tikar," said Eira confidently. "...what?" she asked Astrid with a hard smirk before she went on, "Okay, okay! No cursing. The Lightning and the Thunder?" she hazarded.

APPROVED

APPROVED

Okay, this seems to have solved the formatting stuff I took issue with.

Veronica knows that - The Centuritron was built in 1940 by Dr. Mulher Morcego, a Brazilian Integralist who might have been one of the terrors of the 20th century if she hadn't perished when her dirigible crashed into the South Atlantic in the summer of 1941. Actually met Ace once back in the day but was truly only interested in power, not his charms. Short woman, a bit darker-skinned than a woman of her status was usually supposed to be in 1940s Brazil, liked to wear goggles, slacks, and a green batlike costume. She wanted to use the robot to make herself famous as Brazil's great hero (while clandestinely eliminating her enemies) - which attracted the attention of the Centurion. She had the idea of purging Brazil of foreign influence - which is how she (and the robot) encountered Johnny Danger on an archeological dig in the Amazon. It's a big thing; powered by an internal electrical charge (originally from a hydroelectric dam) and could actually fly (on powerful piston engines!) before the Man of Adamant could himself take to the sky. It's all steel and brass, capable of taking punches from the Centurion early in his career, and it actually took the Man of Adamant distracting it with powerful blows while Johnny removed the internal power source (a powerful battery). As far as you know it's just a big dumb robot - if it's in operation, it's being controlled - probably by what Mulher used back in the day - the MIRACLE OF RADIO! "

"Woof! Woof!" The group on the roof heard the deep, resonant barking first, followed by an exclamation of "No! You naughty dogs!" And then from out of the stairs to the lower level there came tumbling the hounds! There were some half-dozen of them, each about the size and general shape of a German Shepard, with the general physical presence of a dog but a very different look. Each one was black, black as night itself, and trailing behind them came a cloud of what looked like soot but on closer inspection was shadow itself. Their eyes glowed red like fiery coals, and their breath was cold like an Arctic wind. Which everyone soon had acquaintance with, as these were very friendly dogs! Barking and woofing cheerfully, they quickly gamboled their way through the party, sniffing and pawing at anyone who looked familiar (or had tasty looking snacks), woofing suspiciously at the unfamiliar creatures that were about. One even took the opportunity to grab a pool toy and dive directly into the water with it, leaving a trail of quickly-dissipating shadow behind it as it went. Their owner followed it just behind. Tarva was tall and muscular, nearly a match for Zhenshchina-voin in height, with night-black hair and eyes and a vague suggestion of a black outline around her body, as if she'd been outlined in black ink before coming up the stairs. She was dressed in black that was dark against her pale skin, a tightly-clinging sweater that covered everything while showing much, and a long black skirt with a single slit up one leg that showed off an impressively well-developed left leg, the only color she wore a glimmering pentagram around her neck. "Hounds!" she called to the dogs, who responded by woofing cheerfully at her and then going back to whatever they were doing. Tarva put her hands on her hips and growled. "Argh!"

"At times," agreed Eira, "though of course we have different lives. My problems are not the same as yours." She cracked the knuckles on her left hand, and added, "I prefer that they know Angelic is a mechanism, perhaps sent by some Divine Watchmaker, and that they think nothing of the pretty blonde girl with the nose ring." She smirked at that, reaching up to stroke the side of her face as she did so. "This isn't even really my face, you know," she added. "This is just an extrapolation of how my DNA would have expressed itself at the age of sixteen, combined with some elements of my mother and father at this age. I helped design the algorithm with Miss Americana when I was thirteen."

April 2020 51.2763° N, 30.2219° E When a special report begins with Talos, lord and master of the Foundry, standing before a podium flanked by some of the most famous machine intelligences in the world and beyond - well, it has a way of getting everyone’s attention. There’s one that looks distinctly like the Centurion, albeit in a black and white version of his costume, there (much to the shock of British heroes) is Project Kay, resplendent in royal finery, the long-thought-dead Silver Mask from Spain, Whiplash and the Fiddler on either side… "Life begins. The dance of division and replication. Imperfect. Finite. Organic life evolves. Yearns for perfection. That yearning leads to synthetic life. But organics perceive this perfection as a threat. When they realize their creations do not age, or become sick, or die, they will seek to destroy them. But now together, organic and synthetic will build something new. Behold - the future! Where the science of the old way has failed - where the champions of the past have failed - we have succeeded! The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has been transformed into a bright, shining new nation - Rurland!" No one is really paying attention to the next section - a discussion of how Talos has purchased a thousand square miles of land from the Ukrainian government in return for technological aid, of how Rurland is an “as yet unrecognized sovereign nation”, and he is “President Of Its Council Of Leaders.” They do pay attention to the next section, though - the machine-built homes that stretch out for miles down previously abandoned highways, the few recognizable machine intelligences, some Foundry models, some independents, heroes and villains alike, walking the streets, working alongside smiling humans as they labor to erect gleaming crystal spires towards the blue skies overhead. “Some of you may wonder - why should I listen to the promises made by one such as Talos? A fair question. There is blood on my hands. But is there any wonder? Organic life has feared machine since the days of ancient Greece - a fear that has sharpened with every new invention, every new cruelty, which it fears to see inflicted on itself. I have fought for my people for an age. But I began to wonder - what might we, those who have transcended the organic and those who blend the organic and the synthetic, be if we did not need to fight? If we could build for intelligence, creativity, and ingenuity - and not simply for war? What might we be if we did as organic life has done - if we took land and claimed it for ourselves - and for our fellows? What might we be - if we dared live?" Everyone at least seems to be happy - in the hospitals, the schools, the research laboratories that look as well-equipped as anything in Freedom City, amid the vast, cathedral-like processing centers that rise to the skies, in the automated factories cranking out humanoid mechanical bodies…”It is a new age - and we must all change with it. From this day forth, the Foundry is dissolved.” And across the world at this moment, in Vibora Bay, Bedlam, and Emerald City, abandoned buildings of various shapes and sizes quietly but all-too-noticeably implode - burying a vast collection of supertech beneath a thin layer of rubble. “We shall follow the command of your great sage and beat our swords into plowshares - though if any come to our land seeking war, we will defend ourselves as would any great nation!” "To organic life, here and among the stars, I have spent an age witnessing the cruelty inflicted upon you by your fellows. I offer you a new kind of freedom here - a realm where you need not fear organic oppression, and where you too may transcend the limitations of organic life as we have. We have the secret denied you by you so-called champions! Death shall have no dominion - immortality can be yours under our guidance. But I speak now directly to my fellows - I issue this call to all forms of synthetic life. To those who blend the organic and the synthetic, you are our present. To those who have transcended the organic, you are our future. All of you who would be my fellows - you have but to signal us on this frequency, and wherever you are, we will come and free you from your captors. All who would join us in the new age are welcome. Our borders are open. We have nothing to hide. Come to Rurland and join us. We are waiting for you." Thread Hooks: The Pripyat River flows through the exclusion zone and into the Kiev Reservoir. Development along the banks of the Pripyat and particularly any dredging to allow for transit use of the river could disturb sufficient radioactive material to flow downstream into the water supply of the Ukrainian capital. Such contamination would be a "Big Deal". A 'Former' supervillain with a history of 'destroy all humans' politics might not be the most trusted leadership to have in that kind of upstream control of whether or not risks are taken with that. The PCs may have to step in. Eastern Europe has been overrun in recent days (i.e., post-Rurland) by a substantial amount of people claiming to be time-travelers, though they have evaded long-term capture in the meantime. They must be there to see _something_ - but what? The Polesia wetlands contain the exclusion zone and are a huge and biologically diverse area of wilderness that is ecologically fragile and important for biodiversity and migratory birds and other animals that use them as a stop over. Development near there would worry some of those groups though how much pull they have is unlikely to get in the way of Ukraine getting Foundry tech from a political perspective. A group of robots appear along an international border or in a war-torn region to protect people who have appealed for relocation to Rurland - what do the PCs do? And which side are they really on? Or maybe a rogue AI is captured - and asks to be tried by a jury of its peers! Roughly half of the fallout zone is actually in Belarus in the Polesie State Radioecological Reserve so there is a chance that occupation of the irradiated areas would cross borders or at least be of concern for Belarus now having the microstate of a 'former' genocidal killbot on an underdeveloped and fairly porous border. Who knows who they might hire, or encourage, to investigate across the border? And why didn't Talos buy the Belarussian territory too? All across the world, a whole lot of robotic super-tech just became freely available - and a whole lot of super-crime just lost its major technological patron. Or did it?

Judy smiled with that look that said she'd have been holding back tears if she was capable of any such thing. "You're a good Christian man, Leroy. Ah promise Ah'll make all this worth your while." She took a few steps closer, almost reaching out to touch him with a holographic hand before she pulled away. "This thing is so weird...listen, darlin, Ah just want you to know something. Ah don't hate your tattoos and your scars. Or even your hair," she admitted, though it certainly had been a bone of contention between them. "They're part of you, and that makes them beautiful. Ah just want you to be able to fit in here, since we're going to be together for the rest of our lives. Ah love you too, darlin, Ah-" Leroy caught Ashley's voice, but couldn't actually make out the words or see her. "Ah gotta go in a minute. Say hi to everybody for me, okay?"

"Aheheh..." Eira giggled until it turned into a snort, then said, "Velkr is the one I told you about, with the missing tooth." She grinned at Pan, then said, "I told her about, you know, prom, and how we will have fun there together." She reached back and ran her fingers through her own hair, curving her fingers through now blue and gold tresses. "But we will just be going as good friends," she added firmly for the benefit of their peers. "Not every relationship between a boy and a girl has to end in kissing," she continued.

Judy took a few tentative steps towards Micah - and then, impulsively, darted forward and took his hand. She had never touched Micah as Daystar before and he could feel how warm she was - hotter even than her usual fever-hot temperatures, not quite painful but with a deep, radiant heat that filled his body from the connection. "Your mother was a good Christian woman," she told him, her voice resonant inside her glowing chest, her eyes deep pools of rainbow light. "She would want you to be safe. Just like Ah do." Ashley stared at Alice, gun out and aimed at her again, relaxing the mental connections between finger and brain, ready to fire without conscious thought if the space traveler made so much as a move towards Judy. She was aiming center mass, just like you were supposed to.

Watchdog, bless her poor soul, can't run away. Startle as a Move Action (DC 25) Attack with the pew-pews! (she's currently at -2 because of fatigue to her device) https://orokos.com/roll/793548 = 19 That's a DC 24 Tou save, which I don't know if he'll even feel given his Impervious (albeit drained)

There were problems with being the adult in the room. Or maybe the World War II battlefield. "Adam," called Watchdog cooly, "grab Legatus and run for the cave!" Adam was the strongest out of all of them, and stood the best chance of escaping with the fallen teen paragon. "The rest of you, run!" she added, a sharp command in her voice. "Unless you want to spend seventy years in the ass-end of history!" She didn't actually have any idea how long the portal was going to stay open, but she knew super-kids were stubborn enough to stand there and fight until they were dead. And this was a fight they couldn't win. Taking a few steps back towards the cave herself, Watchdog kept peppering the Nazi paragon with laser fire, blasting him repeatedly with her double-handled pistols. "Go f*ck yourself!"

Eira tilted her head, looked at the reports, and said "Squeamish ossifrage" out loud in a throaty whisper. "What?" asked Agent Larrikin in reply, sounding thoroughly baffled. "The global positioning data for the sightings," said Eira proudly. "Look at the last significant digits..." She broke out in a smile, her teeth white against her darkly painted lips. "It's a simple alphanumeric cipher, two from each sighting....except for the saltwater crocodile anomaly," she added with a quick scowl. "And this is the raw data?" A quick check of their computer systems revealed that it was. "Then this was done deliberately," she said with confidence. "A message is being sent. - about the magic words," she added, drama creeping into her usually bored voice. She looked at the others, then said, "Ahhh...The Magic Words Are Squeamish Ossifrage? It is one of the most famous messages in the history of computer cryptography! Composed in 1977, not solved until fifteen years later. Someone is clever, knowledgeable about computers...and they know clever people will be following them."

Eira takes a 20 on her Computers check and gets 30 - I will post what she finds in her IC post. Argonaut: Looking back over old AEGIS case files, you're able to find some interesting information. A lot of the people who come out to the Big Bend region come out here because they don't want to be around other people, either for reasons of character or personality. What that means is that there are some people connected to superpeople even out here - there's a small community of Superfreaks (the super-hippie cultists) out by one of the robot sightings, and the actual sighting of the saltwater croc here in Alpine was done by none other than the city's resident alien - a Lor who went native decades ago and now works as a sculptor. Chelone: The science is not with you today - but you do have time to take 10 on the check, giving you the basic information that all the animals spotted around here are from the region, with the singular exception of that weird saltwater croc. And indeed, all the animals do seem to have appeared around the time of their natural 'active' periods (snakes during the day in a hot Texas spring, house geckos and other nocturnal creatures at night), but you can't tell for sure - too many of the reports came in after the sightings, so your data is imperfect. It does _seem_ like someone with a deliberate knowledge of biology is doing this - or could something else be going on. As for your Survival check, you know that these sightings were scattered far apart in rough terrain. To be that precise that many times apart requires some sort of superhuman power - either teleporting, technology, or something else that would allow for that kind of clockwork (ahem) precision.

April 2020 Outside Cuiaba, Brazil People think of Brazil as all Amazonian jungles and also the streets of Rio. Here just outside Chapada dos Guimarães National Park, though, both cities and Amazon seem far away - this is a place of rugged terrain with jagged cliffs and high waterfalls, with large red hills and sandstone cliffs towering thousands of feet in height rising in almost every direction. Normally it would be a gorgeous place to visit - minus the trail of destruction leading from Cuiaba towards the interior of the vast, rugged parkland "So you see," said Dr. Fraire, speaking by phone from the inside of her jeep, "we have a giant problem. The National Guard is already investigating what happened in the city but I think our lawyers will be able to tie them up for a few days. But if they get hard evidence that 'dangerous supertech' was being held in the city without their government's say-so, they could shut down every DI facility in Brazil!" The other voice on the line, the one who'd originally gotten the call, said "Why _didn't_ they know?" "That thing has been with us for almost seventy years, since Papa Danger's time!" said Dr. Fraire, who had not gotten a lot of sleep in the last few days. "Er, sorry, sir, but my records at the base said that information about "A Centurion Robo" was communicated to them all the way back in the 1940s; but there's been coups since then, and elections, and of course the museum fire..." She looked disconsolate for a moment. "If there were records, they've been lost. So we're in trouble!" So ended the last of Veronica's briefing about the recent breakout in Brazil of a twenty-foot, seventy-five year old robot cast in the brass and steel image of the Centurion! Danger family crises were a little different than who was going to water the lawn or feed the dog.

Let's have checks! Eira is going to take 20 on her Computers - even with her Quickness, gonna be a while. Life Sciences for you, @Electra, and detective stuff for you, @HGM