Avenger Assembled

"Hm." Eira smiled tentatively, her teeth model-white behind her darkly-painted lips. "I can do tricks." She sat back and began running her thumb over what looked like a scar across the knuckles of her right hand; one that on closer inspection had a 'twin' on the other side of her hand. "I will play music frequently. I will play it so you cannot hear it if you prefer," she said frankly. "There is something you need to see." She rose to her feet, made a gesture with her left hand, and changed. There was no other way to describe it. Clothing remained but flesh and hair seemed to fade away in a rippling surge of electricity, revealing a body that was neither feminine nor masculine, its skin a polished chrome so bright that Lulu could see herself reflected therein, its eyes white and blank as they stared at Lulu. "You will see me like this sometimes." She stood in a little pose like a model, showing the way jointed mechanical flesh moved beneath artificial skin and muscle. When she spoke without her disguise, her voice was throaty and deeper than its 'natural' sound - almost a different girl.

Same same Woodsman.

"Bomb," opined Woodsman from behind Sagrado Corazon, having directed the police boat that way while picking up survivors. "Look at the-" He was about to explain when suddenly the terrorists attacking the bay sent the message for them. He stood on the deck of the police boat and flinched, just a little bit, as the Coast Guard ship exploded. He gripped the railing and let a litany of curses play through his head in the second or two it took him to realize how they'd all been suckered by the mass-murderer on the radio. "What the hell is cryptocash?" he muttered audibly, realizing too late that perhaps it was one of the many Earth-Prime things he still hadn't quite figured out.

"Fool!" bellowed the Harbinger. "It is _I_ you should fear!" He raised his limbs to the air and made an eldritch bellow, one that tore through the water around them like a sonic shriek, the shape of an arcane rune seeming to ripple around him in the water for a moment before it faded. The Atlanteans clapped their hands to their ears and cried out in pain, Theodora suddenly convulsing and falling still beneath her brother's ministrations. "_I_ am Dagon's champion. and with my new bride at my side," Aquaria gave a bellow of outraged fury at this, but seemed to go unheard, "this ocean _will_ be ours!" Dalekos's submarine was wobbling now behind them in the water; it was unclear if the crew had been affected the dark powers of the Far Tide, or if they simply couldn't get a clear shot with their commander and allies in the midst of the scrum. Dalekos brought up his sword and shouted - "Poseidon, give me strength! Show these beasts the power of a true god!" At his words, blue-white actinide lightning erupted through the water from his blade, the arcane power behind it enough to penetrate even the insulating properties of H20. It crackled over the Deep Ones, sending Sea Devil and the Harbinger staggering, but sending their troops flying as well - now only the leaders were left amid the wild underwater combat on the temple mount.

Oh, nice! Heroic rolling, as it were.

"I came here last week to make sure it wasn't a dump or a mob hangout or something like that..." Ash made circles on the back of Fa'Rua's hand with her finger, still marveling at the moment. "Everybody's legal." She grinned, resting her chin under her hand as she studied her date. "We'll probably have some drinks, do some dancing, then see what else the evening has in store." It was half-flirting, half-frank acknowledgement that for all that Judy had given her word to spend the evening with Leroy and the rest of their Bible Study group in discussion of the Song of Solomon, who could say what would really happen? I still can't believe she figured out I had a date! Judy was naive, sheltered still, and made foolish choices but that didn't make her dumb by any stretch of the imagination. But she was loyal and kept her word even when it was a bad idea... But rather than dwell overmuch on the potential disasters that could waylay the evening, Ashley said, "I grew up in the birthplace of jazz, so follow my lead when they start playing. It's pretty fast-paced, but I know you can keep up with me."

Harbinger: Seeing Theodora's corruption (reverse corruption) he drops a Rank 12 Stun effect on Dalekos and Artificer. This will knock Theodora out (take an HP, Doc.) I'll say it's a selective effect that he doesn't use on Aquaria - after all, he thinks she's now his ally! (take another HP if you think that's sketchy, Doc!). I'll say it clears the deck of Dalekos's soldiers outside of those still in the submarine. It's a Will save, not Fort. Dalekos Ref vs 22: 13 Will vs 22 28 Dalekos Keeps moving despite being injured and staggered by Sea Devil, so Aquaria takes an HP. He's sorely pressed now, so he calls on the power buried in his sword! Damage 12 (Area) Harbringer: doesn't have enough Reflex to avoid it, realistically, so I'll just roll Tou vs 27: 31 Sea Devil: 20 Just has that one rank of Evasion, so let's roll vs. 27 https://orokos.com/roll/787348 20 Let's spend an HP there (she's at 3 right now for in-scene complications, so now she's down to 2) https://orokos.com/roll/787349 = 27, so she's unhurt. this one you don't have to worry about; Atlanteans are immune to it! Okay, Doctor Archeville, if you will make that Ref vs. 22/Will vs 22, we can see if Artificer is left dazed/stunned by all this or not! You can have him take action or not depending on if he's still on his feet. @Tiffany Kortaor maybe @Grumblefloof, I believe you're up on the inside of the temple!

As the cloud of ink faded, Artificer was at first left with appeared to be a failure. Theodora was still blue-skinned and _altered_, looking piscine as much as humanoid, but when she opened her eyes and fixed them on him they were a familiar color. "Heroditus?" she whispered. "Are you - are you - what happened?" Like him, she seemed to have forgotten about the battle taking place nearby, where the two champions of the Gods Below were squaring off against the finest defenders of Atlantis. "I don't...I don't feel well..." Dalekos was staring at Aquaria; then suddenly, wounded or not, he gave a low laugh. "...I am not one of the Surfacers you have bewitched, monster. Even if you did not stand with this despoiler of our blood, I know how the fallen ones work! Your kind breeds in the hundreds! You let your young eat each other in the name of your dread gods!" He sneered as he pointed his sword at Aquaria. "No Deep One would care so for the deaths of a few dozen of their get, unless she had some deeper agenda. What is it? We are all underdwellers here, my dear - who are you trying to fool?" Sea Devil closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and then exhaled with the sound of a snorting bull. When she spoke, it was a croak of great grief. "I'd care."

"You look amazing," whispered Ashley, looking Fa'Rua over with a smile on her face as the candlelight shone in her eyes. "I'm just looking forward to a date where I don't have a bruised rib," she added with a whisper and a chuckle. She'd been disappointed when a ship repair meant that Fa'Rua wasn't going to make it to Earth this February, but the knowledge of just how much work she'd done to be 'there' that evening (the drone through the embassy, the long-distance connection, the communications room she was sitting in in an outfit that probably looked distinctly odd in space) took the agent's breath away as much as the way Fa'Rua looked by night. She took the Lor's hand, and if tingling holographic energy didn't quite feel like flesh and blood, well it sure as hell beat gripping onto her phone late at night and wondering if there was anyone else out there in the universe. "I just can't believe we're here tonight." A few people were looking their way, a femme couple being a little unusual, but as they took their seats near Lucy Ashley didn't care. That's right, you bastards, she thought cheerfully as she looked around the room, look at this goddess. "I'll have a dirty martini," she told their waiter, shooting a glance at Fa'Rua. It would take a little more work for her to 'have a drink', but she'd been assured that holographic technology and food synthesizers where she was were up to it.

Eira was notably cold to the touch when Mia leaned close; not actually colder than the air but no warmer than room temperature. When Eira whispered in Mia's ear, the latter learned that Eira's breath was slightly colder than the outside air. "Yes." She smiled at Mia, her teeth almost impossibly white against her blue lipstick, and then waved at the teacher. "We are finished here. Mia's statue is impressive."

There was a short sigh. "The Delaztri Empire dominated this area of space in the previous several kiloyears," said Eira. She reached up and pulled her hair back into a short ponytail, the blue fibers lengthening slightly in her grip, and tied it off behind her head with a black band. She shot a look at Seserek that was hard to read, then continued. "Their civilization was a henocracy in which the Delaztri assumed a leadership position of a multi-species empire. They largely retreated from Galactic space during the early days of the First Lor Empire. The leader of the Praetorians is the paragon Paradigm; one of the most powerful organic beings currently active in Lor space. As for the station, its story is as follows - following the defeat of the Communion, the massive Communion mothership lay derelict near the wormhole now present in the Kesteven system. The Coalition of worlds that had fought together against the Communion declared the station a neutral ground, renaming it Coalition Victory Station as a symbol of the cooperation that had stopped the Communion. With so many sentients displaced by the Incursion, many of their worlds destroyed or cyberformed by the Communion, millions made their way to CoVic Station. Engineers from the Lor Republic and hundreds of other worlds worked to convert sections of the station into habitable zones, along with industrial factories, shipyards and other facilities. Embassies began to sprung up, as the station became the ideal location for the former members of the Coalition to attempt to continue to build on the cooperative spirit that had allowed them to achieve victory. While the Lor Star Navy had a presence at the station, a corps of independent peacekeepers from all the Coalition worlds was established to maintain order on the station. In addition, the Praetorians, who had returned to the galaxy in the early days of the Incursion to help fight the Communion once again, chose to establish their headquarters on the station. Currently several large areas of the station have been converted into city sized habitable zones, with several large archologies dedicated to food production established as well. But the bulk of the former Communion mothership is still uninhabited and deserted." She frowned at Leroy and added, "And you should not assume that all reptilian species are subservient to humanoids. That is rude."

"Good." Eira smiled, her teeth white against her blue-tinted lips. The secondary control system for the public address system is on the first floor of our morning classes." Eira closed her eyes, then opened them, studying Pan. "It will be simple for me to install the program that will play your creation. But I will need direct access to the system itself. Hard-pointed." She touched her chin and said, "I will require uninterrupted access for at least thirty seconds. Will you be able to provide a...distraction in the first-floor north-facing corridor? Where our Civics class is," she added for clarification.

Gradually an outcropping of Mias took shape - a mushroom cloud of Solitons that circled and danced around each other, a sea of faces and bodies that spoke and walked, moved and sat, in a graceful, glowing silence as if Mia had herself been used as a building block to make a tree. "...if you like," said Eira simply as she withdrew her hand from the machinery of her ersatz construction, the light of Mias below reflected in her deep blue eyes as she studied the matter controller.

"I have been dead before," said Eira throatily. She looked down at her work and stabbed it with her dataspike again, the silvery cord seeming to slither its way out from her sleeve before striking like a snake. She concentrated, eyes narrowed almost to slits, and the holographic image above it returned: Mia saw herself in a dozen different guises, what in retrospect must have been every time Eira had seen her since she came to Claremont, slowly taking shape.

Eira was looking happier than Astrid had yet seen - or heard of, come to think of it, given the teen's reputation around Claremont. "Let hear you play," she said, enthusiasm lighting up her voice like electricity. As Astrid got herself set up with the guitar, Eira found an electric keyboard left discarded in a corner of the room. With a smile, she bent over the equipment and did something Astrid couldn't quite follow - it looked like a quicksilver serpent had run out from Eira's sleeve and buried itself in the keyboard's USB port. With a smile on her face, Eira leaned back and said throatily, "Oh yes, a lot of people have used this system. When I hear what you are playing, I'll join in. Hmm, maybe some mid-era Bathory sound..." Her teeth were white and polished, bright as as a model's smile behind her blue-painted lips.

Reflex saves vs 21: Watchdog: 16 Daystar: 20 Too bad I can't switch those! OK Tou vs 26 Watchdog: 17 bruised and dazed, okay Daystar: 19 bruised and dazed as well, okay. Judy's first status damage, I think. I will have the characters take the hits and spend an HP to shake the daze when they're up.

Eira jumped slightly, looking down at the holographic display with a stricken look on her face. Immediately she withdrew her hand from her work inside the phone, her dataspike sliding back under her sleeve. She didn't seem to be listening to Mia at first, her eyes unfocused as she watched some inner narrative. "A security error," she finally whispered. "Nothing more." She looked at Mia, her burning blue eyes seeming to dare her to say anything at all before she said, "I do not want to be here. That does not make me better than you."

It was not true, as so many people thought, that Ashley Tran did not wear dresses. Oh it was certainly true that she preferred dressing more practically when she was anywhere close to on-duty; and it was also true that the 'costumes' she wore when she was pretending to be Judy's sister had originally been designed by men who thought that a teenage lesbian had to dress like she was trying out for a part in Grease. But she did actually own several dresses she liked very much, dresses that generally stayed packed away in storage because while they looked great they did not make her look seventeen-going-on-eighteen at all. The dress was sparkly and blue, open at the front to show the halter top she was wearing underneath, and went well with the bright red lipstick she was wearing. If her blonde hair was a wig (the better to hide her obviously dyed pink hair), it was the best she'd been able to find; put there by a very sympathetic hairdresser when she'd told the story of how she hardly ever got to go on dates, and how it was a special occasion for Valentine's Day. Of course, as she walked out into the club just ahead of her date, this was a _very_ special occasion - even if, with any luck, no one watching them would figure out just how special it was.

Eira glared at Mia. "You actually do not know." The last words sizzled in the air, and the image of Mia, pointing a finger accusingly and mouthing, "...villain..." went wild and chaotic. Suddenly, it was replaced by an image of faces Mia didn't immediately recognized - a blonde woman and blonde man, both of them a little older, who bore a noticeable resemblance to Eira if she washed the dye out of her hair and took the piercings out of her face. As Mia watched, the figures pointed accusingly at 'her' before they broke up into static too. "And here I was pleased that you had the wit to say it to my face, and not whisper behind your hands as they did. "

Eira stared at Mia, uncertainty on her pale face, the holo she displayed showing first Mia's face, then the art she'd made, as her gaze flicked from one to the other. "Why are you like this?" she whispered softly. "Do you think I have forgotten what you said to me? I am not stupid."

"Did you steal that idea?" hissed Eira as she glared at Mia. "It was stupid of you to tell me those things about yourself and then shit in my mouth as you have, yes?" As she spoke, the flickering lights above her phone shaped into a holographic representation of Mia, a glaring face that must have matched the one Eira could see with her own eyes. "Ms. Katastroff, please watch your language." The teacher had appeared at their elbow as if summoned. and Eira's nod seemed to be pulled from the very core of her being. "I'm sure the two of you will produce something useful if you can just work together."

Eira narrowed her eyes and stared at the statue as if it was going to jump up and bite her, then glared at Mia. "The instructions were to 'experiment creatively.'" She pulled her cellphone out of her pocket and without comment cracked the case open with a smooth economy of motion in her long, bony fingers. "You may be content with a B- and a 'nice effort'," she hissed without looking up from her work, "but I am not." With the phone's casing removed, she didn't hesitate before jabbing her fingertips directly into the circuitboard. A second later and something metal and snaky about the width of her pinky wriggled its way out of her sleeve and embedded itself in the guts of her phone. The lights and camera began glowing slightly, abstract images playing as she worked.

February 2020 Art Class A Day Before The Eagle Flies Alone The argument with the teacher had not quite been loud but it had certainly been heard across the class. Eira Katastroff had let her know in tones of offended dignity that forced collaboration was a patently failed pedagogical technique that did not actively promote learning. But when faced with a threat to the headmistress's office if she didn't follow instructions, Eira had backed down, just in time to find herself sitting opposite the leader of Orange Squad, who by the grim logic of an odd-numbered class had found herself without a partner at a critical moment. The assignment was to "create a representation of each other" - and as Eira glared at Mia, her arms folded across her chest, her blue hair a striking contrast against her button-down white dress shirt, she was certainly a striking picture. The teacher was on the other side of the room and the studio space was big, and the two of them had privacy if they were willing to talk quietly.

I'll admit I was hoping you'd summon a boat with twelve guys in it with your VP, durf. ?

"There is no reason we cannot do both." Eira laughed throatily, folding her legs up beneath her on the chair where she perched. She eyed Adam, her blue gaze flat and penetrating, before she shrugged and turned back to Pan. "I have songs that have messages about authority and are very noisy indeed." She demonstrated a few for Pan, though with evident consideration enough for his ears that she didn't blow them out. "Hm. I like your idea! Your auditory effects, can they be recorded?" she asked seriously. "If so, we could record the headmistress singing certain material and then broadcast it, yes?" She tapped her chin with one fingernail, adding, "It would be a simple matter to ensure the file could not be duplicated. I am not in the business of creating deepfakes."