Avenger Assembled

Extradimensional Birdwatching Club - It's real! Our first trip is to an Earth with no humans so we can see Carolina parakeets, passenger pigeons, and ivory-billed woodpeckers! We don't _just_ do birdwatching but it's how we started, and who doesn't like birds? ? What's the worst that could happen? Fight Club - Word has gone out; if you meet in the gym after hours, the rogue teen vigilante Watchdog has organized a fight club for people who really want to learn how to fight and don't want to have to wait until the school says they're old enough. Guest Lecturer - A guest lecturer from a species traditionally hostile to humanity (Deep Ones) is coming to Claremont to talk about her people.

That hits, and will again do DC 32 damage as the DC to hit is currently 19. Tou vs 32 39! Okay, @Heritage, Torque is now up. Do you want to go ahead and do your zombie-sweeping thing you posted earlier?

This looks like it was once, a long time ago, a place of magic and worship - you can see marks burnt into the walls that represent African orishas, along with Christian symbolism and other things. But all the magic markings on the walls look burnt away and very recently, as if they've just happened - if there was power here before, now there's nothing but ashes.

There was nothing after that. Oh, there were some things. General Dalekos and Princess Thaelia returned after a few hours with the children they'd rescued. Their Deep One captors had left them behind, unconscious, and as bait for some sort of gigantic squid creature that Thaelia and Dalekos had worked together to destroy before it could gobble up their forces. The children were still unconscious but Dalekos's healer was sure they'd make a full recovery. Xyles Stylanos, with his son, was able to identify the mechanical defects in the damaged medical equipment and make a few suggestions about repair. Though replacing whatever missing chemicals were gone would evidently take some time, (not to mention the Atlantean cost of the murdered scientists) on the engineering side of things repairs would be just a matter of weeks at most. When it was done, Dalekos congratulated father and son on their service to the Kingdom and swore them both to secrecy; the faint taste of Deep One blood in their water from the ax he'd carried into battle. The children would be taken back to the capitol, where the best healers in the Kingdom would work to help them heal from the tragedies of the last few days. That was it...wasn't it?

Cheval Dusting himself off, the man of iron found himself in an unfamiliar setting. He shouldn't have been able to see anything down here, deep beneath the church in the dead of night, surrounded by caverns that looked natural. Even to be in an underground cave he knew he had to be in one of the highest points in the city, as it was the space was small and cramped for someone of his bulk, the walls wet with condensation and the rain now pouring down from up above. There was a smell in the air like a recent burning, though, and the shadow of words and symbols carved into the stone walls that practically sang of arcane power. Shadows because as far as he could tell, whatever had been here had been burned away - and quite recently too.

Give me an Arcane Lore/Theology/History check if you want to interpret more about what you see.

Fast-Forward Jesus. Richard shared everything he saw with Paige, as fast as their mutual link could carry it, careful not to overwhelm her impressions of the house and everyone around it. When he ran back upstairs in the wake of his sudden jaunt around the newly secured facility, he was carrying the signal jammer in his arms. "Thought you might need that," he commented as he put the device down in front of Rachel. "You gotta lot of stuff here a psychic could misuse." Geez, this is right by the kids' school. They weren't actually that close to Claremont, and technically it was only Holly's school during the day when she was commuting but still. "You got anywhere in the neighborhood where it doesn't matter if it gets blown up?"

The man on the bike crashed out among the assembled heroes, making a hairpin turn on the street that nearly flipped him over in the rain and darkness. Woodsman had, much to his disgust, no idea who these people were. But nonetheless he knew a fight was happening and so he growled, loud enough to be heard over rain and lightning and the moans of the horde of zombies, "Going up!" There was no point in being quiet when the monsters were already after you. With that, he gunned his engine and roared towards the zombies chasing him, keeping to the half-broken line of the church walkway to avoid burying his nose in the dirt. Whatever the ravening ghouls expected the man they were chasing to do, it wasn't to come roaring back at them. Woodsman was a glistening blur through the darkness as he drove his bike full speed towards the grotesquely-swollen leg of the gigantic zombie. He'd think later about all the time and effort he was going to have to spend fixing the bike, because right now he was thinking about only one thing - how to survive the next handful of seconds. He drew his grapple gun free-handed and fired at a gigantic, rotting thigh, feeling satisfaction as the spiked tip sunk deep into the kaiju's flesh. It wasn't much of a hold, but it would have to be enough. A moment later he leaped off the bike, feeling the weight yank at his shoulders, a sickening moment of near-free fall, before he swung back and impacted the monster's left leg. He rolled against the impact, breathing in slow, shallow gasps to avoid inhaling the stink of the decidedly rotting mountain he was about to climb. Another flash of lightning illuminated the dark figure ascending the side of the giant zombie, the dead all around seemingly briefly confused by the sudden escape of their prey.

Woodsman: Woodsman can't even be sure of reliably hitting the creature in the head, given how big it is. And he's being pursued by zombies! So he'll turn around and drive towards the monster, because that's what Woodsmen do. Drive check: 23 Acrobatics: 20 Climb: 25 with Skill Mastery He reaches the monster and begins ascending it! With Speed on his Grappling line, he'll reach its head at the top of next turn. Cheval will be up as soon as I post IC, @RocketLord

All right, the debris fails enough for you to work the trapped pastor free.

I'll let you know when you're there - for now @Thunder King is up.

"Ah heard there are some interesting new people," agreed Judy. She flicked her fan closed, then open again, then folded it up and put it away in her purse - coming out after a few moments with a half-finished white cloth. She crossed her legs, looked up at Pan, and began knitting again. "So where did you go for summer?" she asked Pan. "Back home to your dimension?" she hazarded. "We couldn't exactly go back where we came from," she said tightly, "on account of the Grue and everything." Pan had the distinct feeling he was being eyed behind Ashley's sunglasses, but then she leaned back and artfully looked away.

"Classified," growled Watchdog from behind her dark sunglasses. She'd already found the secret that nobody at Claremont liked pushing enough to dig deeply if you were just unpleasant to them. "Oh don't be that way," said Judy, smiling at Pan. He was a very pretty boy, even if she was reasonably sure he didn't like girls. That would have made her uneasy a year earlier, but Claremont had taught her demons weren't in gay people - they were in old books, other dimensions, and lurking inside some superhumans. "Our summer was full of adventure, let me tell you. Ah actually...tried to do some things with my powers," she said, pushing the words out as if she half-expected to be judged for them, "and that was fun. And Ah learned how to knit!" She snapped her fan open again. "Ah got this at a thrift store where we were, Ah think it's real pretty. Have you seen Leroy?" she asked.

Ashley and Judy Smith had already finished moving in - come to think of it, they'd been moved in before the beginning of day one last year too. Now they were sitting together on a bench outside the dorm halls. Judy was dressed up for the occasion in an outfit that wasn't terribly practical but was a lot of fun - a bright floral maxidress with a dark green color scheme. She fanned herself occasionally, though she couldn't feel the heat, the pattern on the fan matching the dress. This was going to be a tough day, so she'd made sure to dress up and damn the consequences - wasn't like she was going to sweat anyway. Ashley was sweating in her leather jacket and denim jeans, not that she was going to show it too much. She scanned the scene as students arrived, keeping an eye out both for new faces and for old ones. Some of the former she'd heard about already, some she was just going to find out about herself. All right, gotta get back in the mood. What did Watchdog do this summer? Nothing I did, that's for damn sure.

Speed Demon: 29, 1HP Woodsman: 26, 1HP Cheval: 21, x2 Bruised, at the bottom of a hole, 2HP, +1HP from Complication Torque: 19, 1HP Sagrado: 15, 3HP Zombie Horde: 10 Betsy: 8, 1HP Persephone: 6, 3 HP+1HP from Complication Croczilla: 6

"Hm." The tiger backed up slightly, stepping off Facsimile. "All questions asked. Frost debt paid." The god gave Facsimile an unpleasantly predatory smile. "Follow me if you like, little man. We can finish this." And then, the tiger-god turned and bounded away through the forest behind them with the speed and power of the divine, leaving the prospective League members alone in the Amur woods as the sun above streamed down on them. How were they going to give that guy his dog, anyway?

Suddenly, the door slid open - revealing the chilly form of Comrade Frost. "Hello!" he said seriously to Salvo, giving a little wave to Terrifica. "I have consulted with Freedom League and we have come to decision regarding respective applications for membership."

Sea Devil Broken Circle The 22nd Century They buried Jessie by the water, just as she'd asked for in her will. There was plenty of water these days and her husband and children and grandchildren had come, a whole brood to watch the tree being planted on the soft, crumbling earth of the hill. It was a special tree, a new sort of tree, one that would use the body planted beneath it to grow tall and strong, and pump oxygen back into the ravaged atmosphere. After two lifetimes as a hero, Singularity was giving back to her adopted homeworld one last time. There had been a battle in this marsh once, long ago, but now this was a place of peace. The Sea Devil had come, as she'd been expected to do, and Aquaria had done everything Jessie would have wanted. She didn't scream in disgust at the thought of Jessie's body rotting beneath the dead earth, she didn't grab her friend's spawn or mate by the face and demand to know why they hadn't tried a little harder to save their matriarch's life. So many worse humans had lived, were living, would go on living, and Jessie was dead - instead she crouched alone amid the mourners, looming over them like the symbol of the past she was, singing the songs that she should, and mourning as a human would have. A century old, she was great, with limbs like the trunks of a tree, and eyes vast enough that she could look down and see there was no soul in the flesh beneath those roots. A century had not made Jessie great. It had made her small, too small to contain what she was, and now that was no longer here. Aquaria was still there when the funeral was over. when all the mourners had gone, and when she thought she was alone she opened her mouth and sang, a bellowing echo of grief that shook land and sky around her. But she wasn't quite alone. "Grieve not, Great-Great-Aunt Aquaria," sang a voice behind her. She turned and spared a smile (oh how it must have looked!) for the human who had surprised her as she so often did. Of all of Jessie's brood, it was Deborah who had listened to Aquaria's teachings the most closely. "For all will be well - when the stars are right." She didn't sound like she quite believed it, there in the green and grey jumpsuits that were the fashions of the time a century after Aquaria had first hauled herself out of the sea near Freedom City. "You know the song well, child." Not as much as Aquaria's own brood, left behind in the castle today in honor of their matriarch's mourning, but still quite fine. "But I have waited so long - and now it is finished." She cast her gaze up overhead and said, "The land will be as the sea, and the sea will be as the land - and the sea will give up its dead. The time has come. I will make them move." "The others will try and stop you," said Deborah, without fear at her great-aunt's words. "Here, and there." She gestured to the stars overhead, and the vessels that moved in the sky that were not stars but glittered like them all the same. Aquaria considered that, and rested her trident against the ground. "Well. They can certainly try." "What would Greatgran do?" And with those words, she left the matriarch of the Deep Ones alone among the stars while the risen sea washed against the beach at Monmouth, while the red, ruddy glare of the Moon shone down upon them all. Aquaria was comforted by the memory that in strange aeons, even death would die...

"Don't worry yourself with what the Deep Ones knew," Helena reassured Artificer, "they have neither the wit nor the will to understand what we do here. Their liberation is nothing more than their- don't touch that!" she broke in with great firmness, swimming up to interpose herself between boy and chemical. "It is a powerful mutagen - and the property of the military." "Is that so?" asked Heroditus's father, taking a position at his son's side. "Perhaps the military might have informed my son and I that we were swimming in so foul a brew!" While soldier and civilian argued, Heroditus had time to watch the chemicals from where the reservoir had once been leak and curl in drops that seemed to hang like oil in the water for several long seconds before they dissipated. What normal substance could react so? He did have time to remove several small components of the device itself, seemingly innocous brass and metal, albeit engraved with arcane markings he didn't immediately recognize save for their fell nature. Had someone tried to do Lemurian sorcery here _before_ the Deep Ones came?

Okay, posting for two since @Electrais doing hurricane stuff. Hologram is going to use her Mental Awareness to quick check for any active psionic influences on people in the house (she has Mind Reading as necessary if you want descriptors, Shofet). She'll also use her ESP to scout out around the house to see if anybody's coming. Paige has Notice 30 with Skill Mastery and Search 20 with Skill Mastery. Meanwhile, Fast-Forward will do a quick search of the house at super-speed - he'll take 20 and get 28.

Woodsman Woodsman was frozen in stark terror for a moment before he sped into action, doing what any Woodsman would do when faced with a sudden horde of monsters. He gunned his engine, hard, loud enough to be heard over the storm even for the creatures rising in the middle of what had been the church's green, now practically under the feet of the giant creature that had brought them back to a mockery of life. Sure fingers found a bolt at his belt and he fired it into the crowd, a sizzling tracer of a shot that further got the attention of the zombies. Just as they started running for him, the bolt hit a tombstone and a highly-compressed chemical compound of his own design fractured and hit open air - the fire suppression arrow blasting everything around it with a toxic brew that froze fast to dead flesh and bone, rain flashing over into ice in an instant. It worked - and now the others were definitely chasing him. Riley turned his bike around fast, kicking up clods of dirt as he went, and roared towards the metahumans he'd spotted on the way in. It was impossible to see much of the rapidly arriving figure on the bike; he was all black and green from head to toe, face hidden by cap, ski mask, and night-vision gear. Persephone and Speed Demon There are indeed people trapped inside the smashed church - it's easy enough to find them in the parson's office, once Persephone follows Speed Demon. It's intimidating here, right under the shadow of the great beast and amid the rotten smell of the animate dead, but it's worth it to save these lives. "Oh Lord thank you!" says the woman they can see inside what looks to have been the pastor's office. You can just make out her bruised face and worn features, and hear the voices of those pressed in there with her. "I'm Lunella Price, I'm the pastor's wife. My husband is hurt, and my kids are here in here with me...." They sound older, teenage boys maybe, but they're clinging to their mom still under the circumstances. Somebody needs to get this closet door open where it's pinned shut by fallen rocks, and get the civilians out here. Cheval Up close, it's instantly clear that this beast is dead - the animate dead! You can feel your fist sink deep into its flesh, though, and as you land on the other side of its feet, a chunk of dead flesh as big as you falls away, revealing more pustulent, rotting meat. It's really very disgusting, which is probably why you're too distracted to get out of the way when the beast ducks its head with lightning speed and closes its jaws around you! The smell is even worse here, as is the pain of being crushed between giant teeth the size of your whole body! Anyone else in the group you were with would probably be dead now but that's small comfort as the beast shakes you like a dog with a toy before hurling you straight down into the heart of the smashed church at its feet. Cheval's impact shakes the debris in the parson's office, sending more debris falling from the broken ceiling, and the Man of Iron himself plunged through a church basement down into the sandy soil beneath the church. He was far beneath the creature now, with a broken understructure between him and the fight above! The fight was on!

"Sure, sure," said Ashley, absently tapping at the phone mounted into the middle of the dash. "Just hitting the GPS now..." Judy, meanwhile, was very impressed with her new outfit. "W-wow! This looks great! Thanks, Corinne!" She smiled, really big, and gave her friend a long, impulsive hug, burning hot like hugging a heated sock stuffed with sand. She pulled back, pulling the shirt open far enough to actually read it. "My sister likes Wolves at the Gate, but Ah never actually-" She tensed briefly, shooting a glance up front. "Hey, I don't tell them about you and what's his face with the hair, you don't tell them about the Wolf," teased Ashley. Relaxing again, Judy looked out the window for a moment as they went. "Did you do something to my..." She reached up, pulled her hair over, and her eyes lit up - not literally, not yet. "Oh man Ah wanted to go red! Thanks, Corinne. You're a really good friend.."

Sagrado Corazon Nullify, Transform, Healing, lots of possibilities! Persephone and Speed Demon You do indeed find people who were trapped in the church! You're right that you can't move all the chunks of debris at once, but you're able to find the pastor and his family in the ruins of his office. Woodsman Riley gets close on his motorcycle and shoots at the zombies with an exploding bolt, woo! He knows better than to use fire on zombies, so let's call it an ice bomb. Reflex save: http://orokos.com/roll/754008 = They fail! Tou vs 25 http://orokos.com/roll/754010 That's going to take out a significant chunk, since they are minions, but there's still a horde - and now they're after Woodsman! Luckily they're zombies so they're not as fast as a guy on a motorcycle Cheval Croczilla: The DC to hit him is 14, so that hits and gives you significant Autofire. Tou vs 32 http://orokos.com/roll/753992 31! He takes an injured (since he's a construct) He's sore now! The DC to hit Cheval is 17 Croczilla will All-Out Attack, dropping his defense to -1. http://orokos.com/roll/753995 19 That's a DC 40 Tou save, plz! His Grapple check is +50. http://orokos.com/roll/753998 = 54! one less than Cheval can make on a nat-20! Okay, he'll seek to throw him. Cheval weighs around a ton. Croczilla has STR 85 for this purpose. 2000 lbs is the Heavy Load for STR 35. 85-35 is 50 10 steps up the Time and Value Progression Table 1000 ft! Okay, he'll throw him 1000 ft straight down, into the crypts under the church, where he'll find interesting things and also make a DC 30 Tou save (he got slowed down by stuff he passed through) as he hits rock bottom. (Sorry Cheval, but you've got power enough to take them hits!) Initiative time! Woodsman: 26 Croczilla: 6 Zombie Horde: 10

"I'd shoot a dog like that," muttered Wadjet. "No offense, amigo," she added as she scratched behind Mutt's ears. "All right, we talk to the morgue people, we hit Saint Sebastian's, we work out a way to get all the vampires in one place for Horus to fry 'em and maybe drag out the leader. Probably use Strix here as the lure, since guy like that's gonna care more about his runaway kid than anything else. Think that covers everything?" she inquired.

Wadjet ducked down and skritched behind the dog's ears thoughtfully. We should get a dog. Maybe a...no, Anna'll want some old lady dog. "I've seen her do stuff that big. And I'm loaded for vampire bear." She didn't know if vampire animals were actually a thing, and decided she didn't want to ask. "Vamp that old you need to piss him off," she suggested. "Didn't get that old by being dumb, right? Gotta really piss him off if you want to draw him out." She snapped her gloved fingers and said, "If he did it, he's gotta be around here watching, right? We show him his plan didn't work and that he's old and busted - that's gotta make him want to come out and prove he's still the king."