Avenger Assembled

I, ah, seem to have forgotten to put any interaction skills on Aquaria's sheet. 6 Well that's embarassing. With an HP it's 14 Let me know if you think that there are any circumstance bonuses for being a Deep One who appears by surprise at night at sea.

Aquaria watched Jessie through the forcefield until the unnatural brightness of the glow became too much to bear. Looking away, she finally said, "Stay safe in here, Jessie. I will find what is happening and things will be better." She stayed long enough to sing Jessie a song before she left her there behind the field, looking happier than Aquaria was sure she would be. It might please some part of Jessie to be here where she was safe and where no one could hurt her, but Aquaria knew this was a false comfort. The psych ward was sealed enough that even Aquaria could hardly hear anything, or smell anything, other than Surfacer machines and chemicals. This was no place for anyone to live, especially someone who had only recently learned how to be free. She took her armor back to the mainland from the island, flying low over the water. The armor was nice because she could wear it and because it could read to her, letting her understand things much faster than puzzling out the words and symbols that Surfacers used to communicate when they wrote. As she flew back to the mainland, she listened intently as it read to her the information about the 'robberies' that Jessie was accused of committing - the places, the names, descriptions, and everything else. What could it all mean?

Okay - @Thevshi, @Blarghy, @Electra What should we do before the Atlanteans show up - if anything?

Oh, geez! Grateful for the mask that hid the look of shock on her face, Watchdog holstered her guns and stood up. Maybe she knew how the Raven's armor worked but that didn't make it easier to see him take a blast that would have instantly disabled a lesser man. Filling her tone with the righteous wrath of the person she was pretending to be, she made her move. "I'd don't think we were ever properly introduced, old man. I'm Watchdog - the hero Freedom deserves." she said as she strode up to him. "And you? You're dead meat!" She put her back into the punch she threw at his face, her leather gloves catching the impact that would have bloodied her knuckles otherwise. "That's reality. Pleased to beat you!"

Mixing it up a little, Watchdog is going to holster her guns and enter melee combat! Attack vs. DC 23 http://orokos.com/roll/609670 = 24! Okay, that's a DC 20 Tou save - should be much more reasonable!

Aquaria is helping - maybe! Let me know what you're looking for at this point.

Aquaria shifted nervously, not sure what to do. She was growing more and more convinced that the Surfacers in the boat were bad (especially when she saw the one with the red eye), and found her sympathies with the passerby unexpectedly confronted with the gun. She remembered what that was like; and the subsequent fight that had landed her in a Surface cell. If I make a distraction, she thought, that one can escape while I swim away under the surface. Even without her armor, there were very few Surfacer watercraft she feared and this one that went beneath the waves was decidedly not one of them. If they traveled in a boat like that, then the Sea was their enemy - not their friend. After some consideration, she made her move. She made sure she had their attention first, croaking a loud Brek-ek-ek! Coax-coax! that echoed off the walls of the cavern with a sound that she might have found lovely under other circumstances. Leaping downwards from the roof of the cave, she landed on all four limbs on the top of the vessel, then bounded down again to land on its midsection, muscles designed to propel her through the waters of the ocean handling the short fall with no difficulty. When she'd landed, she inhaled and boomed loud enough to make her throat sac bulge, lights reflecting off her great eyes and serrated, triangular teeth as she sounded - "SURFACE-MEN!"

If you didn't see this, @Supercape, it's here!

Stealth: 25

Hidden in darkness deeper than the eyes of any normal Surfacer could penetrate, Aquaria clung to the cave roof and listened to the voices below her - the green and blue colorings on her back blending in with the colorings of the rocks. She had seen the footprints and toolmarks of Surface-Men in the cave during her last visit, but she'd hoped they'd simply been stranded boaters rather than whatever was going on below her. She'd always found an eerie, sad beauty to this place during her occasional visits, stretching back long before she'd come to the Surface to stay. These rocks should have rung with the songs of a tribe; there should have been eggs in the crevices and younglings in the shallows, and the sweet scent of meat and drink should have filled in the air. Instead, the air was filled with the sounds of Surface-Men and their machines. She would have moved on if they had come in a normal boat but she knew Surfacers did not travel under the Sea without a reason. Why had they come underwater - and what was in those boxes?

Ooh, sounds like a fun Aquaria one! I'll drop her in there.

I have a couple of characters possible for this - let me know if you'd like Sea Devil. (If this is early enough, Watchdog could still be operating 'in-character' as a rogue teen vigilante)

Raven felt the shock of the blow ride up his arm and knew that the agent's body armor was worth the money the government must have spent on it. "Try harder!" she taunted, her heart pounding with the adrenaline of the beating she knew she was about to take. Only one way to make this look real, and that was to make Watchdog look good. In the old days, Ashley would have backflipped away from Raven but there weren't a lot of calls for acrobatic leaps and cartwheels in her current line of work. Instead she dropped to one knee, guns out. "It's open-mike night in Hell, old man!" From her crouching position, Watchdog aimed her pistols at the Raven's beltline and fired. She'd seen what she was about to do demonstrated personally, when she'd helped the second Raven test an early version of this suit years earlier. The lasers she fired ignited the surface of the stun grenades that the Raven wore on his armor, puffs of hot plasma erupting from the explosives an instant before the plasma triggered the grenades - the twin explosions sending him blasting backwards into the Unkindness.

Ranged Attack vs DC 23 http://orokos.com/roll/609492 = 20 You know what, KD, I am doing this too late at night - have an HP! http://orokos.com/roll/609493 = 28 well, that helped! Okay, well, that's a DC 20 + 5 (for the Power Attack) + 5 for the crit (dunno if the Improved Crit has made it onto her sheet yet, but it's sitting on the bank.) So DC 30 there. Prolly the only good hit I'm gonna get this fight! The DC to hit her is now 14, so Power Attack back all you want.

That does hit! Tou vs 24 24 She makes it!

Raven: 9 Watchdog: 6

Initiative! Watchdog: http://orokos.com/roll/609465 6 @KnightDisciple

After much debate, the airport had been selected as the perfect choice for the car chase between the Dawg and the Unkindness. All the tourists and security cameras meant that it would be recorded in detail; detail that would (given the reality of life in Freedom City) soon find itself all over the Internet. The ease of a security lockdown (triggered the moment the Dawg smashed through the security fence) meant that none of those tourists (or TSA guys, or anyone else) were going to be taken down by a speeding super-car; also an important part of the deception. The chase between the two souped-up cars went well; both the Dawg and the Unkindness performing beyond specifications as the two vehicles chased each other all over the airport complex. When at last the Dawg was "tricked" into smashing into a warehouse door at speed - not hard enough to damage the heavily armored car but hard enough that it was 'pinned' inside the structure, it was time for the chase to enter its last act. Watchdog had to prove herself as reckless and headstrong, as a take-no-prisoners vigilante who could scare teenagers off with a look, as someone to be interested in as opposed to her mousy, quiet little sister who would hopefully just slide under the radar. People liked loners - it was one of the strange realities of life as a superhero. A life that Ashley Tran George had done her best to escape; but now was being thrust back into. No - had thrust herself back into. Inside the 'wrecked' car, she took a moment to compose herself after the crash, her heart pounding in her chest as she checked her gear. The last act of the 'fight' was going to be the hardest because it was the one they hadn't been able to rehearse, not when people all over the world would be watching the new Raven fight on-camera and would be able to tell if he was pulling his punches or holding back, or if his opponent seemed to know what he was doing before he did it. The last part of the show - meant that the Raven had to take Watchdog down. Her face set behind her helmet, Watchdog bailed out through the Dawg's gullwing doors just as the Unkindness pulled up behind her. "You ready to dance with the Devil, old man!?"

"I had no trouble." Aquaria croaked. No. I had much trouble - just not the kind you mean. "I do not think that they are right about what happened. What if the other you who lives across the sea did those things? Or what if it is the you from the bad world?" She looked around the corridor and said, "This is not where you should be. You have worked so hard to be free of this cage. You should not be in a cage." She had to phrase things carefully - and to resist the impulse in the back of her head that said she should crack down that hateful barrier and free her friend from the captivity that held her. Stealing things did not seem so wrong to her - but she knew they would seem wrong to Jessie.

"It will be okay," Aquaria croaked reassuringly, padding up close to Jessie's forcefield. The light from it made her eyes ache, but she was fairly sure it didn't bother Jessie or the other Surfacers. "I do not understand what happened. But I do know that you are my friend." Unconsciously, she rubbed her thick neck, remembering Nereid's water talons there. She wanted to tell Jessie that she was going to be all right and that they were going to free her from this place, but she didn't think the guards would like that very much. She took shallow breaths, trying not to inhale the dry, recirculated air too deeply. "Can you tell me what happened?"

Anna spat out Caroline's beer, the one that had been in the minifridge under her desk. "Ah, jeez! Listen, I don't know what you heard about that, but that ain't my usual thing," she said, pointing with great emphasis at Caroline. She colored, realized Caroline had meant something else, then was on her feet between one heartbeat and the next. "I mean, uh, yeah, Josie's sounds good. I'll meet you there." And with that, she was gone, vanishing without sight or sound of where she'd gone. That had been one of Clock Queen's more frustrating tricks; and it was one thing she could still do. Easily enough. - On a nearby rooftop, in a position well out of sight from Caroline's office window, Wadjet was already storing her rifle when Anna Cline arrived. "You girls gonna be friends now?" she asked, her voice muffled by her hood as she turned to greet her...well, to greet Anna. "Yeah, it went okay," said Anna, running her fingers through her hair. "You heard all'a that anyway. I asked her out to dinner." Wadjet laughed. "Are you gonna try and hook up with every-" Anna flushed bright red at that, which made her protege laugh even louder. "Yeah, well, it ain't no pupusa place we're going to, but I thought you might like eatin' somewhere that's ain't the rooftop or our place," said Anna, crossing her arms irritably. She needed to invest in a thicker jogging suit, dammit. "I'll meet you down there."

Aquaria spent the night at Project Freedom, not the first time she'd done that since gaining her release. Her friends would think little of it; especially when she returned to the castle with Jessie. And she was _going_ to return with Jessie. The next morning, as her elevator descended into the depths of Blackstone, Aquaria remembered the songs of her youth to block out the smell and sounds of her guards and of the sounds of the infernal Surfacer machine that was taking her down below. Not to the comforting pressure and wet of the Gods Below, but the earthly prison that mocked their rest. And then Kar’Kradas will break him loose asunder the earth will fall away The elevator was going deep; deeper than the cells at the Surface prison that had held Aquaria before she'd been liberated by Mizz Wainwright. This was where the prison put people they didn't quite know what to do with - the ones who had things wrong with their brains. If Jessie stayed here, which everyone thought she would do, eventually she'd go deep again, to the cells where she had lived before she had been free. To the places where she might die, if no one ever came to free her. And the land will be as the sea will be When the stars are right!

The water poured down her back by someone else felt very soothing, especially under the stressful circumstances of the night - at least until she'd mentally processed everything Mizz Wainwright had just said. When she did, Aquaria croaked loudly in a tone that would have sounded wordless to a Surfacer but to her meant a startled exclamation of disbelief. She caught the slightly pained look on her mentor's face (Aquaria hadn't actually bellowed but her tone had not been soft to a Surfacer's ears) and added in a low, worried rumble, "Sssorry. She confessed? What did she say?"

Frost chose not to comment on Sin's membership in the Pact - after all, the fact that he himself was here was evidence that Murk was willing to gather all the cards on the table into his hand. "Strange eastern elixirs!" Well, it was a good reminder of just how old their host was. No doubt the words of one century blend into another with enough time. "Heaven forfend - soon he will be selling opium." Frost hmmed, resting the glass against his forehead. "So you think the woman taken and Sin's hand in it? He has done worse in this country, and recently too." Before Sin's focus on the Ravens he had had a particular hatred for the British, Frost remembered - little wonder what they had done to his country in the days of imperialism! Sin was a man who cared for no man save Sin but he had been forged in the fires of the end of an empire.

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