Avenger Assembled

Fox. Foooox. There's an HP in it for you if you do what I'm thinking.

Time passed. Minutes? More? The baby eventually stopped weeping, though from Fred's occasional looks it did not look very happy. As Fred worked, the 'glass' that fronted her cell darkened noticeably. It wasn't enough to cast her into darkness as such, more like the polarization effects she'd seen demonstrated in scientific demonstrations. Outside she could see her counterpart's cell notably brightening, her counterpart rising to her feet and taking her marionetted steps forward to stand just inside the glass door of her cell. She wasn't talking now, and from the position of her body, Fred couldn't see her face. After a few more minutes, her counterpart was joined by a face she knew well enough - Abel, still wearing his whistle, now changed into a black labcoat as he walked in front of her cell to take a clipboard that had been secured next to the other Winifred's cell. Without looking at, or responding to Fred, he began making notes on the clipboard he held. Outside, Matt's reconaissance revealed that he was in a corridor with four cells in it, his the only one occupied - and the first corridor he found had an elevator at one end - and a corridor with more cells! When he turned the corner of the cellblock, he came across a clearly-visible, brightly-lit cell with Fred inside! His friend looked grim, with torturous devices fitted to her neck, back, and arms like long, flexible tubes. The bastards had dressed her up, too, putting her in a bodice and harness, and shaved her pretty black hair entirely. She was standing at the front of her cell, face cast down to the ground, her head bowed. Outside her cell, Abel was standing there with his back to Matt, looking at an old-fashioned paper clipboard. There was no sign of anyone else in the three cells he could see down this corridor - though one of the cell doors looked opaque rather than transparent.

"No, there's only one of me," said Sharl with a laugh. "Unless you count - well you know, that's a really long story you don't need to hear right now. Psychics have never been able to do much with me, because I don't have the organic brain they can tap into." He thought for a moment, then said, much more seriously, "Moe, I'm going to be honest with you. Out here in the Emerald Cities, there's me and there's Emerald Spider who could actually do something to help you. Most of the people here are new. Can you tell me why you left Freedom City?" he asked frankly. That was certainly the best place on Terra for anyone with superpowers, but if she'd been fleeing abuse, or a warrant, or anything in between, pointing that out might not help much.

As it happened there were few 'special effects' for this particular spell - Tarva looked around with her glowing black eyes, rising to her feet and floating around awkwardly as if she could see nothing or rather, if she could see something else. She turned in the air, spinning on a central axis, before pointing with great authority towards - "Mount Tyree?" It had been trivially easy, when the spell was done, to track exactly where Tarva had been pointing; out towards the second highest mountain in Antarctica and the largest visible landmark in the Ellsworths from their base camp. That might be the only thing that was easy about it. "Not beneath the mountain," said Tarva, "else we should leave him in his granite grave. But on its slopes - I could see there had been rockfall there recently. And more to come." She was done with the spell now, and toweling off the black fluid that had come weeping from her eyes when her scrying was done. Fortunately, it hadn't quite triggered the magic artifacts below.

This, at least, was something Citizen understood - at least in the abstract. "You're a mentat," he told her, using the Lor term he was the most comfortable with. "On Earth, many people call them psychics. Those powers appearing for the first time can be pretty frightening." He hmmed for a moment, making connections with the other part of his brain. He patted her back, having learned his lesson that going in for a Centurion-style hug didn't actually work on people most of the time. Frankly he appreciated that, not being a big toucher. "I don't know much about them, but I know people who do. Are you staying with anyone here?" he hazarded, guessing that her accent didn't place her as a native of the Pacific Northwest.

"Hmm," said Sharl non-committally. "I know a lot of people with superpowers." He looked down at his left hand and flexed the fingers slightly, taking an opportunity to send a message off to one of Claremont's recruiting numbers while he was at it. "My best friend when I was in high school could control paper, and our other friend had death powers." He wasn't entirely sure what was going with Kimber these days - probably something good? "Was someone hurt?" he asked delicately.

"I want to help everybody," said Citizen, and it was true! He came in for a landing behind her and stood with folded arms behind his back, looking out at the alien yellow sun with an expression of interest on his face. "My name is Sharl Tulink, but people around here call me Citizen." It was a stock phrase, one that he'd learned worked well with people with experience with superheroes and similar guardians. "What's your name?" he asked her, still not sure if he was dealing with a potential suicide. As they spoke, he logged onto the cellular network and began the laborious process of running her face through a missing persons' search. There were too many databases on Terra, and so many of them ran so slowly.

Summer 2017 It was a beautiful summer day in Emerald City, Oregon - especially if you stood here on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, far from the noisy, delicious minds of the city and enjoyed the peace and solitude of crashing waves at the base of this seaside cliff. The beaches here weren't like the ones Sensus had known back on the Jersey coast, much rockier and colder, but they had a wild beauty all the same. "Excuse me, miss. Did you need some help?" Turning behind her, silhouetted by an east-rising morning sun, Sensus looked up to see Citizen - the most famous superhero in Emerald City. For his part, Citizen's early morning flight had let him spot this girl by the edge of seaside cliffs that had taken the life of more than one young man or young woman in the last few years. There was a fence - but it wouldn't be hard for someone that small to slip underneath it. At first glance, he'd assumed this was a lost child - but she clearly wasn't too far from his own early twenties, though his black costume and glowing blue chest symbol marked him as a superhero.

Here's the OOC

"Dimitri is on his way," said Jack after a moment's hesitation. "He'll cover things here - he can always take the building into Niflheim if he has to. You do what you have to do to support your mother - and stop whatever killed Eldrich." He'd only met the Master Mage a few times, said worthy not being a great admirer of the vampire's personal style, but he knew all the good the man had done - and what sort of things caused wizards of over a century in age to die. He clapped the man that was his son on the arm and looked him dead in the eye. "Make me proud, son."

That will both break a real hole in in the glass, big as his fist, and will result in the glass door sliding open for him entirely!

"About two years ago, about the time I...thought I lost you, a new Feral came out of the Forest - bigger and tougher than anything we'd seen since the Millennium." Riley had seen his mother's eyes haunted before - but as her free hand briefly stole to the stump of her missing arm, for a moment he saw a swell of grief like he'd never known. "We weren't ready. And we lost - a lot of people." She released her stump, and put her arm around Riley, pulling his forehead against hers. "Woundmaker's people, they came out of the Forest a couple of months after that, while we were still trying to rebuild. They knew about the Forest so they hadn't gone in deep enough to turn Feral - and they helped us." "How did they find us?" Riley asked, automatically falling back to thinking like someone from the world he'd left. "The only people who could find a way back from here I've met were bad guys - they set Ferals loose on people in the Goodman Building." "The Goodman Building can go to Hell for all I care," said Peyton with great fierceness. "They helped us take that place down, and most of the other nests. We're finally taking the city back. The sword-Ferals, the Bear Council, the Wolf Kings? They're all dead or running for their lives now. I told them I wasn't sure about what they wanted after that, moving their people to our end...but I don't care. They gave me my boy back." - "That? Oh, that's work," said Eric with a dismissive wave in the direction of the portal "I had a feeling it would bring you back to us but I had no idea everything would come together so smoothly. I don't think you ever met Dubyem or as I call him, Marv," he added with a confiding whisper and grin that was all too familiar as he looked over at Woundmaker, who was giving orders to his troops to run an "upstairs perimeter check and for the Lord's sake, make sure you don't miss any teenagers sneaking in!" "but he's an old friend of your mother's. Some of his people helped us leave shadow duplicates behind in our cell, long enough to get here and start earning our keep." "It's a bit of a comedown from the old days," admitted Raina's mother, "but it's better than prison - and the important thing is, it's a chance for a new start for all of us. They've been expecting you for weeks - we've been telling them we'd be stronger as a trio. The magic's a little more, ah, adult than you're used to," she added, "but you don't need to rush into anything, not until your father and I have finished your training. Now do you have everything you need? You can maybe make it back to that place once, but they'll be looking for us now - and probably looking for you, too." - Upstairs, an agitated Merlin was silently showing Robin his discovery - while trying to hack the local network to send out a distress signal, he'd found that the network was far larger than he'd anticipated - they were on top of a complex at least three stories deep beneath their feet! And down below, the black-masked troops beneath were beginning to mount the stairs towards their hiding place in the rafters.

Lady Horus felt a brief moment of panic, thinking of the Hammer of Justice's gas grenades, but the smell of this stuff was all wrong. Improvising on the fly, she stepped 'back' out of the range of the smoke cloud and laughed. Tainted one, heh! This bozo's got no idea! "You have bombed a temple of thine own god and you are breathing the stink of thy failure," she said, leaning on her ankh as if it were a walking stick and she Ginger Rogers. "If there is a taint here, thou jackanape nameless one, it is thine." And I'm gonna hit you in it for threatening my girl, you cheese-eating sonofabitch! Turning to the obvious button-men around her, who staggered by the blasts were just reaching for their guns, she grinned and hefted her ankhs again. "But first, these foolish men will learn what it means to stand against the Sunhawk! Hah!" Anna Cline had spent years fighting mobsters - when they'd tried to muscle in on her turf or screw her out of a deal, anyway. If she'd learned one thing, guys who fought with guns didn't like to fight girls with powers. That was why having powers was so great! With a smile, she turned to the nearest goon and struck him across the torso with her ankh, smashing him straight up and into the ceiling with a loud crunch. Who's next for the dance?

Lady Horus: Move out of the Obscure, then hit as many of the Scarpia thugs as possible. If possible, she'll take 10 to hit them and use her Takedown Attack 1 - that's a DC 29 Toughness save!

Sea Devil bent her knee to her rear and stabbed low - and felt the shock go up her arm as her hissing trident sizzled against Naia's flank. The other female bellowed in pain and stepped back, exposing three shallow, marks along her left flank that were both bloody and burned. They would heal, Aquaria knew from practicing with her own weapon, leaving behind nothing more than the kinds of scars that most Deep Ones carried. Naia eyed her, eyes particularly wide as the taste of blood entered the water, but Aquaria doused her tridents and held her arms at her side. "You fought well, Deep One," she croaked, loudly enough for everyone in the fight to hear. "for your tribe and for your mate, but the fight is over. We are not enemies. Come, let us gather your people for their-" "No!" bellowed Ikatare. "No, I will not surrender to the Surface! We have bowed too long before them! This giant is clearly not one of us and this female is an apostate Atlantean spy! I will win this battle myself!" And having said so, he kicked up his trident with one three-fingered foot and (despite the angry bellow from his mate) drove said trident directly into Leviathan's belly, the magically empowered blade biting deep with a searing heat!

2007 "So, that's it," said Rick, pushing up his glasses as he studied his son across his desk. "If your mother and I die before you turn eighteen, you'll legally be the ward of Mr. Summers. He's a good man, and he'll give you a good home. He has a lot of experience helping raise good kids. The house is all paid off and so are the cars, so you'll be able to-Mark, what are you doing?" He smiled with affectionate annoyance as he looked over to see Mark drawing a picture in his yellow legal pad - the one he was supposed to be using to take down his father's medical and legal information. "Oh, sorry, Dad," said Mark, looking guilty for a moment as he looked over at his dad. He didn't look guilty for long, instead grinning at him as the two men shared a secret. "But c'mon, you're not gonna die till you're really old! I know it's important for me to be responsible, but you and Mom are gonna be okay." "I'm a lot older than your mother, Mark," said Rick with a half-smile, his once-blond crewcut now decidedly shot through with grey. "And you need to be ready for what happens when you get older. You're my only son, and the only grandson of your grandfather - you have a proud family name. I want to make sure you're ready for what happens when you grow up." "I will be," Mark promised. His eyes lit up as he added, pointing to one of his mother's pictures of his father on the far wall, "Just like you were when you and the Centurion switched bodies and you had to pretend to be an adult for a whole week!" "Hah!" said Rick, leaning back in the squeaky leather office chair he'd inherited from his own father. "Those were good times. I was about your age, I think. You know what that reminds me of," he said, sliding the papers back into the folder on his desk. "My biggest regret from those days is that I never picked out a good codename for myself. If you're going to keep doodling, you'd better do something constructive with it - what were you thinking? Lucky Strike? Edge?" 2017 "Mark! Mark!" Edge appeared in the bathroom in a flash of light, summoned instantly by his wife's call. "Look! He's doing it! He's doing it!" Luckily, Ritchie wasn't doing the thing that he'd been doing the last time Nina had called Mark in to help with bathtime. Instead, their baby was sitting up in the tub, wet like his mother - but with the water in a circle around him rather than in it, so that his bare butt was on the porcelain. Ritchie didn't seem to mind the fact, laughing and waving his arms, the water around him jumping up and down with his pudgy arms. "See, I knew it!" said Mark, grinning as he took out his camera and snapped several pictures, careful not to catch any of Nina, who as usual had stripped down to join Ritchie in the tub for his bathtime. Nina didn't spend quite as much time with Ritchie as Mark had expected, but she loved to take him into the water, whether it was the beach near their house or the tub. At three months old, Ritchie's apparent lack of powers had been a major source of concern for his mother - and his father too, at least a little. "Look at him, just like you." "Well, this is a fine thing," said Nina, watching the way her boy manipulated the water. She couldn't see the familiar swirls of her family's hydrokinetic powers, or the great inky blots of her husband's - instead Ritchie seemed to be..."Is the water laughing too?" she asked, studying the way the bathwater was moving around Ritchie's little body. "I think it was," said Mark, smiling. "That's funny! I wonder if he uses his powers differently than yours." Nina hmmed and looked up at him, hands protectively holding Ritchie up. "Well, we'll soon find out. Fetch me my robe, would you, darling?" she asked as Ritchie's laughter quieted and the water flowed back around him. "Now that he's demonstrating his powers, we can take him out to the beach and see if he's ready for full-" "...babe, c'mon," said Mark, sitting on the closed toilet and putting his hand on Nina's back. "It's time for him to have his bath, then his bottle, then take a nap. He's gonna be a cranky little cuss if we mess with his schedule. Besides, he deserves a normal day, doesn't he?" "Our son is not normal," said Nina firmly, but then softened, "But you're right. He does deserve to be a small boy." She patted the top of Ritchie's fuzzy brunette head, drumming her fingers in the tap-tap-tap that had made him giggle before,. "He deserves everything." 2027 Typhoon sat on her throne, flanked by Monsoon and Gale. Really both of them were too young to project real authority, Nina reflected, but the important thing was the message that it sent - and that it would let them see how much fun this would be when they were older. "Citizens of America! This is - TYPHOON!" She raised a mailed fist high enough for the camera to see. "I applaud your government's proposals to expel its metahumans - proof for all the world to see that democracy is a government of FOOLS and WEAKLINGS!" She slammed her fist against her throne and declared, "Be assured that all metahumans expelled from the United States will find shelter on fair Socotra and her colonies - where we will build a PARADISE the like of which you can only dream!" At the end, she raised her fist again and declared, "HAIL SOCOTRA! HAIL SUPREMACY!" With some reluctance, Monsoon and Gale both managed "Hail Typhoon!" as their father turned off the camera - but their lack of enthusiasm was obvious. For her part, Nina's mind was elsewhere. "Ah, is it really so late? Darling, I need to change for the Lemurian ambassador," Nina said as she rose from her throne, her mask retracting to let her peck Mark on the cheek. "Can you deal with the littles tonight? I don't think we'll need them there, and you can stay in and work on your painting." "Hey guys, what's the matter?" Mark asked as Nina headed off to change into her work clothes - Typhoon's armor was suitable for state occasions but wasn't really suitable for day-to-day wear. He plopped down on his usual spot on the steps in front of the throne, Monsoon and Gale - Richie and Gale, both hopped off their smaller thrones and sat next to their dad. "Normally you love wearing your armor with Mom." "Why does Mom have to yell so much?" asked Richie as he pulled off his mask. His sibling, who in all fairness was only four years old, had mostly lost track of the conversation and was more preoccupied with trying to walk the edge of the marble platform without falling off. "It makes me think she's going to fight you." "Oh, you've heard your mom yell at me before," said Mark with a grin, "It's just how grownups talk. Anyway, all that yelling was just a trick." He held up his camera. "Once we get a good recording, we'll broadcast it out on the Internet. If people in America are worried about what Typhoon'll do, they'll remember they need their heroes and they won't vote for anything dumb." "Ohh, it's statecraft!" said Ritchie, brightening up as he understood the impact of his father's words. "Hooray! I love statecraft. Mom says I'm old enough to start planning a takeover any day now." "Ha-hah!" Mark laughed, "your mother's such a kidder! Watch out there, squirt!" He caught Gale as the latter finally slipped, his younger child landing on his lap with a giggle. "We're a family. And families work together to help other people - even if you have to fool them a little first. And that's not statecraft." He grinned. "That's magic."

"Politics," said Keith shortly, not seeming terribly interested in Cathy's question. "War. But the real thing that brought me here was the passage a' time," he said, pouring a cup of tea for the two young women. "You say you're staying in this realm?" he asked, cocking his head to Phaedra. "Sure. They treat you fine, you got a girl out of it. But what if it wasn't so fine?" He made a little gesture in the air - and suddenly everything was different. The scene was a bit like plugging a movie into the Doom Room, or perhaps wearing a high-end piece of virtual reality. Their table was now in the middle of a large crowd of women and men, their faces pale and bodies thin, some with defiant eyes but others downcast - each dressed in bright orange jumpsuits with their heads shaved and words printed clearly across their torsos - GENDER TRAITORS. Looking down, Phaedra and Cathy could see their outfits had changed too. "Things get better. But they get worse too." Their little group seemed to be in the middle of a large open area of an armed encampment, where uniformed, masked men stood patrol in towers by barbed-wire fences. It looked like two prisoners were in the process of being singled out for special punishment - from what Phaedra and Cathy could hear, they'd been caught in a sinful relationship." "You gonna tell me that's not some of their heads?" Keith asked Phaedra and Cathy, pointing to the two women being led together onto a wooden platform. "They wouldn't do that to you in a minute if they thought they could get away with it?"

http://orokos.com/roll/573043 = 23 ...you know, normally I would never reroll initiative with an HP, but Anna would be so _embarassed_ to go last. http://orokos.com/roll/573044 = 38 with the HP!

The upper, in my experience. Okay, Sea Devil! Attack vs. Naia: http://orokos.com/roll/572479 = 9 Good lord, seriously? OK, this time I'm going to spend an HP on that. http://orokos.com/roll/572480 = 22 That hits! Aquaria inflicts a level of injured (I'm going to say that either injured or staggered counts as bloodied for the purposes of the fight) and Naia is out. Naia is out. Ikatere is up! He'll take advantage of this for one last hit against Leviathan and Power Attack for +2 http://orokos.com/roll/572482 = 25! Ah, geez! Well, that's...DC 39, with the crit and Power Attack! I may have set the PLs a little foolishly for this one. Have an HP (so the worst you can get is staggered) while I sort this out.

As nonchalantly as if this happened every day, Woodsman hooked his grappling hook to the lip of the building's roof and looked back at Quarrel as her arrow whizzed past his head. He was running - running from his impulse to drive his hatchet through her face as much as from her powers. He'd fought people with powers before. Both in this world, and in other ones. He looked Quarrel up and down, gave her a disappointed look, and slid down a rope to the nearest window - luckily finding one left open against the warm weather of a rare heat wave in a Freedom City autumn. He swung inside, dropped the rope - and ran, pulling his crossbow out again as he took shelter inside the next-to-top story of the building. He was going to be followed - either through the window or the ceiling. And he was going to be ready.

Oh, she cheats! Well then. Woodsman switches to his grapple gun and rappels down inside the building - once there, he'll take shelter and conceal himself again.

Most people who care know: Though the Spirit of Liberty has manifested for a variety of people in Freedom City in the last few years, including medical student Sonia Gutierrez, it has not yet taken a permanent host. The current Star Knight of Earth is Cavalier - and the general public is aware that Star Knights are space cops. Bowman IV is no longer on the Freedom League, given his need to run his family business. He remains semi-active as a hero. There is a population of people living in Freedom City who are known to be aliens from another world, refugees from a terrific cosmic disaster and its consequences - the Incursion! Some people know: In the wake of the events of Arcadia, the new Master Mage of Earth is Phantom - Adrian Eldrich is dead! The Conqueror Worm has returned thanks to Malador the Mystic and is setting up a zombie apocalypse to bring down God's wrath. The villain Freebooter is no longer active. No one has seen Lantern Jack in quite some time. The current American base of operations for the Crime League is somewhere in the vast Atchafalaya Basin. Raven II has retired from active superheroing, but still acts as a consultant to the Freedom League and a patron for younger heroes. The swamp creature/man-monster/plant zombie Tom Cypress has joined the Crime League. No one yet knows: Knightfire and Toy Boy have become a spirit of hate and a nightmare being, respectively. New Doc Holiday in the form of an evil force of anti-fun possessing a rando named Holiday. Conundrum has figured out the former second Raven's secret identity and is working to undermine and destroy the institution she governs, Claremont Academy. Warden, formerly a mundane prison-themed engineer supervillain, is now wielder of a magic key that connects Earth-Prime to his otherworldly Dungeon Dimension. The Cosmic Mind has begun to empower the greatest Lor psions working for the Grand Nauarchus - but for what purpose?

Let's see, she will try and dodge them all. http://orokos.com/roll/572428 = she makes two out of the three saves and tanks the middle one because of her Impervious 8, I believe.

Me too! Sea Devil strikes me as a likely witness, since Deep One oral histories go back that far.

Hokay - I think we're ready for the big climax!