Avenger Assembled

Initiative! Naia: 25 Ikatere: 14 Leviathan: 12 Sea Devil: 9 Naia: goes for her mother! http://orokos.com/roll/567573 = 18 That does just hit - but can't get through Aquaria's Impervious Ikatere: goes for Leviathan! http://orokos.com/roll/567574 = 23 That does hit! Okay, that's a DC 32 save for the big guy.

Comrade Frost paused for a moment on a rooftop near the dojo, first verifying that the Major wasn't doing anything so declasse as simply overwhelming the place's defenses with wave after wave of mind-controlled thralls. That wasn't quite the former British intelligence agent's style - but Dimitri knew better than anyone how much a man's outlook could change after a few decades. When he saw no such horde assaulting the facility, he simply cast himself into fog and ice again before reforming on the dojo's roof and heading for the roof access. At the door, he thought to himself briefly, remembering the security cameras pointed at him and for a moment wishing he had access to the Faretti family's dark inheritance that spared them from cameras. "Hello!" he called out loud. "I am not mind-controlled slave!" he went on as he opened the door into the rest of the dojo.

"If neither of you are gonna have some tea, I'm gonna be a touch put out," said Keith as he poured himself a hot cup from the silver carafe on the table. He filled up a porcelain cup with blue flowers on it, and sipped like a gentleman, pinky out, as he studied Ardent and Frostbyte expectantly. "I was in the neighborhood. You have more friends in this city than you know, darling," he said, nodding in Ardent's direction. He took a seat at the head of the table, the back of his seat cut low enough not to interfere with his wings, and gestured for them to join him. "Please. You wouldn't refuse my hospitality, would you?"

I suspect I know what Woodsman will do at this point, but it is @Exaccus who is up!

Here you go, @Fox and @Gizmo

"She's quite the specimen, isn't she?" said the voice overhead in Fred's cell, conversational despite the appalling horrors of the day. "I don't mind telling you - we had quite a bit of trouble capturing her, much less putting in Control afterwards." The other Fred - the Fred-thing if Riley's stories could be trusted, shifted slightly in its sleep, looking a bit like a satiated predator after a big meal. "Of course, she has reason to be so angry. You're familiar with the Hunting Ground - you know what must have happened to her there. Can you imagine what it must have been like before the Change, roaming that dead city, feeling the madness draining her soul away?" The baby was crying louder now, the red-faced wailing of a child in obvious distress. - "I'm afraid your friends won't be visiting us until I'm sure you can be trusted not to send them against us," came the voice overhead in Matt's cell - the cavalcade of death growing stronger and faster, albeit muted by a strange distance Matt couldn't immediately put his finger on, like listening to a low-fidelity Youtube video instead of a live concert. The deaths were coming again and again now, far more than could have been present at that concert - deaths of fear and grief, deaths of terror and rage, and something else - a death of the mind no less horrific for that, as if the very soul had been scooped out and replaced out, again and again and again, the psychic ghosts of a mortal violation of the soul ringing outward again and again - and was that the distant sound of a crying baby? "The living can't be saved, psychopomp. Your teachers, your friends - they've lied to you. This is a multiverse of Murder - and I'm going to show it to you."

As if a decision had been made, Gold suddenly moved - it wasn't quite teleportation and it wasn't quite super-speed, rather the effect was as if Midnight had simply stood there and let Gold smash the end of his staff against his jaw, knocking him backwards against the frame of the waiting room door with a sickening thud that sent the fedora-wearing sleuth's head spinning. "History says Midnight fights past today," said Gold shortly, his Socotran accent thickening, "but it doesn't say anything about his teeth..." There was no sign of energy discharges around the staff Gold was using, just a long, solid pole of saffron metal the size and heft of a quarterstaff - but with Gold's speed, it didn't look like he needed more. The other two in the trio had disappeared down the hall on opposite sides, but at least for now they weren't trying to bust in.

That's great news, EN! Hope to see you back soon, with great wedding stories.

Woodsman stared out the window as Facsimile went about his work, considering his options. "Hostile down there," he said out loud for his fellow superhero's benefit. "Can't stay up here." He considered his options carefully as he studied the slide. "Gonna go down first," he said reluctantly. "You take rear and close slide up afterwards." He hated to do it, but he couldn't let those women go into danger on their own - not when that woman below might be a sniper or a meta watching the fire for anyone escaping. It was standard practice - if anything could be said to be standard practice about today. "Hang on," he said, before testing his balance and sliding down, keeping a careful grip on his crossbow as he went.

Woodsman did as asked, though this time he skipped the explosion. Instead he drew his hatchet and covered his hand and face, then headed to the nearest large window before carefully breaking it open with a few well-placed blows of his hatchet. Once no hail of bullets or superpowers followed, he broke the glass away more freely, making an opening big enough for human beings to pass through. Broken glass was not like its movie self - either he or these young women could be badly hurt if they took a cut while going out of the building. "You fly?" he asked Facsimilie, cautiously peeking out the broken-away window with a mirror on an extendable pole.

The trio made their way into the warehouse through the roof access, moving slowly and carefully to avoid detection. Much of the interior of the building had been gutted and refurbished over the years, meaning that roof access put them on catwalks rather than on an actual second floor. Looking down below, the group saw a great number of crates stacked against the walls of the warehouse, making corridors and alleys all their own, a few left open to reveal their high-tech contents - but their attention was on the center of the warehouse floor. There an arcane ritual was taking place, an arcane ritual guarded by two dozen men wrapped in heavy combat armor and armed with impressive-looking super-guns, their evident leader the same big, muscular man in all black that Raina's parents had been speaking to on the video she'd seen. Raina's parents were easy to pick out too, at least for said worthy, - they were the ones standing in the middle of the skull sketched out on the ground, scattering ashes in a pattern that marked out the lines of the skull above. For his part, Merlin took this opportunity to carry out his own arcane rituals, trying to make a connection to the warehouse's computers from the inside that he hadn't been able to make from the outside. This was obviously the peak of the ritual, or close to it - because all of a sudden reality itself tore open! The portal was red and black, shot through with bright white lightning that looked decidedly ominous for the three graduates of Mrs. Faretti's extension classes on dimensional travel. Phantom's portals were like doorways opened in the walls of the universe - this was like an angry, puckering wound torn in reality itself. As the Sandersons' chanting grew louder, the lightning wrapped around the portal's edge flashed again and again - before the portal discharged its passenger, who landed with a slight stagger but didn't fall. The dimensional traveler was a short, wiry woman with a short crop of kinky black hair interspersed with grey. She was fit, and armed, with a heavy-caliber pistol strapped to her right side, wearing clothes that matched dark green and grey in a familiar pattern. She looked more like a soldier than a superhero - albeit a wounded one. The empty sleeve of her left arm was pinned up at her side. Even at a distance, her face was recognizable enough. She stared around the warehouse, obviously at a loss for a moment, even briefly glancing up at the ceiling and back at the portal. "Welcome to Earth-3," came the distance-filtered voice of the man down below. "I'm sorry we couldn't greet you in your own dimension." He was taller than her, and two-armed - but she didn't seem frightened of him at all. When she spoke, her voice was inaudible from this distance, but they seemed to be having a professional, albeit tense, conversation. "Yes, it's a little dramatic, but magic is full of drama. Or so they tell me!" The man below laughed - and started to put his arm around his guest, before evidently thinking better of it. The Sandersons, for their part, were moving with alacrity around what Raina recognized as a ritual that wasn't actually out of control but could be one - casting and gesturing to restrain the portal inside the skull on the floor, seeming to try and fix it into place behind the new arrival. Woodsman stared down at the new arrival and shook all over - but even now, he didn't call out loud. Stay still. Stay quiet. Stay alive. A whisper escaped his lips anyway, almost inaudible except to the three in the rafters. "...Momma?"

"Ah, jeez!" Alone with Bryant and Holly while Paige got some well-deserved girl time, Richard Cline watched as the Book (as he'd taken to calling it in his head) dropped back down into his lap. It had all of a sudden ascended into the air and begun glowing in the sort of eldritch light that usually meant something bad had happened somewhere. The Book, the product of a Master Mage who'd died some seventy years before Richard's own birth in the 1960s, tended to report on magical doings of great import. Richard read the words, seeming sketched on the page by the same spidery penciled hand that had written the book's various magical rituals, and said a bad word that had him getting up to put a dollar in the swear jar before he took out his phone and (for lack of a better idea) tried texting a woman he knew from PTA. Texting was a new thing for him. Evidently there were lots of new things these days. DID THE MASTER MAGE JUST DIE? -FAST-FORWARD

Initiative time! @Blarghy - here you go Sea Devil: 9 Naia: 25 Ikatere: 14

"Nothing in the male parts," Aquaria hissed at him. "just as I cannot strike her in the cloaca. And only spill blood." She'd seen some Surfacer combats that had all sorts of elaborate rituals of who could hit who where, and how sacred circles must be kept - the latter made sense for elaborate rituals she supposed but what was elaborate about fighting. With his trident, a croaking-chanting Sees-in-Darkness sketched a golden sign in the middle of the muck as the tribe chanted and bellowed. Naia had disappeared, evidently to find her mate, so Aquaria took the opportunity to lead Leviathan out onto the field and show him where they stood. "You beneath one arm, I beneath the other, and the two in the middle..." The tribe gave a particularly vigorous cry - Naia and her partner had returned. Aquaria felt, as her daughter arrived, a stab of pride at how well her line must be propagating itself. Her mate was clearly the Keeper of this tribe's eggs from where he'd been waiting - and he had the muscle and magical power to back it up. His tattoos, engraved with holy marks she knew and some she didn't were already glowing in the reflected light of the golden sign. His power was great and powerful muscles bulged beneath a towering frame that if it wasn't as big as Leviathan was certainly very big - he had a good two feet of height and a hundred pounds on Aquaria or Naia, just as a male should with a female. He had a rugged jaw and proudly erect crest, manly sharp teeth, and beautiful black, bulging eyes. Aquaria glanced briefly at Leviathan and thought a little wistfully, It seems this is a day for beautiful things that I cannot have. Naia stood at his side but not as his feet, a good sign for their relationship, and upon closer inspection the tridents they bore seemed to match. As Leviathan watched, the big Deep One bellowed and aimed his trident at Leviathan's face. "Fool! I, Ikatare, will eat your guts and void them on your bones! In the sacred names!" Naia echoed his cry - and the battle began!

"Of course I've been doing my breathing exercises!" The air around the birthing pool rippled again, giving Mark and Erin slight but distinct feelings of vertigo for a moment. Erin had seen births on television with women in distress and pain in the moment of delivery, lashing out in fear and rage. The look in Nina's eyes wasn't quite like that, though - the other woman seemed to be focusing herself through the burning light in her eyes. The water rippled too, and she reached out and grabbed Erin's hand. "I prepare for everything! But I can't make my plans work, because my husband just walks around and gets whatever he wants!" She broke off and gritted her teeth through another contraction. For his part, Mark had secured some sort of mirrored contraption and had lowered it into the water, never minding how the warm water seemed to actually be boiling briefly despite its temperature never actually increasing. A quick glance told Erin that he seemed to be checking dilation under the direction of the doctor. From her position safely away from the waves of hydrokinetic power, Dr. Hussein declared, "10 centimeters, excellent. You are in the transition phase - so the next step is your son!" Mark, tired though he looked, lit up at that, squeezing Nina's other hand. "You're doing great! I love you so much - I know how hard this is, but you're almost done." For her part, Nina responded with a suggestion that if Mark had any idea how hard this was, he'd grow himself lady parts and do it himself!

Riley wasn't one for talking - not when an arrow in the face, or even better an arrow in the back, was a language all its own. But he'd learned from the best. He advanced on the remaining bouncers, fists held high, and hissed like a striking snake, "Okay, you bastards! This place is ours now. Turn and run or we break you!" He was all of five-foot-six and wiry, but in his cold, pitiless eyes and fierce face, there was something hard and ready for battle. "C'mon! I'm standin' here in a city fulla people who shoot lasers out their asses. And look what _she_ did! You think I'd be going for you if I couldn't take every last one of you sonsabitches!?"

Woodsman: Intimidate attempt 21 That's deplorable. 29 That's better! OK, that's versus DC 24 for the thugs - DC 22 if you think they have a clearly superior position, Durf.

Sea Devil and Singularity chased after the guard, the former springing into action immediately when said guard took a hostage. She didn't punch or kick, or strike with her tridents or the energetic powers of her suit. Instead she leaped forward on all fours without breaking stride and caught the boy's gun with her tongue, said limb lashing out in a blurred burst of speed and power. She pulled the infernal machine right out of his grip and bit down, hard - there was an unpleasant sound as metal bent and plastic crumbled beneath her shark-like teeth as she bit down with a jaw strong enough to snap a dolphin's spine in one hard bite. The gun tasted vile, of course, but she spat out the pieces and glared at the Surfacer goons. She was terrible at judging ages but they all looked so young, so instead of attacking again she glared at them with bulging eyes and gave a wordless bellow, her throat sacs bulging wide and thick, her crest standing tall on her head.

Green: 32 Gold: 21 Midnight: 16 Red: 14 Green: Retreats and takes Aim at Midnight Gold: Attempts to strike Midnight with his staff. Acrobatic Bluff vs. Acrobatics/Sense Motive: 31 Attack vs Midnight: 32 Okay, well, that's not good. That's a DC 32 Toughness save for Midnight. He obviously has a decent amount of HP he's sitting on under the circumstances!

26 is young for a police detective - but not insanely young. It's a sign he was a driven go-getter. APPROVED

Hmm. You'll definitely get mileage out of that Blindness complication without Acute on his mental sense. You should put the flaw Phantasm on that Concealment to represent that it's a mental 'trick' and doesn't work on machines - or figure out why it affects machines too.

Raina could immediately tell something was wrong the moment they arrived at the warehouse in the Fens. The _feel_ of magic around the faded old brick building had the stink of wrongness about it, a bit like there'd been a chemical leak there in the Astral Plane - and a toxic chemical at that. She was a little surprised no other mystic heroes had picked up on it - but on the other hand, this was far from where most of them operated, and whatever had created the magical contamination seemed to be fading now. To Robin and Riley's eyes, though, this looked like any other old business in the Fens - albeit a lively one. The lights were on inside the warehouse and they could see people inside moving against the frosted planes, and the sound of machinery and noise. The garage doors were all sealed up tight against the cold, and there were no obvious entrances to the building. Stepping off Raina's broom as they arrived, Woodsman studied the building. "Go in the roof?" he suggested as Robin joined them in the alley that provided convenient shelter from anyone looking out from inside the warehouse - they couldn't see anyone who was, but they all had experience with nearly-invisible security tech. "Place this old prolly has roof access - 'n crap security up there." Between his and Robin's ability to sneak and Raina's talent for magical invisibility, he was reasonably confident of their ability to make it in there without any troible.

Popular culture says that devils look like David Bowie. This is technically true - in that devils can look like anything they please. The thing waiting inside the warehouse for Ardent and Frostbyte didn't look like David Bowie. With his wrinkled, weather-beaten face, unkempt grey hair underneath a fedora, and leather jacket, it looked more than a little like Keith Richards. Well, Keith Richards with black, leathery wings protruding out of his back. This was not Auld Reekie. That worthy, or rather his iron head, sat on the table next to their host - muttering curses through iron jaws that someone appeared to have partially melted shut. The demon had spoken truth. There was indeed piping hot tea set out on the table by Auld Reekie's head. Looking closely, Ardent realized two things - she'd seen this guy before down in the depths of Throne, where he had some sort of diplomatic job that had seemed incredibly tedious to her younger self. And he was also a million cannibal worms in the shape of Keith Richards with devil wings - not shapeshifted exactly, but both at the same time. Demons could be that way. "Hello, children!" said 'Keith', his voice worn and a little reedy with age. "Come in, come in. I hope you don't mind, I brought you a plane-warming gift." He patted Auld Reekie's head affectionately. "He's all bound up in there. Silly bugger should have learned - you take a mortal shell, you suffer mortal threats."

The hell of it was, when all was said and done and there was time to think about it afterwards, it was a good concert. The audience was both attentive and appreciative throughout, applauding at the applaud moments, cheering when they were supposed to be cheering, giving every sign that they loved what Fred and Matt were bringing to the stage. When they got up to dance for the fast dancing songs, the audience moved with an uninhibited rhythm like men and women without a care in the world other than losing themselves in the music and in each other. When Fred and Matt took a break halfway through, there were pitchers of agua fresca waiting for them just off-stage, and everything seemed to be going fine. At their return, they found Abel waiting for them on-stage, a big smile on his face and a whistle around his neck like the one a high school track coach might have carried. "Hello, everyone! I hope everyone here is grateful to our band for giving us the performance of a lifetime! Give it up!" The crowd cheered, they whistled, they stood - smiling, sweating faces of young people having the time of their lives. "Thank you so much," he added to Fred and Matt under the noise of the crowd, his mouth away from the mic. "You guys really could have a future in this." With a smile, he turned back to the audience and said, "Okay, it's time for my little part of tonight's festivities. I hope everyone has their earplugs in!" He laughed, showing white teeth, a perfect master of ceremonies. The sheer mundanity of the moment, and the ripple of laughter that went through the crowd as they reached into their pockets for red foam earplugs, cut any tension as Abel stood before the big standing microphone and raised the whistle to his lips. And then he blew. SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE It was a terrible, ear-splitting scream that seemed to cut directly into Fred and Matt's souls, almost immediately driving them to the ground with hands clapped futilely to their ears as waves of agonized numbness shot through them again and again, until paralysis and rapidly-rising unconsciousness seemed a more palatable alternative than standing before that terrible, awful sound. SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE There was an instant's pause when Abel paused for breath- SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE In the last minute before Abel reached down to close their paralyzed eyes for them, Fred and Matt can still see - and feel. From Matt's position at the front of the stage, he can see the crowd - he can't hear them, but he can make out their lips as they chant - "We shall repay! We shall repay!" with the fervent enthusiasm of groupies - or cultists. He can see some of them stripping, exposing skin covered in tattoos marked with bloody stones and eldritch symbols of murder and death. He can still feel the dogs but they feel far away - not as if the whistle drove them off but as if the sound pushed them into some deeper realm where they just can't reach him in time. Fred is in the back, where she can't see the stage at first. Until she feels something bump into her back - the French doors are opening! Something steps over her - then bends down and turns her over. She stares up into the thing's face. The lack of hair makes it ambiguous at first until she realizes the woman leaning over her is a woman - a woman with her own face. Except her teeth have been sharpened into a predator's smile and her eyes - her eyes are yellow. Suddenly, with a jerking motion, she seems to be pulled away, frowning. And she drops Fred, the latter's head turning to see her counterpart walk towards the edge of the stage with a slow, mechanical stride. There are wires in her back, driven into flesh and bone, an arrangement of metal that vaguely resembles an umbrella's framework but thicker and denser - wires who seem to be driving the forward motion of her limbs, blood visible at the insertion sites only partially covered by the bodice and harness she's wearing. When she reaches the edge of the stage, she stares at the ecstatic crowd before her before giving a howl - and it's the Alkahest, eyes wide and Feral, body still shackled with steel, who leaps into the crowd below. And as Abel closes his eyes for him, Matt can feel death. Death death death death death - One last blow of the whistle turns paralysis into unconsciousness. Maybe that's for the best. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fred opened her eyes to the sound of a baby crying. She lay on a cold metal floor, still dressed in the outfit she wore to the concert, and in front of her there was a bassinet with a baby in it. The baby, wearing nothing but a disposable diaper, doesn't look very happy. The rest of the room, a cell whose grey walls were marked with squares about thirty-six inches on the diagonal, was empty except for what looked like a basic chemistry set (if they still made chemistry sets, anyway) up against the far wall. One side of her prison was transparent - letting her see next door where another Fred lay on its stomach, covered in gore, metal wires protruding from its back. The other Fred, no longer the Alkahest, was sleeping. From overhead, came a voice. "Good! You're awake!" - Matt woke up surrounded by death. Well not in so many words but the sheer sensation of it. Death death death death. Not the shocks of it he'd felt back at the concert, but a building, inevitable tide at the back of his mind. He could feel these deaths playing like Muzak in an elevator, Muzak that was only getting louder. These were deaths of terror and pain, deaths that weren't happening anywhere in this cell whose grey walls were marked with squares about thirty-six inches on the diagonal, deaths of accident and violence, like those he'd feel at the site of a serious auto accident - but they went on and on and on, ticking away in the psychic noise of this room and getting louder and louder. From overhead, came a voice. "Good! You're awake!"

Sounds good re:the Master Mage thing.