Avenger Assembled

Mark stayed active as he moved back and forth across the farm's property, popping back and forth to study Grim's plan while at the same time making his own cheerful additions with a wave of his hand and a wink in his eye. There didn't seem to be any limits to his ability to translate his imagination into reality, and few enough limits to his imagination, for all that he was concentrating on family-friendly Halloween activities. "What if we made a big jack o'lantern, big enough for all the kids to crawl inside and take their pictures at once?!" As he spoke, he was waving his hand outside the barn, summoning a jack o'lantern easily as tall as the building, a cheery titan of orange with glowing yellow eyes like something pulled from a small boy's mythology. "Or is that too scary? What do you think, little guy?" Richard was awake by now and moved from his father's carrier to his father's arms, peering suspiciously at the world with a small baby's lack of vision in his big blue eyes, sucking on a bottle that Mark had seemed to simply pull from his sleeve when the baby needed it.

Tarva stared at Miss Americana for a moment, eyes narrowed, but then spoke with a calm professionalism that seemed rather different than the woman they'd met outside, "I can do so. The spell is easy enough to cast slowly - though if I fail to find him, the consequences will not be mine." Her grip tightened around her lover, but nothing on her face or in her voice betrayed weakness now. Kimber, at least, had seen this before - Tarva tended to give like for like and hate for hate, and met icy reserve with a cold precision like a perfectly cast shadow. With their gear packed up and dark rituals to be cast here, the scientists in the dome took the opportunity to retreat back to the barracks, taking shelter somewhere isolated from the potentially dangerous doings of super-people. "I will guard their door," said Caradoc after a moment's hesitation, addressing Miss Americana as much as anyone there. "We face foes who would choose them as victims first." He knew that Gina's distance inside the robot would protect her from anything unleashed by Tarva - and that Jill and Dragonfly had their own ways of managing. That left Miss Americana, Ghost Girl, Jill O'Cure, and Dragonfly inside the dome as Tarva knelt on a clear patch of floor and began chanting - drawing on the floor around her with a finger that was suddenly covered with shadowy, inky blackness. The words were a black eldritch speech of which Kimber had heard a little - the eyes that saw and the hands that clenched, the fire that burned but gave no heat and gave no light! Her voice rising, Tarva opened eyes turned into black, featureless pools, the level of eldritch energy in the room growing - but not yet powerful enough to trigger the magical devices below in the cyber-crypt. Not yet!

Without comment, Woodsman fired his crossbow near the frightened civilian - then hooked the line on the other end of the bolt to the far wall. If this was a mad dream, he was going to act like a normal person during it, dammit. He slung a loop of thicker rope from his belt to the line, then leaped across the gap, sliding along until he reached Brandi's side. "Hello," he said out loud for the first time. "Got yer ride," he commented out loud, showing her how to hook the rope to the line he'd strung across the gap. "Like zip line," he said out loud, though the angle of descent wouldn't be exactly the same. "Don't let go," he added, as he tied the rope firmly around her wrists - and hooked it there with clips while he was at it.

Anna sees no reason not to hit this guy - and she's both hard to hit and bulletproof! She'll temporarily drop her Concealment for this effect as a way of striking a more imposing entrance. http://orokos.com/roll/564977 = 18 Dunno if an 18 hits the guy, but I think this is still surprise? Anyway, if that does hit, that's a DC 29 Toughness save.

Lady Horus ran. She ran to the doors and pulled the wires. She ran to the windows and pulled the wires. Anna Cline had once been able to run fast enough to make the Centurion look like a fool - fast enough to leave the sound of her own laughter in the dust and to nearly catch particles of light. That was what controlling time meant - it meant you were faster than speed itself. But that had been a long time ago - and she'd been a very different woman then. She was still, however, remarkably fast - and within the space of a second or two, she had triggered every single wire inside the church. She figured there probably wasn't a bomb; button men were often stupid but they were basically cowards, and so they wouldn't stand there in the middle of a place wired to blow up. She wouldn't even have worried about some maniac like that in Freedom - but Bedlam had a lot of maniacs. Figuring that the guy by the altar was probably the head wack-a-doo, she appeared behind him. The effect was like a sunburst for onlookers as she dialed her speed down and her divine power up, the sudden flare of light making it look as though she'd stepped out of a yellow solar flash of pure divine power. "Lo! The Sunhawk is here!" she declared, her voice stentorian like a Shakespearean actor, before smashing her double-bladed ankhs directly at the back of the man's head.

Sounds good to me!

Leviathan's words stirred up a great to-and-fro among the Deep Ones. The words came faster, or in too alien ways, for Leviathan's translator to catch them at first. This might have been the equivalent of a learned debate, or soccer fans arguing over whose team was best. But it was an argument of snapping teeth and bulging throat sacs, of deep bass underwater bellows and sustained mass hissing like the sound of large, angry snakes having a battle royale. But no blows were struck and no one actually bit anyone else, even if he did distinctly see at least one pair break off into what looked like a wrestling match in the mud and muck at the bottom of the bay. No one seemed to have hostile intentions towards the visitors, though a few did make aggressive threat displays their way. Aquaria certainly didn't look put out by what was happening - standing so close to Leviathan, he could make out her bellowing into the din - "Will you count coup forever? Or fight a true fight? There is no darkness if none can hear its song! Do not let the light Above blind your ears!" She turned occasionally and gave Leviathan a big, toothy smile and a double-thumbs up that looked all-too-human on her froggy Deep One face. Suddenly, a great cry broke over the sound of the debate - and Naia stepped out into the open area between the body of the tribe and Leviathan. "Hear me, brothers and sisters! Hear me, Sees-in-Darkness! I call the Challenge of the Dark Mother and Father against the...survivor and her mate! The blood will tell - and feed the gods Below, if they speak the truth!" Soon "The Challenge! The Challenge!" was coming from the throats of the tribe. It didn't seem like they got a lot of entertainment. Aquaria croaked in English - "She has a _mate_? - I mean, that's good," she added, again in translated Lemurian, "we fight to first blood, and you look like you can make her mate spill blood..." Aquaria suddenly climbed up on Leviathan, quick as a scuttling gecko, and peered from a perch on his shoulders. "Where _is_ her mate?"

"Oh, man, don't get me started on time-travel. Back when all those temporal gateways opened up a few years ago, Miss Americana was trapped over a century in the past for at least a year. She doesn't like to talk about it." For his part, Citizen wasn't a person at all - but he was beginning to relax and think that things were going to turn out all right for Zenith. "Things will turn out all right," he told them with the confident surety of a recent graduate. "When I was here, my best friends were a paper controller, a sentient post-mortem psionic imprint, and a shapeshifter. The mix now is a little more fractured than it usually is - but you'll be fine." When the students were all eating his lunch, Sharl rose to his feet - reminding himself with some reluctance that this wasn't his place anymore. "If you guys will excuse me, I need to fly back to Emerald City tonight. If you need anything, Zenith, just call me or Miss A. Nice meeting all of you," he offered as he lifted off into the air before rocketing away with the faint, soothing hum of magnetic power.

Aquaria switches her Dagon's Might array to Super-Strength 3 - 21! OK, do you want to contest the Disarm there, or should I go ahead and describe her doing it?

Where possible, she'll take 10 and 20 on Notice using Quickness 5 for a total of 18 and 28, respectively. http://orokos.com/roll/564627 - if you actually need a roll at some point, it's 16.

Freedom League - all this stuff sounds great. Baddies - I like the Devil Ray stuff a lot. (No surprise there!) Freebooter has "broken good" in our 'verse, no reason for that to change. Nobody really cares about Magpie, etc, so there's no reason _not_ to have these transitions for them. Not sure about the alien thing - but it's a perfectly fine character origin.

"Dunno," Riley admitted. "Not used to monsters havin' kingdoms and armies and such. But I think the Liberty League's on it. They've, uh, got some good people." Terrifying people when he contemplated what most of them must be like on his own world - if they were like anything at all. But there was no use dwelling on that now, not when there were other, much more immediately concerning things to wrestle with. "It'll be fine," said Monsoon cheerfully, sounding very much like her husband to Riley's ears even though he'd only met the man a few times. "We'll tell your headmaster you had a run-in with the Aurans when they attacked the surface, and then the Liberty League went down there and defeated their king. It doesn't matter how you do something, so long as you succeed in doing it." "...not sure that's right, but ok." said Riley, not wanting to kill the goose that lay the golden egg but feeling a little more talkative than usual. "Should we give her a call, or-" "Oh, she's on her way here," Monsoon added. "By motorcycle, I believe. The vibrations must have triggered some sensors elsewhere in the city..."

Sea Devil and Singularity both have enough movement to surpass any normal human - but it wasn't their turn in initiative! Alas. Sea Devil is going to try and eat that guy's gun as a way of providing a circumstance bonus to Singularity's coming Intimidate check. She'll spend her turn moving within melee range - and then grab for it with her tongue, squeezing it hard enough to keep the mechanisms from working. Can I take 10 and hit it? (i.e., are these minions)

All right - Lady Horus has Concealment 10 up and is exploring the church. Are you looking for Notice or Search checks here, EN?

Should Sparkler and Reagent roll for initiative too?

There you go

Search: http://orokos.com/roll/563835 = 19

Is there a GM post coming here to describe the new state of things, EP, or should I post?

"Well, okay..." When the beam was out of the way, Woodsman pressed a small silver flask into Facsimile's hand. "As far as you know, I found that here and passed it to you, so no harm, no foul." He stepped past Facsimile and headed into the room with the unconscious executive, giving him a quick onceover as he reloaded his crossbow. "Hey listen," he said to Facsimile. "I'm gonna blast us outta here, but that's gonna give us flashover inna room this size. Can you, uh, turn yourself into a shield or somethin' 'n cover these folks?" Riley's suspicions about their current circumstances were palpable - but there was real suffering going on in here too.

Woodsman Init: 22

It wasn't quite a full house by the time Fred and Matt were ready to perform - but it was close. There was a big crowd of young people out there in the audience dressed to the nines in the latest fashions, so diverse that they might have stepped out of Central Casting for Freedom City. There were dark faces and pale ones, groups and couples of all sorts, all of them looking like they were having a very good time despite the fact that a good number of them had the same no-alcohol bracelets that Fred and Matt were both wearing. The duo had found the equipment and plugins they needed for their show without too much trouble, the big industrial-sized outlets looking freshly installed in the old mansion's walls. The dogs, in their exploration, had found that most of the mansion was empty - beyond the small staff in the kitchen and working the floor, most of the doors to the rest of the place were locked down and the slipcovers still on most of the furniture - even inside the locked rooms the dogs had uncovered. It was well dark outside by now, thanks to short winter days, the French doors behind them opaque even in their transparent spots unless you peered directly through them from close range. The perfect backdrop!

Woodsman appeared briefly to call down through the hole. "Man hurt up here. Need powers." Looking around, he considered his options for a moment as he waited for Facsimile and the civilian he was escorting to join them, cautiously checking the exit door.

The glass fell out of the frame - revealing a darkened warehouse that showed the scenes of a recent super-battle - and more besides! The moment the glass was open there came a terrible stink wafting up from inside, thick with the scent of burnt sulfur and motor oil, the walls of the once-vacant building were scarred with burns, craters, and eldritch graffiti in some of the languages of the world Below. The marks were cast in red and black against steel and glass on the interior, the red and black not quite dripping because despite appearances they weren't actually human blood. The graffiti on the walls was written in the blood of other things entirely - much worse things. And such graffiti it was. HELLO! the marks on the walls declared to Phae's eyes. COME IN! THERE'S TEA!

The Sunhawk wanted to fly in through the boarded-up stained glass windows and smite all those who had dared threaten her family. Anna Cline wanted to fortify her stronghold and wait for the enemy to come to her - and her well-armed allies. Lady Horus split the difference - or at least took a third option. She flew faster than the eye could see to the church roof and landed there, a bright beacon of shimming golden light to anyone capable of seeing her. Not that most people could see her, invisible, silent, and out of phase with normal reality as she prowled the church rooftop, glowing ankh in hand. Invisibly smashing her way through the roof would certainly catch the attention of whoever lay within, but in the wrong ways just now, so she looked for a way inside. She'd been in the game a long time - it wasn't the first time her loved ones had been used as bait.

What's the next room like?