Avenger Assembled

September 2017 Bedlam City Culver's As Esperanza dug into her Mint Brownie ice cream cone, Anna Cline lined up her pills and took them, one after the other. Maybe biologically she was a good thirty years younger than her age on the calendar - but thirty years off 82 wasn't so young in the grand scheme of things. That was why she'd taken the tomato soup with her ButterBurger, and why she was drinking the unsweetened tea. (She and Espy were splitting an order of cheese curds. She wasn't ready to give up on flavor yet.) When she'd finished with her medicine, Anna smiled at her erstwhile protege. "It ain't much of a congratulatory dinner, but it's what you deserve. I didn't get my GED till I was-" "fifty-six years old and in stir," Esperanza finished with a smirk around green-stained lips. "You've told me that story a thousand times, Anna." It was good to see the kid smiling, Anna reflected, even if it was at her expense. From what she remembered of raising a teenager, a full lifetime ago, that was usually how it went. It was late outside, and out the front window Anna could see cars moving by on the Interstate, heading down the peninsula. The fast food restaurant had the anonymity that came with the tourist crowd of the Labor Day weekend coupled with highway traffic. A dangerous place for their mutual enemy to start trouble. "It's a good story, honey," said Anna with a smirk of her own. "You know," she commented quietly. "I've been thinkin'. I've got some money comin' my way, and if I spend it right, I could get us a place here in town." That news was startling enough that Esperanza stared at her from over her cone, the ice cream in her mouth stopping any immediate response. "If that's still what you want." Smart thinking would have had them get the hell out of this crappy little town and find help for their mutual problem - but that would have meant abandoning Esperanza's family, the city where Anna'd been born, and probably ticked off the lady who lived in the hat Esperanza was keeping in her backpack. While Esperanza was thinking about that, another small group came through the restaurant's doors, Anna's eyes briefly flickering to them.

DC to hit is 19, so that does miss. You should spend that HP!

Under fire, Woodsman returned fire automatically - an arrow thunking out from his bow and burying itself in the 'armpit' of the Auran who'd fired on them. He turned and ran, not stopping to look as the short internal fuse inside the bolt ran down. From her position, Reagent could see and hear the muffled bang of the small explosion - the afflicted creature's side bulging outward like an inflated bubble for a moment before it staggered and seemed to right itself, its side collapsing backwards into a semblance of its original shape. Woodsman briefly had a tactical problem, not wanting to lure the gold creatures towards Fred's hiding place but not about to stand there in melee with them, but solved it by running for a warped-looking tree growing nearby. He'd almost made the partial shelter of its trunk when he heard that same noise behind him and turned. Another creature, not the one he'd hit, had thrown a piece of itself at him. Turning at the last second, he managed to get the golden mass to hit him a glancing blow across the shoulder-blades, still a cold, wet mass that nearly struck him to the ground. He didn't hesitate, having seen what the mass had done to the rockface, he divested himself of his poncho and (with a fast motion, and his knife) his shirt too as he felt that spreading wet cold extend everywhere. As he watched from his position behind the tree, shirt and poncho both transformed into thick, heavy golden masses. He knew objectively he was stuck in a sports bra above the waist. He'd deal with the feelings that stirred up later.

Woodsman: Move Action: Retreats to cover! Standard Action: Shoots Monster 3 26 Tou vs DC 21 18 It takes a bruise! Monster 1: Move: Attempts to Startle Woodsman: 23 resist: 24 Standard: Throws Transform at him! http://orokos.com/roll/543799 = 24 That hits! Okay, I'll say that deprives Riley of his Equipment-derived Toughness - but at least he's behind cover now. Lemme get an IC up.

I'll put Caradoc in for Thread 2.

Taking 10 will let her hit them (the DC to hit them is 14!) Toughness vs 23: She takes all five down!

Woodsman: 20 Monster 1: 17 Reagent: 15 Monster 2: 14 Monster 3: 11 Gonna tag this soon, wanted to get it up!

That hits. Her Grapple is not great. http://orokos.com/roll/543642 = 5! Okay, she is bound and helpless. I'll take that Interpose, though of course it may not work... Go ahead and post, Rav! @TheRedGuy, El Huracan is up as soon as Raveled posts IC.

Okay, I think it's initiative time!

It was not an auspicious beginning to Human-Auran relations. With Reagent taking cover behind the rockpile, Woodsman was the one facing down the three humanoids that emerged from the lake. Though humanoid was a generous term - they had two legs and two arms and heads atop their torsos, but their shifting, featureless quicksilver bodies were clearly inhuman, their molten-moving skin cast in shifting colors that varied between cream and goldenrod. The leader of the trio pointed a limb at Woodsman and made a sound Riley couldn't understand, one that reminded him of the bubbling of a hot spring - or of the volcanoes he'd seen on television. A quick glance at ground level revealed that these creatures were leaving the same trails as before - they weren't shedding on the ground as he'd thought, but sand and other loose particles seemed to be _changing_ where the ystood. "Hey," said Riley, doing his best to sound friendly, "sorry about the flare, didn't think y'd be home. You wanna sit down and-" The leader of the Aurans made that sound again, louder, and hurled a gobbet of itself at Woodsman! Ducking at the last moment, Riley rolled as he saw the ball of molten gold stuff strike the rockpile behind him and leave behind a sizzling trail of transformed metal!

"I have felt worse than this," Steve reassured her. He was cold to the touch too, his entropically-altered cells not needing the infusion of excess energy from elsewhere in his body to avoid freezing, but he was warmed by Gina's touch through the robot all the same. He couldn't reassure her that soon they would be done with the Terminus, because he knew that he would be dead on the day when that happened, but what he could say was "When we are finished with this place, we will burn it, bury it beneath the ice, and I will sleep with you again." They weren't sharing quarters this trip, there was little point to that, but he could watch her go for her shelter before heading for the residence dome. Eyes could make connections all their own. - With Miss Americana and Dragonfly in the same space, building a disposable robot probe to explore the depths of the Mandragora facility was an easy enough task for everyone involved - the prime responsibility everyone else had was staying out of the way and making sure that the necessary electronics were available for the two geniuses to do their work. Luckily there were plenty of electronics to be had in the facility, especially with the crew so limited, and Miss Americana and Dragonfly were both fast workers. By the time a hot lunch was served the next day, they had a working model of their probe - and by nine AM the day after that, with civil twilight bright enough to navigate by, they sent their robotic probe rumbling along on its treads down towards the nearby dig site. The scientists had largely stayed out of the way while Miss Americana and Dragonfly worked, running their dragon bones and other artifacts through machines that Jill quickly recognized as the sort of high-end scanners that could produce a high-res copy when connected to a good 3-D printer. It was an Archetech model typically used for helping make artificial body parts for implantation - but now had the role of providing the seeds for excellent copies of some truly bizarre things. Even crushed by millennia of ice, there was something distinctly _unwholesome_ about those ancient dragon bones and the artifacts left behind by the men and women who'd lived here, armored skulls and jeweled daggers suggesting something barbarically decadent in the ancient ice fortress. Slowly, their little probe rumbled through the darkness of the fortress, its lights revealing grim scenes preserved by the ice - skeletons of men and other things with a humanoid form and sharp, shark-like teeth laying where they'd fallen throughout the complex, strange and disturbing battle scenes clearly recognizable from Steve's stories about the Terminus jut visible behind thick walls, following the trail towards the crypt that lay at the complex's center. There were marks on the walls that hadn't been put there on purpose either, great blackened scars that rippled up and down the walls, whole craters and blasted away areas that broke up the inner lining of the structure. Again and again, the symbols of Mandragora were visible - but other symbols were visible too, one of a strange yellow sign, the others that looked vaguely Roman - or something like Roman, at least. "I know those bones," said Steve, his voice a low, quiet rumble as he watched the probe go deeper. "The reptilians, and the others. Lemurian."

They are indeed.

Okay, @Raveled, it's all Chrome!

"ENOUGH!" In the sky, Electroman hurled a bolt of lightning at Air Force One, then another, machine gun bullets and explosions detonating harmlessly against the glowing shield of blue-white electricity that surrounded his body. "If I'm gonna go down for hitting the President, I'm gonna go all the way!" He threw another bolt at the plane, and then another, energy crackling all along the jet's flank, a hole beginning to gape open in the tough metal surrounding the passenger compartment. It wasn't quite big enough for a human to enter yet - but it was certainly big enough for another lightning bolt. "C'mon! Hit me! Hit me!" he shouted, raising his arms in the air as bullets and bombs burst harmlessly against his protective shell. "I'm the biggest thing around!" Mind-Knight concentrated again, focusing her mental energies on Miracle Girl, and once again the paragon felt the oily touch of psionic power invading her thoughts - only to be driven out by her sheer mental power! "Agh! Take down the flying one!" the psychic called to the others. "She's too strong, I can't break her! I know where _I_ need to go," she added, turning and running for Air Force One as fast as her legs could take her.

Oh, it's him. Citizen frowned as he peered in the direction of the voice on the floor, trying and failing to catch sight of the famous Ouroborous. Famous for some, anyway. By all accounts the invisibility was something that the younger man had inherited from his father, a fellow infected with the blood-borne extradimensional pathogen that some people called 'vampirism' on Terra. Obviously it blocks the standard energy spectrum but not the latent psionic energies of sentient observers - fascinating! "All right, well, the more the merrier!" he said with cheer up in the lobby. He'd caught the tension between the escorting students and Huang, especially from Jayaman, whose glare Huang's way was truly fierce, but without any reason not to he decided to go ahead with the simulation. "Setting the timer for five minutes. We're going to put you in the middle of the, uh, Archevil Invasion. It's a slightly alternate version," he added, "so you'll have to do something original. You need to find a solution to the biggest problem that you see. Here you go." He pressed a few buttons and a crude but recognizable version of the Pyramid Plaza seemed to spring to life around the heroes - the holographic technology had been deliberately 'dialed back' in the wake of the incident with Mr. Archer, overall giving them an experience that had about as much fidelity as the latest console video game system - albeit a console that they could fully interact with and touch, smell, and hear. And there was a lot to touch, smell, and hear here - the Plaza was full of panicking people, running in terror and pointing to the sky! Overhead, a gigantic something was climbing its way up all three Plaza towers at once, looking like a gigantic, multi-eyed octopus as it ascended its way towards the matte-blue colored skies, giving a terrible inhuman cry that echoed like an ancient war drum, the shriek sending the civilians around them into a further state of panic.

Electroman: Will blast the plane! Air Force One is now taking some significant damage - it would be worse if the heroes weren't there, but they need to take action quick. Psychic, Bruised x2: Will try to Mind-Control Miracle Girl again! http://orokos.com/roll/542208 = and, uh, wow, will continue to roll badly. I believe you're rolling with a +2 bonus because of her previous attempt, Heritage. DC is 17 with your vulnerability. Okay, Chrome will be up as soon as I post for the NPCs - @Heritage, I need that Mind Control check so I can post for the NPCs. (I promise this is the last time! This fight, anyway. =D )

Heading for occupied areas of the city - damn. Negator's faster than me in the air and probably tougher too. But if I fight him down here, we'll bring the whole place down on our heads _and_ tear up this place up even more! The citizens of the Emerald Cities, essentially living in a wilderness by Sharl's standards, had enough troubles with decent infrastructure without it being torn up by an antimatter-powered madman. Fighting him in the air would at least get the man out of the main arteries of the twin cities. And this still doesn't explain what destroyed the previous robot! It was definitely not a good day. Knowing that only Negator's flustered state was giving him the advantage in these tight corners, Citizen accessed the city's WiFi network to figure out exactly where he was, then scanned overhead to make sure no one was about to get hit. I'm going to have to come back and fix all of this when this is done, he thought regretfully, but it beats the alternative. There was a sudden roar of magnetically displaced air as Citizen rocketed upwards, grabbing a manhole cover as he went and taking it with him as he rocketed upwards into the magnificent skies of the Pacific Northwest, the Emerald Cities and the adjoining odd-colored Pacific Ocean shrinking beneath him at alarming speed. Luckily a childhood in arcologies, or at least imagined ones, meant he had no fear of heights, even as within seconds he rocketed into the stratosphere as high as passing heavier-than-air vehicles. Inside he was reprogramming, altering his magnetic emitters to produce the effect that he'd need when the Negators closed with him, but he knew he needed more time - he needed to get higher up!

Citizen will fly upwards through the nearest manhole cover (he'll use his Super-Senses to make sure he won't hit anybody on the way upwards) then fly as high as he possibly can, way up into the sky away from the city. He'll fly all-out to do this, so he should be able to get about 40,000 feet up. Note that he's still much slower than Negator off the straightaway, so I fully expect some shots to be taken at him!

Finding their quarters meant dressing again and making a quick walk across the Antarctic night - luckily Dragonfly's powers offered them a way around that. The crew dome had an internal temperature of around 80 degrees, downright comfortable after even a touch of the outside, and while their small quarters were probably smaller than Yolanda's room back home (with thinner temporary walls abutting the bunk accommodations most of the scientists were in), it was private, there was a real bed, and other creature comforts, right down to Americana-brand red, white, and blue chapstick against the effects of extreme Antarctic dryness . As empty as the crew dome seemed to be, it wasn't hard to guess that they were benefiting from the sparse winter crew. Checking the women's side of things revealed no sign of quarters that might have been Miss Americana's, but of course the paragon was famous for needing few creature comforts. The food was in here too, again probably an benefit of the small crew on the winter shift. It was a microwave and portable electric stove, but it was a way to heat up the ample contents of the refrigerator and the MRE-stocked cabinets. The fridge was well-stocked with bottled water; another way of fighting the dry conditions. For the moment, at least, they had the crew dome all to themselves. - Outside, Miss Americana needed no protection against the cold - and in his parka and snowpants, Steve might have been a man in a Freedom City winter rather than an Omegadrone in an Antarctic one. It was night outside, of course, but the lights of the encampment gave them a sharp island of security inside the darkness of the icy desert continent. "It is nightfall," he told her quietly, knowing that of course Gina was well aware of the time in her cradle in Freedom City. "You need to sleep." Away from prying eyes outside, minus of course the security cameras that were watching against infiltration, he put his arm around her, knowing she could feel it. "Our time will come."

That also misses but I'll edit the post. That should do the trick.

"Now we're not going to do anything elaborate," said Citizen as the doors to the Doom Room opened. The group of new students, plus their escorts, had all ridden together in the elevator (somewhat uncomfortably) down to the fifth level metal-lined corridor that had taken them to the Doom Room. "I'm not a teacher, I'm just an alum. We'll be doing an old Young Freedom training scenario." As they stepped inside the large, cubic room with its lined holographic walls, Sharl thought about the past. The last time he'd been down here he hadn't actually been part of Young Freedom, of course, he'd been part of the team trying to help figure out what exactly had happened to Alan Archer and why his last training scenario in this room had gone so spectacularly awry. So that's where I heard of him! he thought suddenly, 'loud' enough for Salvo to hear, as he shot a look down at Jayaman as he joined the others heading into the Room. "So do you guys have a favorite?" he asked of the teenagers, trying not to think about how recently he'd been one of them. "I've got Medieval-1, Crisis-3...all the classics." There were also quite a few more safeties in place than there had been before, or so he remembered.

"Better us than the civilians," said Riley stoutly, a principle of the Woodsmen that he believed in absolutely but he had to admit wasn't the easiest principle to uphold. "Might not be hostile." He thought fast, thinking about Fred, and his friend's pride, and the horror of the Alkahest. "You get back behind the rocks," he suggested, jerking a thumb back at the testing site they'd started using only about an hour earlier. "Better parabola," he added, miming a thrown flask. It would also keep her out of melee and out of sight, just in case she did turn into a monster. "I'll be real diplomatic," he went on, reloading his crossbow with one of his red-striped bolts - he didn't carry many of those because of the risk of shattering his internal organs in the event they ignited. "It'll be fine."

http://orokos.com/roll/541648 = she just makes it! Bummer.

The pyrokinetic woman didn't so much dodge as simply step out of the way like a long-practiced dance partner, as if she'd known the punch was coming the whole time, a sneer on her face as she did so. "You won't get me, girl. We've got your number." She tapped the side of her head. "Mindknight is going to crack you open like a piece! of! cake!" With a mighty roar, the simian Primal came under fire from the troops on the ground - bleeding as bullets tore into his super-tough hide, he leaped and wrapped his gigantic arms around Argonaut. Drone and ape crashed into the tarmac and began trading blows, their melee too intense for the allies of either to intervene. That left the gorilla off the side of Air Force One, but did nothing to fix the substantial hole he'd ripped out of its side. "Time to melt, steel boy," hissed the firebreathing leader of the Chapter Zero group before inhaling and unleashing a jet of searing hot plasma that erupted over Chrome's flesh like a blowtorch against steel, driving him backwards despite his own mighty puissance. Seeing her opportunity, she turned and ran for the plane, calling back one last taunt as she did. "Maybe they'll put you two kids in a museum when we're done. The morons who let the President die!"

Okay, Hyperactive will be up as soon as I post for the Gorilla and the Firebreather.