Avenger Assembled

Oh, I'm so sorry, K, I missed this post - the bomb is dynamite with a big, fat fuse hissing down - it looks like something from a 19th century melodrama but it also looks real! It's hard to tell. What do you want to do with it?

Aquaria laid a cold, wet hand on Jessie and pulled her lips up slightly in a careful imitation of a Surfacer smile that didn't make it look like she was planning to bite off somebody's head. Turning to Daphne, she said, "You don't have to grow one of their-" Aquaria made a gesture with her hands held far enough apart that it was hard to tell if she'd ever actually seen a human male's genitals. But a quick sideways glance at Jessie with her great bulging eyes suggested it was time to change the subject. "Okay. We will speak to the female together first, and then the male." The description of the male Surfacer had unnerved her more than she wanted to admit - Surfacers who had been wounded in their minds like Jessie she could understand and get along with easily enough, but Surfacers disturbed in their minds as a true sickness were sometimes...blasphemous. It was unsettling. When Holly Page was escorted into the interrogation room, Aquaria Innsmouth had partially retracted her armor against her limbs, exposing her face and much of her muscular, tattooed amphibious body - blue ink dark beneath green and white glistening skin.

The subsequent search of Liam's office was not particularly Constitutional, nor was it particularly mindful of protecting property in general. But eventually the Bedlam SWAT realized they weren't going to find their target, and that an "accidental" squabble with the property owner would be tough to explain at this point. At least the local cops were unlikely to be wise enough to plant a bug or other tracking device, given their usual record of competence. They gave Liam a speech about Lady Horus, the notorious super-criminal who'd been running riot in Bedlam, then left, not bothering to clean up after themselves. Time went by, tick-tick-tick - and then Liam realized it wasn't the clock. The front office computer, left on, through all the melee was typing by itself. THANKS FOR THE HELP. BEST THEY CAN'T SEE ME.

"Hey, free advice from someone who knows how it is. Girls like it when you tell 'em the truth, man," said Riley. "You want to ask Hannah here out, you say something like, "Hannah, yer real pretty, you wanna go out on a date?" That sort of thing had always worked out well for him, not that he wanted to share the details of his relationship with Robin with these guys. "This just makes you seem like Bullshit Guy, and nobody wants to go out with Bullshit Guy." Riley glanced towards the still-oncoming Next-Gen ladies and felt his spine stiffen. He'd been speaking in a low, quiet tone before now - and even as he raised his voice to greet the new arrivals, he wasn't speaking above a stage-whisper. "Course, some girls like the taste'a bullshit..."

Riley stared at the new arrivals for a moment, his face expressionless. "Right." He knew these guys a little - enough to know that they weren't malicious, even if he couldn't stand to be in the same room with them. So he didn't do much as twitch his hand towards the hatchet he wore at his belt, though he did think about the crossbow still hanging up in his dorm room. His dorm room sounded pretty great, now that he thought about it, and he was just turning to leave without a word to Corinne and Hannah when he caught sight of the oncoming Sofia and Celeste. This time his hand did twitch towards his hatchet, ever so slightly, even though his face stayed tight. He considered a moment, then leaned back against the tree, snapping open his belt knife to make an ostentatious point of filing his nails. "Boys," he commented towards the Bro Squad, before he turned to Corinne and Hannah. "Well, ladies, you're about to see a collision between what they like to call'n irresistible force and immovable objects," he went on, jerking his head towards Sofia and Celeste. Sofia was the one who couldn't stop putting on airs when she was around Robin and Celeste was the one who had mind-controlled a monster to attack Robin. Real pretty though.

Texas, for its part, proved to be free from dangers - but for men as fast as them, state lines were just a momentary obstacle. They were in the midst of the Appalachians, running down a state road that paralleled Interstate 81, when the lightning hit. The twisting roads had slowed them all down (well, relatively speaking) but they were all still hypersonic when the blasts struck the ground in front of them, blasting craters in the asphalt in an instant that must have been measurable only on the nanosecond scale. An instant later, they were joined by three new runners, each keeping pace or surpassing the heroic trio of speedsters - an armored figure in black surrounded by crackling lightning, a lithely-figured woman in tight-fitting pink and black spandex with what looked like a high-tech motorcycle helmet over her head, and their quarry - a laughing androgynous figure in a toga, winged sandals on hir feet and helmet on hir head, zipping along with a speed that seemed to surpass them all. "Keep running!" yelled the woman, hanging behind to keep pace with the heroes as her partner sped up after the Greco-Roman looking figure. "You have to finish the race - and we have to catch Hermes!"

Outside in the car, Dimitri had the radio turned up. He'd heard great things about Talya's latest protege - and was looking forward to seeing her put into action. His powers and his nature, as usual, prevented him from going undercover, but he had his own ways of contributing to the evening's plan. "So this is quite interesting evening," he said to Ace in the passengers' seat. He was glad they'd brought Ace along, glad that they'd shaken Ace out of his funk in the last few years. And Talya as well. Not everyone can have a placid Russian temperament like me. "This young lady enjoys starting fires, you know. Should be good person to 'hang out' with, eh?" He winked. Ace knew that Dimitri's interest in Talya's eighteen-year-old sidekick really was just professional.

Okay, that's a short post, but I thought it would help the plot if we got inside the house quick! Feel free to yell at me if that's the wrong way.

"Guess we'd better go in the front," commented Woodsman, looking at the others once he was back from his quick recon with news about the cops outside and the CSI techs inside. He'd slipped around both easily enough, but outside of Sanderson the others didn't have his knack - and there really wasn't any reason for them to sneak around under the circumstances. "We're legit supers, right?" He smiled thinly, the upper part of his face still hidden by his poncho's cowl. He hung back as the more socially-inclined of his classmates took the initiative in actually talking to the cops, trusting them to look like heroes in more ways than one. Once inside the house, he slipped away a little, casting his gaze around the interior of the building with an eye well-used to spotting the aftereffects of mayhem.

Woodsman hits a DC 27 Notice.

Richard's directions, Paige's telepathy, and Taylor's dimensional attunement soon led them to the place where the other Richard had come through - a cool stretch of Great Lake beach near the city of Green Bay. It would be warm here later in the day, warm enough to attract crowds of tourists, but this early in the morning it was still semi-dark out, the breeze from Lake Michigan downright cold to people used to the Atlantic off New Jersey. Richard Cline, his helmet still firmly on, looked at the sign for Bay Beach Amusement Park with an expression best described as sorrowful. "Used to take the kids here for a run every morning. Now it's just me." He smiled faintly. "Well, just me who can run, it's not really Paige's bag." He closed his eyes, then said, "Hey, listen, I ain't much good at this diplomacy thing, but if we go over there, it's just like a humanitarian thing, right? Put me back, pick up your guy, everybody goes home to the wife and kids?"

"Salright, I've done everything up to twenty pounds of TNT n' nobody's heard. We're inna hollow here, in sound gets caught up by the trees outside it." He shrugged. "People prolly hear it in the city, but out there it's just super stuff." He led the way down the gravelly path towards their destination, a flooded crater surrounded by sand and gravel piles. It was good ambush ground, and so by reflex that he was determined to never lose, Riley kept scanning the scenery as they talked. Riley did not have a high opinion of the attentiveness of your average Freedomite - an opinion that had not changed during his time here. "Sides, I'm faster'n the cops."

"Yeah!" called Riley, who wasn't much for shouting even over the noise of the motorcycle's engine. He'd debated the relative merits of taking Fred out on his bike versus something like the city bus, or even borrowing Peyton's car, but he'd made the decision months earlier that Fred was someone he was willing to let into his circle of trust. The circle of not breaking my damn spine, anyway. It had been a pleasure to rediscover Goldman Quarry, an area he knew well on two worlds now. The partially flooded sand and gravel pit had proven a poor home for the Forest Primeval - and most of the trees that had sprouted there had died of various causes in the years before his birth. Like the best wild places, if you came in numbers, and armed, it wasn't a bad place. He parked the bike in the most familiar spot on this Earth, chaining it to the old chain-link fence behind what might have been an ornamental bush a few decades earlier. If he'd been there alone, he'd simply have scaled the fence, but taking Fred up to a high spot would be both cruel and dangerous. He fastened his bow onto his back with motions that Fred knew came from long practice, pulling armored gauntlets onto his hands. "C'mon, this way." The fence had been cut, years earlier, here behind the bush, and he pulled it aside just far enough for the two of them to slip through. "Should be clear. Chased off th'dogs."

House sounds good to me too

"Yee-haw!" The outlaw leader aimed her revolver at the Weekend Man and got blasted across the room for her pains, hitting the wall and collapsing with bone-crunching force. Her gang gave a whoop of delight and opened fire on the Weekend Man as the crowd screamed in panic, pop-pops as small explosions erupted along the wall behind the hydrokinetic. The outlaws didn't seem put off by their leader being taken down - if anything (though it was hard to judge expressions with the bandannas) they seemed delighted. "Let's roust 'em, boys!"

The other six open fire on Weekend Man! http://orokos.com/roll/522370 = and they all miss, too sad! Okay new round: Hyperactive is up

That just barely hits! I'll say you're targeting the bandit leader. Toughness vs DC 25: http://orokos.com/roll/522367 = 24 She failed by one - and she's a minion, oh well! The bandit leader is unconscious.

Okay: First Thoughtspeed, then Hyperactive, through your radio sets you start hearing strange sounds, like snippets of a conversation between voices you don't recognize: "He's <zzzt> through! <zzzt>, we <zzzt> knew <zzzt> was <zzzt>! Everybody <zzzt> ready <zzzt> make <zzzt> you <zzzt> your <zzzt> - we're <zzzt> to <zzzt> sure <zzzt> stays <zzzt> the <zzzt> track!"

Woodsman fired again - and this time the arrow struck the rabbit right between its ribs! The bolt punched through flesh and bone and out the other side, producing an alarming SCREAM from the dying rabbit that a hunter like Jann was only too familiar with. For his part, as the bolt hit, Riley grinned - if that was a monster like he suspected, an arrow through the body wasn't going to do the trick. Something else would, though. 1 2 3 The internal fuse, triggered by the friction of being fired, hit the explosive core of the bolt and it exploded. It wasn't a powerful arrow as things went, in all honesty probably not much more powerful than the firecracker arrows that he used for holidays. But a bomb going off inside something the size of a rabbit doesn't need to be very big. With a flat bang the bunny exploded in a small cloud of gore, splattering the nearby trees and rocks with its guts. Hmming, Riley reloaded - just to be on the safe side.

OK, don't need to if you don't want to! The Outlaw Leader is going to take a shot at the Weekend Man - go ahead and roll the attack with the Javelin, MW. Her Defense is +8, so you'll hit if you hit 18 or over.

The subsequent encounter was not unfamiliar to either of the two private detectives - after all, they worked in Bedlam in a profession that frequently required contact with law enforcement. Still, the number of armored, heavily-armed Bedlam SWAT officers who abruptly crowded into the office for an intensive search certainly was unusual. Corruption and deep paperwork meant that Bedlam cops weren't quite as heavily militarized as their counterparts in other American cities, but the city certainly had its share of armed, armored men with thick necks and thin morals, many of whom were either crowding into the office or were visible on the streets outside. They were looking for someone - and hadn't found her. "Where is she?" demanded the officer in charge, who hadn't quite leveled his shotgun like one of those cowboy cops from the television, but looked like he wanted to very badly. "Where's the fugitive?" The cops were searching, but their very crudeness was actually undoing them - the papers being tossed on the floor and the desk bric-a-brac being swept down would be annoying to clean up, but so far they hadn't had the wit to go for any real secrets.

Kesteven 79 system Coalition Victory Station Imperial Year 0, Day 0 One way or another, Sharl Tulink had all of 36 hours in Coalition space before he had to be transmitted back home to the body waiting for him back in Emerald City. He had friends, family, a city to protect - and an employer who had high expectations about his report on post-Incursion Lor technology and its adaptability for Terrestrial purposes. He had just one last thing to do - to act as bodyguard for the woman who he hoped would be the next Imperator of the Lor Republic. He knew the Imperator's duties well enough from his early education in Tronik, for all that the Republic he'd learned about had been just a few centuries removed from its imperial days: the Imperator on the one hand had little power "reigning, but not ruling" - but on the other hand as the voice of the people against the state, as the symbol of all the Lor revered about themselves, and as the person who actually selected the ministers of government from the ranks of the Senate and the people - well, it all came down to how you used your power. In the first election since the Incursion, filling a spot left vacant after the old Imperator and its family had gone with the rest of Lor-Van, the question of how the Imperator's power would be used wasn't as easy to answer as it once had been. Sharl wanted Grand Nauarchus Bucklin Frankan to be the one who found the new answers to that question; and not just because he hoped that her election would be a stepping-stone to Terran unification and joining the Republic. The Lor needed to be strong again after the horrific things they'd lost, and from all he'd seen, she was the best candidate for the job. He took the lead as Frankan's party walked into their station quarters, scanning the suite with his internal sensors as a supplement to the scanning already done by the station's security staff. "It's clean," he said after a moment. "No listening devices or bombs - and I think the station commander left a box of sweets in the refresher." "She must be angling for a promotion," commented Frankan with a wry smile as she entered the room just behind Citizen. "Thank you, Citizen Tulink. As always, your work here has been invaluable." As the two spoke, Frankan's staff, almost all of them uniformed officers either in the Star Navy or in one of its planetary militias, were filling the rooms, setting up gear and calls, getting ready for the media presence they were about to encounter. It was tradition in the Republic that on Election Night, the candidates for Imperator shared the same space at the same time as a way of promoting amity (and as a way of preventing assassination attempts). This year, this election, this day - it was Coalition Victory Station that would see the two candidates together. A quick glance out the window (with the help of tapping into the station's external sensors) showed Sharl a three-dimensional sphere buzzing with spaceships, a volume he hadn't seen since the end of the Incursion - military vessels armed to the teeth to prevent another attack, civilian ships, Grue Individuality vessels with their usual hodgepodge of designs, and countless others. Between the press, the spectators, and the parties of the two candidates, the interior of the station was packed to the gills even beyond its usual large population. It was going to be a busy day and a half.

Sea Devil kept a brave face on - and a translucent armored plate on over that face. "Singularity and I will meet the female and Miss Grue will meet the male. You can turn yourself into Mister Grue," she suggested to Daphne, "so you can meet him as one of his own." She wasn't entirely sure how they would get the respective teleporters to speak of their crimes, but she was confident that between the two of them, she and Jessie would come up with a way to make the criminals sing their songs - and they certainly wouldn't be left trapped down here at the bottom of this dry mockery of a cave, no. And if they did nothing, we will report to the others and our time here will be over. A prospect that was becoming more and more appealing with so much Surface-worked stone over her head.

(Also, hah, I wasn't paying attention and did two of these threads - this is the one y'all should follow)

All right, it's Notice check time!