Avenger Assembled

TACTICAL TURTLENECK'D by GIZMO Woodsman: 4PP to spend Feats: 3 Evasion (to 2) Luck Inventor Skills 1 Knowledge (Tactics) to 7 (+10)

Riley usually let Robin talk in these situations - but she wasn't here. So he stayed in the back of the group and did some hard thinking. The last time he, Raina, and Fred had teamed up as a group for more than just training, they'd taken down Next-Gen and Mr. Archer both. He was pretty sure their temporary gym teacher wasn't going to stick around till the next year, either, which meant who knew what for their senior year? And Matt's a badass magic guy. If she's sending us out, something must be going down. Getting out does sound good. Long as we're not going to that creepy place with the plant lady where Sanderson goes. That place gives me the willies. He'd learned not to say that kind of thing out loud, so instead he kept his thoughts to himself as they listened to Raina and Ms. Summers banter.

NOTES LEFT IN DISCORD by GIZMO Sea Devil: 8PP to spend Feats: 3PP Improved Initiative 1 (to +6) Luck Sidekick 1 (to her Sidekick 35) Powers: 5PP add Accurate Tracking [half-speed] to Olfactory - 2PP add Accurate Extended Ultrahearing - 3PP Singularity: 5PP (from the Sidekick) Device 1 (Bat, 5PP, Flaw: Easy to Lose, PF: Subtle [collapsible]) [5PP] Strike 0 (bat strikes, PFs: Dazzling Attack, Extended Reach 1 [10 ft], Improved Crit 2, Stunning Attack)

LUCKY CHARMS'D by GIZMO Comrade Frost Skills: 1PP Medicine 4 (to Medicine 7 (+9) Powers: 8PP Gadgets 1 (5PP, magical trinkets, Extra: Action [Move], Flaw: Hard to Lose) [8PP]

KUNG SHOE'D by GIZMO Edits for Sparkler (married people can post edits for each other, whee!): Sparkler 17PP to spend: Abilities: 6PP Charisma 6 (to Charisma 20/+5) [6PP] Feats: 2PP Challenge (Fast Taunt) Taunt Powers: 7PP Strike 2 (sick ninja moves, PFs: Accurate 3, Innate, Mighty) [7PP] Skills: 2PP Bluff 4 (to Bluff 14 (+19) Sense Motive 4 (to Sense Motive 10 (+10))

The next morning, the speedsters, their families, and friends turned out bright and early at the starting line in Hanover, HIT being one of the major sponsors of the race. The setting was pretty familiar to Richard at this point in his career; the bleachers on either side of the temporarily blocked-off state road, the fans and press in the bleachers and lining the street, the sponsors and symbols, and of course his lovely wife and kids. Maybe we sold out, he mused without regret as he looked over the starting line for the race, but I'm damn glad we did. The product labels sewn into his leather jacket (not his actually favorite one, but the one he used for sponsored races) were gonna pay for his kids' college, for his mother's house in Florida, and for everything else that was good to have when you could honestly earn the money for it. "See, you're just not gonna get this in LA," he said significantly to Will as they stood there and made a father-son picture for the cameras. "There's no place like Freedom for something like this - or for crowds this big. Or girls that pretty!" He blew a kiss to Paige and Holly in the stands as they waited for the competition to show up.

"Yew'll have to come out and get us, Yankees!" called one of the outlaws by the door, giving a rebel yell and firing his pistol in the air before slamming the door shut and throwing some sort of internal lock. The outlaws, it seemed, didn't want to come out for anybody. The horses, at least, were much more willing to go along with Hyperactive's demands - the moment he was loud enough and fast enough, the horses spooked, bolting from the parking lot and fleeing for their safety towards the flat stretch of scrub brush on the opposite side of the bank. There were advantages to being built on the edge of the city like this. Looking more closely revealed that those horses really did just seem to be mundane horses of a sort that had probably been purchased from one of the region's farms - even the gathering county sheriff's forces probably would have had no trouble with these guys.

Sea Devil hmmed at that thought, her helmet snapping back into place so that when she spoke, her voice returned to its usual artificial resonance. "You do it the way young ones hunt a fish - you set a trap for him, and then when he snares it, you catch him, and then you-!" She made a gesture with her three-fingered hands, then a weird sort of gulp that might have been a cough. "Singularity and I will be scenting Blackstone now. We will look for the smell - and shake those bad people who tried to take the man before. Good luck, my friends." Aquaria knew that sometimes Jessie liked to be by herself when she traveled, so she let Singularity run, bounding along after her on the rooftops until they ran out of those altogether near Lonely Point, then leaping along after her on the ground. Her suit might have let her fly, but there was a certain satisfaction to be gained by sheer muscle power! She joined Singularity by the Blackstone ferry, where sure enough the guards did seem to be expecting them. This time Sea Devil did stick close to Jessie, looking down at the bay from the rail of the ferry and trying to relax. There was no use frightening Jessie with her own fears that once they went back to Blackstone, they'd never get out.

All right, well, there's definitely no reason we need to hear about Cahill's party (notice that I left it deliberately vague) - we do actually have a possible alternative candidate for an independent POTUS, so I'll toss that around along with the idea of President Cahill.

Well, I think it's uncontroversial to say that a majority of PCs don't share Cahill's political views, KD - but they might appreciate his vigorous support of superheroing. I thought something like this was more interesting than electing someone who most of the PCs on the site would agree with politically. That's one reason why I'm using the picture of John Goodman as Glen Allen Walken - he was a West Wing character who did _not_ agree with most of the characters on most issues, but who wasn't their enemy or a bad guy personally either. (And I assumed that the Oklahoma Sooner is whatever state-sponsored hero does disaster relief in the place where the wind goes sweeping down the plain!) If this is too specific for people's tastes, we certainly don't have to do it (trust me, the _last_ thing I want is a political argument here or anywhere else on the site) - this was just an idea I had in response to some of the ideas for an alternate political history for the World of Freedom.

(His full name comes from the Presidents in the West Wing, 2012, and Escape from LA - i.e., the best, middling, and worst fictional Presidents from one recent poll)

The idea here, at least in theory, is that this gives you a US President who is not necessarily someone heroes will like but who will nonetheless not be antagonistic towards them.

Note that this is decidedly not canon until we get some discussion of this. The former governor of Oklahoma, JT (Josiah Thomas) Cahill was elected President of the United States in 2016. A big, beefy guy in his mid-fifties whose brown hair has been a dye job for about a decade now, he loves fried chicken, barbecue, and Oklahoma-style chili almost as much as he loved "the Yewnited States of America." Cahill’s southern-fried good ol’boy exterior disguises a steel-trap mind on the inside. (He makes much of his deep roots in the Oklahoma Panhandle and rarely dwells on his 4.0 average at Yale.) His wife Rachel is from Oklahoma’s Comanche country on the other side of the state and ten years his junior, a short, slim woman with raven-dark hair who speaks both English and Comanche fluently. Their three daughters Jaybee, Jaycee, and Jaydee (16, 14, and 12) are the apples of their daddy’s eye. A beloved professor of political science and American government at Oklahoma Panhandle State University before turning to politics, Cahill ran as an outsider promising to bring change to Washington after years of rule by political insiders. In general, he’s a conservative who wants to cut taxes and un-American regulations, build up the military, and bring back morality and decency to the public square. President Cahill is a vigorous champion of and defender of superheroes, seeing them as “one of the many blessings of living in the greatest nation on Earth - America.” He engineered public funding for Sooner (Oklahoma's officially sponsored superhero and a friendly rival of the Barnstormers) while serving as Governor - and would be happy to see more federal money sunk into supporting America’s superheroes. During the 2016 campaign, he openly flirted with reversing decades of policy and establishing a US government-funded team. He’s less interested in non-American superheroes but he’s “not gonna make an enemy out of a lady who could throw the White House into Saturn faster’n a cow could jump over the Moon!”

Indeed he could!

The ooc thread.

May 15, 2017 Austin, TX Austin's Lone Star Bank is located near the edge of the city proper, about halfway down 290 towards Dripping Springs. The distance means that it usually caters to patrons who live in western suburbs and bedroom communities and don't want to drive all the way into Austin to do their banking business. Of course, that also means it's prone to robberies. The bank has security and security cameras - but sometimes all that does is pick up what's happening. "All right, yew varmints, we warned you!" The lead outlaw, like her confederates, looked like a character from a movie - her black bandanna, cowboy gear and hat, and twirling six-shooters, belonged to the crime of an entirely different era - as did the half-a-dozen horses she and her gang had tied up outside before bursting into the bank with mayhem in mind. The guards were disarmed now and scattered among the bound and gagged patrons, her confederates were either guarding the door with their pistols or applying the dynamite to the door, everything was going well. Even the one guy in the middle of the floor, blood pouring from the six shots blasted in his shirt, was all part of the plan. Stupid bank manager had tried to play hero. Gotta make sure the people know who's really in charge. "C'mon, boys, hurry it up!" she called.

Anna disappeared. Wait, no, that wasn't right - the door was swinging open and closed as if a strong wind had come through the room and papers on the floor were flying everywhere - and then Anna was back, just a touch winded, her helm still under one arm. "...dammit, it's the freakin' fuzz!!" Anna set the helm down on the desk next to Esperanza. "Ms. Halliday," Esperanza was saying, "You can't let the cops take me - even if he doesn't kill me, the Mara'll find me in jail and then I'm fucked!" She said the last word too loud and started coughing, hunching over herself from the pain of her injuries and what had to be a few broken ribs. "Ah, jeez, fella, you shouldn't fight the damn cops over this" said Anna, waving her hand around the detective office. "Bedlam cops may be screwy as hell but they're still real cops - and you gotta legitimate business here, they'll shut you down!" She swallowed hard, then said "All right, she ain't dyin' no more, so I'll take Espy here some place they can't find us - then I can come back for you and you can finish patchin' her up?" Outside the sirens were clearly audible now - the famously trigger-happy Bedlam PD was just a minute or two from their door!

Sea Devil turned to Adept, her face still invisible behind her mask, and bellowed "THE LIGHTNING-oh!" She croaked and cocked her head back and forth for a moment, then croaked in a more normal volume through her suit's speaker. "The lightning wasss very powerful! But things are working now." She flexed her muscles a few times, blinking away bright light that had been very uncomfortable for eyes designed to see through the darkness of the sea. "Come, let us go this way!" she said, waving a trident. "I think I heard the others down below!" She hopped off towards where she thought she'd seen Miracle Girl go, all the while wondering where Punchline was. Surely the clown would follow them and bless them with his connections to the blessed ocean of chaos that lay between the worlds!

While Doctor Thorne went to do her (his? their? Anna wasn't up-to-date on the pronouns for this kind of thing) scrying, Anna Cline scooped up her helm and - The echo of a goddess long past appeared in her perceptions, hovering somewhere around the other side of the desk where Esperanza was laying. "Why didn't you tell me somebody wanted me dead?" she demanded of the goddess, seeming to be staring at nothing in particular as she shouted at the air. "I am not your social secretary," said Nepthys dismissively, reminding Anna of the phase her friend's granddaughter had gone through with all the black clothes and the dark nails - Nepthys sounded like that a lot. "I track the moods and meanings of the Great Work that keeps me on this plane and empowers you - not every common criminal who seeks your demise. If you want the power of the helm to use against your enemy, don it again." "Not yet," declared Anna, aware that she was speaking aloud to no one visible but pressing forward all the same. "I can't just go away from Esperanza here..." She settled down, the helm in her lap, still holding Esperanza's hand. "We girls have to stick together." Dr. Thorne's scrying showed the outside of a SWAT van speeding down a street in Hardwick Park - a street that wasn't very far away...

APPROVED

APPROVED

It just seems like that's best left as a Complication, only coming up when you want the HP.

Anna Cline knew sincerity when she heard it. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Tick. Tick. Tick. Call Dickie - and do what? Tell him you screwed up bad and now a superhero wants you dead? Call Set then - and do what? Tell him you screwed up? Tell him you're just some dumb old broad? Call Basil - and tell him you're weak, and stupid, and old, and - "I don't know the Hammer of Justice." Stupid stupid stupid - you're pretending to be a hero, why didn't you try and get to know the people who think they're heroes too? "Why would he want to kill me?" It wasn't that she lacked for enemies but why would they strike at her here, when half the people who knew her still thought she was just on a cross-country trip after Bryant died? "I don't know," said Esperanza, shaking her head painfully. "He's-he's always planning something. After-after he was done with me, he said you'd be along soon and he'd get two birds with one stone - then he threw me off the roof. If I hadn't hit that trash pile..." "You're not trash," said Anna fiercely, anticipating words Esperanza hadn't actually said. "He's a son of a bitch, and he'll get payback." She looked up at Rosa and said, "I heard he's tough. One of those overcompensating scary guys who just happens to fight the blacks and the Mexicans every night."

Equipment: 0PP = 0EPCellphone [0 EP]Laptop [0 EP] - probably don't need this. Why not just give her actual Flight and fluff it as Air-Walking?