Avenger Assembled

Richard put his hand on his mother's shoulder. At the sight of her son, grandson, and daughter-in-law, she bit back another shout, and settled for pointing at the baby Nurse Kathryn was holding. "That's him, right there. I saw it happen." "Ms. Cline, you have to understand," said Bolt, sounding just a little desperate. "The idea that a terminally ill man could transform himself into a baby is just so - bizarre, that it's hard for us to accept." "He...he did it before," said Richard, his arm going around his mother's shoulders. "Back in the old days, you told me about it, the Baby New Year formula. He must have had some stashed somewhere." Emotion was thick in the room to the psychically sensitive, especially around the stormy figure of Anna Cline herself. "Y-yeah, he must have-" Anna blinked, then focused her gaze on the baby in the nurse's grip. "You know what he told me? He told me he was sorry - he was sorry leaving me when I needed him, and for all the wasted years..." Anna Cline had fought the Centurion and been a life member of the Crime League. She didn't cry in front of superheroes - but her grip on her son's arm was rigid, her muscles tight.

Now Nighthawk is up, depending on if you want to let the dazed ride.

Okay, I edited my post to include that information. I think I'm still waiting on an IC post from you.

Monsoon finally collapsed, rolling onto her back to face the sky. "Monsoon will return," she muttered, half-deliriously. "And bring with her vengeance a thousand-fold..." Her English failed her after that, muttering black Arabic oaths nearly-inaudibly. Her part of the fight was done.

It was a long walk from the Fens to Lincoln - so after some consideration, and a quick consultation of the map, Riley and Robin wound up climbing aboard a bus. Riley actually liked buses of any kind of transportation in Freedom City; rubbing shoulders with a large crowd was nothing new for someone who'd grown up in such confined spaces, and it also meant the two of them got to ride very close together. Of course, there were disadvantages to the bus, too - especially when he was with his best girl. Riley carefully didn't make eye contact with anyone on the bus, just taking Robin's hand and squeezing it tight as they went. He could pass pretty well these days - as long as nobody looked too closely. There was a reason he favored the loose, layered clothing, even in this heat. "Hey. You're real cute, y'know?" He leaned over and kissed her. "Nobody I'd rather be out with."

"Okay," croaked Aquaria. "I have seen movies but not all of them," she agreed. "We will have to watch outside. My room-mate does not like visitors and I am not allowed in the house of your parents. I have been to malls. They are interesting." She hesitated a moment, hopping from foot to foot, then reached up and pressed a button on the side of her head. Her opaque helmet slid open and away down into the suit with the drip-drip-drip of water, revealing the face beneath. Aquaria stared at Miracle Girl with black-and-gold bulging eyes on the far sides of her face and wrinkled her green snout, snuffling in a way that made the sacs at her throat bulge for a moment. When she spoke, the electronic buzz was gone from her voice - but the bass rumble could only have come from the unmistakable form of a Deep One, the foul, eldritch invaders of Freedom City. "I am Ackweera In-His-Mouth." She gave a nervous little hop, water from the inside of her suit glistening on her skin.

Merlin gave Raina the little out-loud clicking that told her he was listening but he was very busy right now, his hands and whole body in motion as he scampered from keyboard to keyboard, shutting down the manual override on the Doom Room system's - and hopefully giving them back control! Of the door, and who knew what else. "Enough of this! I'm tired of these stupid games!" Epiphany took too deep a breath - and coughed. "Is that-" She said a word that Raina recognized as an extremely foul one in most magical dialects and then shouted another few. "Conputruit et abiit!" As she cast, the cloud of foul-smelling smoke vanished like someone turning up a filter, instantly making everyone and everything in the room visible. Except Sparkler and her familiar, anyway. "Next-Gen, take them down! We can't deal with them and the Alkahest at the same time!" Raptor went for Woodsman, perhaps recognizing him as a softer target than the others with their powers. From the set of her hands, she was going for a grab, not a blow - but when Nighthawk intervened to keep her all-too-human boyfriend out of the reach of the oncoming Raptor, the other girl hissed and threw a quick rising kick that caught Robin under the chin. "Stay down, Nighthawk! This isn't time for you to fly by the seat of your pants!" Woodsman shot Robin a horrified look - but dropped down anyway, already committed to the fast descent down the line he'd dropped, his armored gauntlet absorbing the friction of the descent even as he kept a firm grip on the unconscious Mr. Archer with his other hand. He landed, sweating and straining, his muscles pushed to the breaking point - long after Prestige had already executed a perfect backflip through the opened window. "All right, Epiphany," she called with a laugh in her perfectly modulated voice, "I'll take them down, but I won't buy them dinner!" She squeezed off another shot from her perfectly formed magical bow, a shimmering green bolt that struck Alkahest in its armored torso, and was about to quip again - when Woodsman tackled her from behind. Riley didn't speak, and hadn't had time to go for his bow. Instead he hit her at a full run, knocking the tall girl off her feet and wrapping his legs around hers, wrapping his hands over her mouth, letting brass and leather block fae speech. They struggled and wrestled together, but for all Celeste's power, she'd never learned how to fight hand-to-hand - not when it really counted. When he was sure she couldn't get away, he forced himself to talk as he pinned her against the wall, hissing, "Stop fighting! Just stop fighting!"

Okay. Epiphany: Disperses Woodsman's cloud with a spell. Woodsman gets an HP. Epiphany tells her friends to hit the heroes! Everyone gets an HP. Raptor: Goes in for a hit on Woodsman, doesn't do so well acrobatically Woodsman rolls vs DC 17 and passes Attack vs DC 24. http://orokos.com/roll/427761 = And a crit! DC 28 Tou save there, unless someone wants to Interpose for Riley (I think Nighthawk is doing that) Round 2: Prestige: 27 Woodsman: 27 Nighthawk: 22 Garuda: 22 Sparkler: 20, freakin' invisible Alkahest: 18 Epiphany: 16 Raptor: 10 Prestige: Move Action: drops down to ground level Standard Action: shoots Alkahest again! http://orokos.com/roll/427757 = I believe that hits, so that's another DC 27 Tou save. Woodsman: Standard Action: makes his way down to ground level with Mr. Archer Move Action: goes for Prestige! spends an HP to cancel fatigue Standard Action: misses, needs an HP 28 hits Grapple = 35, so 40 with the Crit http://orokos.com/roll/427768 = 17 She is Bound and Helpless. Riley will make a point to put his hand over her mouth.

"Pretty fine," said Riley with a smile, stripping down himself. His own outfit was even easier to remove than Robin's - with his poncho off and wrapped around his bow, he could have passed for most slight young men on the street. He fished out one of the plaid shirts he liked and slipped it on over his shoulders, hanging it loosely without fastening it. After a moment's consideration, and a glance at Robin, he made a point of taking off his hatchet too, wrapping it up with his bow and hiding them both on the rooftop. "I gotta date with the best girl at the concert." He reached up to scratch the top of his head, where his usually shaved scalp was just beginning to grow out with a faint dusting of black hair. "I don't even know who these guys are," he admitted. "But the pictures looked cool - and we both deserved it."

Some of the heroic archers Woodsman had heard about would have played this fancy - a shot to the man's eyepiece to blind him, a shot to the gun to disarm him, or many other things, really. Riley had trained to fight enemies that didn't think, didn't feel, didn't care, except when it meant looking for new and different ways to rend and tear each other and what had once been their fellow humans. This was a fellow human, though - which was why the bolt didn't go through the top of the man's head. Instead it hit the man in the middle of his armored torso, detonating against the hard plate with a boom like a gun going off, shattering the surface and sending shockwaves rebounding through the man's flesh. Damn, Riley thought. He always forgot how much human beings protected their torsos. Rolling out of sight on the other side of the roof, he gave Nighthawk a feral smile, waiting for her to head down too. He worked his slide, this time loading a line that would let him join the other two down below.

"They're goin' all right. Learnin' more 'bout super-science, anyway - even if it's nothin' I can put on a bolt yet." He kept his grip on her hand, having lit up (as much as he ever did) at her approach. "Glad everything's goin' good, because I did some work today and got something for you," he said easily, reaching into his pocket and producing what turned out to be two tickets. "If you don't wanna work tonight, we stash our gear, go there, hear some music...or we could work." As tough as Riley could be, Robin could pick up on the edge of nerves in his voice. It had been a long time since they had had a date that didn't revolve around supering in one way or another. "Up to you."

The door opened - and the four heroes entered the shop together. The toy shop looked like something out of a movie from the middle of the last century - the shelves and boxes along the corridors were stuffed full of a wide variety of old-fashioned toys ranging from yarn dolls to tin rocketships, from cap guns to tea sets. Everything looked well-made, with marks of craftsmanship on carved wood, stitched seams, and metal welds. Except that nobody was here; outside of the newly-arrived foursome, the place was empty. Until suddenly, a figure pushed open the door behind the counter. "Well, it's about time!" The young man who stepped out the door and from behind the counter was immediately recognizable as Quirk, the young prankster who had bedeviled the heroes of Freedom so often - albeit looking a few years older than his last appearance. If he usually looked to be about twelve, now he looked near the end of adolescence, maybe sixteen or seventeen, in an old-fashioned suit and leather apron like a craftsman of everyone's grandparents' generation. In his arms was a baby, blonde-curled and in a heavy onesie that looked equally old-fashioned. "I called for a sitter this morning!"

"While she is teaching Daphne, we should play a contest," croaked Aquaria cheerfully to Kimber and Tarva, glad to leave behind the subject of Surfacer mating and its many bizarre foibles. "We should play beach volleyball!" Raising her head as much as her thick neck allowed, she put her hands to the sides of her gigantic mouth and bellowed out to Jessie, who was still out on the water. "JESSIE! LET'S PLAY VOLLEYBALL!" Turning back to the others, she said, "All the Surfacer females play volleyball at the beach, I have seen it on the television. I saw the net and ball!" she added, pointing to the beach supplies laid in by Kimo and Leilani did indeed include both net and volleyball. Dimitri kept his jaw closed - but he smiled, obviously very much enjoying the sight of Leilani entering her element. "I will keep best pictures in here!" he promised her, putting his hand over his heart (or rather, where his heart should be) as he watched Leilani and Daphne head for the water. He was still smiling as he sat down again by the fire, the bonfire notably dimming for a moment or two. He was very distracted!

August 2016 After dark Riley was waiting for Robin at the usual place - the old church rooftop that was one of the highest points in the Fens (and made a convenient lookout point for most of the surrounding neighborhood). Or rather, Woodsman was waiting for Nighthawk, at the spot where the two heroes had met at least once a week since the beginning of summer had sent most of their friends their separate ways. Riley hadn't gone far, just up to North Bay, but the advanced classes that his not-mother had enrolled him in (just as Peyton had expected, telling Riley how hard these were were the best way to make him stick it out) along with what he was doing at Claremont meant he didn't have much free time. "Hey," said Riley, reaching over to squeeze Robin's hand when she joined him on the rooftop - then to lean over and kiss her on the lips. "You look good. You get everything done you wanted today?"

One thing Richard knew about Native villages of this period was that the Hollywood thing about nobody speaking English was a bunch of bull - in fact, from the look of things, there'd been a lot of intermarrying over the years. He came out of the woods, unarmed and with his hands up, casually confident in his ability to dodge a slow-moving musket ball, but not wanting to push the already-altered time stream too far. "Greetings to you and yours! I'm Richard, I'm from the city. If you people are looking for your friends, my friend and I left them back in the forest there. I can get them over here, or show you where they are, whatever's easier." He looked around, without moving anything but his eyes, seemingly a quick glance, but absorbing the scene at super-speed and taking in everything at once. "The people down on the coast are getting pretty paranoid. Don't go down there for a while till things blow over."

Thoughtspeed and Hologram seem to have the pertinent info, so I'll let them get in here!

Richard looked at Will and moved to his son's side, clasping him firmly by the arm and looking him in the eye like a man. "All right, son, let's do this. As a family." They left Holly sleeping - with all the power in the family, being across town was about as 'far' away as being across the room as far as her safety. And even without her powers, as Holly herself had vigorously reminded Richard and Paige on more than one occasion, girls her age got to be alone in the house all the time! - Across town, Providence Asylum was lit up and its staff obviously on alert. After an agonizingly long wait at the gate (at least by Richard's standards), the Clines were allowed inside, their escort and keycards letting them find their way to the asylum's infirmary. The infirmary was crowded, restless patients moving behind steel doors or cloth partitions, staff on high alert everywhere, and Anna Cline herself in the middle of an argument with a young hero that Richard was startled to recognize as Captain Thunder's son Bolt. "-that might fly in your little schoolboy league a'pissants, but I know what I saw!" Anna was yelling, near-red in the face, a startling sight for the woman who was usually full of jokes and teasing for her family. "Ms. Cline," Bolt was trying to talk Anna down, "you have to understand, Bryant Halliday has made hallucinogens before when he was trying to get out, and he had friends on the outside, are you sure he didn't-" "He did it right in front of my eyes, that cheating-! You think I don't know what his crazy juice looks like?" There was no sign of Bryant Halliday. A dark-haired nurse named Kathyrn who Richard had gotten to know was cradling a small baby in her arms nearby, the red-faced tot making the unhappy noises of an uncomfortable newborn.

430 PM Like a good best man, Mark Lucas was everywhere that day - his powers making his job easier. He didn’t teleport around the mansion grounds, though, not when the day was about his best friends in the world - and not about his powers. He carved out time for Nina, and Corbin, and his other friends, but the day was about Erin and Trevor and their marriage. Everything had gone well - with all the rules for a good wedding followed, Mark was sure that the lives that followed would be as wonderful as the day itself. He disappeared once the male half of the wedding party was done with its pictures, reappearing about the time the party’s picture sessions were wrapping up. Taking advantage of a momentary distraction that saw the groom and his blood family posing together in a shot that the photographer kept fussing over, he approached Erin with a smile. “Hey, Erin! I put something behind the pagoda for you!” Erin, looking far more relaxed now that the ceremony was over, looked up from her compact. Alex had redone her makeup for the pictures, but somehow she’d already removed most of her lipstick. She gave Mark a look that was half-affectionate, half-skeptical.“You didn’t get anything too extreme, did you?” she asked him dubiously. “It’s not like, a pony or something?” “No,” said Mark, shaking his head. “You wouldn’t have any place to put a pony! I guess you could put a barn in the back of the property,” he added, “but you’d have to tear down all the nice garden stuff...anyway!” He shook his head - a few years earlier, he’d have talked at length about the new idea. “No, this is something I made for you guys. Made-made, not just poofed into existence.” He led her around the side of the pagoda, where she was confronted with a painting of herself and Trevor. Or, rather, of Wander and Midnight. About three feet wide and two feet high, it reminded her of the Impressionism she’d learned about in school - it showed a Freedom City rooftop at night, the familiar glow of the city in the sky behind the two figures on the rooftop - one a dark outline marked by two glowing red eyes and a familiar fedora, the other a blur frozen in the middle of a leap, the silvery flash of motion in her hand recognizable as a cosmically empowered bat. “I know you can’t hang it in your house, probably,” said Mark with a shrug and a smile, “but I thought you could put it down in the lower part of the Manor. Do you like it?” he asked. Erin stared at the painting for a few moments, one hand pressed to her lips. “Oh wow,” she finally said, her voice soft. “Mark, this is really amazing. It’s beautiful. Did your mom do it?” She and Trevor still had the painting she’d commissioned from Martha, years ago now, hanging in one corner of their bedroom. This was much larger, but still beautiful and surprisingly evocative given the broad brushstrokes. “Nope, I did it,” said Mark, looking pleased at Erin’s reaction. “I read a lot of books about painting first from my mom’s library, and I decided I liked this style the best.” He patted the top of the wood frame. “I started painting when I got the job at the UN, and I’ve been doing it a lot more since Nina and I moved into our house. I’d been thinking a lot about my dad and my mom, and how they both made things without any powers, and I wanted to make things too…” Unexpectedly, but maybe not given the emotions of the moment, Mark took out a handkerchief and started dabbing at his eyes. “I just wanted to give you guys something you’d always remember, because you’ve always been there for me….” “Oh, Mark.” Erin turned and hugged him abruptly, hard but not hard enough to hurt. “You make being there for people into an art form, you know. Even if sometimes things get surprisingly crazy when you’re around, Trevor and I both know we couldn’t ask for a better friend.” She let him go with a smile, and took a few steps closer to the painting to examine it. “You did this yourself, with a paintbrush?” she asked, sounding a little surprised and a little awed. “I guess you take after your mom in artistic talent.” Mark hugged her back, surprised but grateful for the contact. “I know we’re not like each other, but if I had a sister or a brother, I know I’d want them to be like you.” He took a moment to calm himself, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief and blowing his nose. “My mom could have paintings hanging in galleries if she wanted to,” he agreed with Erin. “But she wanted a stable job where she’d get a pension when she retired, so she did Andi instead.” Castle Comics, unlike many of the big publishers in New York, provided ample benefits. “I should take this back to the house and hide it somewhere,” he suggested, “then I’ll meet up with everyone back at the party. Just don’t hurry back,” he said with a grin, “I’ve got to be there to come in with you guys.” “Show it to Trevor,” she urged him, “soon as he’s done with his pictures. He’ll love it too. Then you can stash it in the library or one of the second-floor sitting rooms, nobody’s going to be using those tonight.” She took another long look at the picture, then cocked her head as somebody called her name. “I think my absence has been noted. I better get back. Remember now, no embarrassing stories during the speech tonight. I know where you live.” With a quick laugh, she turned and loped back towards the bridal party, holding her dress up with both hands.

"I don't know what's happening there," admitted Richard. He dressed in a flash, out of the T-shirt and boxers he'd worn to bed since Will had been old enough to walk, and into the costume that let them come and go at Providence without being mistaken for civilians. It had felt decidedly odd to be at his dying father's bedside in costume - but it made it easier to get along with the Providence staff, and it was something the old Doc Holiday had actually appreciated. "She was talking...crazy." Given his mother, and her habits, it wasn't hard to guess a couple of reasons why she might sound irrational right now, but his mind shied away from those possibilities. "I know she has a bottle there but she swore to me she wouldn't touch it as long as he was alive - and we'd have heard the alarm if anybody had gone after the Asylum."

Alkahest is up now, whee!

From full Stealth, Woodsman readies an action to shoot the first bad guy that moves - in this case, it's the Symbiote, I guess! http://orokos.com/roll/427159 = 25 Okay, that's a DC 26 Tou save for the guy.

Skills: 44 r = 11 pp Climb 3 (+10) Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) 8 (+8) Languages 3 (Atlantean, English, Galstandard, Lemurian [Base]) Pilot 1 (+4) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth 8 (+10) Survival 3 (+5) Swim 6 (+13) I don't think any of those are likely to come up! No worries here - just do your thing!

"Gods below!" croaked Sea Devil, cradling the creature in one arm even as her trident flared to life in her other hand. Surfacer pets were so foolish - Baxter would surely have run from such a fire rather than cling madly to a rescuer. She couldn't remember the name of this species, just that they were bad for eating. Feelings or not, she automatically defended the creature from the strangely crawling fire-thing. jabbing at it with her trident and hissing in warning the way she would at a particularly hungry-looking shark on a day that wasn't for mating. The green burning tips of the trident made contact with the thing's fiery flesh, leaving behind verdigris flames that crackled and sparkled inside the creature's own flesh. As she looked at the fire-thing, Aquaria remembered lessons learned long ago on the ocean floor, and things taught about the things that Surfacers did not know. "Starspawn!" she suddenly croaked in Lemurian. "Why have you come here from the sky?" She wondered, worriedly, if it had come because of the armor she had stolen.

http://orokos.com/roll/426993 = 12 I'll actually spend the HP on that. http://orokos.com/roll/426994 = 28 Theology with the HP! What'll that tell her?

Fast-Forward ran right out the window after the Angel of Death, already planning ahead to his next move. Careful not to get too close to the bizarre creature (which was now all ashy tentacles and bone, as if one of those multi-limbed Bible angels had been burned away but the ashes still remained), he ran around it in an intricate arcane pattern, tracing a complex mystical spell in the space of just a few seconds. He didn't get the chance to use the magic of the Tome of Theurgy much - the divine light of the Behenian stars generally burned far too bright for Freedom City. But here, with the big parking lot cleansed and an unholy monster that posed a threat to the entire world on the loose - he could. He ran and he ran, chanting faster than the mystics in the group could follow, until he finished some hundred feet from the whirling fiend. "...Sirius!" He finished, and a bolt of brilliant white light rocketed down from the sky, enveloping the mighty angel in a brilliant nova of searing stellar light. It was a palpable hit, though perhaps not as great as Phalanx's, leaving the ashy body of the creature smoldering and writhing as divine magic tore apart unholy flesh. Richard felt a surge of pride - and then a sudden terror as one of those tentacles lashed out, impossibly fast, and enveloped him before he could evade it! Too slow! he thought in a moment of sick panic before thinking desperately in Paige's direction I love you, don't worry, just get it- The creature picked him up and smashed him directly into the concrete, head-first. It should have been a fatal blow - but the Tome of Theurgy, still in Richard's hands, put out a faint glowing sphere of protective magical energy, the wards that protected the book itself from damage guarding the man as well. He was hurt, rolling away and bleeding, but what should have instantly snapped his neck had been merely a serious blow.