Avenger Assembled

Man, this is what it's like for Paige half the time, thought Richard. What he said out loud was "Go!" As they ran, things slowed down until they both were traveling at his usual velocity - after all, boosting Miras now would just risk ripping the tarp in half with catastrophic results. They ran together through a Freedom City slowed to a crawl, Richard taking the opportunity to compose a mental message to his wife. Hey honey. Still working on the thing with the bombs - we should be just about done here. Should be home soon. Love you! Sure, they were at risk of being blown to kingdom come - but he'd been in much worse situations than this and he'd come through all right. The important thing was, whatever happened, between the two of them they could contain any explosion. The hard part was going to be making sure they themselves came through all right.

Woodsman stared at Reagent for a long moment, his hand twitching at the hatchet he wore at his belt. There were Ferals below and a friend about to turn into a monster here, but a sharp blow to the back of her head before she changed would end the nightmare before it began. And then he jumped off the roof. He knew what falling off a roof from this height meant; the shattered bones, the spilling blood, the predators tearing apart your broken corpse - but none of this was real. He hit the ground next to Nighthawk as if he'd fallen ten feet instead of fifty, landing with a neat tuck and roll directly on the section of flooring that Robin had torn up and thrown at the observation booth, ignoring the FERAL ALKAHESTS THE FERAL ALKAHESTS THE FERAL ALKAHESTS and trusting that landing outside the simulation would protect him from attack. "Don't even have da god'amned voices right!" he snarled at the Alkahest that might have been Robin's father, his bow out and ready. "Fred's gonna go," he hissed to Robin, crouching low so that the monsters on either side couldn't reach him without hitting the clear zone. This was no time for comfort. Don't feel. Just act. From above, there was a maddening lack of response - the outer window over the observation booth had actually cracked from the impact of Nighthawk's attacks, but the darkness inside hadn't changed, the only clearly visible sight inside was Archer's blank face and the reflection of the lights within on his glasses. Meanwhile, Merlin was telling Sparkler that he was hacking into the system through wifi - and it was going far too easily. Someone had completely compromised the security systems for the complicated independent computer network that ran the Doom Room...

Fast-Forward, professional that he was, decided to back the younger woman's play. He did as she asked, moving with impossible speed of his own as the bombs that had been there, and there, and there were all now suddenly on the tarp, stacked neatly together so that no toppling induced by gravity would lead to an explosion. "Backup plan is I lock 'em all down," he told her, so fast it would have sounded like a single high-pitched whine to anyone outside their bubble of accelerated time. He watched her work, faster than any normal wizard he'd seen going about her work - but still maybe not fast enough. "Gonna speed you up - add my speed to yours, so you're gonna go quick. You'll be faster than me - so talk slow so I can hear you. Hang on." He knelt down and put his hand on the back of her leg - and suddenly the air around Miras seemed to go still and rarified. The world, always in slow-motion thanks to her powers, slowed to a nigh-imperceptible crawl, as if everything had been put on pause. Or, rather, as if she had been put on fast-forward.

Dimitri blinked as he processed the mental image, his accent fading as he said, "You would be very popular, I am sure. The people of Freedom love their heroes more than any other place - and one they see every day will be even more loved. And you see," he teased her, "you worry if you are a hero but already you are planning to save lives. Magnificent, see, I told you!" he said to Kimber, grinning. He was long since used to the sight of other people eating, so instead he said, "This is great-nephew," to Kimber, "big strapping fellow, built for the ocean." He hmmed. "As for New Jersey vs. Hawaii, well, we would be in Honolulu now if I had my druthers, but heroes of America have preferred to settle in Garden State. What can I say?" he shrugged. "And do not talk up Canada to me, Kimber," he added with a smile, "It lacks the tropical ambiance. Even if they did invent that Hawaiian pizza."

http://orokos.com/roll/417227 = 12 for Edge's initiative. Monsoon has 25 Skill Mastered on Notice.

Dimitri was all business now, crouched over the idol and chanting in guttural Old Norse, mixing his own blood with the blood of weeping orphans Talya had been kind enough to collect for him. As he chanted, the air around him grew more and more cold, the blood on the ground freezing solid in strange, spiralling lines that matched the runes he was tracing on the surface of the idol. "Travel will take us to Earth-Prime but may pass through other realms first!" he called, having found a backdoor around the protections surrounding this plane. The easiest would have been Nifleheim but he wasn't taking a pregnant woman to the realm of Hel without any better choices. "Suggest you all prepare yourselves."

Correct re:PP totals, KD. Okay, our top choices are 'neighbors' of - Green Bay, WI Cleveland, OH St. Louis, MO There are definitely potential for shady government ops, D42. Any thoughts?

APPROVED

Ari's thing is what I'm waiting on, sure enough!

A couple of quick hypothetical ideas: Wisconsin (or wherever) has more restrictive laws about costumed vigilantes than New Jersey does. Superheroes can't testify in court, own property or a business, be paid for superhero work, or otherwise legally function in their secret identities, etc. PL caps for Bedlam-placed PCs - maybe? Maybe set the cap at PL 10 to keep things street-level. What do you guys think?

Sparkler's well-placed fireball didn't disperse the crowd as such - but the flames licking up from the altar seemed to hypnotize most of them, making sure no retaliatory missiles of one variety or another came her way. There were hoots and rhythmic chanting now, the howls and gibbers of a maddened crowd. For her part, Nighthawk was easily able to drive aside the maddened crowd, making her way almost directly to the foot of the burning altar. The struggling 'goats' were there, still in their heavy leather masks, with the man and woman who'd been leading the crowd into a frenzy stood above them, one on each side of the altar and standing above their would-be victims. Or so it appeared. What followed happened quickly, even as the assembled heroes watched. The 'devil' and 'succubus' tore off their masks to reveal a man and woman who looked slightly alike - blond, blue-eyed, both of them handsome without being outstandingly gorgeous, the man looking a bit like one of those character actors everyone knows but no one can put a name. Raina could put a name to both of them, though - as off as the copies seemed, she knew her parents. "Hail Satan, Lord of Hell!" they shouted in unison. Then they slit their own throats - the blood gushing with the sort of volume seen more in Hollywood movies than real life, thought Woodsman as he studied the bizarre scene. The blood spattered over the goats, whose captor released them as they cried out wordlessly, howled, and ripped off their own masks to reveal a blonde, muscular woman with a stocky build and a dark-skinned man with blue eyes and dark hair going grey at the temples. These were Robin's parents - and suddenly Riley had stopped looking at the simulation and was staring up at the hidden observation booth, his eyes narrowing in a suddenly-burning rage - an instant before the noise from below sent him looking down again. Covered in blood, the goats howled, writhed - and suddenly roared with malignant glee as their eyes flushed an eerie, animalistic yellow. "BLOOD!" they howled together, "BLOOD!", even as their transformation continued, growing ever more violent as their bodies actually warped and changed into twin pallid masses of twisting, too-dense muscle with a greyish, corpse-like tint. Towering even with a pronounced stoop, their proportions were only nominally human and gave only the most general indication of gender. The only thing that made them look different from the Alkahest was the look of malignant glee in their Feral eyes. Riley did not yell even now - but he found himself thoroughly at a loss for words as he crouched there on the roof next to Fred.

"You could give such love far more convincingly than I, Klara," said Dimitri with frankness enough that his Russian accent faded from his voice. Normally he and Klara would have moved to Russian for an emotional conversation - but it felt odd to do so with Leilani right there. "And we cannot all live comfortable domestic life with pretty Englishwoman. Save that for Talya's husband, that Latin fellow." Decade of grudge or not, it was easier than he'd have thought to fall into pattern of sniping at their mutual friends in Klara's company. Just as it often was with Talya. A strange thought - but not as strange as how particularly warm Leilani's hand felt. "This is trouble with older friends," he commented to Leilani, "they seek to marry you off moment conversation falters. What is your government going to do if EU falters, hm?" he asked Klara, hoping the subject would distract Leilani from her own past. "Seems like bad troubles to me,"

Dimitri put his hand on the small of Leilani's back at the talk of fire, a quickly reassuring presence that just as quickly sought to change the subject. "Ah, we will have full beach party, will be delightful. Music, surfink, porheps those potable beverages that you folk with warm hearts do like." He cocked his head at Leilani and continued. "I think I told you of Aquaria and Jessie, the Deep One and the clone from the other dimension. Interesting party companions, very interesting." Sometimes DImitri's stories of superhero life were hard to believe, but he was quite proud that he had never actually lied to Leilani. "Sleeping is best way to pass years. You miss all the dreadful new fashions, teeedious popular music - all in all, you two are lucky ladies!" He laughed, then cocked his head. "Speaking of ladies, will your delightful podruga be joining us today?"

Fast-Forward poked the woman in the nose - and suddenly the would-be terrorist froze stock-still. "Hey, look, now you're a statue in the park! Dumbass." He did not seem like the cheerful TV host at all today. Zipping backwards, he turned to Miras. "Gotta watch her," he commented, "sometimes they can think their way out of that, but types like this don't know the meaning of hole card. If she was hiding mind powers, she'd have been broadcasting her little playground speech here to the whole block." His speech was fast and choppy as he blurred around the room, only Miras' powers letting her keep up with his motormouth. He was searching the terrorist as he spoke, mindful of explosive vests and similar fripperies. He'd learned a lot of things in the 80s and 90s, back when Freedom City had been the one-stop-shop for the worst terrorists of the day. "All right, she's clean. You wanna get the rest of the place?"

The climb up the side of the building was a tricky one - the bricks weren't so much weak as they were somehow decayed, as if their very substance had rotted. But between Robin's great strength letting her make her own handhold and Riley's careful, utilitarian ascent using climbing gear from his poncho and a line from his bow, the trio made their way to the roof of the apartment building. There was a dead body here, the usual not-quite-real imitation from Claremont's computers that to Riley's practiced eye looked more like a plastic dummy than a person. Checking to make sure this wasn't one of those tricky bodies that moved that Erin had told him about, Riley quickly took a position at roof's edge where he could cover Raina, keep an eye out with his binoculars, and have least some semblance of cover. Down below, the magic felt weird to Raina - but then it usually did at Claremont, where the "magic simulators" could never quite match up to reality. Like looking at a photograph of a fire, she could usually tell what it was supposed to be, even if she knew it wasn't what it looked like. The crowd was strange, wild-eyed and shabbily-dressed, focused on the ritualistic chanting of the coven leaders with a maniac intensity, some masked but most bare-faced and enraptured. This seemed like the earth magic she was familiar with, calling up the powers and principalities below, but also of the forbidden stars and things between them - symbolized by an elder sign embossed in a pentagram. The cult leaders, wrapped in bright red robes of their own, were a man in a full-face satanic mask and the other, a woman beneath a succubus's visage, suddenly stopped their chanting and pointed with great intent into the crowd. "Goats! Goats!" Two of the masked figures, their faces still obscured, were the ones called out - their neighbors, shabbily dressed and manic, suddenly grabbed them and began dragging them towards the stage, the two 'goats' seemingly reluctant now that they'd been chosen as victims. The crowd was chanting now, a call and response with the female of the cult leaders. "Sheep! Goats! Sheep! Goats!" The male, for his part, had drawn a long, ritualistic dagger from beneath his robes and was advancing to the altar - which for its part appeared to be a repurposed, heavily desecrated church centerpiece.

Sounds good - I think we're about ready to get this open as a sub-forum, barring further issues.

Tell me more about my power, I mean, uh, watch this space for further updates!

All right, what else needs to be done here?

Kaige, that's gorgeous! Is there anything else that needs to be done here?

All right, what else needs to be done here?

All right, what else needs to be done here?

Not commenting on the engagement with racism in the text yet - but yeah, Ari, I noticed that too re:the racial demographics of Freedom given in the text. (i.e., Freedom City is noticeably pastier than Atlantic City.) In my mental headcanon, the demographics given for Greater Freedom, not the city as a whole.

Dimitri laid his hand lightly on Leilani's, the contact having become familiar in the last few months as a way of keeping the other woman settled. "Well, don't call just any meta hero. Am confident of great success - Volcanic, greatest hero of waves! Give all those Atlanteans and Deep Ones and Magmawomen something to think about, eh?" As often when talking with the ex-Soviet, his manner started out serious, but he gave her a wink by the end of the conversation. "Be careful with Klara, she will tell you such tales of children and theirs! Is like Fleur de Joie and flowers, but ever more so." He thought for a moment, then hmmed. "Speaking of cheeldren, will have to discuss, ah, birds and bees. I know, I know!" he added quickly, "nothing you want to hear from old Frost! Maybe Lady Tiamat would be so kind - better to know about such things before such moments happen."

"Hey!" said Dimitri, snapping his fingers as he pointed at the masked Avenger. "I know this fellow! What small worlds we live in!" He didn't say aloud what he was thinking, that evidently Faretti's date with vampiric destiny happened in many a world. "Thank you, Talya, this should provide the needed components..." He took the chest from her and snapped open the lock with a casual show of strength, then cracked the lid with a nod of satisfaction. "Hmm." Pulling the top off the bottle inside, he sniffed it experimentally, then took a quick swig. "Ah-hah! Well, someone is gourmand in this fancy estate!" he declared, taking the open champagne bottle full of blood and dumping it out directly over the idol he'd been working on, spilling it out until he was kneeling in a large puddle of almost malignantly bright red blood. With that, he began rubbing his fingers across the idol, tracing weird figures in the blood that covered it. "Remind me to donate to some orphan charity when we return. Seems fitting."

"Is easy for you to say, Klara, you are Amazonian giantess from steppes," commented Dimitri with unusual mildness when it came to the subject of his former teammates. "Biggest challenge is chandeliers in homes." He ignited his butane lighter as they spoke, his eyes drifting down to the hissing flame. "Some of us are forever on because we are forever on." He held his hand lightly over the flame, almost immediately snuffing the fire as his anti-warm body drew the heat from its burning contents. "But you are right," he conceded. "There is place for humanity in business. Hence such fine things as bars, and surfing, and life!" He put away the lighter and looked back at the others. "Is like with any other profession. Time for self is what one needs."