Avenger Assembled

Phalanx felt the nuclear bomb, specially modified to target his entropically-enhanced cell, rip him apart. When the dust cleared, he was standing in front of a long, long memorial wall that stretched nearly as far on both side as his vision could make out. He knew the names well enough - the names of everyone in Freedom City, the members of the Freedom League, and all the rest... When he turned his head again, Mr. Infamy was there at his side. "You know this is your future, Phalanx. You and your friends will die failing to save the population of this city - and you know the people will turn on the Terminus mutants afterwards. Your child will become a vagabond in time, the last scion of a dead dynasty." The final question seemed not taunting - but genuinely curious as Infamy, looking for all the world like a man in mourner's black, held his hat to his chest and studied Mike frankly. "What does all this matter to you?" - "Oh, jeez!" When the illusion faded, the heroes were on the second floor of the hospice, facing a particular closed door with the name "I.M. Perator" written on the name plate. Fast-Forward, taking immediate stock of the situation, reached out to Hologram through their psychic link, taking stock of their situation. The grey serpentine curls of power were gone now, but all the mystics nearby could feel the power inside that room, power to shake the world if it burst its seams. Hologram could feel a living mind there - and something else as well, the malignant power she'd felt the moment they'd arrived in the city. Roman was inside - and so was something far worse than an angel. You okay, hon? She caught a quick flash of his memories from the touch, the very personal one that Roman - or somebody, anyway, had used against him. It was bad - but they both had plenty worse memories. "Everybody all right?"

Wisconsin sounds good - I've always thought of Bedlam as a "dirty snow" city. Plus, that give us a regional anchoring for fictional cities - FC is in the NE, Emerald City is in the NW, San Angeles is in the SW, and the SE has....well, I've always liked Vibora Bay, I guess!

As his friends were beset by boils, Comrade Frost put his hand against the neck of the rampaging monster who had done so much damage against everyone in the city. "I'm going to count to ten," he said, his voice perfectly calm and completely devoid of a Russian accent. "Look at me, man. I'm going to count to ten, do you understand me? And then if you have not stopped, you will die, just as Beria himself did, beneath my icy grip." His grip tightened against the monster's neck, heedless of the way fluids leaked through his gloves and onto his fingers. "One. Two. Three-"

Aquaria croaked nervously, the glowing tridents in her hands vanishing as she took in the worshipful crowd of Deep Ones. She suddenly felt, deep beneath her muscular chest, a quavering in her heart that had nothing to do with the stress of the battle or the Atlantean she was engaged with, and everything to do with the crashing waves of loneliness that came upon her when she was away from her people - a loneliness no better when she was among people she could not join. Spontaneously, she began to sing, her words echoing back and forth among the crowd of Deep Ones, their powerful voices carrying her song until every Deep One in the city and in the waters around could hear it. Across Providence, the Deep One invasion was over. "Elders find children Eggmate find eggmate close by Our war is over" - "Fran Nielsen. His mother's in jail," said the older woman, a look of pity on her face as she looked at Linc, who in his now half-conscious state was clinging to Phantom with great energy. "She couldn't pay her rent and so she got into a punching match with...hey, Harry? Harry Smilac?" Her eyes widened as she turned and glared around at the crowd of people who had fled the half-wrecked building before she pointed at one man in a tanktop and boxer shorts who was suddenly trying to hide despite his bulk, bald head, and pale skin that made him stand out even in a Providence crowd. "With Harry Smilac, our idiot landlord!" "You are evicted, Nielsen!" yelled Smilac, trying to find authority in a situation where he lacked it. "You can't scare me, Harry Smilac, my grandson's a lawyer!" yelled Nielsen. "He'll sue your ass off if you try and evict me because I told this superhero you got that perfectly nice woman evicted just because you wouldn't take a check a week late!" Now they were shouting at each other for real, all but ignoring the super-scene around them. "That's two," Linc muttered into Phantom's shoulder. "That's two." - Scowling, the pharmacist put his gun down, even showing enough presence of mind to unload it as he did so. "That damn place is haunted, anyway," he sneered, pointing his finger towards the still half-visible apartment complex that had been the apex of the Deep One's invasion. "You know it used to be some kinda creepy Catholic orphanage? I heard they closed the whole place down after some Mob guys burned it down in the 40s. Fulla prevert ghosts if you ask me."

Riley and the other Woodsmen took shelter behind the wall, listening to the screams and inhuman moans as the two gangs of Ferals tore into each other. MEAT! BLOOD! MEAT! BLOOD! In the world outside his head, which had no cannibals in it at all most of the time, Riley coughed. "Uh, not like what you're sayin', anyway." He frowned, trying to put the concept into words without either stepping on the older man's toes or selling them short. "Where I'm from, things went bad right after I was born. Almost everybody was...gone. But the people who were left, they built homes, and families, and they built a life in a really, really bad place. Didn't matter much that Mom 'n me were black and most people were white, or that I liked girls and most people didn't, or that I wasn't a girl and I was the only one like that, - long as you pull your weight and you do what you gotta do, you're part of the community. But here everything's a label, everything's what club you're in, or who you wanna screw, or everything else." He sighed, and for a moment actually looked guilty. "I know people like me have it bad here - and they could prolly use a superhero like them. My, uh, brother's real political - he wants to be the first trans guy in space, and he wants the whole world to know about it. And I guess that's great for him, but I'm not...I don't know anything that should make people be like me. Most of the stuff I grew up with isn't worth much here if I'm not fightin'. I don't even like talkin' to people here most of the time."

Well - I wouldn't want it anywhere near Freedom City proper, otherwise our heroes look like chumps for not rolling in and cleaning up the place. It's a relatively small city, far away from anywhere, and just not important enough for them to clean up. At least, not important enough if you don't live there live there. I'd want to dial back Bedlam's awfulness a _bit_ - but not much, since it's supposed to be a hellhole. Fundamentally, Bedlam is a place to run games where your heroes are vigilantes fighting outside the system. Everything is broken - and fixing it needs heroes. Location-wise, Nick, that's all left up to you the GM. It could be an Atlantic port, it could be on the lakes.

For his part, Woodsman wasn't one for talking. Instead he crept ahead, his headset keeping him connected to the conversation on the ground, moving from rooftop to rooftop on pure muscle power. When he was in a position that he could see the second line forming, the better-armed, better-prepared thugs who suggested this was more than just a gang meeting, he went into action. First he lay prone on the roof, his poncho still wrapped around him, then peered with his binoculars down into the courtyard below, assessing who was best-armed, who gave the orders, and otherwise who needed to be attacked first and hardest. The leader earned a silented, blunted bolt to the back of the head - hit in a moment of inattention, the man fell and had hit the ground before his squadmates quite had a chance to react. The woman with the flamethrower and suit got a steel-tipped bolt through the reservoir of her tank; that impact was loud and vibrated through the arsonist's costume. Impossible to miss. Good. "Oh, crap!" she was declaring, hastily undoing the straps that held her to the double-walled tank as highly flammable liquid gushed out everywhere. Her squadmates, seeing the spilling fluid, retreated too, not wanting to fire guns near such a high explosive. "Where is he? Who the hell is doing that?!?" On the way to the other side of the rooftop, Woodsman treated himself to a flaming bolt directly in the middle of the spreading pool of gasoline, just as the would-be flamethrower operator got herself unbuckled and ran like hell. The flash of light from below caught his smile, quickly, before he took shelter again.

'Upstairs', Raina found a post-apocalyptic city given over to strange rites and bizarre acts. Atonal music played from street-level speakers and the instruments of dancing musicians, while a frenzied crowd danced and sang and gibbered. There were no signs of other heroes in this version of Freedom City, only the crowd gone wild and innocents she could see here and there, huddling in their homes against the maelstrom outside. Overhead the stars were wrong in some unnameable way, arranged in arcane patterns that had no business existing in reality. The main action appeared to be happening outside in a park located directly adjacent the building, where before a cheering crowd of shabbily dressed civilians-turned-acolytes bearing unholy symbols on their foreheads, masked figures were in the middle of an arcane ritual she didn't recognize. The symbols on the walls certainly looked like blood to Fred's experienced eye, fresh enough to have been there only a few days. All the damage looked only a few days old, the carpeting and walls torn up but the torn areas themselves looking half-faded. it was as if the city had one day decided to simply go mad. At the window Raina had gone out of, Riley was watching outside with binoculars too. "I c'n snipe the leader," he called out, reluctantly loud to make sure his voice carried to Sparkler and Merlin outside, "but at this range, I'll only get one shot with any chance of hittin' 'im hard. Whadda we do?"

So are we still in initiative, TV, or should we go ahead and get together and fight the Big Bad? Can it be the second thing?

Comrade Frost is going to take a full round action to get the dimensional travel started up - let me know if any actions/posts are called for there.

"Yeah, well, guy's a jackass," said Riley, his face darkening in a frown. "Think they thought a gay guy wouldn't freak out. Got him pretty good though, made his damn feathers stink f'r a week." That thought made him smile, at least for a moment. "It's just so...so damn stupid." The two men were walking through the park now, the mountain and the bundle of nerves. "I tell my mom I'm a lesbian, she tells me, 'Thank God, you're not going to get pregnant.' I I turn fourteen, I read what a trans person is, biggest problem is that I have to show I can do anything another guy can do before I sleep in the boys' quarters." By the edge of the park's small pond, Riley looked out at the ducks and geese, his gaze hunter-sharp as he studied the animals. "Here's, it's 'Oh, you're a dude with girl parts, you're a freak from Mars.' And I used to think it was people who had it good could afford the spit for somebody's face, but I even heard people talk like that in the Fens!"

Gaia's Liberation Front meetings, from the trio's earlier investigations, tended to be relaxed affairs - the group's rotating council of leaders would talk at length about the need to liberate the Earth by any means necessary, music by hard green bands would play, someone would break out the pot brownies or the pills, and the subsequent party was the sort that wasn't really worth a superhero's time to break up as long as everyone involved was of age and consenting. But tonight things were different - the would-be eco-terrorists were meeting in a warehouse full of railroad shipping containers (which provided excellent sources of cover even with all the lights turned on), they were in black turtlenecks and balaclavas rather than their usual more colorful fare, and a notably smaller version of the usual crowd was listening to a speaker talk with great seriousness about the need for armed revolution against technological civilization - this time providing a detailed list of potential targets all over Freedom City. From behind Wander, Woodsman, figuring they wouldn't be waiting long, took the time to turn the crank on his crossbow for a sniper's shot. Meanwhile, addressing the crowd of lotus-sitting eco-terrorists, the speaker continued to talk, his voice high and firm as he spun his web of ecological revolution. In a wheelchair, he was squarely built, torso muscular and arms big and powerful, his own brown sweater and glasses making him look like an academic instead of a man planning terrorism. Lots of labs did animal testing in Freedom City - including some in hospitals, some on college campuses, some of them working with cancer treatment and vaccinations...

"She is magnificent on the board," said Dimitri warmly, "Is a shame metahumans are barred from competition in this country. Kimber, you should at least watch, bring your friends. Is great assortment of young ladies here, Leilani, fine bunch of women! And genderless aliens who prefer feminine forms," he told Kimber with a wink. "Ah, such a place this is!" He did indeed stay close to the oven as Kimber served, watching both women with great affection. "I may be forever a spectator on the beach in these parts, but Leilani makes the show well worth it." Doing his best to be reassuring, he told Leilani, "and you have hardly melted a thing in ages!" It was generous - but not inaccurate, depending on how you defined ages. "You should have seen me when I was your age, freezing air solid when I sat too long, killing cold everywhere, was terrible. You will do fine."

Fast-Forward was not in a playful mood today. Contrary to what he'd assured Paige that morning, going off and heroing wasn't helping as much as he'd hoped. "You boys think you're real big hitting a hospital, huh?!" Richard appeared behind the armored figure in black, his face set in a scowl. "Buncha lousy punks!" He moved fast, grabbing the man's arms and directing them upwards, the tasers on each wrist discharging directly into the heavily insulated neck. The other man, in matching low-grade sub-MAX armor that had been spray-painted white to match the grey, was just turning around when Richard turned to face him. "This place is fulla sick people, and kids, and families, and they don't need your political crap!" He grabbed the heavy guns out of the man's built-in holsters, what looked like dual armored Desert Eagles, and smashed them, butt-first, into the man's jaw, again and again, at speeds that in local time equaled something like the impact of a jet in flight. "Stick! It! Up! Your!-" Richard stepped back, grabbed both skulls, and slammed them together at sound-breaking speeds. He did it again - then when both men were stunned, he stripped them naked and left them tied together with surgical tubing. He nodded in satisfaction and ran downstairs, zipping right past Miras and reappearing just a few feet behind the armed woman she was bantering with. When he locked eyes with her, he was smiling, arms spread and jacket open wide. "Hey, sugarlips, go ahead and point that thing at me. C'mon - I dare you."

Okay, sure.

Hee hee - I had a feeling you'd like Bedlam, Shaen. Plain Brown Wrapper has a great sense of black comedy in their writing - and Bedlam is a fine, wretched place. I personally would put Bedlam somewhere in the Upper Midwest, the better to explain why no one from Freedom has ever rolled in there and cleaned it up - and because that gives us an iconic fictional city for the region. (I tend to think of it as an evil Green Bay - the snow is high, the racism is vicious, and why are we bothering to save these people again? Because we're heroes.)

I'd definitely vote for the PNW - stories set in Southern California are a dime a dozen. Just a reminder - please do send your ideas for Emerald City to the Refs once they're done so we can approve them before they start showing up in thread.

Woodsman went into action fast, taking control of the situation quickly to avoid giving his target even the thought of resisting. "Hey, jerkass," he hissed from behind the sleeping man, arrow aimed loosely at the top of the man's head protruding above the top of his chair. At this range, even a half-cocked bolt could stun or kill, but Riley's hand was perfectly steady hovering over the trigger. "No sudden moves. Yer covered. Here to ask you some questions." He was invisible himself, having taken shelter behind a corner of the room's plaid cloth couch to act as an ersatz sniper's nest. "You give me answers, we're good. If not..." He let his voice trail off, letting his target fill in the blanks as he liked.

Okay, are we still in initiative? Who is up in any case?

Init: http://orokos.com/roll/413561 = 4

"No no, is that fellow there that did it," said Dimitri, pointing right at Erik when the subject of how Talya had come to be pregnant came up. "Well, I suppose it takes two," he allowed, before joggling Ace in the ribs with his elbow. "You missed great to-and-do! Even had old revolver out. But we will dicker on such things later - and on how now the debt of saving from angry woman with horde of undead is paid, eh?" He winked at Ace as he reached into his parka and went to work. The artifact out, he knelt before the statue with knife in hand, once again all business. "Minutes. Less if you can get me the blood of other vampires. The fell curse on this land is most unpleasant."

Woodsman wasn't much for conversation in a fight - instead a slow, steady stream of bolts rained down on the battlefield, their blunted tips knocking men down and out without actually injuring them or breaking their skin. Well, much. He disarmed the gunmen first, then took out the ones who went for the guns, his rapid hand movements cocking and reloading his automatic crossbow faster than nearly any normal bow. He moved from rooftop to rooftop as they moved further down the alley, taking the time with each jump to load up a grapple line, fire it across the way, and then slide down it with his hatchet in hand. After all, he didn't have his girlfriend's anatomy - or their ally's armored suit. "Prolly setting us up," came his laconic voice crackling over the headsets they wore. "Can scout ahead and blow 'em up."

Fast-Forward squeezed his hands open and closed, the vivid memories of this day - which he did indeed remember in detail, surging back unpleasantly. "I know you screwed my ma, Roman. But I'm not a fourteen-year-old kid anymore. You can't scare me off by showing me old stories." He took a step forward, ignoring the illusion of his mother with her costume half-undone, and focused directly on the reflection of the old man. "C'mon, is that all you've got? Just some time you used your power to take something you wanted? I know you did worse than this. Anything you did with my ma, she did because she wanted me to have a home and a roof over my head. So c'mon, you can either keep up the spook show in here, or we can talk about this like men of respect."

"Oh, uh, better not," said Riley, reaching back to scratch the back of his freshly-shaved head. "Gotta...mom 'n brother," he said, "better just be Riley." He looked at Wail and tried to put his face to horrors from his world's past, but fortunately couldn't. That made things easier when talking to heroes from before '99 - most of the time. "Wait, no, you mean my name!" He snapped his fingers. "Sorry, uh, I don't do a lot of elgeeteebee stuff." Even the acronym sounded vaguely alien to his ears and in his mouth - and absurdly, Riley wished he'd brought his duplicate along. The other Riley was better at this stuff. "No, uh, I didn't change it or anything. Always been Riley. Nice to meetcha, Keith." He shook the other man's hand, a year at Claremont teaching him to not bother pitting his own strength against someone built like that.

More places to play is always good - I would want some of our speculations here turned into a Guidebook page. Down the line, I personally would like to see Bedlam brought in somewhere in the Rust Belt.