Avenger Assembled
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My God, what a beautiful woman! Talya knew what that look on Dimitri's face meant. "What, this? Pfaugh, I know how to ruin a ritual." He scratched his foot along the bloodlines, obscuring the arcane lines that would have carved a spiritual hole into the heart of Asgard. "Don't worry, only gonna summon one thing today, and that's you," he added with a wink. He kept his hands in his parka pockets, slowly walking a half-circle beneath the flying goddess. More seriously, but still trying to keep this a casual encounter, he went on, "You know, Hel said to me 'Little Mitya, this is bad idea. Thrude is crazy Asgardian, she's just gonna pop your head.'" Thrude was almost certain Hel did not have that kind of accent. "But I said 'No, Lady Hel, my friends Jack and Willow say Thrude is all right, so she's all right.'" He spread his arms and said, "So we gonna fight, or you gonna have some mead?"
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"Oh, you know I just couldn't stay away from my family Thanksgiving!" said Anna brightly. This was a blatant lie - Anna's holiday visits generally came when she was bored rather than any interest in family bonding. But it was hard to correct her on that account with their guest right there, not to mention all her blood relatives in the house. "Gramma!" declared Holly, who had appeared in the doorway behind Paige to first give Anna a hug, then give a friendly sort of wave to Daphne. "I'm so glad you're here. I still have that cold," she added, waving her handkerchief for emphasis. Remembering her manners, she added to Daphne as she came in, "Hello! Welcome to our house!" Richard, who had been hovering in the kitchen like a hummingbird, appeared when their guests did. "Ma! Well, this is a surprise!" Richard loved his mother very much; but he also knew well what kind of person she was. He hugged her warmly, but nonetheless found himself wondering exactly why she was there. Maybe those plans of hers fell through. She'd described those plans, which involved a godling about Will's age, in really more detail than her son had needed to hear. "Hey, Daphne," he said, shaking her hand. "Glad you could make it. This is our daughter Holly, and this is my mother, Anna Cline. Welcome to our home-away-from-home." "You probably know me as Clock Queen," said Anna, flashing a smile that was the result of some expensive dentistry. "And look what I've got for my little Hollygirl!" From her purse, Anna produced a brand-new Apple Watch, still in its packaging, which she handed over to a surprised Holly before turning to Paige, "I know you're down a man with Will off with that girl in LA, and I thought I could come over and help. I've been around for almost eighty Thanksgivings, I've learned a few tricks!" she added with a grin.
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"Ah yes, Faretti has told me that story. He praises your arm." This was not a false statement. Inwardly, Dimitri was thinking. These people seemed cordial enough (and certainly were attractive enough for Talya) - by all accounts they could handle themselves in a fight, and seemed comfortable with the sort of social play that was necessary when dealing with immortals. If Talya was simply staying with them fr a while, he'd have had no worries. But he'd seen the look in Talya's eyes; this was not a monthly or yearly dalliance, but full of the sort of dangerous emotions that could break even an immortal's heart. Or else turn it so cold. "We greatly aged are all novel characters, yes." He topped off Erik's vodka, and Talya's too while he was at it. "And yet neither of us," he said with a little wave, including Talya, "are yet as aged as the late Madame Calment, or even some others that yet live. We are but striplings before one such as, ah, Thrude." He'd been about to say Min, but he wasn't actually drunk. "A certain change in character settles in around the middle of one's second century. For the better, I am sure!" he said with a wink Min's way. "But enough of tedious past! What are your lovely people's plans for future?"
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A Still More Glorious Dawn Awaits (IC)
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Known Space
Sea Devil and Singularity followed the Voidrunners to the nearby settlement where they were supposed to look for their bounty at his favorite dive bar. Pantanel's nearest watering hole was like any other working-class dive bar in this part of space for the Voidrunners, a perfectly typical place with the stink of various intoxicants in the air, a motley crew of patrons, staff, and others eyeing them from darkened corners of the room, and a four-armed blue-skinned musician playing an obscure set of woodwinds in the corner. For Aquaria and Jessie, though, it was a scene from another world! They hung back, eyes wide, at the exotic scene like something from a Terran science fiction movie. After a moment's hesitation, though, Aquaria muttered to herself, "No one is looking at me," words that the patrons, and the Voidrunners, could all understand - cheap bar this was, someone had evidently sprung for an area translating field, probably because of the number of impoverished workers who couldn't afford translation implants. "No one is looking at me!" Aquaria croaked to Jessie, loud enough that people started looking at her - startled, she put her big hands over her mouth, and decided to stay close to the inside of the door. -
December 1, 2015 Thrude had already had a busy day fighting some sort of horse-headed creature from beyond the dome of lopt when she detected the spell - ancient, powerful Norse words were being spoken by a caster with formidable arcane powers, words designed to summon a being of Asgard to the side of the caster! The spell was a dangerous one, a summoning without a binding, the sort that would likely get some fool killed and unleash any number of powerful creatures upon the innocent people of Midgard. Luckily the nearest creature to them was Thrude herself, and she was unlikely to smite even a mortal sorcerer so badly that he would not regret the error of his ways. She followed the 'signal' to a beach at the edge of the city proper, absolutely deserted by the cold-hating locals given the time of year - i.e., what felt like a mild autumn day to one who had taken the battle to Jotunheim itself. Standing amid a rune that spelled the letters of her own name stood a figure wrapped in the chilly mist of the coldest Scandanavian winter, a creature of death and a mockery of all that lived - a man in a blue parka and green uniform she recognized as Hel's representative on Midgard, Comrade Frost! "Hello!" he called up to her in a heavy accent like the scion of Rurik he was. "You got message, good! You want parley?" he asked, waving his hand. "I got guy who made me some mead under floor last year!" he went on, pointing to a nearby orange and white beverage cooler. "Is supposed to be pretty good!"
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One more day to make the roll, TT and Heritage.
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Nina made her way upstairs, flying through the air to avoid her boots clanking on the steps beneath her feet, until she reached the level where she was sure to find Farida's quarters - the upper level, at the very roof of the volcano. As she'd expected, her brother was in the prison's 'interfaith chapel', which of course in Socotra meant that all potentially 'divisive' secretarian images had been replaced by a life-size statue of their father behind his mask and armor. Her costume covered her hair anyway. His soft prayers to God echoed in her ears as she stepped forward, ready to smash him into the altar until he was unconscious. She stopped, though, when she saw what was waiting for her in the middle of the aisle between the prayer mats - a curving scimitar, resting in its scabbard on the floor, with her name emblazoned on the leather in white Arabic. She stared at the blade and said aloud, once again breaking with the element of surprise, "You knew I would come for you." Farida turned to her and she was surprised at how old he looked - he'd grown the heavy mustache that their father wore, and around his eyes were creased lines that didn't belong on a young man's face. Farida was not even thirty. "Yes. From the moment Mariam died, I knew you would not come at the head of some Western army - but only as yourself, my little sister. Whatever the consequences." Tears stung at the edges of Nina's eyes as she glared at her brother. "Was Father's rage so great that an old woman who did nothing more than nurse me, than nurse _you_," she added, pointing her finger accusingly, "had to die in this place?" "She was sick," said Farida, spreading his hands. He carried no blade, having always relied on his ice powers to fight. "I was with her to the end, but I could not have made her well even in the palace." "You could have done more!" Nina kicked the sword up into her hands. "You could have fought for the woman who was your family because she chose to be, not because of the blood in her veins!" "Father would have done worse had I not been here. You had word in time, didn't you? Father would have sent pictures of their corpses to mock you had it pleased him to do so - had I not asked for another way." "There is no other way, brother!" She drew the blade, the golden metal embedded along the cutting surface gleaming in the light of the blue-white candles in Typhoon's eyes. "You are with Father, or you are with me! What will it be?" Ice crystals glittered around Farida's hands. "I'm sorry it's come to this, little sister."
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ooc So Great A Cause (2015) (OOC)
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Archives
Dragonfly is up, and then our time-lost heroes will be home! -
Across town at Archetech, Steve and Miss Americana, or rather, Gina Evans, were conducting the last of their holiday business. While Gina put the final touches on the Miss Americana robot, Steve looked at himself in her office mirror. He'd donned the 'casual formal' outfit she'd purchased for him some years earlier, one he wore whenever she suggested it was a good idea. His black blazer and slacks went well with his white button-up shirt, his tie in his blazer pocket just in case such a thing proved to be necessary. He doubted that it would be, given the Interceptors, but between the two of them he and Gina had both planned for any social eventuality. "...and Liz Lawlett has recovered from the incident with Mastermind, and she and Chris are both scheduled to attend the event," he was saying through the door, just finishing his tactical report on the kind of people they could expect to encounter at the party. He'd made sure to tell her about the triad at the heart of the Interceptors these days, the better to make sure she knew the groundwork before she walked onto it.
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She wasn't alone at the front porch. Jogging up the short walk just as she arrived was a fit woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties, her short brown hair perfectly coiffed and just reaching her shoulders. She wore a tight men's dress shirt and vest, her red tie and leather spats making her look like a woman of the 1920s, the gold ring on the fourth finger of her left hand glittering cheerfully as she looked over the young teenager also heading for the Cline house. "Hey there, chicky-baby," she said with a toothy smile as she looked Daphne over. "Are you a friend of Will's?" As she spoke, she idly twirled an old-fashioned watch on a chain, looking relaxed and confident.
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"Any friend of Riley's is always welcome in this house," said Peyton with an unshakeable confidence. In the gaze of this successful nuclear consultant, Robin could see a shadow of the survivor Riley had described, the woman who had led a post-apocalyptic community even as a world of heroes died all around her. "Boys, why don't you go upstairs and see if you can find the extra silver. We have to pretend to our guest we always live this well." She grinned and watched the two Rileys go upstairs, the two young men watching each other warily, before turning to Robin. "Why don't you join me in the kitchen, Robin?" The kitchen too had been refurbished. In clean days, all the silvered, polished surfaces would have looked like something from the space age. But with the turkey in the oven and various other Thanksgiving delicacies in the middle of being made, the kitchen bore the marks of hard use. "We're making sweet potato pie," she commented, pointing to a bowl of fresh-looking sweet potatoes by the big, almost-industrial-sized kitchen. "We'll scrub those, then boil and mash them. So tell me about yourself, honey," she said warmly, "Riley tells me you live in the Fens?"
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"Let's play truth or dare," said Riley with confidence as he poured himself a drink, shrugging off the criticism of his brewing with a firm drink of blackberry champagne. He wandered over and took a seast on the room's overstuffed leather couch, drink in his hand and map of Freedom City's colonial antecedents behind him. He felt good, and he was pretty confident he looked good too, surrounded by friends at the beginning of what was gonna be a very nice party. "Robin, truth, or dare?" he asked her with a wink.
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A hiss of static greeted Gina's communicator as she tried calling first the police, then ominously her own robot. In the heart of tech-laden Freedom City, she was in the middle of a technological dead zone. Looking around her, she realized the stores on this side street were all closed; one side due to construction, the other a combination of closed storefronts and others simply shuttered. There was nowhere obvious to retreat to, other than the confines of her car. The executive kept gamely putting up a fight, kicking and struggling, until a pepper spray directly to the face made him gag and vomit, twitching before, red-faced, he slumped, semi-conscious. Two of the officers, one SWAT, one police, started going through the guy's car, searching front and back with their weapons drawn. Gina's car was next.
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"Jeez. Well, we'd prolly hang somebody who tried making that." Riley fell silent for a moment as he looked at his friend and girlfriend, wondering how they'd take those words. He knew Fred at least could read between the lines, and probably Robin too with her experience with crime - someone making dangerously addictive drugs and making potentially lethal bombs in a closed-off world without heroes and few resources, where a breach in a wall could be gory death for everyone was going to meet a painful end, one way or another. "Anyway, it's not a thing where I'm from. We don't need help feeding on each other. Sounds like a real problem here." He kept his eyes open as they headed for Robin's bolthole. "You know, Mr. Hawke talks a little about how he was on drugs. He said he doesn't know if he stole to feed cocaine, or if he did cocaine to have a reason to go steal."
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Geckoman: 29 Mastermind: 26 Echo: 20 Jack of all Blades: 19 Harrier: 12 Withering: 9 Darkness: 8
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Caradoc stormed into the room without a trace of the tentative, strategizing soul he had been before the most recent encounter with the psionic monster. Here he was all flaming wrath, a knight-errant of the Crusades confronting a sinner, even if he had a rather different interpretation of devil than the men that once wore armor that looked like his had. "Behold! We have come among you," he growled to the room at large, the corpse earning only a single glance from his armored head. "We know what you are, monster of the Terminus." He drove his blade into the ground, making the floor crackle with eldritch energies. "You may run but you will be followed. You may hide but you will be found. Come to me and know my wrath."
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They were greeted at the door by a figure who was at once familiar to Robin and alien at the same time - the figure of Riley Smith-Quinn of Earth-Prime. He was taller than her Riley by a good two or three inches, and broader in the frame - but softer despite, or maybe because of, that broadness. He had a short, albeit patchy, goatee that Riley admitted to coveting, and his plaid, loosely-fitting flannel shirt and slacks gave him the look of a nerdy lumberjack. "Riley," he said, the two young men giving each other sharp looks before he nodded politely to Robin. "And you must be Robin. Hello, I'm Riley Smith." He reached over and shook her hand, his grip noticeably softer than the Riley she knew. "Mom! They're here!" Riley-Prime called as he led the two of them inside. The house itself was well-appointed, with modern furnishings despite the antique exterior. The big-screen TV, Playstation 3, and over-stuffed leather furniture in the den alone all could have been afforded by a lucky family in the Fens - but all of them together, especially with equal signs of wealth throughout the house, were proof that the Smith-Quinns of this world lived far better than their counterparts elsewhere. As her guests arrived, Peyton Smith walked quickly out from the kitchen, her World's Best Mom shirt covered by a flour-dusted apron. "Riley!" she declared with a determined smile, giving the short, wiry reflection of her son a hard hug before turning to Robin. "Hello there, young lady. Welcome to the family. I'm glad you're here, I just put the turkey in so we'll have plenty of time to talk."
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ic The Traveler In The Dark (IC)
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in City Center
The police were already on the scene by the time the heroes arrived on the scene at the First Municipal Bank, where they'd gone ahead and handled this the "Freedom City" way - put up barricades, summon the SWAT teams, but otherwise wait for superheroic assistance. Captain Glen Brooks, a tall, rangy man with a bushy grey mustache, was there to greet them and give them a short briefing behind a blue and gold police van, out of sight of the Power Corps' sensors inside the bank. "Half dozen of 'em," he said laconically. "Teller who got out said they came in with the armor under their clothes, then made everyone get down on the ground. Saw 'em goin' for the vault, but by then she was already running out." Anna Ng turned out to be a middle-aged Vietnamese woman with a faint accent and the marks of glasses on her nose; glasses that she had, unhappily, left behind her during her dash out the front door when her return from lunch had been interrupted by the arrival of the bad guys. Her story was about the same, with the exception that she added, "I remember when Mr. Wolf told them they were welcome to all the money, one of them laughed, and said who cares? He made it sound very funny." -
By now their food arrived, and they were between them well into their meals (and wine). Nina and Mark had been speaking in low, flirtatious whispers while Miras and Joe got to know each other, feeding each other pasta like a couple from a Hallmark advertisement and sharing the occasional quick kiss. They'd both had a decent amount of wine, but neither seemed actually inebriated. When the waiter took her plate, Nina took the opportunity to ask of Asli, "So, what mosque do you go to? As conservative as the clerics are here, you must have an interesting time."
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"Why'ld I wanna do that?" asked Riley, cocking his head at Robin questioningly as they waited for the food. "Are they causin' trouble, or...?" Riley had heard a lot about drugs growing up - about the things that had suddenly become impossible to get after the end of the world and the people who had died, gone crazy, or been lost to the Forest trying to find the thing they couldn't get. He'd stick with the wine he and Fred had brewed up; anything else was just crazy. It was, if he was honest, one reason why he'd never tried brewing up hormones back home, not even the stuff you could make from piss. But he didn't understand why people on this planet were so obsessed with the people who threw their lives away over that stuff either.
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"Gonna find him." Riley knelt down over the body and looked it over, using his gloves to avoid touching flesh directly as he examined the wounds. "Looks like somebody he knew. Look, knife marks onna hands." He used his phone, a gift from Peyton, to snap a picture of the incision cut onto the skin. "Musta scared him off. Good thing he didn't goferya." A Feral certainly would have, even if it was already full from eating this man. Riley reminded himself that these were people People had done all this. He tried punching in the number, then when he got no answer he hung up. "He makin' drugs?" asked Riley, cocking his head towards the laboratory. On his own world he'd have guessed explosives, but Robin had never talked about that kind of thing being made in the Fens - and there were more people selling drugs here then guns. He didn't really understand that. "You know what a de oppresso liber is? Saw it written on the guy who did it."
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Riley will take 20! He's not afraid of the police - though maybe he ought to be. What does he seeee
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Search: Medicine: 25 - boom, critical success! Riley is master detective. Search: If I have time to take 10 or 20 on the Search check, I'll do so - yielding either 20 or 30. If I can't, I'll stick with my base roll - which unfortunately was sixteen.
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Avenger crossed his legs and stared at Nicola, a king perfectly confident in the seat of his power, especially with his dread mate at his side. He reached up with one hand and idly rested his hand on Phantom's back, stroking her lightly as he did so. It was all right - she had ways of demonstrating her status in their marriage privately. "Hm. Don't be a peasant, woman - an inability to appreciate drama will serve you poorly in your new life." He smiled, showing teeth - all of them. "But you are hungry! There is food here for our kind in plenty. Tell me your name for my hospitality." I'll have to buzz Daisy and have her bring the bags downstairs, he thought. JJ can probably be left on his own for a few minutes without trying to chew through the walls...this time.
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"Whaat?" The Deep One burbled, its big bulging eyes flickering up briefly towards the ceiling before gazing back at Wander. "We didn't want your degenerate twin, ape! We came to destroy the apostate and retake what was ours as true sons of Lemuria. When the flash of light took the apostate and your twin, we came to take what was ours and lie in wait for their return." It fixed those big eyes right on Wander - a look that looked much less cute on this fellow than it did on Aquaria. "Go ahead, kill me then! Send me to join my brothers and sisters in Dagon's maw, to speed his return and your own fell destruction!"