Avenger Assembled

Okay, well, Triakosia is up

Oof - sorry for the delay, Gralient! Note that it is ALWAYS okay to bug people about looking at your sheet. This looks like a fun, interesting concept! APPROVED

APPROVED

Rock is up - go ahead and start acting, Dragonfly and Miss A

For a moment, even as the heroes moved out among them, it looked like the Communion ships were going to completely ignore them. After all, as mighty as they were, this was indeed a vast armada. And then a fighter rammed Galvanic. It happened too fast for anyone to react - a lightning-quick move at relativistic speeds that sent the electrical paragon and the craft that had subsumed her spinning away in a dizzying spiral. She wasn't out of the fight; the heroes could see lightning flashing out of the swirling, gelatinous mass enclosing the Praetorian, but it was pretty clear that for now it was up to Paradigm and Rock to fight the Communion! The cruiser they'd been approached at first still loomed in the rapidly-shrinking distance, left vulnerable by the fighter screen that had struck down their comrade.

I think you forgot to post OOC, Heritage!

http://orokos.com/roll/295743 = 19 Miss A is inside his brain! He is an advanced military and control computer built out of organic parts; there's no sign of the necrotic intelligence she was talking to. This version of Joseph is cold, remorseless, but vengeful nonetheless - looking to punish the surface world for the circumstances of his birth (and the death of his original brain).

Frost is no detective - he will probably cook up a magical ritual to summon the eyes of Ganglati and Ganglöt, the servants of Hel. He can get a 20 on his Arcane Lore check - 10 PP will buy him Enhanced Survival 12 (+14) [3PP] + add (Enhancements: Analytical, Extended 4 (x10000), Tracking 2 [to 3]) [7PP] to his Infravision. He'll start at the target's last known location and hunt him from there. What'll that get him?

http://orokos.com/roll/295667 = 14! I will spend an HP. http://orokos.com/roll/295668 = 25 Much better.

All right - keeping in mind that Frost's technical knowledge is pretty scanty, what kind of checks are you looking for to keep the reactor from blowing up?

What should I roll investigation-wise?

Fast-Forward The Whole World June 3, 2015 Freedom City Richard was on his way out of Freedom City when he burst into song - words that burst from his heart and soul as he ran down the Interstate, watching Captain Thunder and Captain Thunder Jr. flying overhead. He was keeping up with them (and would have outpaced them if he hadn’t been keeping it slow early in his run), but something about the sight of father and son working together, the flash of lightning and sound of thunder in the sky, made him want to...sing! “I love the Captains, I love when people fly!” “Crap!” He kept running, and to his surprise the song faded. He’d heard all about the Song Wave sweeping across Freedom City (and even into space from what he’d heard), had made big plans for a full-on new wave number if the music ever hit him...but it seemed like he’d finished in just a couple of lines. He tapped his earpiece again. “On second thought, I think I’m finished.” It was an oddly disappointing thought. “Should I keep the thing on?” The ‘thing’ was an Archetech Go-Fast, a Go-Pro specially modified to be compatible with super-speed powers. The tape of “A Day In The Life of a Speedster” was going to be used for a Discovery Channel promo - assuming he didn’t sing his way through it all. He ran the 2770 miles from Freedom City to Tijuana in about fifteen minutes, where El Spectro and Camazotz were supposed to be waiting to meet him for an interview about supercrime on the US-Mexican border. He ran through the city, reached Rosarito Beach, and found the masked luchadore and the dark god of vengeance in combat alongside a pretty blonde princess in armored Atlantean garb. Their foe was a gloating fish-faced sorcerer wielding a glowing red trident, firing deadly beams of energy at the heroes and the fleeing civilians. “FOOLSSS! ARCANISSS WILL PUNISH ALL!” he hissed in a booming voice like a frog’s croak. “Need a hand?” called Fast-Forward as he ran up and into the battle. They beat the monster working together - Fast-Forward using his magic text to blast Arcanis, the Deep One wizard, with bolts of solar energy that dried his flesh, Nereid pummeling him with her fists, Camazotz blasting him from afar, and finally El Spectro closing in to catch him in a headlock! Richard hadn’t expected to come into combat that day, but secretly he’d enjoyed it thoroughly. He put the book away and zipped over to join the other heroes, running past the glassy craters left behind by Arcanis’ poor aim. He grinned at Nereid, who looked no older than Will despite being several years his senior, and clapped the princess on the back. “I love Atlantis, I love his plans awry!” “What?” she asked, a baffled look on her pretty face as Richard’s song finished. The other heroes seemed equally baffled - though of course it was hard to read expressions through full-face masks. “Awry, it means ‘away from the appropriate,’ I got it from my word of the day calendar,” Richard said easily. “Oh, wait, the singing? Yeah, that’s catching these days. It’s best just to be cool about it.” When Nereid took the Deep One wizard away, Fast-Forward and the Mexican heroes recorded their pre-arranged talk about border crime - and then he shook El Spectro’s hand before running away off into the Pacific. Man, that guy’s strong! The run across the Pacific was, as ever, not very interesting - even with the promise of a stop in Honolulu to meet Kahuna III, the volcano-controlling legacy defender of Hawaii. Mostly to get my hands on some sweet, sweet pineapple pork, Richard admitted to himself. Hawaii went well enough (Richard found himself disappointed he didn’t join in the ceremonial luau, then decided he’d just have taken attention away from the nice kids who’d put on the show) - which was good, because it was a full _half-hour_ to get to Lhasa, his next stop! The meeting with Nagpo-Chenpo had been carefully worked out for months in advance - the fearsome-looking divine incarnation (who was an empowered PLA officer) would speak about the many demons of the Tibetan countryside and how helpful the Chinese army had been in fighting them, and neither man would say a word about the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Richard ran through the gorgeous mountains, past fields and rivers, and right into the government building in Lhasa. He shook hands with the translators, met the local commandant, and was introduced to the big-eyed, sharp-toothed, club-wielding hero. And of course promptly burst into song, music rising out of thin air behind him. “I love our freedom, And your angry frowns!” The translator, a middle-aged woman in a PLA uniform, actually fell out of her seat. “Crap! Sorry, sorry!” he declared, waving his hands as the room fell into dead silence. “Have you guys heard about the Song Wave? Hitting Freedom City, going up a cosmic string into space? Everybody bursting into musical numbers?-” Nagpo-Chenpo looked at his handlers, looked at Fast-Forward, bared his massive fangs, and began singing. “<I don’t know how to tell you this - but it’s been here for daaaaays->” Being a duet partner in what Richard later learned was Canto-Pop wasn’t actually that bad; the music was peppy, he had the legs for the dancing, and Nagpo-Chenpo really had a beautiful voice. Afterwards, once again back in the clean, comfortable government office, they all had a nice big traditional Tibetan meal of papza mogu and thue (Richard had long since learned not to clean his plate when visiting East Asia) and Richard got his interview, resisting the urge to yawn as he stepped outside. It was dark over Lhasa - but his day wasn’t even halfway through! He tossed back a Coke from his bag (both for the pick-me-up and to get the taste of yak butter out of his mouth) and nodded. “Time to go!” Running through the Himalayas, he was out of contact with the world, but he let his mind wander - there were flashes in the sky as he went, the sound of a late-night thunderstorm at the roof of the world. When he stopped on a nameless road to catch his breath, taking shelter underneath the leaves of an especially large tree, he sang in time with the thunder overhead. “Boom-de-yah-da, boom-de-yah-da Boom-de-yah-da, boom-de-yah-da!” Karachi went well enough - Doctor Chagai, wearing a saree and blouse made from atomic particles, gave Fast-Forward a tour of Pakistan’s largest city, the nuclear scientist-turned-heroine earning cheers from the crowd in the (carefully vetted) neighborhoods they toured. Fast-Forward interviewed a few young Pakistani men and women who wanted to go to Freedom City to work in the superhero industry “and see the city with all the superheroes!” and played DDR with two young men in thin mustaches and New York Yankee shirts. I won! That game's not so bad after all. He passed through India quickly, stopping to film some absolutely gorgeous Bollywood dance numbers that were springing up everywhere from New Delhi to the countryside, watching young couples spinning cheerily around each other and singing, old men in turbans high-kicking in sparkling crowds, and he had almost no idea what any of it was about. “Looks like they’re having fun, though! This is the best magical disaster in years,” he said cheerfully into his Go-Fast when he took it off to scratch his head. And then, after a quick snack from a vending machine, it was time to run! He took to the sea again, dipping back on to land just long enough to bypass Socotra, for the long run to Cairo. Twenty minutes! Ugh, I am going to have the worst damn headache after this. Shoulda broughta aspirin. He stopped outside Cairo to watch the sunrise over the city, settling down in an empty suburban park to enjoy the view. It was all very pretty - at least until the giant pyramid shimmered to life over the city, cutting off the sunset, spoiling the view, and getting Richard on his feet with a muttered curse. “YOUR CITY IS NOW THE PROPERTY OF DR. RAMSES!” declared the loudspeaker’d voice even as the holographic head of a man in what Richard thought of as a “Pharoah’s hat and beard” shimmered to life. “SURRENDER, MORTALS!” The Battle of Cairo (2015) was actually a pretty ordinary day for Egypt’s superheroes. People showed up in Egypt a lot to cause trouble, usually in costume, trying to seize this or that ancient artifact, or “simply to squat inside the Great Pyramid and drink their foul American beer!”, as Khery-Heb put it to Richard afterwards. It was worse in summer-time, when Americans were on vacation. What mattered for Richard was the chance to meet new people (in advance of his planned interview) - and that he spent the fight providing background music. He started singing the moment his feet hit the pavement, and it seemed to naturally flow into the rhythm of the battle. The Nile Guard were already on the scene, and he slotted into the fight alongside them as if he had been, well, choreographed. He ran past Khery-Heb, the priestess calling on the incarnate spirits of Thoth and Hequet, as a rain of frogs began falling on the giant pyramid overhead, obscuring its radar and letting the others get in close and personal. “I love your potions, I love real giant things!” He dodged a Giant Sphinx alongside the Desert Wind, a veteran Egyptian speedster in black and brown. and like trained dancers he and the other man ran in opposite directions simultaneously, stirring up a whirlwind that began pulling the pyramid down low enough for the ground-bound heroes to leap aboard and begin battling their way through the Anubis-bots inside. He turned to the other man and declared, music rising behind him for a moment, - “I love to go fast, I love these ancient things!” When the interview with the Nile Guard was done and he got a harmonized invitation to come back any time and bring his family, he turned on his commlink back to Freedom City and, grinning, listened as Aoki, his Discovery Channel tech, sang about how boring her job was with the distant sound of the rest of the tech crew in the background. When she was done, and he was running across North Africa, he harmonized in reassuring tones. “I love our world, and all its wackiness!” In the Mediterranean, he stopped at an alternative artist colony on the southern shores of Italy to film an illusionist telekinetic put on a display of lights and colors that brought out a cheery - “I love some Play-Dough I love your acid trips!” from Fast-Forward. He took another break on the shores of the Atlantic, stopping in Lisbon for a big McDonalds breakfast, before getting back on his feet for one last big push. He was running away from the sun now, so he took off his sunglasses, ran a comb through his hair, and took off across the Atlantic! Keeping up a banter about the ocean and the weather as he went, he found his mind wandering to the wife, son, and daughter waiting for him at home, and what a damn lucky bastard he was to have all that after everything he’d done. He started singing again, far out at sea. “I love my freedom I love my witty quips,” Freedom City was coming into view now, first the Pyramid Plaza, then the DuTemps Castle, and he found himself slowing down to take in the view. “I love my family And this crazy place,” He ran into the Discovery Channel studio and, on cue, the staff raised their hands and pumped their fists in time with - “Boom-de-yah-da, boom-de-yah-da Boom-de-yah-da, boom-de-yah-da!” "So, think you can get anything from this?” (Music Source: Boom-De-Yada, as sung by the Discovery Channel)

"Ugh, fine," said Artoo, after staring at the heroines in growing disbelief. He'd looked around for someone else who thought this was a bad idea, but so far hadn't found any. "Well, at least take me with you, for the love of all that's rational. And the Resistance is not the one you have to worry about shooting you," he added firmly. "I can show you the location of one of our bases, as long as you don't bring ugly here along so he can rat us out to his friends in Talos City. We'd love to have the help of powerful metahumans take on Talos, and we would welcome you as a-." "Didn't you hear, you greedy little terrorist," sneered Vigil. "They want to help everybody. Personally I'd be happy to lead you to the gates of Talos City and let you do your thing there," he told the women warmly, rubbing his mechanical and organic hand together. "They'll be very happy to see you, and I'm sure there's a lot you could do there. Why you could help prevent starvation, malnutrition, all the sorts of things the weaker sort of human struggles with."

"NO MORE INTERFERENCE!" declared Kashima as a flash of energy erupted from his body in a ball of electrically-charged light that swept out across both the heroes and the foe in which he was engaged in fierce battle. "Neither false gods nor false heroes will keep me from the salvation of this city!" Hovering in mid-air, he seemed a god himself, energy crackling along his armor and through his opaque eye-slits. He looked ready to grab Net Fly and hurl him into space if necessary as he closed to the battle. "Get out of the way, young fool!" declared the being he was fighting with, a tone of stentorian command directed directly at Net Fly. "Can't you see this is a battle to the DEATH?"

Initiative: Galvanic: 23 Communion Space Fleet: 18 Rock: 13 Paradigm: 9 Galvanic is up. Dragonfly and Miss A are not technically in combat, so they do not need to roll!

Grimalkin is up!

Steve stared at Jean Pique, his hairless brows furrowing for a moment as he processed the man's words. Why are there so many languages on Earth-Prime? "You will not go below. But you may join me on guard." He stared down at the old man and put weight into his words. "I have studied the attacks made by the House of Swords. They will not gain entrance here again." And indeed he had studied them - all of them. The tactics used by the House of Swords on their last attack would certainly have disabled his cybernetic components and thus left him completely helpless - but on the roof, able to see all, he could make sure that wouldn't happen now. He kept at his post, waiting for the other to turn his back first.

"What does that even mean?" Fast-Forward demanded of Silver Scream as he ran through the crowd of villains she'd summoned, throwing his fists left and right in a blur of super-speed motion. "Are you going to go swimming now, like you're Esther Williams? Are there gonna be a whole lot of little yous all doing a synchronized dive into some kind of ghost pool while ghost music plays?!" He looked to the others as he ran, trying to see if they had any idea what the ghost was talking about. "And what are you doing trying to stab me, Ms. Bette Davis Eyes? I was the one who was gonna give you a show! But no, now you're just gonna have to go to the place where we send shows too old to make it. Nick at Nite!"

"Got her. Waterfront," said Citizen with a nod as he pulled his hand free of the handset, turning to look back at the other heroes in the room with a smirk of victory on his face. "Looks like 505 Carver Street. Terran systems are easy," he commented, "the connections just aren't..." His voice trailed off as he made eye contact with Set, having had to move very close to the godling to maintain his link to the system. "...just aren't that tough!" He slid away and back over towards Temperance, suggesting (without volunteering himself), "Somebody better stay here and watch our patient. Marvelous seems like the type to have somebody standing by to try a kidnapping, or just snipe him through the window."

"What do you think?" asked Sharl as he and Miss A worked on the arm. "A compiled carbodinium matrix? We could liquid-mold inject it right into the arm's circuitry, save us the effort of actually field-stripping the entire suit." He was pretty sure Miss A was already on that - but on the other hand he always liked the look on her face when he said the right thing. To Aya, he went on in his archaic accent, "Well, hopefully you'll all get them in the Republic one of these days. I'm still holding out hopes for Terra in a standard lifetime. I'm still a citizen, everyone in Tronik is a citizen, since we're not going anywhere anytime soon, what we need is the Republic to come to us." He smiled, though there was pain around the edges.

"Don't you understand?" demanded Artoo, who was still flinching from Dragonfly's words (which evidently sounded a little familiar) when Fleur began speaking. "Talos kills metahumans who don't serve him - he personally killed everyone in your old Freedom League that lived through the war. I've personally seen him..." His voice trailed off for a moment as he seemed to watch some internal struggle play out. "He's not going to be interested in your help; he'll kill you and use your cells for building super-powered drones." "The Resistance may not want to see you on our world," said Vigil thoughtfully, "but I think Talos would be glad to have your help. I haven't had a chance to see your version of this city, but I'm sure it's much finer to look at than mine is - and certainly more alive." "That's-No way!" Artoo waved a hand at Vigil. "If he can't have me, a powerful metahuman prisoner will let him keep his rank with the Watchdogs. He's just trying to lure as many of you as possible to our world."

"No, a device like that would destroy my organic components. I'll be retrieved by the full-sized version in...five and a half hours. And I want to go home because that's where my family is." Vigil frowned, staring at Fleur de Joie. "What do you mean, you're going to try to help us both? Unless you're going to send me back with my prisoner, what can you do for me? And if you're not going back with _him_ to set up some kind of organic dictatorship, what can you do?" "I was going to ask the same question," said Artoo, a tight-lipped expression on his brown face. "We don't seem to have a lot in common. And if you're not going to give me my device back, how am I supposed to go home?" he went on. "I don't know anything about building dimensional technology, especially on a world as backwards as Terra. I don't even know how to find my home dimension except that I know it's hard-encoded into the device. And I don't know about _you_," he added, looking at Cerulean, "but I'm not here by choice. I'm supposed to be going home."

Tarva moved over with just a moment's hesitation, taking a seat behind the driver where she could look out at the vastness of the night around them. While the others figured out who sat where, she began singing softly, almost under her breath - it sounded like more a way to pass the time than anything else. "Anything you throw at me, I'm gonna throw back, wait and seee-" "Oh, I'm sorry," she said as the others joined her in the truck. "It just seemed an occasion for music. Shall we sing?" she asked the others. "I have been practicing your songs. Ô Canada!Terre de nos aïeux, Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux! Car ton bras sait porter l'épée, Il sait porter la croix!-" She grinned, looking almost disquietingly cheerful in the artificial light of the back of the pickup truck."

"I was gonna be Princess Powerful, but that's lame," opined Holly seriously in response to Starlight's discussion. "I'm thinking Mind Queen now, after my Nana." She spread a generous amount of butter on her buns before digging into the burger again. "You can have whatever name you want, but you'll still be my baby girl," opined Richard, affectionately rubbing Holly's head. "I think you just want to wear that crown Nana promised she'd buy for you when you turn twelve." Turning back to his guest, he continued. If you don't like games, you could see if you can fly faster than the boy. We already know where you stand with me!" he added with a laugh, sounding like it was all in fun.

"There are about three billion sentient beings," said Artoo, who obviously had to do the math in his head before he spoke. "Most of the organics live in places not directly hit by the war like the old nation-states of China, India, and others. They'd like to get rid of Talos, but by the time they'd recovered from '94, he already had the orbital platforms and the super-weapons pointed at them, so they're in a state of cold war. The population of _this_ continent is about a hundred million, if you include Canada and Mexico. I'd guess there's...maybe one AI for every twenty organics?" he hazarded. "That's on average. About a half a million people live in Talos City, and it's the largest city in the old United States, and I'd guess maybe a third of its population is inorganic." "The human race damn near killed the world," said Vigil seriously. "The nuclear winter starved us out, then the plagues that came afterwards killed even more. I don't know what cushy little story this person got," he added, pointing to Artoo, "but I remember the machines being greeted as liberators when they came to our village." He pointed to his own implants. "I'd be dead, or a mutant freak right now, if they hadn't taken me in. We still have to get by on vat-grown food and use parts from before the war, because otherwise the planet itself is still poisoned." "It's not that bad," said Artoo firmly. "It was a holocaust beyond holocausts, but your world has recovered more than you'd think. In twenty years, outside of fallout zones the land has rebounded, people can grow crops...look at the radius on the device," he urged Dragonfly. "That's not for stealing food supplies or ores, that's for stealing individual pieces of high technology so Talos can finish taking the planet!" While both Artoo and Vigil were noticeably more radioactive than the norm, Dragonfly was pretty sure (once her scanner was finished) that neither of them were putting out enough radiation to poison the people they were around - as long as they didn't stick around regular human beings long. The glow that came off them was a sickly greenish-purple; enough that they looked in need of decontamination without actually making them look dangerous. Glowing with an unpleasant light of its own under her scanner, she found the device Artoo had carried would put out a lot of gamma and thermal radiation when active, but only when actually being used to open a gateway.