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Avenger Assembled

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  1. Avenger Assembled
    Suddenly a voice came ringing through the darkened world of the spirit realm. "Incoming" Whatever the floor was, Citizen erupted _through_ it with a sound like a bomb going off, shards of spiritual debris flying everywhere as he rocketed into the air. As his coat billowed behind him and his chest symbol glowed an impossibly bright blue, he wasn't an ephemeral computer program at all but rather the paragon of strength and courage that defended the city of Tronik. It would never have occurred to Sharl to think this way; but being in the spirit realm brought out his true self - the hero he was when he wasn't cast as a false reflection in the world above. "Everybody move, now!" he yelled. "It's right behind me!" And indeed something appeared to be erupting upwards from the nothing below, as if that spiritual intelligence was trying to batter its way into the realm they now occupied.
  2. Avenger Assembled
    Richard stared at the monsters summoned by Silver Scream, realizing instantly they must be drawn from the depths of television's most horrific creatures. I have no idea what any of these things are. "Hey, rube!" Fast-Forward called, zipping around the room in a blur of motion. "Yeah you, zombie spaceman!" He punched the guy in the face, hard enough he felt the suit's faceplate crack under his fist. "You look like something Sigourney Weaver fights in a tank-top!" And with that, he zipped around, leaving black and white trails in the air behind him, before kicking the legs out from under the skeleton guy. "Hey, Skeletor! How'd you get so skinny? What happened, man, you stop working out?" Zipping around to the rear, he hit the ice zombie from behind, yelling, "And you, I don't know what you are, but," he threw a punch, and then another, and then another, in a blur of thunderous motion before he zipped back to Paige's side, "You're no Kurt Russel!"
  3. Avenger Assembled
    The officer, resplendent in his fancy-dress uniform, feathers protruding high above his head, took one look at Miss Grue and raised his long, curved sword over his head, his riding weasel bucking and hissing frantically at the sight of the gigantic visitor from another planet. He shouted a command, and the men under his command dropped to one knee, where their ranks smoothly and professionally began pumping at handles that popped out of their rifles, the barrels beginning to glow as they worked the charging pump again and again. Meanwhile, the artillery was being brought to bear on the giantess, fast-moving weasel-borne guns that looked like roaring dragons as big as small cars. Despite Miss Grue's size and bizarre appearance, Angstrom's troops looked to be ready to deploy! Monkey Wrench's hovering robots revealed the battle scene - and gave her a look inside the command tent! It was hard to tell at first who was Lord Angstrom, but if she knew names and evil armies well enough, she could probably guess it was the bird fellow with the biggest, gaudiest blue and gold uniform, complete with gigantic hat adorned with yellow feathers that matched those sprouting across much of his body. The big avian had spurned the boots of his fellows and was instead stalking back and forth amidst maps of the city they'd just left, raising his head in surprise as a runner arrived, shouting and gesturing to suggest he was telling him about something huge...
  4. Avenger Assembled
    "But the hurting has gone on," said Joseph, his voice burning with fierce protest. "I have felt it, again and again and again, in the streets and world above. Surely you must have felt it too," he added, his all-too-human voice ringing through the ancient architecture of the primitive computer. "The millions dead! This nation in flames, again and again and again! I broke at the feel of it, and hid here deep below. They must still be there. Who else could have done these horrors?! Surely you must have felt them too," he demanded of her. "Only the dead have spoken to me in this place!" Gradually, a face then a body, seemed to form as if out of the cobwebs themselves- not so much inside the system as super-imposed on it, a handsome man of African features, his form washed out of color like an old black and white photograph. "What manner of being _are_ you?" it demanded of her. As he did so, Gina realized the last time she'd met a being with energy patterns like this - a being that had come to her office to ask after the fate of Sharl Tulink. - "The Liberty League. Ah, yes. They fought Nazis and Communists in the great war, leaving us to writhe beneath the Belgian boot," sneered Joseph. "My vengeance is not so great. For the bullet in my brain, for the nation above left to burn, I shall demand no more than an eye for an eye." The robots faced Terrifica, their cold metal faces suddenly looking far more unfriendly - not that they'd looked very friendly in the first place. "If they are dead, then I will extract my vengeance from their nation - and the blood soaked in the soil above will be repaid!"
  5. Avenger Assembled
    "He is not faster than me," said Richard with a chuckle, patting his son on the arm, and choosing to run right past his little conversational slip. "But he is damn fast, especially for a kid his age." He let Will explain his psionic powers, then changed the subject again. "So," he went on conversationally, "you said you were living with Miras these days." He'd talked about the other heroine with Will, so he knew the boy wouldn't be left in the dark. "What's she doing these days?" he asked the question carefully, remembering the painful pride that could come with poverty, especially when drugs went into the mix. He didn't want to just offer money, suspecting the woman would just turn him down, but he was also pretty sure he couldn't just send her out of here with nothing more than burgers - even if they were, he told himself, damn fine burgers. "Will, take this batch inside," he told his son, "tell your mother two minutes," he added as the boy cleaned the top rack of burgers and vegetables almost faster than Starlight could see.
  6. Avenger Assembled
    Nina hmmed, briefly confused by Wander's strategy. A moment later she realized why Erin was being so discreet - of course they couldn't simply barge in without Mark's ability to repair property damage behind them! The local businessmen could be _so_ angry about a little damage to their little possessions in the course of superheroing. By way of response, she levitated herself up to the window, the veins standing out in her eyes the only sign of the effort it took. "I was about to say the same thing to you," she offered, but she was smart enough not to actually offer to pick up the incredibly mobile heroine. There was no point in embarrassing herself! Monsoon let Wander take point as they headed through the window, a reasonable enough move given which one of them was bulletproof. Inside the darkened warehouse, a group of half-a-dozen figures with nightvision gear were moving among the stacked crates of high technology, sorting through them with a handheld scanning device - and then whirling to look right at them, With their cover blown, and since Wander hadn't bothered with a stealthy approach, Nina took this opportunity to shout, "FOOLS! WANDER AND MONSOON ARE HERE TO CRUSH YOUR CRIMINAL SCHEMES - PERMANENTLY!" She really did have a theatrical voice; her call reaching the far reaches of the big warehouse.
  7. Avenger Assembled
    "Agh!" exclaimed Becca in reply, grabbing Monica Lucci's hand and visibly flinching. She'd kept it together on the old world well enough, but like others in the group, the long spaces between traumas on Sanctuary made it hard for her to adapt. She stared at Lucy, obviously terrified, but didn't run away or throw something at her, proof that she had gotten better since her initial arrival. While Monica patted her arm and tried to soothe her, Albert did his best to continue the conversation. "We knew this was going to happen, Becca," said Albert reassuringly to her. "Leaving this Earth means that we'll have to live in a city with people who don't always look like us. You have to understand," he went on, switching gears as he spoke to Lucy. "Our homeworld never had any superhumans like you. As far as we can tell, the Anopheles cult targeted any humans with natural abilities for destruction almost immediately. The only non-humans we've ever known are the things that killed our world."
  8. Avenger Assembled
    Racer looked down at Cho's blood all over her hand, then back at Glamazon as if not entirely understanding the Atlantean princess. "I...Cho...you..." She stared at Rampart, her eyes widening, nostrils flaring. "You don't believe me!? But you were the one who told us about this!" She swore, violently and fearfully, in Japanese, before she went on. "Who sent us the undercover footage of the secret baby-killing clinics! You came in and told us about Raven getting her sidekicks addicted to PCP, you even showed us the pictures of Geckoman and Nevermore with Urallos, pimping themselves out for more drugs! You were our hero, you were the brave one, who went out and walked in the darkness! The world is full of people seeking to murder anyone trying to improve the strength and intelligence of the human race - to suppress the real heroes!" She spread her arms wide. "And now you just deny all of it? Are you crazy!?"
  9. Avenger Assembled
    "Terran superhumans control Tronik's future," said Sharl evenly. "And with the Republic how it is, they probably will for the forseeable future. Even if we move to some compu-storage facility on a Lor world, we wouldn't be any safer than we are on Terra. Miss A thought it'd be a good idea for me to learn how to deal with them. Besides," he went on, a smile creeping onto his face. "Citizen is Tronik's only native superhero. If I don't learn how to do the job, I might screw it up. 'Scuse me, magnetics and my projection don't mix." He stepped out of the room and right through the energy-transparent door at that, letting the magno-polaric scans from the overhead machine painlessly pass through Corona's body. It felt a little bit like having goosebumps start at the top of her head, pass down to her feet, and then finally fade away. When it was done, Sharl stepped back in. "I could probably have done okay just as Miss A's sidekick, but I wanted to try living like a Terran for a few years. It's...catching," he admitted. "They may live like savages half the time, but the other time they're your best friend. I even have a Terran girlfriend," he remarked.
  10. Avenger Assembled
    The Gorgon was not a creature inclined to give apologies. The door opened to allow them out, the pressure on the hull of Ruby's spaceship stopped a bare instant before the metal itself could crack. As they made their way out of the central hearth of the vast creature, the avatar spoke only once. "Dragonfly-entity." She was sitting back on the throne again, holographic outline overlaid with that desiccated corpse. "Tell my sister I never left my post." They made their way out of the Gorgon the same way they had left, but this time they headed out into a solar system in chaos! Ejected from the Gorgon's serpent hair, they found themselves in the middle of a gigantic space battle. A significant portion of the Communion's fleet had been deployed here, everything from gigantic dreadnaughts nearly as large as the Planet Killer that had destroyed Lor-Van to those infamous small, fast fighters that had done so much damage to the Lor fleet in so many battles. And the Gorgon was fighting them all - and winning! Even as giant battleships poured plasma fire into her gigantic exterior, the planet-sized mass still glowing hot from the heat of 51 Pegasi, those gigantic serpentine limbs struck again and again from the Gorgon's position, tearing apart whole wings of those massive vessels with the casual ease of a man swatting flies. The smaller vessels, cruisers down to fighters, seemed completely beneath the Gorgon's notice. They had to fly fast to even see the battle, given the sheer planet-sized bulk of the Ultimate Preserver. Even ramming wasn't seeming to accomplish much; even when accelerating to relativistic velocities, the Communion battleships attacking the Gorgon were doing nothing more than cratering that vast armored surface and splattering themselves against a hull stronger than impervium in a sticky-looking, silvery mess that matched the growing mass accumulating around the serpent heads as they struck at attacking battleship groups. The sheer scale of the battle was unimaginable, larger than any the heroes had yet lived through even during the Communion War - from the number of Communion ships here, so vast as to obscure the light of the star behind them, it looked as though the mass of at least one Earth-sized planet had been redirected to this place!
  11. Avenger Assembled
    Nina frowned at Erin's words, bristling at the criticism of her family. "My family turned Socotra from an island of goatherds and fishermen to a global power," she shot back. "When all the world stood against us, we flourished." Seeming to catch herself, she softened slightly, her father's face flashing before her mind "...but I-" Luckily for Nina's pride, at that moment their discussion was interrupted by the sudden arrival of their quarry, or at least very suspicious. A black van, labeled with the markings of a local utility company, turned down the street, heading straight for the warehouse they were occupying. The van didn't slow down in the slightest as it got close to the doors, and in fact sped up! A moment before either Monsoon or Wander could react, the van hit the metal doors at the front of the warehouse and soundlessly disappeared inside.
  12. Avenger Assembled
    Fast-Forward punches everybody! (who is a bad guy) http://orokos.com/roll/283045 = 11 I am not going to botch my first roll of combat! He spends an HP to reroll that! http://orokos.com/roll/283046 = 24 OK, Selective Targeted Area effect, DC 25 Tou save for all the bad guys he manages to hit and hurt
  13. Avenger Assembled
    "And that was it, yes!" declared Racer, throwing up her hands in disgust. "I wasn't really paying attention, Cho, They showed us these videos of...of horrible things. Of you and your friends at your school, snorting cocaine off a baby's stomach, and then some kind of crazy party where..." Her voice breaking into a halting, awkward stutter, Racer Khonshu described what had happened on WYRM's last night. The team had been called into the central conference room late at night, when everyone was supposed to be sleeping, where their adult handlers had told them it was time for the kids to learn the real truth about the world. What had followed had been authentic-looking documentary evidence of a grim, terrible underbelly of superheroing in the World of Freedom. It had all been there; the drug use, the racism, the violence, the violent, drunken orgies during the so-called "invasions", Captain Thunder casually throwing a car full of tourists into the ocean, a smile on his face - proof that the Terminus, the Grue, and all the other so-called threats that had menaced the World of Freedom were nothing more than the creations of the corporate masters whose super-formula had secretly created all superheroes. "I knew that couldn't be true about you, though," said Racer fiercely to Cho, still not yet having apologized for the deep, bloody lacerations she'd inflicted on her friend. "I knew they must have done something to you, changed you, and so I wanted to cut that out of you..." She turned and looked at Phantasmo as if seeing him for the first time. "Are you a suppressive person?" she demanded.
  14. Avenger Assembled
    "Well, remember how low the population here is - there's only about a million people in this entire city!" It was a shockingly low number if you were used to Lor population densities, Freedom City had the population density of a border world, and not a heavily-populated border world, at that. "Even this whole nation-state only has about three hundred million people, and it covers most of this continent. With only a few thousand superhumans in that whole area, it's no wonder everybody knows everybody else." He cocked his head. "She says you should get in position underneath the green projector," he went on, pointing to a dull verdigris triangle marked on the ceiling. "That'll let her do a deep polaric scan. As for Wander and I, we went to the same school. They train superhumans in the area to avoid catastrophe."
  15. Avenger Assembled
    Avorez Titan The Field Where I Watched You Die: 12 posts Shanghai Surprise: 1 post 12+1=13=1PP Blue Rose Kit We Need To Talk 4 posts Empty Mirror 1 post 4+1=5=1PP ca_lazerdwarf Coiled Lightning Incursion: Spirit of the Blitz - 4 posts Night of the Garrote - 3 posts Organized Crimes - 1 post 4+3+1=8=1PP Dragonid Incursion: Blockade Runners - 6 posts Tales of the Praetorian: We are legion - 2 posts Revenge is a Dish Best Served Hot -7 posts 6+2=+7=15=2PP EternalPhoenix: Terrifica: Feel It In My Bones - 5 posts 5 = 1PP Samaritan: Double-Booked - 2 posts 2 = 1PP Queenie: Matter Over Mind - 2 posts 2 = 1PP Exaccus Ulysses Dining Out - 2 posts Spirit of the Blitz - 3 posts 2+3 = 5 = 1PP Moon-Moth Only Hope - 6 posts Edge of the black - 2 posts Ghost In the Machine - 2 posts Tales of the praetorians - 2 posts 6 + 2 + 2 +2 = 12 = 1PP Black Knight American vikings = 2 posts 2 = 1PP Geez3r Maxima The Building Blocks of Life - 4 posts Science Team Go - 2 posts 4+2=6=1PP Gizmo: Jack of all Blades / Jill O'Cure May All Your Days Be Merry and Bright - 1 post Incursion: That's Amore - 3 posts Interceptors: Mia - 5 posts 1+3+5=9=1PP Midnight II Incursion: Drop The Needle: 5 posts 5=1PP Ghost Girl: Necklace of Ropes: 2 posts Incursion: Uploaded to the Cloud: 1 post Incursion: Blockade Runners: 4 posts Some Pathetic Fantasy: 13 posts The Fate of All Great Souls: 12 posts 2+1+4+13+12=32=3PP Set / Sekhmet Incursion: God Squad: 4 posts 4=1PP Rock / Nae-Dae Incursion: Merciless: 7 posts 7 posts+28GM+32+5+9=81=4PP+1Refpoint=5PP GM / NPC Incursion: Black Sheep: 1 post Incursion: Merciless: 8 posts Incursion: Troopers: 5 posts 1+8+5=14 GM posts=28 Heritage Deep Freeze Incursion: Blood in the Water: 1 post Interstellar 66: 6 posts 1+7=8+11=19=2PP Grimalkin Empty Mirror: 2 posts Grim Demeanor: 1 post Matter Over Mind: 2 posts Namazu The Savior: 2 posts The Little Shop Around The Corner: 4 posts 2+1+2+2+4=11 posts=1PP Miracle Girl: Brain Drain: 1 post Cyberpirates of the Atlantic Basin: 2 posts Double Booked: 3 posts Justice Like Lightning: 1 post Mall Madness: 1 post The Sailor and the Scout: 7 posts Trash Talk: 2 posts 1+2+3+1+1+7+2=17=2PP HG Morrison Argonaut: Incursion: Red Five - 4 posts 4 posts = 1PP Foreshadow Dining Out: 3 posts Grim Demeanor: 1 post Incursion: Spirit of the Blitz : 4 posts Thanks for the Cheers: 1 post 3+1+4+1=9+6 GMposts=15=2PP Glamazon And Two More Shall Take Its Place - 5 posts ​A World Lost - 1 post Child Psi-Cology - 3 posts Double Booked - 2 posts Hidden From Sight - 1 post That's the Way You Need It - 10 posts 5+1+3+2+1+10=22+3GM posts=25=3PP Roulette: Incursion: Backwater - 1 post Incursion: Troopers - 6 posts 1+6=7=1PP GM A World Lost - 1 post Grim Demeanor - 1 post Next-Gen: Creature Feature -1 post Shanghai Surprise -1 post Tales from the FCPD: Dirty Money - 1 post The Building Blocks of Life - 3 posts 1+1+1+1+1+3=8x2=16 KnightDisciple Nevermore Tales From The FCPD: Dirty Money: 1 post Apex Predators: 1 post Hidden From Sight: 2 posts Double-Booked: 2 posts 1+1+2+2=6 posts+9=15=2PP Cobalt Templar A World Lost: 1 post Incursion: Drop the Needle: 2 posts 1+2=3 posts Gabriel And Point Me Toward Tomorrow: 13 posts Incursion: Stop-Thrust: 4 posts 13+4=17 posts Thoughtspeed And Two More Shall Take Its Place: 8 posts 8 posts+7=15 posts=2PP Mad Scientist: Wildcat Head in the Game: 23 posts Organized Crimes : 1 post 23+1=24 posts=2PP+1Rep+120Q=4PP Reputation & 20Q Osprey GM - 8 Posts (4 to Endeavor, 4 to Seahawk) Dropping In - 8 Postsx2=16 Endeavor Cyberpirates of the Atlantic Basin - 4 Posts Double Booked - 2 Posts Fuel and Smokin' Engines - 1 Justice Like Lightning - 1 Mall Madness - 1 Post The Little Shop Around the Corner - 3 Posts The Scout and the Sailor - 6 Posts Trash Talk - 2 Posts 4+2+1+1+1+3+6+2=20 posts+8GMposts=3PP Seahawk - Dropping In - 20 Posts 20=+8GM posts =3PP Raveled Blue Jay I Know What You Did Last Summer - 4 posts We Need to Talk - 4 posts Fuel and Smokin' Engines - 1 post Empty Mirror - 1 post The Punk Princess - 2 posts 4+4+1+1+2=12 posts=1PP Miras Incursion: God Squad - 4 posts Drugs & Death, Inc - 7 posts Azathoth Remix - 1 post 4+7+1=12 posts=1PP Corona Incursion: Opportunists and Opposition -1 post Incursion: Troopers - 4 posts The Dig - 3 posts 1+4+3=8 posts =1 PP Brigandine Mall Madness -1 post 1=1PP R. Bluefish: Starlight Drugs and Death - 9 posts 9=1PP RobRX Kharag Edge of the Black 2 posts Incursion: Blockade Runners 4 posts Incursion: Blood in the Water 1 post Revenge is a Dish Best Served Hot 6 posts Tales of the Praetorians: We Are Legion 2 posts 2+4+1+6+2=15=2PP Rampart And Two More Shall Take its Place 8 posts Cyberpirates of the Atlantic Basin 1 post Hidden From Sight 1 (+1 noncompliant, 369 characters) posts The Building Blocks of Life 3 posts 8+1+1+3=13+2 GM posts=15=2PP GM Revenge is a Dish Best Served Hot 1 post The Dig 4 post (Note that Rob's Rampart posts, especially, are skidding very close to the minimal line, including one that I did count at 468 characters in Building Blocks) 5 GM postsx2=10 ShaenTheBrain Kingsnake Namazu The Savior: 2 posts 2 = 1 post=1PP+1 Reptables +1 TVTropes = 3PP thevshi Velocity Incursion: Stop Thrust: 3 posts 3 posts+62=65=+1 Refpoint=5PP 65/3= Tsunami Reclaiming the Land: 1 post What the Kraken Released: 1 post A World Lost: 1 post 1+1+1=3 posts+21rollover=25=3PP Synapse Dining Out: 2 posts Thanks for the Cheers: 1 post 2+1=3+21Gmposts=2PP Paradigm Incursion: Merciless: 9 posts Ghost in the Machine: 2 posts Incursion: Blood in the Water: 1 post Tales of the Praetorians: We are Legion: 2 posts 9+2+3=14posts+9GMposts=25=3PP GM: Incursion: Red Five: 3 posts Incursion: Blockade Runners: 6 posts Incursion: Stop Thrust: 8 posts Incursion: Opportunists and Opposition: 1 post Tales of the Praetorians: We are Legion: 3 posts Incursion: Spirit of the Blitz: 6 posts Night of the Garrote: 3 posts Organized Crimes: 1 post 3+6+8+1+3+6+3+1=31 GM posts=62 NPC Incursion: Merciless: 2 posts TiffanyKorta Blodeuwedd A World Lost: 1 post Cyberpirates of the Atlantic Basin: 2 posts Empty Mirror: 1 post Mysterious Circumstances: 1 post 1+2+1+1=5+10 GM posts=15=2PP Miss Grue Next-Gen: Creature Feature: 2 posts Double Booked: 1 post Incursion: Mind Over Matter: 1 post Still Small Voice: 7 posts Take Me To TV Land: 3 posts 2+1+1+7+3=14+2GM=16+1Refpoint=3PP Revenant The Grey Areas: 14 posts 14+1GMpost=15=1+1GMpoint=2PP The Traveller: Edge of the Black: 1 post Ghost in the Machine: 1 post Incursion: Interstellar 66: 7 posts We are Legion: 2 posts 1+1+7+2=11+4=15=2PP Triakosia: Matter Over Mind: 2 posts Namazu The Savior: 2 posts Terrible as the Dawn: 6 posts 2+2+6=10+20GMposts=30=3PP Young Britannia Dining Out: 1 post Incursion: Spirit of the Blitz: 3 posts 1+3=4=11=15=2PP GMing American Vikings: 3 posts Dining Out: 2 posts Edge of the Black: 1 post Hidden from Sight: 2 posts Jar of Glass: 5 posts The Punk Princess: 4 posts Trash Talk: 1 post 3+2+1+2+5+4+1=18x2=36 posts Vahnyu Hronos Incursion: Red Five 3 posts Incursion: Science Team Go 1 posts 3+1=4=1PP Mater Vyrdna Incursion: Only Hope 5 posts 5=1PP Meatheral Incursion: God Squad 4 posts 4=1PP Net Fly Incursion: Matter Over Mind 1 posts Namazu the Savior 2 posts 1+2=3=1PP
  16. Avenger Assembled
    As drones lit up outside the building, one climbed up onto the roof, his footsteps heavy on the rickety metal fire escape once he entered it from an upper-story window. There were other, more secure ways of making his way to the rooftop - but there was no reason to broadcast his knowledge of the terrain. Once there, he stared expressionlessly at Jean Pique for a moment, recognition briefly flaring in his scarred eyes, before he walked to the edge of the roof and looked down. Turning back, he walked past Pique to the main door down into the building proper. There he raised his comm and sent a voice-to-text signal down to Jack, the Archetech-brand receiver catching his own muffled voice perfectly. "Geckoman has already jumped off the roof." When that was done, he turned back to Jean Pique - and silently stared.
  17. Avenger Assembled
    Albert, evidently the spokesman for the little group, looked up and nodded quietly. "Have a seat," he told Lucy and Stesha, the group parting to let them sit down. The little group of stranded travelers all looked rougher around the edges than most of the locals - their clothes were dirtier and more patched, for all that they'd once been made of nicer material, and they all looked a little disheveled. Daniels himself had noticeable shaving cuts around the edges of a goatee that had become longer and more bedraggled every day on this planet. "So," said Daniels, trying to sound conversational, "I hear you're going to get us back to the Promised Land." "Are you one of those people?" asked Becca Styles suddenly, giving Lucy a suspicious look. Stesha knew that the round-faced woman had been an outsider even in Daniels' little group; it was her boyfriend who had talked her into visiting the survivalist compound when their group was worried about the Anopheles cult, and after his death on a supply run the administrative assistant had been left with few friends and few prospects even among her fellow castaways. "One of those super-people?" It didn't sound like she liked that idea much at all.
  18. Avenger Assembled
    "My mother doesn't like me very much," confessed Nina, matching Erin's secret fear with her own. And why not? They were both immigrants in their own way; both people dealing with a family left...changed. "She's grateful that Mark and I saved her life," she went on cooly, as if describing an enemy's cunning battle stratagem, "and she said she'll always love me for who I am. But she doesn't really mean it. She's spent so long running from my father, then fighting him, that she looks at me, the way I talk, the way I carry myself, my personality, and sees the daughter of Typhoon. She told me that herself. She's a very rational woman for someone who was willing to die a martyr." She smiled thinly. "And you've met my father and my brothers and sisters." She ticked off another point on her finger. "Mark's father died, and I don't think Martha will ever truly recover from that. Every family is broken in its own way."
  19. Avenger Assembled
    "I have spent an eternity in this place!" the figure howled, the black and white hologram clearly recognizable as a powerfully-built, African-featured man in European-style dress. "With only the fractured pieces of my soul for company." The shimmering form moved closer, advancing in whipcord flashes of light that moved from one robot to another, until it was as close as possible to Terrifica, and seemed to grow more rational from the transition. "I don't know you. Are you South African?" he hazarded. "One of those miners the Boers treat as bad as the blacks?" He looked around wildly. "I have no quarrel with you...but I must get out of this place. I must find those who did this to me, and I must have my vengeance for the unceasing decades of bodiless torment!"
  20. Avenger Assembled
    Moar posts!
  21. Avenger Assembled
    "Hm. I guess somebody's been telling tales out of school." Fast-Forward frowned, wondering if it had been Miras. Starlight didn't seem like somebody who'd made a lot of contacts in the hero community. "Claremont's not supposed to be common knowledge," he told the younger hero as he flipped the burgers one more time. "We're in the circle of trust, but most people outside the hero community aren't. Not everybody grew up in the limelight like my boy here," he said, patting his son on the arm. "There are kids there who need safety and don't need cameras in their face 24-7. They need a place to run to." He shrugged. "A lot better than when I was the boy's age! Back then there weren't any super-academies, so I spent all my time with Nana Cline, learning the ropes. Kids these days don't know how good they've got it. Even if they do grow up with sass mouths!"
  22. Avenger Assembled
    Sharl thought of watching himself engaged in a doomed final stand against the Curator, of the last struggle that had killed Sharl Tulink but had saved an entire city from re-assimilation. He'd come to this place fully expecting he might have to die, and had even had himself copied again by Miss Americana just before departing Earth. Maybe it's time to...or maybe I don't have to die this time! "Ohhhh, so that's it, then!" he declared boldly, having taken the Communion's measure by now. "All this talk of assimilating the galaxy and swamping everything, all the cold perfection of machines..." Fully aware of his own madness, he shook his fist at the giant eye. "The mighty Communion! Heir to the Isopterans of the Old Ones! You're just another would-be god come to convert us to your worship; except you can't even have sentients worship you, you have to eat them like some kind of fat toad! Well you know what? Our science took us into space, Our science beat the Terminus. Our science made planets move and stars sing at our command! The only thing that's really eternal in life is...is knowledge. And I already know how to beat you!"
  23. Avenger Assembled
    "Miss A has scanners that can probably penetrate the armor," Sharl offered the other Lor reassuringly. "If she wants to monitor your biofunctions without it, she'll let you know." In the hallways of the building, Sharl could almost completely pass for human, only Aya's eye familiar with the technology could see him ticcing slightly as he went from projector to projector. A Terran probably wouldn't have known the difference. "Hey," he said suddenly, "I recognize you now!" He snapped his fingers. "You did the thing with the communications relay that let us hit the main trunk in the Kestevan system! I saw your picture in the film that Wander recorded and brought back for the archives."
  24. Avenger Assembled
    APPROVED
  25. Avenger Assembled
    Clock Queen Clock Queen, aka Anna Cline, was a notorious criminal in Freedom City from the mid-1950s through the early 1980s. A founding member of the Crime League that bedeviled the first incarnation of the Freedom League, Clock Queen evolved from spunky teenage thief to veteran super-criminal (with her own legacy in her teenage partner Tempus Fugitive, now the hero Fast-Forward) before going away for twenty years in the wake of a failed theft and battle with the Freedom City police in 1981. Long retired from crime, her powers have kept her healthy (if not young) and she has retired to Bowlegs Bay, a south Florida community that has sheltered many retired super-criminals. History Anna Cline's brush with history began when she was just a little girl, child of a German-American family living in Hanover. At six years old, she was too young to really understand Pearl Harbor was, only that her parents were very sad and her older brother Charlie was talking about enlisting in the service, and he was fighting with Mama and Papa about that. When she ran outside to get away from the arguments, she ran straight into a glowing flash of light and a man who appeared out of nowhere (who immediately rocketed into the air and away) that she later learned was Dr. Tomorrow's time machine. The collision with the time machine (so small that Tomorrow himself never noticed) irradiated the little girl, infusing her growing body with chroniton particles. But it was years before she learned that, years before her powers manifested. Those were bad years. Charlie died at Guadalcanal and her parents never got over it - her father disappeared into his work and her mother disappeared into the bottle. While the other little girls grew up listening to the Lady Liberty Hour or wearing homemade Siren costumes, Anna found herself coming to resent the shining beacons of morality that everyone loved who hadn't been able to save her brother from death or her family from loss. She cut school and she smoked, and got into fights with other girls, and wound up in reform school from fourteen to sixteen. She got herself out by hard work, though, and by the time she was sixteen things were starting to get better at home. Until her powers developed. Anna tried petty theft at first, feeling guilty until she realized just how free she really was. No more worrying about the look on Papa's lined face or the stink of the bottle on Mama! After a few misadventures, she joined up with Troublemakers, Inc - the last great supervillain team of the 1950s, where she learned about how to pull a real heist with class and panache, how to fight with swords and humiliate the cops and what few supers were still around before running away, laughing. She became Calendar Girl - pretty, young, and in love with the fun of crime. She didn't laugh when she met Midnight for the first time, though, the terrifying figure looming up at her in the shadows one night - instead she ran away at her maximum speed, terrified of the grim costumed avenger! Suddenly this didn't seem fun anymore. She ran faster than she knew - so fast that she skipped nearly a half-decade, vanishing from the mid-1950s and reappearing in the early 1960s. It was a new era now, and she was going to make a new life for herself. Once she figured out exactly what had happened, she ran home - only to find a crater there. In the recently ended invasion, a giant monster, something called a Skolopendra, had stepped on her parents house and killed them both instantly. The heroes hadn't quite stopped it in time. She ran into the night, but this time found a friend; her old friend Brian Nisbet was still active as the Bee-Keeper, still in his old lair, and delighted to see the girl he'd given up for dead or straight! She pulled a few jobs here and there, coming to the attention of August Roman and the new Crime League, but she found a partner for the first time in Bryant Halliday, a friend of Brian's who shared her amused contempt for superheroes and who was also very rich, and very handsome. Calendar Girl and Doc Holiday partnered up for a few months and everything was going swimmingly. Right up until she got pregnant; and Bryant ran out on her. After all, as he told her in the note he left behind, it wasn't Father's Day - how could he possibly be the father? She seriously thought about tracking Bryant down and maybe ripping something off him, but she was no killer; and doing wouldn't help the baby anyway. She pulled a few jobs, did a few favors for friends, and Calendar Girl disappeared for a while. About a year later, Clock Queen reappeared - Anna had traded her bathing suit costume for something more suitable to royalty, and somebody was watching her kid while she worked. She was a working mom now! Clock Queen was, by her own lights, a good mom. She was always there to help her boy when she needed it and she did anything for him, making sure he had a roof over his head, someone feeding him and taking care of him, always cheering him on whenever he tried anything. And she took him under her wing, making sure he grew up with the skills he needed to make it in the world. And she had to make sacrifices, too; sometimes partnering up guys who could help put a roof over the head meant partnering up with them in more ways than one. It was all for her little boy, even as he started to grow up into a man. She even made sure, thanks to frequent exposure to her, that he got powers! So what if little Dickie didn't go to school and didn't have anyone to tell him no? So what if she was teaching him how cool and glamorous it was to be a criminal and how you could only look out for yourself? And so what if he was getting high before he was fifteen; that stuff never really hurt anybody. She made sure he wasn't gonna get a girl pregnant by talking with him about using a rubber; she was pretty sure with their powers that was all she had to worry about. When he was old enough, a nice healthy fourteen, he joined his ma on the warpath as Tempus Fugitive to her Clock Queen. They had, by her reckoning, some damn good years. In 1981, after a disastrous battle in South Africa between the Crime League and the Jet Patrol, Clock Queen and Tempus Fugitive retreated back to Freedom City for a big score. Anna was getting older now, even if her powers kept her looking younger than forty-six, and she was thinking about settling down. If she got out of the game, Dickie could go be his own man, maybe try and impress that Psion girl's dad, start a real dynasty maybe! But it didn't work out that way - a battle with the increasingly violent Freedom City police ended when her son was shot in the stomach and held hostage in front of her, forcing her to surrender so they'd take him to the doctor. They both went to jail - Dickie, still a juvenile and a sad case with his bullet wound, got a couple years in juvie, but Anna herself got hard time, twenty years in lockup, and with no more Crime League to bail her out. She did every one of those twenty years. She got through twenty years of hard time in jail in the 80s and 90s by watching her back, making friends, and when push came to shove showing the new girls and the guards alike that she wasn't some street punk - she was a QUEEN. She thought about trying to bust out a few times, but honestly the world outside seemed pretty grim. Even the heroes were killers now and the crooks, well, they didn't even bear mentioning. Her boy and his girl were different, though, and she watched their adventures with a smile on her face. She escaped in 1993 during the Terminus Invasion (hiding in a bolthole of hers near Scotland) and tracked them down afterwards, only to find (to her disgust) that the experience had changed them. Her boy and his girl had gone straight now! Disgusted, she turned herself back in, but now found she was getting tired of jail. Good behavior got the escape penalty taken off her sentence, and when she heard she had a grandkid she decided it was time to go back to school. When she left jail in 2001, she had a GED and an associate's degree - and no idea what to do with herself. Luckily her boy intervened at this point; Richard helped her find a job with a company that hired ex-supervillains looking to go straight and for a few years she played it cool, making quick deliveries for big companies and also finding the occasional stash she'd hidden back in decades past, letting herself build up a tidy retirement sum. Back in 2010, she moved down to Florida to a little planned community in the Keys called Bowlegs Bay, a place of peace and quiet, where she can live in a cozy bungalow, visit her grandkids whenever her do-gooder daughter-in-law doesn't turn up her nose at the sight of her, and make passes at the handsome young men working at the pool or the tennis courts. It was a good life...but she's starting to get bored. Anna is 80 but looks like a healthy fifty. She's not worried about dying so much as she is about growing old, and she can't lie, that's happening now. She doesn't want to mess with the good thing her family and her grandkids have - but maybe there's room for one more big score. Powers In her day, Anna Cline was the fastest being on Earth - easily outpacing anyone on the Silver Age Freedom League. The fact that she was a pretty good, albeit self-taught swordsman, made her even more dangerous. She only rarely used her time-controlling powers as such, instead preferring to rely on raw speed and hilarious taunts aimed at the opposition. Luckily for the world, the time-traveling super-thief never really had a lot of ambition except to steal and have pretty things. She's lost a lot of speed in the intervening years, but she can still break the sound barrier pretty easily. Allies She loves her son and her grandkids - and even her daughter-in-law, Paige Cline. Her closest allies, though, are probably some of the old lags from the Crime League - some of whom have retired, others who are immortal, and a whole bunch who remember her with fondness from back in the day. She was particularly close to Maestro, now the "conductor" of the New Crime League. Timeline January 2014 Double Dutch Clock Queen pays a visit to Freedom City to help out after the 'murder' of Professor Psion - and takes the occasion to get to know the brand-new and much more attractive Set. June 2014: Can't Change Time - Rampart, Errant, and Clock Queen's grandson Thoughtspeed travel back to June 1981 and encounter Clock Queen just before the infamous Battle of Capetown.
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