Avenger Assembled
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"We could do a special on you," offered Fast-Forward, his hand idly pressed against the magical text he kept in his jacket pocket. "Silver Scream - The Greatest Villain Of Them All!" he waved a hand in the air. "Put on footage of your classic films, some of your latest crimes..." Leave out all the murder, obviously, he thought in his wife's direction. They had occasionally done profiles of particular supervillains on the show, but they tried not to give publicity to killers like the Golden Age ghost. "With this as the showstopper. You'll be a star; and the audience will love you!" He and Paige were obviously an experienced duo when it came to this sort of con, playing naturally off each other while they let the other heroes in the room do their own thing. That's right, just watch the birdies. With any luck, maybe they'd be able to talk the starlet down before things got even worse.
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As Tiamat was speaking, a thoroughly-disgruntled Frost was watching the machinery, pacing around it and stroking his pale chin thoughtfully. "Say, Lady Tiamat," he finally said, still casting narrowed eyes at her despite his civil tongue, "do you see this here and here?" he inquired, pointing to the damage done by the antibodies. "This is intricate work - not mere vandalism by rough-handed robots. They are rewiring station's power for some sinister purpose - perhaps to blow us up, or make us blow up some other place!" He snapped his fingers. "Station's reactor, if rigged to detonate, could damage entire hemisphere if brought low enough - or station's weapons could burn hole in atmosphere. At least, hah-hah, that is Russian scientific analysis for completely irrelevant contemporary scenarios. Now come along," he said, heading for the emergency stairs, "let us find reactor before we are all killed."
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ooc And Two More Shall Take Its Place
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Archives
This is a regular old darkness-based Obscure. People with the relevant super-senses can see through it fine. Everyone give me initiative! -
ic And Two More Shall Take Its Place
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Grenville and Ashton
The warehouse was on fire. Of course it was. By the time the heroes made their way to Greenbank, even with the help of Thoughtspeed's super-speed, it looked like they'd gotten there entirely too last. The Greenbank warehouse whose picture Terrifica had found was engulfed in roaring flames that erupted merrily from every tattered window and open door, the sirens telling them that emergency services were already on their way. It looked like they had come entirely too late, standing together by the old railroad track, and that this was yet another false lead in what was already shaping up to be one of the worst days of Rampart's young life. At least until, all at once, they were all abruptly cast into darkness. -
"Dumbass," commented Fast-Forward at the back of the fleeing drug lord before zipping forward and tapping the fleeing criminal on the back of the head, instantly 'pausing' him in mid-run, the temporal distortions around him looking like old-fashioned error bars on a paused VCR tape. "And...hey, wait a minute!" He turned to Starlight. "Bowie!? David Bowie? The Thin White Duke? Ziggy Stardust? Jared from Labyrinth?" He stared at the young woman, then threw his hands up in the air as if praying for a miracle. When he was done, with a sigh, he turned back to the others and said, "This guy can hear what we're saying, so let's not go telling tales out of school. Except how we're gonna find where the drugs are, kick his ass, and then kick his boss's ass too." He took the beer out of the guy's hand and went on, "What is this, Belgian? You Commie!" He poured it out disgustedly, right there on the paralyzed man's good shoes. "Too good for American, eh?"
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Net Fly: This is an ultrasonic generator, similar to those you've seen used for industrial wet-milling and grinding. This is much, much larger than any you've seen, though - usually these are used to break up micron-sized particles into smaller versions. Kingsnake: By scent, you sense that the device stinks of high-end incendiaries. This was no natural fire that melted the device - somebody set this off just a few minutes ago, probably about the time of the earthquake. You can make out the lingering trace of the machine oil it was packed in to get it out here; this was freshly unboxed from whatever factory produced it. You can smell the same machine oil on the handle of the hammer, and you can make the connection that it was probably handled by whoever brought in the machine into the stadium. You smell what you're pretty sure is a bloody handprint on the door frame - the guy didn't even bother to wipe down after himself! You're pretty sure you can find him again once you see him. The janitor himself smells strongly of men's cologne, probably his own, and just faintly of sake. By feel, you sense that the janitor was beaten to death with his own hammer, the latter is missing from his belt and matches the same tool set as the rest of his tool belt - Namazu, a local technology manufacturing company. It looks like he was taken by surprise; somebody hit him once in the back of the head, then repeatedly hit him in the temple to finish the job. It's not hard to guess that if the ceiling had come down (as it _really_ wants to do), there'd be no sign he was anything other than a victim of the earthquake (and for that matter the machine itself would be so much scrap). The seams and other marks of welding are smooth as butter - you're no tech expert, but somebody with a lot of knowledge and some very good tools put this together. You find, scattered everywhere, small scraps of paper that are 1000 yen notes; perhaps 1000 of them, torn up and thrown around the room, some scattered around the janitor's feet like they were thrown there. The money itself is fresh and clean outside of someone tearing it up - and a check by fingers reveals that the serial numbers are all non-sequential. Triakosia: You find a clear bootprint on the floor in the blood, but the rest of the floor is too broken up from the quake to make out any finer detail. You can also tell how profound the structural damage is this far down - you guys do _not_ have long to stay here.
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He noticed me! Sharl did his best to quash that annoying little inner voice and went on, "It's one of Miss A's models - smaller and more portable than anything else on this planet. She said the hard part is getting my projection matrix to react to stimuli enough so I can sense things through my body." He cut out again as he slid open the phone's case, which certainly didn't look like any iPhone on the inside, but soon had reappeared to continue his work. "I'm not a robot, if that's what you're wondering," he went on as he fiddled with a tiny set of tools inside the open case, "I mean, I have a steel suit I wear sometimes, but I didn't get made in one of your factories. I'm pure AI."
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They wound up escorted to the edge of the city by the locals, giving the heroes a chance to cast a practiced eye over the people of the Nano Realm. It was pretty obvious that these people had very little experience with warfare, or really privation of any kind. Despite the fear that gripped the population they looked well-fed and well-dressed, the children playing in parks tinted with azure grass were happy and content despite the tension on the faces of the slitted-eyed locals. The technology looked to roughly match the planet they'd left behind, or perhaps was a little slower - they didn't see any computers or smartphones on the street, but there were puttering motorcars here and there and old-fashioned arc lights that lined the streets. Everywhere there were cheers and celebrations at the sight of them - their alien costumes and the crowd that followed them evidently making it very clear that they were the promised saviours of the people! The edge of the city, which seemed to have a population of about thirty thousand, was walled and manned by a small contingent of armed, uniformed troops; but it was abundantly clear the wall itself was largely ceremonial, a big, blocky-looking structure whose green bricks looked to have been arranged for style rather than function. It was clear that it would slow invading troops down for no more than a few minutes. "Well, ah, here we are!" declared Kwis, waving his hands expectantly at the heroes. "The armies of Lord Angstrom will be here within a few hours, but with you here, our salvation is assured. Cheer for our champions!" he called, and the growing crowd of happy lizardmen and women began cheering for the heroes as they studied their situation.
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Give me some crime scene checks, folks! Under the circumstances, the DCs for your Notice/Search/Investigate/Technology etc may be a little higher than usual.
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Down below in the guts of the stadium, the heroes found the machine that Kingsnake's super-senses had uncovered, even if the darkness of the powerless stadium interior meant that they had to rely either on super-senses of their own or a handy pocket flashlight; or a cell, for that matter, depending on need. It didn't look like much to the untrained eye - a half-melted column of metal and plastic with one end jammed against the solid structure of the stadium's interior concrete architecture and the other pressed against the floor. But this was the center of the ultrasonic vibrations that Kingsnake and Triakosia had sensed. Hard evidence for this could be found in the gut-churning structural damage clearly visible everywhere. The ceiling in this room, a janitor's storage area, and the hallway around it, were like so many cracked eggshells just waiting for the right pressure to snap it. It was instantly clear they didn't have long to study their find! It was also abundantly clear that they weren't alone. Stretched out beneath the sonic device was the usual occupant of the storage room - a stadium janitor with the side of his head methodically beaten in.
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This hurts, thought Citizen, but I can't exactly complain with Hronos' head over there! Instead he sat up, carefully working metal fingers into cunningly implanted grooves where his 'ribs' should be. He was silent as he felt around for connections, only slowly making connections to the global satellite network. (After all, there wasn't much in the way of service, here in this shockingly-empty stretch of land!) "This is happening all over the planetary system," he finally said. "There was something on Luna, something in Europe, on the west coast of North America...but we're actually winning this. I need to try and reach Miss Americana - maybe she'll have some idea what to do with all this computronium." Sure enough, said semi-mythical substance wasn't going away with the battle ended - instead the gigantic chunk of silvery metal lay like a mirror dropped on the desert's surface, for all that it still faintly glowed with Citizen's chest symbol.
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Sharl stood with her, gazing out at the Freedom City night. "It's so quiet here," he murmured, putting his hand on hers on the rail as he marveled alongside her at the railing. "It's hard to believe so much happens in a city this empty. But at least the company is-" Suddenly, in clear view of the others, he vanished - then reappeared with a noisy fritz and visible 'stuttering' in his visible image. Which, on closer inspection, was exactly what he was. "Ah, frack it, the projector's screwed up." He headed back to the 'smartphone' he had left on the second bedroom's bedside table, picked it up - and promptly dropped it through his fingers again. Muttering alien curses under his breath, he bent down and started working on the 'phone', sliding his fingers right through the plastic to directly interface with the interior circuits. "I've got this," he reassured Temperance, "This is just some overclocked boards I need to work the current around. Shouldn't be more than a couple of minutes here."
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"...so anyway, that's why I missed class that day. Estúpido Gwen Jackson and her dragon." They were still in position on either side of the hallway, but with some prompting Yolanda had taken out her math homework and begun to work on it. "At least she's not allowed to take it to school anymore, even if all her ugly friends can play with it at her house." "Children can be thoughtlessly cruel," agreed Steve. "But a time will come when she grows into a woman and regrets the wound she inflicted on you." He kept half an ear, no more, on the happy conversation on the other side of the door, having taken up the position closest to the birthing. "It is our fate to regret the past." "Why do you do that?" she asked him, setting her pencil down as she looked at him again. "Why do you talk about fate so much? The cyborg kids, they do the same thing, and Prometheus did that when he came to talk to our class." "It is..." Steve was quiet for a moment, drawing together his inner thoughts. "In the Terminus, there are no gods, no heavens. No devils, no hells. There is simply those of us who live, and our suffering beneath the Eternal Heel of Entropy. Most succumb to despair and embrace Omega as the dread incarnation of Death that brought them to this place. But for those of us who do not, we look to...our fate to explain what has happened to us." Yoyo hmmed at that. "Maybe I'll make my own fate, then." "Perhaps," said Steve, and then, as lightly as he could given the weighty subject. "And your mathematical problems?" With a sigh, Yolanda went back to work.
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"You ladies wanna see a trick?" invited Fast-Forward as he walked up to the door. "I don't actually have super-speed like Miras here," he said, waving idly at the young woman. "What I do is control time." He pulled back a fist. "So I accelerate time around my arm, all without aging it to death, by the way-" sure enough, his arm was blurring as he pulled it back, "and then hit this thing with the force of a thousand years of punching!" He hit the door with a blur of impossible motion, the noise of his blow like a hummingbird mixed with a jackhammer, and it BOOMED, an echoing noise that filled the hallway. "and stop time with my punch before I pulp my whole upper body!" He hit the door again with his other fist, a slow, rhythmic metronome of hyper-accelerated blows. "If they come out shooting, I'm super-hard to hit," he said breezily, "so don't worry about me." "For me, it was cocaine. Lots and lots of cocaine," he went on, having evidently caught part of their conversation while he was zipping around the tunnel waiting for them. "Twenty-five years clean, and I still think about it sometimes. Goddamned coke." He didn't sound like he was joking at all when he said that. "I think about these bastards on the same streets as my kids, on the same streets when _I_ was a kid...at least when there are vampires in the neighborhood, they're usually listening to Bowie, you know what I'm saying?"
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It was easy enough for Cyberknife to make a connection to the hard drive inside the Archtech laptop, by now the familiar systems were as easy to find as locating part of her own brain. The laptop itself was in stand-by mode with a low battery reserve, having gone into its sleep cycle once it was left unattended long enough. That meant she had a system she could readily access, but she couldn't push it far - absent mechanical hands to move, she couldn't actually plug the thing in. Booting up the laptop's webcam was able to give her a low-res image of the research area that the MIT team had described to her - where sure enough, she could see some of the first-generation robots taking apart the team's advanced equipment. The big, clanking automatons weren't speaking as such - but they were clearly working together as they methodically wrenched apart what had once been a well-equipped research laboratory. Gina caught the noise rising from VI itself, though of course she couldn't actually see it with where the laptop was pointed. There was, in cyberspace, a connection to the laptop's system that wasn't her - but VI's very age made even looking that way difficult, as if Gina's consciousness was staring into a forest of inhabited cobwebs every time she contemplated the connection between this system and that other one. Making her way down, Terrifica heard it too, over the clearly audible racket of the whirling gears, humming vacuum tubes, and whirs of magnetic tape that made up VI's brain. "MOKÈLÉ-MBÈMBÉ. MOKÈLÉ-MBÈMBÉ." It was a low, mechanical voice - that suddenly began to sing in the cold, low-resolution version of a child's song. "Je te plumerai la tête. Et la tête! Et la tête! Alouette! Alouette!" It sounded like an old recording of a child's voice, made long ago - perhaps even before the vault itself had been sealed up.
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25 Listen to the science from a man who graduated from college eighty years ago!
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ic The Field Where I Watched You Die
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Europe
"I do!" declared Frost. "I have known them since childhood." He thought for a moment, then turned to Fleur. "Can you teleport to street address and GPS coordinates in London if I can provide them? Was last at Griffins for birthday of little Griffin boy of fourth generation in February." Come to think of it, that did explain the unannounced vacation Frost had taken right around Valentine's Day. "Griffins should be in family mansion in London for today. They have always preferred to take this day..." His eyes flicked back to the monument. "...as a family. But all will be there, and we can speak to them immediately." Frost didn't seem to mind what was evidently a very late hour in Europe; but of course Fleur had never seen the Russian ice controller sleep, or even show much in the way of fatigue. "Can bring this fellow as well and have tested by Ministry of Powers. Need not even return to America." -
Fast-Forward was left with a choice to make as he studied the situation - the kind of choice faced by many a hero in a crisis situation. All right, it's dark down there and it's unfamiliar territory. If I run too far ahead, I could get caught up in something bad. He was confident in his ability to avoid any walls, even going at full tilt, but he'd been taken off-guard by various traps over the years enough to know that there were no guarantees even at super-speed. "But on the other hand, that water smells like crap. And if I go in it, I'm gonna smell like crap," he said aloud, a moment before he joined the women down inside the tunnel by the expedient of running down the walls and across the surface of the water, so fast his feet didn't even sink beneath the surface. "Race you there!" he called, zipping past them faster than the eye could see.
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Popular fiction likes to imagine that in a moment of great disaster, people will set aside their humanity and embrace the carnage of raw survival. And sometimes that's true - but usually it isn't. It certainly isn't true here under the Sapporo Dome, where transplanted Freedomites and locals alike rally together to save themselves and protect the wounded. Gretchen's 'aid station' soon became a center for help, the American woman quickly joined by two Japanese EMTs with what looked like first aid kits from the stadium's fortunately ample supplies. Flying high, Grimalkin could see the grim extent of the damage. The Japanese built for earthquakes, which meant the building had survived even the serious tremors; but the damage had still been serious, and in a crowded audience to boot. The deaths must be in the dozens already, even with the emergency crew in the stadium working overtime. But where are the city's emergency crews? Net Fly soon found himself pressed into service as a first-aid technician, the sight of a costumed superhero one that the people outside the men's room immediately seized on. It was all he could to reassure the local crowd and small number of Freedomites that everything was going to be all right, even as he steered them towards the first aid stations forming inside the dome. Peering outside a window, he caught sight of a grim scene - outside, fires were blazing in the battered-looking city of Sapporo and sirens wailing everywhere. The earthquake had not been limited to the dome; and a quick check of the local media revealed the signs of a devastating quake that had struck the whole city. Triakosia was able to negotiate with the crowd easily enough, this sort of situation being a common enough role for someone with her powers. Her strength meant she could lift debris off the fallen, carry the injured to first aid stations, and otherwise save lives wherever she went - but the damage itself could not be undone, nor could the countless dead be brought back to life. It was easy enough for Kingsnake to make his way to the spot under home plate where he heard the ultrasonic projection; the spot was instantly obviously to his recovering sonar senses as they detected the ominous crater beneath the crumpled Astroturf. The spot that produced so much horror is now dead silent - but listening closely, he could hear the shape of what lay underneath, a twisted mass of metal and plastic that must have been a machine as big around as he was tall. But listening that closely meant he could hear more now, hear even beyond the stadium - hear the sound of the sirens, everywhere, and the low rumble of distant disaster.
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The door behind Tarva's eyes slammed shut. "Oh, of course," she said, all 'business' now. "I'm so sorry, Ghost Girl, that was a wounding question. I shouldn't have asked. Why, I've practically vomited my old feelings out today," she said with a little laugh, "I shouldn't try and spread my little virus of loose speech around!" She clapped her hands together as the elevator doors opened, and stepped outside. "Thank you again for saving me today - even if that freedrone was not the foe you thought he was." Her hands twitched, as if she was forcing herself to stay in one place and finish the conversation. "I...you were willing to put yourself between me and my just fate. And you know what that is - more than anyone else of this world." She looked at Kimber for a moment, then turned and headed for her room.
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"I was thirty back in '93." All superheroes, and most Freedom City citizens, meant only one thing when they referred to _that_ year. Jesus Christ, first grade and she's a grown woman now. "Paige and I were actually in the city those days. Ground Zero - back when there was no Freedom League, and we knew that if we screwed up, we were all gonna die and that was the end of that." He kipped up and looked at the other heroes, surprised but not displeased when Serge showed his face. "Nice to meet you, Serge. My name is Richard Cline, and I've seen some things." He thought of fire, and screaming, and the terror of imminent death. "This is bad. But we've done this before, and God help us we're probably gonna do it again." He felt old, looking down at those young faces, but it wasn't an unpleasant feeling - something he had to admit, in his heart of hearts, was a rare thing. "For all our kids." Time went on and on - and it gradually became clear that, for them, anyway, the battle wasn't going to renew itself any time soon. The sky was clear and blue and the air around them tropical warm on what promised to be a lovely evening. The sun finally set after lingering for an hour or two in a long, gorgeous sunset, and above their heads the stars were vast and deep, a rich blanket of jewels cast across black, sparkling velvet. It was hard to believe something so small as an alien armada was coming for their little planet beneath all of that,
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Tarva was visibly 'layering up' as Kimber watched, her shadows growing in intensity even as a sultry, fiery persona seemed to settle on her very bones. "Oh, my friend, if I could have been there to warm you!" She actually beat her breast. "To die alone, to know the true touch of the cold darkness of Creation - a fate I have seen inflicted upon countless thousands. What a tragedy each and every lost soul was!" It wasn't as if her lamentations were false, really, but the careful layers of emotion packed around her words, like sandbags around a breached dam, seemed to function as insulation against the true horror that had been exposed to Kimber back in the park. And then, a single crack in that armor. "What-what was it like?"
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Comrade Frost will go inspect the panels, TV - what does he see?
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The Gorgon glared at the Traveler, her projection futzing with electricity like lightning in a distant storm cloud. "Asssss we speakkkkk, the biological life forms on E-class planet 34043 arrre being annihilated by the Stststar Plague. Preservation has been has been has been DELAYED by the Commcommunion." Her head twitched and she stared at the Traveler as if looking right through her. "I am not some palpaltry god to placate, I am THE GORGON, NOW AND FOREVER." Those words didn't stutter at all - and the heroes realized they had come not from the avatar, but through the very walls. "I know that you have come to plead for my aid assistance alliance- this is why I have granted you the privilege of an audience with my organic avavavatar." Her eyes flicked to Dragonfly. "That one has said you speakspeakspeak from a posssssition of strength - thus we speak now. Whwhat is your strength? What will fight alongside the Eternal Gorgon - and what will be mimimine when the fighting is done?"
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Still waiting on that GM post, Rav.