Avenger Assembled
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Okay, I don't really have enough for an IC post just from a miss - go ahead and keep moving without me.
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"I don't want things to be different." He gently took her face in his hands and kissed her, long and deep, before letting his hands slide down her body. She was so soft, so fragile, so very human in a grip that a few minutes earlier could have cracked her bones. It had been a night for desires, kept tightly-locked away and only shown to a select few, and these were desires he had ample experience with showing her. "I want things between you and I to stay as they are." He'd spent enough time on Prime, barely, to bite back the "until we are dead" that was nearly on his lips. Instead he pressed his lips against hers, urgently, drinking her in with the need of a man in the deep desert.
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http://orokos.com/roll/263761= 17 for Citizen
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Richard's hands balled into fists as he talked, remembering the past. Drugs had been easy enough for him to come by back in the day, when his powers meant he could take down all but the most heavily-armed dealers, and he'd sneered at the stupid junkies who had to beg for their fix. I was the same way, though. I was just too young and stupid to understand it. When I get home tonight I need to tell Paige how much I love her. Fast-Forward extended his hands to the two women, obviously expecting them to take them, the slight blur around his form increasing a fraction as he began to build a time bubble around himself. Oh, right! he remembered quickly. This is what happens when you do all your crime-fighting with family. "You kids need a ride?"
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"Just hold it together for one minute," called Citizen through the comm system. "Once you see me transmit, stick with the plan! Temperance, be ready!" That plan was to lie low and take shelter by one of the other dead stars in the stellar vicinity of Kestevan - stars killed by the same long-gone war that had destroyed this system's sun and transformed it into the screaming magnetar outside. Am I really going to jump out there and see if Hunger's transmitters really can keep me together long enough to make it to the mothership? He thought of Terra and its people; he thought of Gina and Koshiro, Kimber and Indira, and all the rest of the galaxy threatened by the Communion. And he thought of Lor-Van, a dead world, and the hope for Tronik's freedom that had died with it. Of course I am. Citizen pulled himself free of the control console he'd used to talk to people on the ship and took 'off', flying through the white noise that was Hunger's internal systems before he found the 'wormhole' in space that represented the systems that would send the tightly packed squirt of his consciousness into the Communion's systems. "Let's do this," he said to himself, even though he knew just how alone he was. He took a breath, thought of home and family, and dived into the wormhole. He'd been sent through space before but it wasn't like this - he could feel the radiation from the magnetar battering his program, a deadly, agonizing wash of hard radiation that felt like a trip through pure acid! He closed his eyes and cried out in pain, but didn't stop flying - the burning stink of the passage that he flew through seared his nostrils, the shrill scream of it burned his ears, but with fantastic speed he pushed through the barrier until he reached the other side!
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All right. http://orokos.com/roll/263726= 15, with the +2 All-Out Attack
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ooc And Two More Shall Take Its Place
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Archives
The numbers all sound good - talking it out also sounds good. Let's see some checks here, people! Let me know what you're rolling and what it's for. -
ic And Two More Shall Take Its Place
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Grenville and Ashton
The scene inside the building was grim. It looked as though the occupants, super-powered and non-super-powered alike, had been attacked by some sort of wild animal. There were claw marks on the walls, on the floors, and even in the flesh of the dead - deep triple cuts that had sliced through even super-tough flesh like hot knives through butter. The blood, and the gore, was everywhere - it really was appalling. Suddenly, as Cho stood there, energy crackling and emotions churning, the nearby security monitors that the unfortunate Lola had been watching flashed to terrible life - revealing a scene from the very pits of Hell! A hideous clawed mutant, its body covered in matted hair and gore, was tearing its way through the WYRM residents and staff with terrible speed, slicing and murdering its way through a group that after all had consisted of several young teenagers. All in all it was a horrible scene, albeit one completely captured on camera. Including, they all saw, the man who looked to be the mastermind behind everything. Jonathan Grant, the controversial but instantly recognizable head of Grant Pharmaceuticals, famously attacked and nearly killed by the heroine Wander during the Day of Wrath two years earlier, was standing in the lobby, nodding with approval as a henchman with a radio transmitter controlled the brutal rampage of the merciless killer. When the massacre was done, Grant and his cronies seemed to vanish out the backdoor, just seconds before the heroes came in the front. -
"Kimber." When Kimber looked back, Tarva was sitting on the floor, her back flat against the window she's been looking out of at the end of their conversation. Slowly the shadows crept up, blocking most of the glass, casting the hallway into darkness. "They've been gone a thousand years now. All of them have." She put her hand over her heart. "But they're still here." When she looked at Kimber, her eyes shone with a wet gleam over the dark lining of the sockets. "It matters."
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"I wish..." He put his hand on hers, gently, his anger cooling at her touch. Guilt warred with an infinite pool of regret in his voice, finally stealing the latter from him as he gently touched his forehead to hers. For a long time, there was only the gentle hum of machinery in the room and the soft sound of their breathing. "But wishing will never bind a wound, nor raise the dead to life." He looked at her, his scarred face lined with emotion. "That we have made our fate together is a greater boon than I could ever have imagined."
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Tarva held out her hand and a black, curling shadow appeared on her palm. "Desire is a flame, daughter of Canada. Too much of it will burn you alive from the inside." She brought her hands together, snuffing the 'flame' in her palm. "Far better to master that flame and use it as you see fit. When you find what you seek, it will be all the sweeter for the seeking." She locked eyes with Kimber, her eyes black and white pools swimming in a black-lined face. "Others will tell you that love will one day triumph and that you will find the right being to take you in its arms. In my years I have seen little of the triumph of love. You can mourn this loss. Or you can find a way to make your desires happen. You can exist on sorrow. But you cannot live on it."
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Steve nodded, evidently not quite trusting himself to speak for a time. "She would have been powerless to prevent it. She would have lived as my parents did. A slave, clinging to the arm of an greater Annihilist for succor. She would have been taken to Steelgrave's bed, just as my mother was." His voice hardened. "But I see her face, and I remember that day, and all those painted faces of Steelgrave's court. I remember the way they LAUGHED!" He had raised his fist, as if about to strike the table (and no doubt shatter it in twain), but at the very last his hand stopped inches from the hard surface. Shaking, he put his hands in his lap. "And it is wrong, because I remember what it is like to kill, to, to...and I should never want that again, never! But I think of her in this place, all because she...she repented, and I..." He fell silent again, staring down at his hands.
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"Oh." Tarva fell silent, processing what Kimber had said. Her shadows growing around her like a spreading blanket, for a moment Kimber thought Tarva was going to disappear entirely. "There were these two boys," she finally said. "Blades and Beanpole, I called them. We were young, and they were madly in love with me, of course, as most of the boys in the village were." She smiled at a long, long, long-gone memory. "The night I debuted at the temple, they both came to court me in my chamber, bringing me gifts, pledging their devotion, promising me their swords, promising me their loves, if I could just choose between them. So I kissed them both, one right after the other, and told them they were my boon companions and I could never bear to part with either of them." She blinked, the shadows fading, as she chased away the memory. "That was no kiss we had, Kimber. If you find a love that waits for you, in this world or another, then that will be your kiss. What we had was just...our fate."
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Tarva blushed, or rather darkened, faintly herself. "It was the only way to infuse you with my umbral-entropic essence," she finally said. "To take some part of myself and put into you, so that you might survive the death that we had brought to ourselves. I tried to make it as pleasant as I knew how." She gave Kimber a worried look. "It should have long since faded from your mind. Are you all right?" she asked, concern growing in her voice even as her voice grew. "Have you been thinking my thoughts? Dreaming my dreams? Have...have I cast you ever into some shadow of the darkness that is my very being?!"
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"Hah-hah, well, Erin and I have had our share of culture clashes. If she can handle an authentic Nigerian Thanksgiving, I can certainly handle a superhero Christmas." Eric was a little unsettled around Midnight, the way most normal people were, but his smile was real and his handshake firm as he returned Trevor's grip. "The Whites have always made me feel welcome. I would be remiss if I did not make you feel welcome as well." He held up his camera, taking a step back, and Midnight realized he was silhouetted by the family Christmas tree. "May I take your picture? Or would that violate your code of secrecy?" he asked, excitement bubbling behind his professional tone. On the lawn, Edge and Monsoon appeared, turned around the wrong way. "-be fine, it's Christmas!" Mark was assuring Nina, "Nobody turns away a guest on Christmas." He looked around til he found the house, then hesitated briefly. "Oh crap, we didn't bring anything! Hang on, I'll make them something," he told Nina. "You should get inside and get some cocoa or something. It's cold out here," he told her with a wink. "Well, what are you going to make?" asked Nina curiously. "Oh, a really big snowman! Something big and Christmasy that everyone can see," said Mark, waving his hands as his breath made puffs in the air, "so everyone knows how awesome today is. Even with all the weird alien stuff, these people deserve a good time. They'll love it." Nina hmmed, looking out at the snowcovered lawn. "And they'll like that?" When Mark nodded, Nina grinned, "Well, I do like making things that everyone can see, and I've never worked with frozen water before. Let's try it!"
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"Bluebird is a daughter of the Silver Tree. She knows no deception, no awkwardness," said Tarva. As much as the cybernetic intelligence and the shadow-witch disliked each other, they understood each other well. "But I do." She looked at Kimber. "I have noticed that you have hidden yourself from me - but you need not trouble yourself with apologies. It is my just fate to walk alone through these halls, paying an eternal lifetime of debts for my sins." She smiled tentatively. "Did you like the, the poetry? When I knew you were watching me, I...I tried to write things I thought you would like." Which, come to think of it, explained the business about the dark and tormented soul, fled from the cold and clutching Forests of Sorrows, wandering the world of the bright and shining living, never able to touch the joy and laughter she had left behind to be burned in the Eternal Fires of Night.
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"She is in...protective custody." Steve stared off at nothing for a moment. "Confined to the building, but free to roam it. She has a comfortable room, she has kept busy with work, and she has given all she knows about the state of Steelgrave's court to the Freedom League. And I should be glad." His hands clenched together tightly, and Gina knew from experience that he could crumple iron with that grip. "Her story is not impossible. Practitioners of umbral magic have been known to shield their minds from the fires of the Doom Coil. This is why someone like her would have been so valuable to Steelgrave's court, as a counter to such things. Normally she would simply leave for another Annihilist, but if Steelgrave is master of the Annihilists now she would have had no place to flee but here. But I..." He fell silent again, staring at his hands. "She...she does not remember my face. My voice. Why should she? It was burned away in the doomforges long ago." When he spoke again, looking at her across the table, the nascent anger in his voice was something altogether new. "But I remember her face. From that day!"
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"The Freedom League knows. I was summoned to consult on her case when she arrived on Earth-Prime." Steve knotted his hands in a ball before his face, elbows resting on the table. "Tarva the Black was a hanger-on in the courts of many greater Annihilists. When she learned of the nanite drone experiments last year, she contacted the Furions and directed a team of heroes from Earth-Prime to destroy the construction site. Now she is here, on Earth-Prime, living in the DuTemps building under guard of the superheroes based there. I have spoken to her more than once and each time she has told me she regrets the ways of the past and that she seeks to walk a different path." His low, grinding voice burned with cold blue doubt. "An Annihilist, one who has gazed into the Doom Coil and known its true embrace, would no more feign repentance than they would deny the dark glories of Omega. It would not be possible."
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Late March 2015 Gina had been able to tell something was wrong with Steve for the last few days. Always quiet, he'd fallen nearly into monosyllables unless directly pressed, and he'd started spending his nights either reading or sitting up, staring out the window at the world outside. After living together for well over a year, this was a familiar pattern - the only mystery was whether he would eventually tell her what was the matter or if his feelings would sink back down below the mantle of his self-restraint. Finally, over a dinner of oven-cooked shrimp fajita, he put down his fork and broke the silence that had been pressing on him. "There is an Annihilist living in the DuTemps Building." He said the words with the calm frankness of a man broaching a difficult subject, as well it was.
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With Miss Americana's help, Terrifica's social faux pas were, for the moment, overlooked by the team as a whole - even if Chambord did decide to keep his distance from the two American heroes after that. In another room, they found the files of Project VI - still in their dusty, partially rusted filing cabinets, just as promised. Going through the records for Project VI was something of a step back in time for the two women, and not just because of the primitive circumstances. Both women knew that the Belgian Congo had become independent in 1960, a process which had taken the Belgian government completely by surprise. The Belgians had planned to stay far longer, however, and had taken the end of World War II to try and modernize their colony, building railroads, promoting large cities, and otherwise trying to "Europeanize" the African population. (Even though even the highest-ranking African had remained beneath the lowest-ranking European, both sociall and legally). Kinshasa itself had gone from a population just before fifty thousand in 1940 to nearly 200,000 by the end of the decade. The VI Project had been a prototype - mechanical thinking machines, modeled after German assets seized by the new Belgian government just after the war, that would be able to run all industrial and social life in the colony after independence. The goal had been to one day automate all of Belgium if the colonial experiment proved successful, and then, as the scientists wrote to each other in excited hand-written notes decades earlier, perhaps the world! Fearful of another war, the Belgians had installed automated defense systems for VI, relying on primitive humanoid robots with... The pictures jumped out, big as life - the vivisected animals, dogs and monkeys and other native creatures, with brain matter teased out, preserved, and integrated into the vacuum tube structure of the robot brains. Those automatons guarding VI were as smart as dogs or apes, because the brains of dogs and apes were inside them! The files on VI herself were largely absent - it looked like the Belgians had taken those with them when they had left in 1960. But Miss A, being literate in French and very clever, was able to find a list of names, all of them African, with one circled in red. Joseph Otetshima was listed as SUBJECT - and then came a collection of what looked like telegrams back to base about SUBJECT. SEPT 1945 SUBJECT DISCOVERED WITH 1 TERAWATT RANGE FEB 1946 SUBJECT HAS BEEN VERY HELPFUL IN CONSTRUCTION OF VI. JUNE 1946 SUBJECT CONTINUES TO REFUSE PLAN CAPITAINE ELECTRIQUE . AUG 1946 SUBJECT HAS OBJECTED TO DEATHS OF NATIVE WORKERS AFTER CEILING COLLAPSE OCT 1946 SUBJECT GROWING UNRELIABLE DEC 1946 SUBJECT HAS FINISHED HIS WORK. There was nothing on why the project itself had been closed down - just that in the summer of 1947, the team of scientists had been withdrawn back to Belgium and the site bricked up by native workers imported from a distant mining settlement for that purpose.
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The high priest looked up at them, slitted eyes widening in shock. Scampering to its clawed feet, it made a few frantic gestures at the heroes before it turned to face the others. In a high, almost falsetto voice, it called with a penetrating tone that reached everyone in the square. "THEY WILL HELP US! SALVATION IS AT HAND!" The crowd went into a wild display of celebration, cheering and bellowing, their necks spreading wide like frilled lizards. Over the noise of the crowd, the priest (now speaking more quietly, albeit with the same high-pitched tone) faced the group, blunted teeth bared in alien emotions that were hard to read. "Impossible!" it charged with a tone of disbelief in its alien voice. "You are the great champions of the Overworld! The great machines would not have summoned you if you lacked the will and power to aid us!" It waved frantic arms, claws gesticulating wildly. "You are great ones from the realms beyond, surely you have not forgotten we, your ancestors!"
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Tarva turned slowly to look at Ghost Girl, as usual her pale body outlined by black lines that made her look as though someone had colored in her very reality with a Sharpie. "Was I too loud again?" she asked, worry in her voice. "I upset many people today and I want to make amends for my transgressions before Lady Martel learns of how my tongue tore apart the very souls of her vassals." She stared at Kimber, black pools forming on her pale cheeks. "Metaphorically! Metaphorically! I am sure their souls are completely intact." She smiled, too big, each tooth outlined by that same black sheen around the edges. It wasn't as if she was blackened by her powers, really, she just looked very...defined. "Can I help you, Kimber?" she asked, her voice solicitous. "You have but to speak and I am in your service."
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Arichamus, after discussing it with other Refs, I think what you're proposing is too much of a change to the setting. A story where AEGIS is being infiltrated by a super-science based supervillain organization is a great idea. The villainous organization itself sounds like a great idea. You could easily do the story SG is interested in without the MacGuffin of the carriers. Fundamentally changing AEGIS's mission on a long-term basis, however, is too much. What you're proposing is a bedrock shift in the nature of law enforcement in the Freedom City setting. And that needs significantly more groundwork than the desire for an extended Winter Soldier visual homage. This is probably something best-saved for that homebrew setting you're currently working on.
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Sounds like a great idea, EP! All my characters would be interested - let me know which ones you think would be the most interesting for Queenie to interact with.
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Hah, well, thanks for the reminder that we do actually have active PCs related to AEGIS, SG! (That had been my next question) What can the carriers do that existing AEGIS facilities can't, Ari?