Avenger Assembled
-
Posts
23,141 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Freedom City Guidebook
Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
Gallery
Events
Everything posted by Avenger Assembled
-
"Hmm." Frost walked over and pulled the door shut, the heavy steel slamming closed with a boom and click as thick deadbolts slid into place. Folding his arms before the door, he eyed Bloodline like a schoolmaster sizing up a new and questionable student at the academy. "If you do not know my name, I am Comrade Frost of People's Heroes, on attached duty to Freedom League. I am also Dr. Dmitri Peshkov. I have been dead seventy-two years since fascists tore my heart from my chest." He looked Bloodline up and down and said, "Your story, young one?"
-
Monsoon flew overhead, stormclouds gathering behind her. Amsterdam had been a terrible disappointment. All Father's talk of decadent Western imperialists, and what do I find? A city full of whores and drug addicts! At least the locals were impressed enough by the sight of a superhero to wave and take pictures, which wasn't always the case with the more jaded citizens of Freedom. "And I look _good_," she said aloud as she stopped by an upper-story window to take in her reflection. The costume Mark had helped make for her was worthy of a princess; and it even had her scimitar strapped comfortably to the back for ease of drawing. Perhaps I'll fight some Dutch supercriminal, she thought pleasantly as she flew over what must have been the local market district. Supershoeman, or Opium Lass... She checked her phone and muttered a curse in Soqotri. Had Mark really only been testifying at the Hague for an hour? It was all very noble, she conceded, that her boyfriend was helping bring down African war criminals, but it made for a tedious European holiday. Finally, something delicious pulled her out of her funk - the delightful scent of mutabak coming up from a street vendor below. She landed by the cart, a countryman (at least distantly) by his skin color and the Arabic writing that adorned his cart beneath the Dutch. "<Greetings!>" she declared. "<I, Monsoon, wish to purchase mutabak! With egg and cheese!>" she added. There _was_ something satisfying about introducing herself by a nom de guerre, that of the future...hero of Socotra, knowing the legend she was building.
-
1000 Omegadrones Force Modifier +9 ATK: +13 Damage: +15 Toughness: +11 Defense: +4 For future reference! The 24 hits. http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4730759/= 30 They pass. The Field Battle rules suggest that feinting doesn't work - but I'll give Wraith a +2 for flanking. Go ahead and post
-
Frost snapped open the belt pouch with practiced efficiency and looked over the serum's ingredients. "I can have this made," he commented, "I have ingredients in my laboratory. Will you take hard stuff?" he asked seriously. "You know, good old red hemoglobin." Comrade Frost's personal corridor in Freedom Hall turned out to be an isolated section in the lower depths; he'd requested to have privacy and few luxuries and overhead the yellow artificial lights gave the other vampire's face an alien look. He led Bloodline to a decidedly sparse, old-fashioned laboratory with glass beakers and vials on the walls, and Bunsen burners prominently displayed. "Come in, sit down," he offered as the door closed behind them, pointing to a metal stool in the corner. "My personal stock is in refrigerator," he commented, pointing to a square silver box along the wall. "Dog's blood," he added with some distaste, "I generally forsake it."
-
"No thanks, tobacco gives me the heaves. And weed is illegal in New Jersey," he added with a wink. "But I will take another beer." He'd been on the hard stuff, a long time ago, but the years he'd spent pulling himself out of that particular hole didn't seem helpful during this cheerful conversation. Geez, poor bastard, stuck in this place with nobody to talk to but street rats. Halfway through this beer, he set the can down. "You know what? How would you like to come back to my place and meet the wife and kids? My wife is in the trade and my kids have seen all kinds of stuff growing up." Hmm. Better call ahead, though. Maybe there were advantages to carrying one of those stupid cameraphones after all. "Maybe you can't eat dinner, but I can do something even better for you. How would you like to be on _television_?" he asked.
-
ic Incursion: Meaning in Destruction
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Unknown Space
As far as Sitara and the others could tell, their sensors shouldn't have been able to penetrate the relay at all. That pitted black hull that had survived uncounted ages was all but opaque to their sensors. But sheer age had worn away the outer casing in places, allowing them to get a limited idea of what lay inside. The great device was, by all appearances, a massive wormhole generator - one that would when activated generate first a series of small wormholes, then a single greater wormhole effect that would cover the southern hemisphere of Kestevan. It was impressive to imagine a people who could bend space inside an atmosphere and not die - while such a thing was theoretically possible for the Delaztri, a work of this particular magnitude had been beyond their science five thousand years earlier - already eons after Lelak's people have lived and died. It looked as though they'd be able to power up the relay by establishing a connection between their ship's engines and the absorbent structure of the relay itself, perhaps by the engineer's stand-by, a direct EM discharge. The material in the tubes, that strange mixture of organic and inorganic matter, proved harder to penetrate - though some of the chemicals down there, in what must have been in stasis, were the sort used to power antique chemical rockets! An odd anomaly indeed on this dead world of technological marvels. -
Steve stepped out of the big truck, the vehicle bouncing on its shocks as his weight left it. From the other side, Erin White, the driver, exited. He would have brought Miss Americana under other circumstances (certainly not Gina) - but she was occupied with Cosmic Entity 403. Erin White, on the other hand, had excellent claim to attend any gathering about the Terminus. "They...there she is." He walked over slowly, taking in the sight both of Yves Zermeño. "Erin White, this is my...compatriot, Yves." Despite the way Steve loomed over the much smaller Yves, the 'family' resemblance was instantly notable despite the latter's wig. "Catherine Fields, from the Australian continent, is the one who summoned us for the conference at this....place." He gave the German restaurant a baffled look. "She was injured during the conflict with the Annihilist cell there." He shifted awkwardly on his feet, obviously unused to being the center of a conversation. "Erin is a colleague of mine - and a veteran of wars against the Terminus." He eyed Yves and added, "She is a Dethroner."
-
Sharl felt the back of his neck flush red, hidden by his high collar and longish hair in the back. Between the three of them, he was sure everyone was staring now. Not for the first time, he wished himself back in a society with more order in its social gatherings - even as he admitted that if he was _really_ so happy back in Tronik, he wouldn't have made the journey that brought him to Terra in the first place. "Okay," he finally said to Eliza. "Okay." He thought about how Gina would handle this. Break into her harddrive and corrupt all her files...no, that wouldn't work. He thought about how his friends from Claremont would have handled it. I could turn into a giant silver monster and eat her cellphone...man! He set his cup down, lest he lose concentration from suppressed emotion on Eliza's, carefully not paying attention at all to Set. Or at least trying to seem not to, anyway.
-
ic Incursion: Meaning in Destruction
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Unknown Space
On most planets the south pole was a cold region - but on Kestevan, with internal heat coming from the dying terraforming system left behind by Lelak's people, the south pole felt no different than anywhere else. Beneath the multi-colored blanket of the eternal auroras overhead, what Lelak had described as a 'relay' was still there. Though its outer coating had been heavily abraded by a million years of grit and ash, and before that the supernova had sagged the mountains all around, the device itself still rose clearly out of the glassy soil. The relay itself proved nearly opaque to their sensors, though it did radiate gravitons at a shocking rate for something that wasn't a star. Stranger still was the land all around it, honeycombed as it was by a series of hollow tubes sunk hundreds of meters into the bedrock all around the relay. Many of these had been sealed by collapse or sand accumulation, but as the Kavaca maneuvered for a landing near the relay, some of the tubes still gaped open to the sky overhead, their insides reading as a strange mix of organic and inorganic matter. -
APPROVED
-
What are you doing? A voice demanded in Sharl's head. Squabbling over your girlfriend while Lor-Van burns? But all the touching at the table was making him uncomfortable - he could take the rude touching from the faux-divine all day, since no one on Terra had any idea about personal space anyway, and honestly at least Set didn't smell of unwashed flesh or the ashes of toxic leaves, but the way Set was stroking Temperance the way Terrans did their lovers was not sitting well with him. Everyone is watching - and she likes it! It wasn't just unsettling; it was deeply, stomach-churningly alien, like watching a corpse be left to rot in the topsoil. He forced himself to look away and check the crowd. A few people were watching the argument with interest, but nobody had gone for a cameraphone to take the just-outed-superheroine's picture. "If you're done with this little whatever it is, the lady and I are having coffee," he finally said, picking up the cup in front of him and taking a sip.
-
There was no sound at first - but then Bloodline became aware of faint movement in the bushes through the hall's surrounding greenery and sensed things stirring in the grass, a defense system that wasn't his pursuers - but wasn't anything he'd come prepared for! A moment later the door whooshed open in front of his face and he was confronted with a half-dozen armed security guards, the scent of the blood freely pulsing in their veins an almost irresistible draw for the hungry vampire. Standing at the head of the group was something new, though - a short, slender fellow dressed all in white, who looked up at him from inside the darkness of a hood that didn't quite hide two red eyes. "Who comes!?" Comrade Frost demanded of the intruder, almost immediately making a snap decision when he recognized the man. Or rather, recognized his condition. "Ah, my old friend!" He patted Bloodline reassuringly on the arm, his touch icy cold even through his gloves. "Say nothing," he urged him, "and let me help you to my laboratory! Oh, you should have phoned ahead..." He made excuses to the guards as he led Bloodline through the darkened lobby to a nearby elevator. "How fortunate you are that it was I who had monitor duty this morning..." he said as the elevator doors began to close behind them.
-
"1978, actually. 1993 was the year I retired from the crime game and became a productive member of society, you're probably thinkin' a' that. A jerk tried to _swipe_ it from me that year, but I put him on pause and left him for the Canadian cops." A couple of beers in, Fast-Forward started to relax, though not before he moved around the shop in a sudden blur of motion. "This guy, I can't remember his name for the life 'a me, but he was this skull-faced old Malador-wannabe, he hired my ma to do some bodyguard work, but it turned out his definition of bodyguard work was the kind where he gets to sleep with his bodyguard. So we ripped him off pretty good before we left to make up for our trouble, and Ma squealed on him to the Crime League so he wouldn't take advantage of any more 'single mothers in difficult circumstances', as she put it." He shrugged. "Statue of limitations is long since expired and that guy's dead with no heirs, but you never know with some types." He crumpled the can in his hands and went on. "Your family know what happened to you, man?"
-
Seconds later, his head still muzzy from sleep, Richard watched the credits through his wife's eyes, her hands splayed across his temples to ensure an interrupted feed between her mind and his own. "Those damn network suits," he muttered about the time the grandmother clutched her chest, "ruining yet another piece of classic 80s television with their..." He fell silent as the credits, and the horrors, went on. "Jesus freaking Christ..." When the 'show' was done, he leaned back in the old leather accountant's chair that was his favorite seat (when he sat still) in their workroom. His face was pale and his eyes wide, and for a moment or two he was completely at a loss for words. "Well, damn." He checked the television over at super-speed, zipping around it briefly in a blur. "I don't see any weird cables or wires, and it doesn't smell like any of Fear-Master's old stuff." Cautiously, he pressed PLAY on the rewound tape, and then FAST-FORWARD - there was no need to inflict it on Paige again and he could watch it fine even at super-speed. Even at that speed, Paige could see it was not the same show - though the tape still held steady at 0:00. "All right, looks like one of those Cosby knockoffs, they're in downtown LA....hey, kind of a Miami Vice thing, and..." Suddenly, Richard's eyes tightened and he hit the STOP button. "You know what, that's one iteration in and the oldest kid just took two rounds in the forehead, and I don't really think I need to see the rest." He sat back. "Jesus Christ. Is the house freaking haunted, or what?"
-
"That's about what I heard," said Fast-Forward, a little regretfully. Damn! If I take this to the Master Mage or something, he'll probably want me to give it back and - he thought of Professor Psion, now embodied and free to hunt his family, and if he was honest he also thought of the step or two he was losing every year. And I can't have that. "I've taken this to some people back in LA and they couldn't tell me much more than that. Evidently starry magic is boring and complicated even for people who have been to the Magic Jedi Academy, so most of them don't bother with it. Good thing I can do it at super-speed, right?" he said with a grin. "Some of those cultists are still around today," he added more seriously. "Bunch of psychopaths. Too bad about the lady, she seems nice. Talks a lot about how nobody took her seriously even after she was Master Mage because she was a woman. Too bad." He looked at Phantasmo and added, "Hey, uh, do you have a way of turning your face down? Because bum steer or not, I still owe you something for looking this over for me."
-
Incursion: Meaning in Destruction (OOC)
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Archives
All right, who's going where? How are you guys dividing up? -
Initiative: Field Combat rules - all rounds will take two minutes real-time >Tarva: True Random Number Generator Min: Max: Result: 14 14 + 2 = 16 Omegadrones (1000): True Random Number Generator Min: Max: Result: 1 1+4 = 5 Blue Fox: 25 Tarva: 16 Ghost Girl: 11 Wraith: 10 1000 Omegadrones: 5 Blue Fox is up
-
Crap! Sharl was no fool - this girl was putting Eliza on edge, and it wasn't hard to guess why. "Oh come on, you're what, two, three seconds on Google? And that's if I scroll past the pictures," he went on, in fact doing just that while they conversed thanks to the cafe's excellent wi-fi. "Now don't get me wrong, you've done good stuff, and-" EGYPTIAN 'GOD' RESCUES MISS AMERICANA FROM "PATRIOT GHOST" - Boston Globe, July 5, 2014 Double-crap! It's the laptop for sure if this gets out! "...all right, look, it doesn't matter what story you want to tell about yourself," he went on begrudgingly. "But c'mon. What's telling people all that gonna do?"
-
Never one to hold back in these kinds of conversations, Sharl was in a particularly combative mood today. "I mean, come on," he said, spreading his arm out as if relaxing. "You've got some electromagnetickinesis for the lightning, the weather stuff, the silica, and the darkness tricks, you've got some biomanipulation for the shapeshifting, you've got a relative who can do the same stuff, why spread all the superstition onto it?" Talking this way to a worshiper of the Egyptian gods would have been one thing - but a worshiper of a god probably would not style hirself after them. Really, Sharl decided, that was the worst part - that people out there might believe it. "These people have fought the Gorgon and punched the Curator in the face." Images of his own death, watched on a monitor, flashed clearly through his mind. "Who's actually impressed by that hocus-pocus stuff?"
-
Initiative time, kids!
-
Blue Fox's telekinesis carried the elevator all the way to the top, the shaft walls screeching in protest after just a few minutes. "The walls are gut-foundered for our blood!" exclaimed Bluebird cheerfully in an accent vaguely akin to upstate New York's. "We'll deke 'em! Grab your toques and hang on!" With Bluebird's help, they escaped the compressing walls and after a few minutes they rushed to the very top of the huge structure - so fast that their hasty ascent actually lifted them all off their feet. When the doors slid open, they were inside what appeared to be an Omegadrone repair area - there were broken parts of units all around, some standing with eerie blank faces with their armor either removed or retracted (depending on the model) and two big repair units in the process of either eviscerating or repairing one particularly burly model, its arms and legs held in place by sizzling metal wires as its skin was gradually replaced with hardened steel. For a moment, as the doors slid open, there was silence, before one of the guard units looked directly into the open shaft and said the standard Omegadrone greeting. "DIE FOR OMEGA!"
-
"Yeah, well, I know she's a superhero and all," Sharl had seen the male Set too, and while a Terran in his position might have assumed there were two Sets, the idea of someone with minor bodymorphing abilities wasn't that bizarre to a Claremont graduate familiar with a galactic civilization. Some aliens had two genders, some had ten, some had none. "But it's this whole divine...thing," he went on, "that annoys me. I know Terra has a lot of extra-dimensional entities running around," he ticked them off on his fingers. "Hades, Horus, Baron Samedi, that winged guy who used to be on the Freedom League, all the rest, but c'mon, why do people still cling to these old primitive mythologies?" Normally Sharl was a better liar, but he'd had a long day and was maybe speaking a little too loudly. "If the Freedom League had tried to set themselves up as gods back home, we'd have laughed in their faces."
-
"I'm doing all right," said Sharl with a little shrug. "Better now," he added with a grin that was almost entirely real, putting his warm, electric hand on hers and looking deep into her exotic alien eyes. "Other-me is covering for both of us in Tronik, so I can stick it out up here for the duration. Miss A and the Freedom League are on the case." Actually drinking coffee was about as far as he could go in eating out outside of very special occasions, which was probably why Eliza had sent them here in the first place. "I'm sleeping better." When the new arrival came in, Sharl glanced her way - and then again. Hey, I think that's - He looked back at Eliza and realized what she was probably thinking. "That's Set," he said, pointing that way. "You know, from the Internet." He'd seen plenty of the pseudo-godling's antics online that he recognized Set in both male and female forms. "Wonder if she rode here in her flaming chariot," he muttered.
-
Fast-Forward sat down at the table and reached into the leather jacket he wore over his jumpsuit, pulling out an old-fashioned journal bound in cracked black leather. "As far as I can tell, this used to belong to Violet Pennyworth, the most powerful wizard in the world. At least, until 1893, when she bought it. Got a whole speech about that from this lady my wife knows out in LA..." The pages inside were covered in cramped, crowded handwriting written so small as to be nearly unreadable, joined by the occasional cryptic illustration, all of it handrawn in grey pencil that somehow seemed magically bonded directly to the paper itself. "Like I said, I don't know beans about this stuff, but when I draw the marks in the air and I call on the stars, I can do some crazy stuff. Once dropped a starburst on a whole gang of punks - and another time I blew a hole five feet deep in Route 66! Man, had to work for like ten minutes fixing that."
-
OOC