Avenger Assembled
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"They're gone now," said Edge with determination. "Typhoon, the other al-Darsahs...they've all retreating back home." "They're gone," agreed Nina, her bloodshot eyes staring at the distant horizon - at the direction of distant Socotra. With the fleet's battle done, the French force was heading as far away from the rogue nation as possible! "...they're gone." - Down in the carrier's sickbay, the De Gaulle's doctors did their best to treat the American superhero and the Socotran princess who'd taken a thorough beating at their hands. This wasn't easy since the first was bulletproof (even with her broken ribs and ruptured blood vessels) and the French military personnel were clearly uneasy around the latter. Around the time Erin's injuries were slowly, ever-so-slowly, beginning to heal up, one of the doctors turned on the sickbay's television - the carrier's satellite TV was turned to al-Jazeera Socotra. In front of his still-visibly water-damaged palace, Typhoon announced that he would be entering into negotiations with the French government to "offer charitable aid on behalf of the French sailors injured during their misguided attempts to detain the Socotran royal family." He turned to what was evidently more serious matters. "Typhoon's methods are a means to an end, no different than pruning weeds in order to let a garden flourish. Those who stand in the way of my vision oppose me because they fear me, but more than that they fear what I represent. Let those who have walked away from that garden-" A water bottle levitated from the table next to Nina and hit the off button of the television so hard it nearly cracked the plastic. She stared at the television and Mark remembered suddenly his own father's words, twisted with grief and rage. Fathers who abandon their children don't deserve to live! He looked at Nina and said, "We'll get him for this. One of these days...he crossed a line. Not just us, but with the world. The next time...we'll be ready." His face crinkled. "You were amazing today. I love you."
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Fast-Forward charged his erstwhile father-in-law, slipping past his wife with practiced speed towards the monster who had nearly taken her soul - and had tried to kill them both! In an episode of Supercrime!, he'd have easily laid the villain out with one punch across the jaw, but unfortunately real life wasn't like that. "Time to send you back to Hell, old man!" he snarled, a taunt that came straight from the heart but didn't seem to impress the elder statesman hiding in the younger man's body. "Oh, please," Psion sneered, and he vanished before Richard's oncoming punch - reappearing just behind the speedster with a look of cold mockery on his face. "Look at you, boy, still a rage-filled child, just like your mother. Now-" and then he made eye contact with Fast-Forward and Richard felt the awesome power of that unleashed mind crashing down on his own small, pitiful brain no that's his thoughts in my head that's HIS thoughts. STRIKE YOUR WIFE! The words came with such awesome power that Richard actually turned, his entire body locked tight, - but screaming with a sudden fury, he punched the roof of the plane. The pain broke the bond, freeing his mind from psychic control. Meanwhile, in all the melee, Coda had vanished from view. Invisible and soundless, he was lost to the heroes until the sound of a sharp, sudden report came from where Ember was still struggling to get up off the floor, her flames burning with a fiery blue light that had already lit the carpet on fire where she'd landed. "MISSED ME, FLATSCAN!" - "Oh man, what a day..." Wildcard reached down and offered a hand to Stronghold, ultimately grabbing her by the scruff of the neck and pulling her entirely into the stealthplane, his cannon now slung across his back. "Flying the Maestroplane is fun and all, but man, you should have heard those Psion kids glaring at each other on the way out here, and that creep Coda just sharpening his damn knives all the time!" He yawned as he looked down at Stronghold. "Trust me, kid, you're better off up here. Now, you gonna surrender, or do I need to do the old double-tap?"
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Fast-Forward goes ahead and punches Professor Jump! He Taunts him and http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4699339/gets an 11... and then goes to punch him and gets a http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4699337/= 16 With Ember dazed, Professor Jump is up. Standard: He goes ahead and tries to mind-control Fast-Forward. http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4699343/= 22 http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4699345/= 15 Move: Strike your wife! The good news is - this does give Richard another opposed check! http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4699351/= 14 That one, I'll spend an HP on! http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4699353/= 28 OK, so Fast-Forward has shaken the Mind Control. Coda: Free Action: activates his Stealth suit, giving him total visual and auditory concealment Move Action: he then advances on Ember and shoots her - problematically since her Force Field is down! Standard Action: he shoots her, catching her flatfooted, and hits her! http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4699380/= 20 Hah! She takes another bruised
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Fast-Forward: 47 Ember: 19 Professor Jump: 13 Coda: 12 Hologram: 8 Aura: 6 Coda has a surprise action, though, so he shoots at Ember! http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4699323/= 24 OK, that'll be a DC 24 Tou save for our plucky sociopath. http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4699324/= 15 Oof! She is bruised and dazed - and mad as hell.
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Nina and Wander didn't surface so much as they erupted from the water like flying fish shot from a cannon! They arced up high in the air, well above the surface of the carrier, before they landed on the deck with a loud thump. Nina, still in control of their flight for these last few seconds, automatically took the impact for her passenger and instantly realized the mistake when she felt a rib crack. "Gah!" She shoved Erin off her and clutched her side, pain shooting through her body in intense, numbing waves. She'd taken hits before but this was worse - every nerve was on fire from the energy she'd absorbed from Mark that was still shooting through her like mainlined heroin. Edge was at her side so fast he didn't bother running. "They're here!" he called, having grabbed a deck emergency medical kit on the way. "Need you on deck, Midnight." he added, automatically falling into Trevor's shortened speech patterns for a moment. "All the way to the bottom!" Nina was gasping as she looked up at Mark. "You sent me all the way to the bottom...what did you do?" "Let you save the day, babe," said Mark, snapping open the kit. He knew Nina was much more fragile than Wander, but she wasn't looking so good either. "Wander, you..." He didn't ask how she was. "Midnight's on his way up."
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"All right, well, let's go wake up the rest of the Sleeping Beauties," said Vince, clapping his hands together and putting on a big smile rather than dwell on the implications of her words. "Follow me!" Sure enough, just around the corner was another room similar to the one where Amara had awakened - if a game of table zha was similar to the full-sized version that took up a whole building! They were on a catwalk above a distant floor that had to be several hundred yards below their location, with a ceiling that gaped equally high above them. There were rows of cryogenic tubes here, stretching up towards that distant ceiling and down towards the floor. The nearest row, the one right at her eye-level, was made up entirely of familiar faces - the frost-rimed forms of those friends she had fought alongside against the Curator to the point of death - and perhaps beyond! "Geez, where did he even pick this stuff up?" Vince was focused on the control panels for the tubes, shaking his head in bafflement. "Really, this freezing thing was just a phase for him," he reassured Paradigm, "I didn't even know this room was here before today..." He pressed a few buttons and, as the lights began to come on by the tubes holding what was left of the Praetorians, declared, "Nice! Stabpunched it!" As the doors opened, he nodded, talking half-to-himself. "All right. All right, I think we've got something. The Ringworld is safe with the Praetorians defrosted, the Lor and the heroes back home will rally and fix this thing. It's not like the damn Terminus, right?" he said with a brave smile. "This is bad - but we're gonna be all right."
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"Ugh..." Vince put his face in his hand for a moment, taking the time to sort out this conversation. This is not going well. Probably should have made it down here before she broke out of the tube. "Listen, lady, you've been down for a long time - and a lot's changed out in the galaxy. The Curator, well, he's not really running the show anymore, so the guy who locked you up isn't here for you to punch out." He thought back, past painful memories, of exactly how to deal with superheroes. "But there's something serious going on right now, and we need your help and the help of your friends." Vince drew a little circle in the air, seeming to cut a magic 'hole' in space that was replaced with a projected image. The image faded and Vince went on, his face uncommonly serious. "I've seen one world die, and I've seen others where the people are already dead. Whatever's out there, the boy's been watching them on his sensors and they're not just going for one world, or two, or five - they're going everywhere. In this whole damn place, as far as the files can tell, you're the only people who even know what this is." He gave her a serious look. "Are we gonna work on this, or are you going to punch my projectors till your arms get tired?"
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"Hey there, Dreamsicle," came an unfamiliar voice from an unfamiliar source. Appearing in the middle of the ill-lit room was a man, a Lor by the look of him, with short brown hair turning grey at the temples and wearing an alien costume with which she was unfamiliar. He stood as if centered by an invisible spotlight, clearly visible even in the gloom - either a photokinetic, or a holographic projection. "Listen, my name's Vince, and I'm sorry you've been locked up in here for..." He coughed. "...as long as you have! I'd have had the boy let you out a lot sooner if I'd known you were in here, but you know how it is, kids don't always tell their dad everything, especially if they think they're going to get in trouble. Hey, is it dark in here, or is it just me, ha-ha-ha?" He laughed nervously and waved at the air, making bright white light erupt from the overhead wall panelings enough to cast the entire room into a stark glow. The room wasn't immediately familiar to Paradigm - but she could see her tube had been entirely alone. "Listen, you're probably wondering about the rest of your team. Don't worry, they're fine!" He smiled. "The automatics, you know, they went and defrosted you first because you're the leader and they figured you'd probably be the most reasonable."
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ELSEWHERE The Curator's Ringworld Temporal Designation 4240-24013-ALEPHOMEGAONE (Lor Timemark 1312.8) The three-eyed robotic boy looked up at his paternal caregiver, peering past the brim of a Freedom City Comets' cap, and spoke in a mechanical approximation of a boy of eight or nine. "Why-do they-allow the-mosquitos to-live, Father? Surely they-could-" VINCE winced, wondering if this particular map had been a mistake. The local civilization, as far as he could see, were good enough folk for people living in the ruins of their own world. From what the old Curator's files had said, he'd snatched up the local civilization when they were on the peak of a nanotechnological Singularity - unfortunately the sudden, unexplainable transformation of their world into a projected map on the surface of the Ringworld had caused a nuclear conflict as each nation blamed itself for what had happened. The locals, blue-skinned catfolk with long tails, had just about rediscovered flying machines...two thousand years later. "For one thing, Curry, you saw their chemical plants -" he gestured around the wide mangrove swamp where father and son were fishing for three-eyed, scaly creatures that were supposed to be good eating if you fried them up. There were advantages to this simulacrum projection technology the boy had introduced him to. "-maybe they could poison the swamp and kill everything here, but then they'd kill our fish! And then where would we be!" he laughed, then added, "and besides, the mosquitos have lives too, even if they're pests. You treat others how you want them to treat you...even if they're stinging jerks." Suddenly, Curry sat up with a start, nearly losing his grip on his pole. "Father! My backup systems are stirring! Something on the long-range sensors is activating the-" and then the boy was gone, his robotic form crumbling into fast-decaying metal fibers even as VINCE watched! With a curse, VINCE left his organic body behind, leaving the meaty remains to decay within a few hours in the alien swamp - and soon found himself back in the central headquarters of the Curator - aka his adopted son, Curry. The boy looked excitedly up at the main display screen (or as much as his face allowed it), displaying an unfamiliar set of symbols that he quickly translated for his holographic father. "A class-two emergency-has been-detected. The Delaztri-Protocols have-been activated!" He turned to VINCE and reassured him. "Enemies of-such great-heart that-they would-fight for-the Collection-against the-Devourers!" VINCE threw up his hands and decided that they weren't getting that fishing trip in at all. "All right, you lost me at Delaztri, kid. Start from the beginning. Who are they, and what are they doing in the..." He made out some words. "the...in THAT cryocomplex?"
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I'll say Wildcard takes a -2 penalty given what he's doing... http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4697699/ Which means he just fails! Go ahead and post, HGM
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"Welp," said Wildcard, shrugging as Stronghold neither came inside or responded. And then he pulled the trigger! A devastating blast of pure sound erupted from the muzzle of his big cannon that smashed Stronghold right in the face; blasting her backwards against the hatch so hard she felt ribs crack! And the blast went on and on, a soul-trembling eruption that penetrated her forcefield, her skin, and her very flesh until all the world was an all-encompassing eruption of sonic fury! Full of sub-sonics and ultrasonics as it was, the blast didn't deafen her, and so even as the world darkened around the edges she distinctly heard Wildcard declare, "Holy crap, THAT was the stun setting?" - "Cowardice always was your weakness," sneered her father in agreement, no longer even bothering to disguise the arrogance and cold fury that penetrated to his very core. "Come, Ember," he said peremptorily. "It's time for the Psion Family to leave this place." "What family!?" Ember detonated, her hands on the seat as she rose to her feet - hands no longer wearing power nullifying manacles! "All of us, all these years, Just...just an old man and his whores!" Her eyes, and nothing else, burst into flames as she spoke, vaulting out of the seat and hovering in the air in the now-very crowded plane "TO HELL WITH YOU!" "Goddamit!" yelled Coda. "You said she wouldn't be on fire!" And with that he leveled his blaster and opened fire on the renegade Psion! The sonic blasts smashed Ember against the ceiling, activating the fire suppression system and making masks drop everywhere while alarms began to frantically blare!
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As they retreated back to the control room, Citizen's mind, and powers, worked like lightning. He accessed the communications systems of the Vox as soon as he was inside the control room - not the big transmitter that had sent him here (and was still powered up), but the smaller emergency systems scattered all through the building. He flashed from system to system; lighting the building up like a Terran Fourth of July on all the electromagnetic frequencies and beyond. A neutrino squirt erupted from the trailing end of the massive structure, radio waves sang their distress to the heavens, green and white emergency lights flashed all up and down the Vox's length, and infrared beams shone out across the city and beyond. The Vox, like a hundred other places across Lor-Van, sang out its distress as the planet's annihilation threatened. Reappearing in the control room, Sharl's face was full of cautious optimism. "All right, uh, we are glowing bright enough that every ship in the system can see us, somebody can probably make it-" He started to step forward, then realized he was stuck - he had re-emerged not into the holoprojectors that filled the room but the systems tied directly into the main transmitter; the ones he'd arrived in earlier in this long, long, nightmarish day. "Hey, what's going on!" The invisible wall at the edge of the transmission pad might as well have been impervium for all that he couldn't push through it. "I'm sorry, Citizen Tulink," said Scientist Rex, standing at his control station. In the few minutes Sharl had been gone, most of the room had cleared out. There was only Rex, working alone, a few of the Lor soldiers, and a handful of white-faced refugees. The latter, in particular, were staring at the electronic teenager with a grief he was only beginning to understand. "The fleet got your signal seven mini-cycles ago. They can't make it in time before the blast wave hits - and I told them not to die for us. So instead, I'm going to send you home." "No, wait a minute," Sharl pled, even though he knew it was foolish, "We don't know what that gun does to a planet, we may be able to-" "Remember us!" said Rex, his voice a sudden exclamation. "My name is Rex! I am a scientist." The others called their names out too - Doral-5 and Sakura-13 in uniform and their clone siblings, and the civilians; Doctor Havarlak, still in her emergency uniform, Rogand, a man Sharl remembered with a mate and child before the last flight had left, and the rest. "Remember what you saw here today!" His hands over his mouth, Sharl promised, eyes wide as the faces of people he had never seen before burned into his memory like he could never forget. The hum of the powering transmitter was rising in his ears, a siren song in counterpoint to that terrible glowing light in the sky. Suddenly, someone broke through the crowd - Sharl realized for the first time that Doral and Sakura had been guarding the door to keep some of the civilians out! He caught a glimpse of clamor and argument in the halls just as one of the refugees, a man about Sharl's age with green hair and skin to match, slid desperately across the floor and all but landed at his feet on the pad. "In the name of all the gods, take me with you!" he begged, tears running down his face. "Please, please, send me too!" he begged of Rex, grabbing on to Sharl who automatically phased at his touch, making the all-too-human Lor pass right through him. In the sky a terrible brightness was beginning to shine through the open windows of the control tower, so bright that Rex deployed eyeshields and the soldiers polarized their helmets. "I can't, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he gasped, apology in his voice as he backed up as far as the systems would go, all the way against the wall. Rex was still counting down, but Sharl's eyes were only on this last of the Lor. Doral had come over to try and wrestle the civilian away, the terror on his face naked and raw. "I can't carry anything! It's not a teleporter, it's a transmitter, please, I can't-" the man, no, the boy's hands were passing right through him as he begged for salvation from the holographic alien, the glow from the transmitter beneath his feet nearly blinding, the chime of it deafening in his ears. "I CAN'T TAKE YOU WITH ME! I'M JUST A HOLOGRAM!" Over his cry of despair, Rex called. "Transmission away!" Sharl's last impression of Lor-Van, just as the signal launched him into space, was of that terrible brightness exploding with celestial fury - and of the triumph in Rex's shout of victory.
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Wildcard spends an HP to make her reroll the Tou save and take the worst of two rolls!
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In the Vox's control room, all was dead silence as the assembled refugees stared in horror at the murdered Star Knights. Sharl Tulink looked up at the scattered, falling bodies of the armored defenders of the galaxy and knew they were dead. His heart in his chest, he finally pushed back the terror he'd felt since the first alien spaceships arrived in the sky. "Ho-hovercars!" he called to the others, looking around a little wildly. "Everybody get to a car and get out! Go straight up! Even if you just get to the top of the atmosphere, you'll at least be away from that damned thing!" He zipped around frantically in the last stages of this desperate evacuation, he jumped from stalled car to stalled car, overriding security protocols in the last remaining vehicles to give the refugees a chance for some kind of escape. Anywhere's better than this! But of course there weren't enough cars for everybody, even overloaded, and as he stood with the last remaining civilians in the loading bay, Sharl realized there was, finally, no way out. At least we did all we could, he thought as he watched the hovercars flash away into the still-bright blue alien sky. There weren't many of them left now - just the emergency crew for the Vox itself, a scattered handful of civilians who had come just too late for the last starship out, and a small group of Lor soldiers who had stayed behind to the last. Scientist Rex checked his timepiece, tied to the powerful sensors back in the control room, and spoke in a doomed voice. "10 mini-cycles to another discharge..."
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Wildcard shoots Stronghold in the face! > - his stats are here with Luck Control 4 and 5 HP. I am changing that to a linked Stun to represent a powerful sonic blast. http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4696622/= 25! He, uh, he critted! So that's a DC 35 Tou save vs the damage and a DC 30 Fort save vs the Stun
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As much as the bees hated the giant mosquitoes, they were hardly about to refuse Fleur de Joie! Within the space of ten near-deafening minutes of insectile chuffing and encouragement from the only superhero among Sanctuary's bee population, no less than three of Super-Bee's formidable sisters had joined her for the journey to the other dimension! Luckily the portal they had was just wide enough to accommodate each bee if they passed through single-file, something Super-Bee, ever the heroine, tested before her sisters arrived (albeit without actually entering!) For his part, Comrade Frost walked completely around the portal, leaving icy footprints in his wake until the self-inflicted wound on his hand had completely healed. When he rejoined the other heroes (well behind the bee swarm), he muttered, "Hmm. Would prefer old Akatsiya guns with us, but this will do. A mighty host you have assembled, Fleur de Joie!"
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"Thank you," replied Bluebird, this time with a voice that was noticeably feminine (and if anything even younger!) - yet unmistakably the same they'd heard before! "I am...ooh, there are a great many minds here! And all of you so different!" The eye in the machine swiveled around and looked at all of them with confusion. "We should rise to the upper tier of the Terminus construct," said that odd little voice with fierce determination. "Detonating the power supply will implode the dread machine into the Doom Coil itself! What are guards to such as we, the Swift and her mighty companions!"
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Back home, Giz
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It's an elevator! Or at least there's a shaft - and Kimber's pretty sure that patch of blank wall is really a button!
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Countering Check http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4693545/= 29 http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4693565/= 35 Mark spends an HP! (he's getting looooow) http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4693569/= 41 OK, mark succeeds! Midnight, give me a DC 20 Fortitude save vs. a Nauseate effect from being tossed around. Note that Typhoon is still technically within ranged combat distance, since he won't be able to move till his next turn
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A column of water erupted from the sea, then expanded outwards into a whirling tornado of water that towered above the aircraft carrier's deck like a mountain above the plains. Edge gasped in surprise as he was cast into darkness by a roiling storm that loomed over the now-desperately scrambling sailors on the deck. "No!" Without hesitation, Mark blasted into the heart of the thing - streams of whirling magical energy that made the watery mountain erupt into a cloud of cool white mist that poured down over the carrier deck in a torrent of cloud! Down below, the severed liquid mound sunk back into the water beneath, sending whirlpools and wild currents through the water under the boat that shook Midnight to his core but still let him see Typhoon - zipping along under the water, escorting his battered minions. Fleeing the scene of the crime!
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Paige's horror and distress leaked across her psychic link to Richard like curdled milk. Without stopping to think about it, he zipped between his wife and Joshua Psion, the implications of her words only sinking home once he'd done so. "Wait...what?!" For his part, Professor Parker Psion crossed his arms and hmphed, a look of begrudging respect that Paige had seen precious few times in her childhood. "Hmm. Your gifts have matured, then. Perhaps there is hope for you yet." Behind him, Aura turned so fast she nearly fell over, her hands still plastered against the cockpit doors but her eyes wide with shock. "Wait a minute," exclaimed Frances. "What the hell is she talking about, J-" She looked Joshua in the eye, really in the eye, and seemed to see it too - perhaps because Frances Psion had seen that look of annoyance plenty of times. She fell silent, eyes wide and face suddenly flashing with a child's mortal terror. "Is it so strange? He was a traitor four, five times over, not only to the sacred cause of the new humanity but his own flesh and blood. Even you, my dear Paige, you never thought to inform on us to the authorities, or to the wretched Atoms."
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Josh got 23
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Stronghold opened the hatch and extended her head into the plane, finding herself in what looked to be the rear of the plane's passenger compartment. Things were cramped in there - the stealth plane was bigger than the jet it had grappled, but the passenger compartment was notably smaller, with only four seats and a scattering of high-tech equipment. She could just make out the cockpit, which was empty, but she had a pretty good idea where Wildcard was. Because he was standing over the hatch, pointing a huge gun directly at her face! "Hey there, kid," he said cheerfully, casually resting the big brass cannon on his shoulder. "Lucky thing I came down here, huh? I dunno what you're doing out there, but you better come in. The boss man gave me this sonic gun for my birthday and it's really awesome, but I'm not gonna lie, I don't even know what all these buttons do. Be a shame if you got a high C right in that pretty face!"
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Left alone for the first time on the planet's surface, Sharl was surrounded by streaming crowds of refugees boarding vessel after vessel. Once again he was struck by the sheer shocking diversity of the Lor population, enough to make his hackles go up - if he wasn't familiar with Terran cities with their diversity of dress and appearance, this place would have been almost terrifying! As it was, he was able to pick out races and species from all over the Republic, the kind of peoples he'd heard about in holos growing up or in what records Terrans had of the Lor at Claremont. He'd wondered sometimes if he'd ever see them; he'd never imagined seeing them like this, a babbling crowd of frightened faces, weeping children, and worried people. "It's all right, the Star Knights will-" "-the million gods of Zultas, save us-" "-just a plot by the Grue, they must have disguised those ships-" "-where's the Praetor? Why isn't he doing anything about this?-" "What's going to happen now, Mommy?" A little purple-skinned girl asked that of her mother, just as the starship's access door closed behind them both. Sharl disappeared into the system, staying just far enough on the outside that they'd be able to see his image projected on the wall monitor. He dug around in the Lor broadcasting system, most of which passed through the Vox's heart, until he found what he was looking for - the program he tapped into, a military satellite, was like raising a set of Lor magnifiers to his face that let him stare up at the battle in the atmosphere. "There you are, you bastards," he muttered. "I...oh, man..." He stared in morbid fascination at the huge war machine bearing down on Lor-Van. "If that's an EMP gun, I'm dead already," he muttered. "Time to go!" He turned and dropped the magnifiers, stepping out the system and heading straight for the Vox control room.