Avenger Assembled
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The OOC
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August 1, 2014 8 AM A million stories in the naked city - and this one begins with lightning. The terrible storm had come up fast, nearly swamping the naval base at the Point and forcing the sailors there to take shelter against what seemed to be a terrible hurricane - but one localized to within a few square miles at the very tip of the peninsula. This was no natural storm - no surprise in Freedom City! A normal part of town might simply have called in the Freedom League, but as usual the military preferred to handle its own problems. As naval personnel and AEGIS agents combed the streets of the small community of base families that lived nearby the facility, the storm raged on overhead - spectacular bolts of lightning harmlessly crackling through the sky that might have been dismissed by the occasionally jaded Freedom City public - but that rang like a bell to those with a particular connection to the storm. Something was wrong in the skies over Freedom - something was very wrong indeed.
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With the Collective contained behind Stronghold's barriers, the Psycho-Collective attempted to make a break for it - at least until Caradoc's gleaming blade came down in a flash of energy that penetrated the concrete between the psychic cockroach swarm and their means of escape. Steve knew he had to act fast, having dealt with swarms before - and he felt a strange kinship with these things, bizarre though they were. I too have been shunned by what I was once; and fled from it as I would Death itself at my heels. Before the group could completely split, Caradoc declared in a voice drained of nearly all medieval pretense, "Stop! If you flee into the sewers again, you will never find your freedom. Darkness and fear are no escape from the world. They are only cages. Come with us and be free." "Shut up, fool!" declared the Collective. "Your disguise may fool them, but I know the taste of your energy! Don't listen to their lies!"
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-Stay inside the tunnels!- came Tarva's horrified mental exclamation, quite unlike her brassy, bold spoken voice. -Stay inside the tunnels and DO NOT LET THEM SEE YOU! If they do they will_- The images that came now were unspeakably vile, pouring out of the shadow-priestess like an opened box. Sorting through them, Eve could tell that intruders were actually fairly common in the Terminus. Across a vast, near-infinite multiverse, and given how easy dimensional technology was to develop, many heroes had the idea that they could take down the forces of ultimate evil. They came and they failed and failed and failed and their blood seemed to drip down the walls as cold, remorseless steel shoved its way into their very veins and murdered their souls and they crawled and begged and died died died - "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" said Tarva, her hands over her mouth to hide her own scream as she shut down the flood of emotions by main force. "I'm so sorry, I didn't...I never had someone at me like that. I know the path, I swear! Please don't leave me here!"
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Caradoc, a shining beacon of hope and justice, and someone Terrifica remembered for his skill in fighting cockroach swarms, abruptly plunged onto the sidewalk only a few feet from where Miss Americana had been standing. "Miss Americana!" he called to the family, "have...ye seen Miss Americana? Yon lady is urgently needed." Knowing Gina's pride, Steve wasn't about to broadcast that something was happening to her or the robot unless absolutely necessary. A moment later, he looked up as the titular titaness of all-American values flew overhead again, this time going east - and then abruptly switched around and engaged the people following her in the air. When the tawny lioness arrived nearby, Steve was actually distracted enough that he hardly looked her way. Instead he rocketed into the air, in time to arrive in the middle of a very strange conversation. "You!" said Miss Americana, pointing a glowing red finger at Set. "That's great! Can you do a bald eagle? If we're going to be teaming up, you need to wear the _symbols_," she said with great determination. "You!" she added, pointing a finger at Temperance as well. "I don't get you. Is that some kind of patriotic blue like the ocean thing? Because that's good, but you need to be MORE blue." Miss A's head whipped around to an almost-alarming degree as it took in the flying knight behind it. "Caradoc, I need to go home," she said in a slow, deliberate voice before declaring, "home to Washington! It's time for FREEDOM to come home for all Americans!"
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"I didn't do anything," said Nina as she shook her head, defiantly forcing herself to meet Midnight's strange eyes. "The sea will cool my father's rage once the moment has passed." Her hands clenched briefly into fists, though, as she put an arm around Mark. "But he should just...just have listened to me." With their respective powers, it was easy enough to convey the injured woman into Midnight Manor - and soon Fatima bint Antar al-Darsah was stretched out on a bed in the Manor's small infirmary while Nina stood guard like a Socotran sunbird over its nest. She had let Mark change her clothes, but other than that she kept a vigil over her half-conscious mother as if she couldn't dare to do anything else. After a long moment once the IV had gone into her arm, Fatima opened her eyes and looked around - first at the faces of her hosts, and then laser-like up at her daughter. "<Look at you. A princess of mighty Socotra.>" Nina's eyes widened. "<I...no, if you are my mother, then you speak English!>" Switching to that language, she went on, "It was you who taught me! I remember because my father said that it was you who thought I should learn the language of our enemies!" Fatima coughed, hard, and spat up bloody water up into a towel that Mark provided. "You learned English so that you could see the world beyond the palace walls." She looked up at Nina, eyes bloodshot with broken capillaries. "But you were so little then, my small stormcloud. I remember a pretty little girl with curly black hair, who screamed like a banshee when she got no sweets." "...I like sweets," said Nina, her voice pulling tight for a moment. "But...how are you alive? How have you come to be here?" - Meanwhile, across Freedom City, Blue Fox had been jolted awake by an emergency alert from a very impressive individual - Monsieur François Hollande, President of France. "Renarde Blue," he told her seriously once he'd given the code words that told her he was indeed speaking from Paris, "do you have access to a swift means of travel? There has been an incident in the waters of the Gulf of Aden. The Charles de Gaulle has been engaged by what appears to be members of the Socotran royal dynasty."
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<Stand by for pickup,> said Paulette with a cool professionalism. An instant later, a gorgeous blonde woman in a white cape and wearing a timepiece-bedecked crown appeared as if out of nowhere right next to Errant. "Youkidsare hard to find," said Clock Queen as she slowed down enough to talk to Errant. "Uh, Paulette Psion sent me. Geez, is that really what supers wear where you're from? Oh well." She reached down and took the boy's hand. "C'mon, let's get you back to yourfriends..." And then the city was an almost impossibly fast blur, and then... "Are you guys talking with your brains?" asked Tempus Fugitive, his fingers to his temples mockingly. "Ooh! Man, my girlfriend's jerk dad does that all the time and he's a jerk. Listen, honey, if you wanna ditch the mama's boy here," he said with a scornful look Will's way, "we're gonna get totally radical up in the honeymoon suite with some of the raddest people in...GEEZ, MA!" No sooner had he opened the door to step outside than Clock Queen had appeared, this time with Errant in tow. "You're ruining my bit!" And with that, he was off like lightning - leaving the trio from the future to reconstitute themselves. "Ah, kids," said Clock Queen, not sounding at all worried about her son's outburst as he zipped away. "Listen, I gotta go do a...thing." For the first time, her face clouded before she added, "But Paulette Psion's on her way, and she'll keep an eye on you. Oh, hey, Paulette!" The short redhead with the sparkling brown eyes had been coming up the walk; from the feel of her mind, the same one Errant had been talking to. "Just don't let your dad in here, all right?" "My father is one of the wisest men the world has ever known," said Paulette seriously, and she really did look just like her daughter Frances as she broke into a wide, wicked smile. "But he's not much for parties, no." <You see?> she asked of Errant with a little laugh. <Infinite diversity, in thought, dress, and deed, - that's the way of homo superior.>
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Death, Crime, Rage of a Beast, Etc. [IC]
Avenger Assembled replied to trollthumper's topic in Riverside
Before he'd really thought about it, Richard was on his feet, his hand raised. "Hello, I'm Richard." He processed through questions fast as the veteran journalist took to look at him directly. "I read your book. I thought the photomatching you did was interesting, especially with that forehead tattoo." He tapped his own bare forehead where Slamdance had worn his own initials in garish ink. "Did your research find the names of anyone else in RIOT? I thought nobody ever figured out who they were." Which had only fueled his own disgust, he remembered, his and Archer's on those few occasions they'd actually talked to each other about the terrorists that had replaced Freedom City's supervillains for those bloody years at the end of the 1980s. Maybe the people of Freedom City had deserved a crime uptick after what they'd done to their heroes (as he and Hologram had reminded them so often), but even they'd deserved better than a bunch of nameless thugs and terrorists. -
Death, Crime, Rage of a Beast, Etc. [IC]
Avenger Assembled replied to trollthumper's topic in Riverside
"Sure, sure." Richard had hot chocolate rather than coffee, not wanting to deal with how jittery caffeine made him when he was restraining his powers. Still, he had a copy of the book in his lap which he flipped through occasionally whenever the crowd's attention was elsewhere. "Looks like a pretty good crowd. Nice to know not everyone's forgotten the old days." With the way his powers had affected them both, they didn't look like the streets had been theirs in the 80s - but of course those had been their glory days. He shot a look over at his wife as they sat down, pleasantly remembering the good old days with his best girl at his side and the world as their oyster. "She'll do fine. She's a long way from that thing with the waterbed." Stopping halfway through the book, he looked at a black and white picture of an underground club he and Paige hadn't seen in half a lifetime. "Oh man, remember this place?" -With the DJ with the big glasses, and you and me on the dance floor?- They had done a lot back in those days - especially in the darker corners of the booming clubs, where the wild sight and sound made it very easy to be completely invisible. -
"It was-" The two spoke at once, then Mark spoke louder, breaking through the impasse. "This is Nina's mom." Her injuries were severe; deep bruises nearly everywhere under her dark skin, blood-shot eyes and shallow cuts in the skin that looked like they'd been torn open from the inside - an instant later and it was obvious she'd have been dead. "Fatima bint Antar al-Darsah." "That can't be right." It didn't sound like Nina believed her own words. "They, they told me that she had died, that she had gone back to Oman and she had died there after I was born...she must be one of those brainwashed SHADOW assassins!" "We were at a party for Nina's brother when...this woman came in with some masked dancers. Real pretty, real Arabian Nights stuff." Mark rubbed his eyes. "Oh, man, I'm sorry, you guys, but the last thing I was thinking about before all this happened was making sure Nina didn't see me looking their way, you know? Anyway, she worked her way up to the main table, got close, and went for Typhoon with a serving knife." "My father's armor is camouflage," Nina confessed. "His body is armored by the rigors of the sea, the knife...it cut his flesh but did not penetrate." "We were outside on the balcony when it all happened. When we came back in, there was running and screaming, water and blood in the air..." Mark shook his head, his short blonde hair plastered to his head by all the water. "Nina's brother had...had Fatima up against the wall and had pulled off her veil, and Typhoon was holding himself together. I didn't know what to do at first," he admitted, "I mean, I won't let someone just be killed, but attempted murder is still murder." "She said she had struck a blow for Socotran freedom and national liberation." Nina's dark eyes were very wide at the memory. "This...has happened before. In my childhood. But when she saw me, she gave this terrible howl and said...'Look what you've done! Look what you've done to her!' And so I demanded to know who this was who had struck a blow at my father and she said 'Don't you know your own mother, child?'" "Typhoon told her he was sorry," Mark went on, taking up the story when Nina couldn't finish. "But that the penalty for killing a king was death. And so..." Mark shrugged, as ever reluctant to boast about his power. "well, we stopped him." "We don't even know what we did this for!" objected Nina. "For all we know she could be a Grue, or a shapeshifter, or any number of things! We-" "If you really thought that, babe, you wouldn't have helped," Mark said seriously. He looked over at Erin and Trevor as Nina leaned against him. "The whole family was there, or almost all. When I went for Typhoon, they all backed him up. There must have been...geez, it was like standing inside Hoover Dam. If Nina hadn't kept the water off us while I threw up a shield, I'd probably have gone through a skyscraper. As it was, we...we tore up the palace some, and hit the bay, and I got us here."
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The OOC
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August 1, 2014 Midnight Manor 5 AM The ball of water smashed into the grounds of Midnight Manor like a tidal wave, water erupting outward and down as the artificial sphere produced by a hasty mass teleport collapsed under its own weight in a mini-tsunami. The water smashed across the lawn and flooded the flower beds, smashed against the first floor windows on the north side (which were luckily closed) and flooded the pool. In the center of the vast wet spot on the completely drenched lawn, a bedragged Mark Lucas and Nina al-Darsah were crouched protectively over an unconscious, bloody woman in a torn blue and white outfit like something from a Victorian's painting of a Middle Eastern harem. She looked bad, like someone who'd been grabbed in a giant's fist, and was covered in blood. "<-STEN TO ME!>" Nina was in the middle of screaming; the only water still standing the head-height inch-thick wall she was holding up between them and an invisible assailant. Her formal Socotran dress was ruined, even royal-made waterproof blue and white cloth torn to ribbons and hanging bedraggedly off her body, as if she'd been tossed into a waterfall and come out the other side. Mark wasn't panicking, really; he'd been in crises far worse than this, but as his soaking wet suit and tie erupted into his costume in a flash of light he was certainly far more focused than he usually was. "He's far away, and we have to get her to a hospital right now." He looked up, bloodstains on his hands from where it pooled on Fatima al-Darsah's skin like juice from a squeezed grape. "This is bad; I don't...I don't know how to fix this!" he said, a moment before he yelled "T-Midnight! Wander!" Pacing around the scene, her eyes still out for danger that was thousands of miles away, the princess of Socotra kept moving. "It doesn't make any sense," said Nina desperately, pulling her hair loose so the black strands poured down, soaking wet, past her shoulders. "Why would he do this, why would he just..." "Nina, please, I need you to help me with this!" Mark snapped. "I can't do this alone!" Torn out of her fugue by her boyfriend's urgency, not to mention the crisis of the moment, the princess went to help tend the bleeding woman who twenty minutes earlier had called her Daughter...
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Let's see some Arcane Lore, Knowledge (Technology), and maybe even Cosmology from the new kids - as well as Notice, Search, and Investigate
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"Heh, who do you think gave me this," said Tempus Fugitive with a wink, handing a nice fat blunt off to Cho. "My mom's totally cool, she went out and got primo ganja specially for me and my girl. She doesn't even mind I do coke sometimes." He rubbed his nose, then leaned in with a cocky grin and a look in his eye that suggested he was definitely checking her out. "Hey, if you're cool, you know, I'm on my way to this really rad party with some friends of mine. We're gonna hang out, listen to some music, raise a little Hell...it'll be totally bitchin', man." He reached over and opened the door - and suddenly Clock Queen was back, with Thoughtspeed in tow. "I'mback! Kyogenwasonthecase!" Clock Queen zipped out of the way to let Thoughtspeed enter. "See, toljdawe'd find your friend, Cho. Watch this one, Dickie, he's super-fast but he seems all right. I have to warn you kids, though, if you've been jerking us around when I could be winning a bet with Professor Psion, I'm going to clean your clocks." "Aw, Ma!" complained Richard Cline. "I'm trying to get to the party!" "Fine, fine, bring everybody! Gotta go if I'm gonna beat the Psions to the last one!" And with that, she was off again.
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Thrude (PL11) - ShaenTheBrain (Silver)
Avenger Assembled replied to N/A's topic in Archived Characters
All right, this looks all right to me APPROVED -
It was all very mundane, albeit peculiar to mortal eyes, but for Temperance and Set something remarkable indeed happened - a mighty force of chaos had come zipping down out of the sky at an incredible rate of speed reserved only for forces of nature. Glowing with a cheerful, optimistic power that radiated the promise of hope and change, the vaguely humanoid, vaguely feminine form hadn't hesitated before diving directly inside Miss Americana - just before the patriotic heroine had made a hasty exit and taken off into the wild blue yonder. - As the patriotic heroine disappeared into the sky, Steve stared in bafflement at her retreating form before he took action. Eyes smoldering with suppressed fear, he turned and pushed his way past the two strangely-dressed teenagers, disappearing momentarily behind a copse of trees before re-emerging with the familiar signs of someone who thought he was invisible. He snapped open his pike as his armor erupted from his body and holographic disguise flared to life at the same moment - and on a glowing column of fire with a belching roar, a shining knight took off into the air after Miss Americana, visible now even to the onlookers in the square. Steve had no idea what was going on, but he knew that was no normal departure for Miss Americana. Once he was a few hundred feet up, he scanned the skyline, only to see a familiar red, white, and blue form heading down at a rapid rate of speed. - Meanwhile, a few blocks away, a tall, leggy blonde in a deceptively simple designer sundress in swirls of red and white, paired with navy blue leggings studded with tiny white stars, fell from the sky and landed awkwardly just a few feet from Samantha Carson and her family. The instantly recognizable form of Miss Americana looked around, eyes wide and staring, before they seemed to focus on the little family group with laser intensity.
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The dinosaur town was a frantic bustle of activity when the disguised visitors arrived, cameras and eyes both straining to their utmost to make out every detail they could of this place to better facilitate the rescue of the inhabitants. They might have expected to find them completely oblivious to their impending doom, but between the way the raptors themselves were darting about in the jungle below and the conversations that drifted up to Tiamat's ears, it sounded as though something was up. "The shaman says the end time has come! We must all bring him fish to stave off the Great Burning!" Looking down, Tiamat and the others could see one dinosaur stopping to talk to another, spear negligently over his shoulder. Looking more closely, they could see it was their friend the Crab Hunter they'd met before, speaking to a fat-bellied dinosaur about his size who (upon closer inspection) wasn't fat-bellied at all, but had a front pouch occupied by something small and scaley and feathered! "Oh, sure he does," said the female with a snort, "This is just like the big storm all over again..." The dinosaur village was strange to humanoid eyes, but not so bizarre to someone with experience with reptilians and avians - with pairs like Crab Hunter and his mate living with very small young out in the jungle and with a central 'nest' building with many younger males and females, the dinosaurs were living like ravens or other birds rather than apes. --- A few hundred miles away, Fast-Forward talked with great reassurance into a camera as he heard thundering footsteps fast-approaching. "That T-Rex may be fast in sprints, but I think we'll see Thoughtspeed is a whole lot faster. How you doing, boy?!" he called into the microphone that connected him to Will - and the camera on him as his son ran with full camera gear away from the charging king of the monsters.
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Gargantua told his story, and a grim one it was as Paige translated it for the other heroes and the cameras alike. Gargantua <that is the closest you could come to my name> had been held captive for some ten years, most of it right here in Namibia. <I heard the conversation from my cage - the one called Orion won me in a game of poker from...him.> A native of the remote Pacific island nation of Gorilla Island, Gargantua as a young gorilla had heard stories of a job opportunity in French Polynesia, which had turned out to be a chance to be a personal assistant to the Crime League's prime primate - the sinister Dr. Simian. <As a child I had a tumor removed from my throat,> said the psychic ape as he brushed his massive hands against his neck, <and since then I have been unable to speak any but the primal Gorilla language.> He growled at the memory. <When Simian, that man-in-ape-clothing, learned I was a 'cripple', he had me caged as a defective member of my own species. I have not seen him here since.> Meanwhile, Velocity's Freedom League communicator was signaling insistently - when she spoke, it was Captain Thunder on the line. "Velocity," he said, as usual beginning without preamble, "check your six, because you'll have company in about thirty seconds. The Lighthouse just picked up a major energy discharge in Gorilla Island, and Daedalus thinks it's coming your way. It looks like someone there's using a surplus Lor matter teleporter - and they're moving either a small city; or a small army, right into your part of Namibia."
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ooc The Spirit of Revolution (OOC)
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Archives
Something Gina has no experience with at all is taking control of the robot! It's not painful or wrenching; it's as if something glowing and beautiful is muscling in on your action - it's like being mugged by an angel. You have one full round to take action - note that the Kill Switch will not work. -
The Collective fails and is, for now, bound and helpless.
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ooc The Spirit of Revolution (OOC)
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Archives
All right, I need a DC 24 Will save for Gina Evans. -
Harrier: Gather Info DC 5: What is that?!? DC 10: KILL IT! DC 15: KILL IT BEFORE IT CAN KILL YOU! DC 20: This is the first Omegadrone superhero - somehow! Man. Knowledge (Cosmology) DC 20: Harrier is a heavy combat Omegadrone - the kind that the Terminus built specifically to kill superheroes. Caradoc: Gather Info DC 15: Caradoc is a "techno-knight" who flies using a dragonshead jetpack, wields a glowing mystic blade, and wears a suit of glowing silver armor. His secret ID is unknown DC 20: Caradoc has been active in Freedom City alongside a wide variety of heroes, but much of the work he does is in the suburbs and small towns outside the city proper. DC 25: Caradoc is the secret ID of another hero altogether - one who prefers to keep his ID a secret DC 30: Caradoc is Harrier. Knowledge (Arcane Lore) DC 15: That's not magic in his armor... DC 20: Or any normal science, for that matter. DC 25: By the scarlet shades of Sirrion, that's entropic energy drawn from the bowels of the Terminus itself! Knowledge (History) DC 15: Caradoc is not a very convincing knight - he sounds like someone trying to parrot popular fiction about how medieval people talked. DC 20: The sparingly few hints he drops about coming from "Techno-Camelot" sound pretty fishy, frankly. Knowledge (Technology) DC 30: Hey, is that Miss Americana's work in those holoemitters? It is!
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pc Edge - AvengerAssembled (PL15) (Impervium)
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Archived Characters
Edited to give Mark magic clothes-changing power -
<Yes, I suppose you are. Now, are you going to come in?> It was a pointed question, one that came with the sight of a bottle of champagne being opened and poured into two tall, narrow glasses. <My family and I have a strong interest in protecting our fellow psychics, especially when there are so many homo sapiens and race traitors about - and even our own allies can be rather...brutish.> A painted woman in a cape, and something masked and cruel that stalked the dark, blood dripping from its claws. <So what would you prefer? You come join me out here by the pool in our luxurious accommodations and we have a pleasant conversation about ourselves, or someone more...unpleasant comes your way?> - "Heyyougotimyet!?!" There was the sound of feet running impossibly fast, and suddenly they weren't alone on the roof. Thoughtspeed and Kyogen had been joined by a figure absolutely unmistakable to Will, even with over thirty years of aging between them - twenty of those spent in prison with limited use of her powers. Clock Queen, Anna Cline, his gramma, looked exactly like the glamorous villain and thief she'd always claimed to be. Of course, she showed no sign of recognizing Thoughtspeed at all. "Didn'tcutimupthough," she added, zipping around the rooftop for emphasis. For her part, Kyogen made a sound like an amused snort - it was clear, murderous assassin that she was, that she wasn't an enemy of Clock Queen. "He was playing it smart," she said, snapping her claws back into place and deadly serious as she gazed right at Thoughtspeed's face for a thoughtful moment. "He's still mine, though." "Fine, fine, so if the Psions get the third one, we're all even stevens...but who's gonna buy me that beer?" With a wink, Clock Queen took her grandson's hand. "Come on, let's get you back and out of sight. I've got a little friend of yours back at my place who's probably getting herself cleaned up by now. You kids took quite a little tumble."
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Steve focused with great intensity on the tour, immersing himself in the urban life of Boston in the 1770s as best he could given that his education in these matters had primarily come while studying for his American citizenship. The holographic program was certainly impressive, simulating buildings, people, and even domestic animals as they passed by, with the single earbud that came with the glasses even providing auditory feedback like conversations and city noise. Overall it was a sanitized picture of an 18th century city, Gina had told him at home when she'd used his eyes for a test case, but it was certainly something that would appeal to Boston's many historically-minded tourists. He stared intently at the holographic people around them as the group progressed around the city, winding up well at the back of the little knot of VIPs. While he was no student of history as such, it fascinated him how the people of this recreated Boston (and others in this nation-state at the time) had fought for their political freedoms while practicing race-based slavery. It was a good reminder that even on Earth-Prime, inhumanity was only a step away. Still, he mused, trying to stay positive, even in this moment of their history, freedom was not so far away. Two hundred and fifty years of slavery in the Terminus, after all, was as yesterday. And here, they had never...With great and deliberate energy, he stared at a holographic representation of Samuel Adams (helpfully labeled by popup) and put any other thoughts out of his mind. He ended his reverie as they reached the Common and as Miss Americana wrapped up her tour, applauding loudly and distinctly as the VIPs began peppering Miss Americana with questions. They weren't alone; the charismatic heroine had attracted attention from the moment they'd landed with the streets so full of tourists and picture-takers, and here on the Common with so many more tourists, their tour was definitely getting some attention. "Miss Americana!" said Dave Williams, who worked for the city of Chattanooga, one of the few US cities to rival just how wired Freedom City was. "Thank you for the tour. How applicable do you think this system will be for sensory-disabled users?"