Avenger Assembled

Since Frost can flow out of a grapple with his Insub 2, he relents? I think that's how it works, anyway.

At the tone in his wife's mental voice, Richard instantly dropped the shoot and was there faster than a heartbeat, the thick conifer jungle hardly an impediment to his super-speed. At the sight of the dinosaur with the spear (who had just caught a crab), his eyes widened, taking in the situation in a heart-stopping instant. "Oh, damn," he whispered under his breath, before switching to mental communication. -Look at the arms on him, he must have rowed all the way here!- Sure enough, on closer inspection the dinosaur did have long, human-like arms that bulged with reptilian muscles - albeit with clawed fingers at the end of four-fingered hands as he nimbly tossed his spear back and forth from hand to hand. His hand-held still in his hand, Richard automatically pointed the camera at the dinosaur hunter. -That poor bastard. Jesus, they must have never known what hit them.-

Lose another Equipment Protection. Arrowhawk is up

Suddenly air displaced itself behind Crimson Tiger and she felt a hand on her body - then a surge of pain and the distinct sensation of air on an open wound on her back. The teleporter had struck again - his black-clad body and full face mask giving no clues to his identity, but the bloody patch of her armor on his hand showed his sinister power and frightening intent. For the first time he spoke, his voice a low chuckle, but used no words that might have given away his identity. He pointed his hand at her and beckoned, as if inviting her to bring on the fight. This was a personal fight - even if she had no way of knowing who on Earth he was, and even if he'd given no sign of recognizing her.

New Round. Downtime is still dazed. Ninja Teleporter tries for Crimson Tiger again. http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4483278/ = 29! And hits! That's another DC 25 Tou save, TK

Paige lacked her husband's speed, but of course he was just a thought away and within a second was by her side on the beach. "Hey babe." Respectable married types that they were, he slipped his arms around her and gave her a quick kiss. With a grin, he added, "See, I told you have good ideas. Everything go OK?" While the smell of frying fish filled the air near the campsite (thanks to a lucky haul by one of the cameramen and his net), they zipped around the island, exploring its rough star shape from the thick tropical pine forests in the interior (complete with miniature dinosaur herds) to the lush beaches that surrounded them everywhere. It was gorgeous enough to pass for any resort back home, but alien enough to be breathtaking even to jaded travelers like them. Given the lack of large predators (except for Tiamat), if not for the fact that the whole place was going to be completely annihilated in just a few days, it would have been the perfect tourist attraction. If you ignored the bugs, anyway. After swatting another huge mosquito, this one with a body as thick as a Goliath beetle, Richard (who was not a fan of the insect kingdom, especially not with the way their wings sounded at high-speed) commented, "I'll be right back...with a whole lot more bugspray. Don't go anywhere, gorgeous." He was slowed up enough by conversation back at the camp, though (and the need to cut a quick take) that Paige was alone on the southwest beach for several minutes, the one closest to the not-quite-visible mainland. Turning a corner on the shore, she found herself looking at a small, sheltered cove beneath the shelter of several large overgrown trees. She thought the log resting on the sand was one of those trees fallen over - until she saw that it was smaller than the rest, and looked scorched as if by fire, which might explain the hollow depression at the top. The dinosaur on top of it was bigger than she'd seen before, maybe as big as Holly, scrambling around inside that depression for its meal... Until the dinosaur reared up on its hind legs with a satisfied hiss, a spear in its hand - the long wooden pole topped by gleaming black obsidian triangle. She couldn't read its thoughts, but even the faintest touch of her power against it revealed a sentient mind, and cleverness in those saurian features as the dinosaur paced down towards the waterline, its eyes focused on the scuttling crabs.

APPROVED!

Let's see, go ahead and give me an unmodified d20 roll for this one.

Normally Richard would have pressed his son into joining him in helping the crew with their equipment - but with a girl to impress, he figured a good dad would let Will handle things on his own. Besides, that little trip through time had left him more exhausted than he'd wanted to admit - that kind of power and precision didn't come easily, even among speedsters and those who had mastery over time! He might have mentioned that to the kids - if it wasn't so damn hot. Instead he took a while to rehydrate, drinking a bottle of water at perfectly normal speed, before he got up off the rock and began helping both crews get the campsite and equipment ready for a busy day of filming. I'm not the President of the others, he thought easily, they can do their own thing. Sitting down on another rock that overlooked the vast, almost impossibly lush Cretaceous 'Gulf of Mexico', he spent some time recording "Fast-Forward videos" using a handheld camera. "Today we'll be looking at the story of Dr. Dromiceiomimus (it had only taken him a couple of takes to get the name exactly right) - did Canada's most famous criminal speedster _really_ get his powers from an injection of dinosaur DNA? Last time our Crime Technicians said "Probably Not" - Dr. Dromiceiomimus most likely triggered his powers to erupt when he injected himself with ground-up fossils. But we're going to put that to the test - Thoughtspeed and I are going to run up north to find a real Dromiceiomimus, one of the fastest dinosaurs ever, to see how fast they really were in the field..." In between recording hours of footage in the space of a few minutes (a handy tool for anyone on television), he looked up to see the other heroes and the camera crews exploring the island. The island they were on, about as large as Freedom City's downtown, was primarily made of limestone, with a cave system stretching deep underground. It was the sort of place where palm trees and coconuts might have been found in the 21st century, but the pine trees and flying lizards (was that really their name? he'd have to look it up) in the trees showed just how far away from home they were. Nothing larger than a wild pig actually lived on the island, for all that pigs themselves were far away - in fact, there were several miniature dinosaurs, the microraptors that had showed such a terror of Tiamat, small plant-eaters that looked like 'long-necks' like Apatosaurus cast in Great Dane-sized bodies foraging in the woods, and more familiar creatures like crabs and salt-water crocodiles. It was hot, very hot; the air thick and muggy, smelling deeply alien to modern senses, and Richard wasn't quite as young as he used to be. Sitting there on the rock, under the shade of an overhead tree, he actually dozed briefly - until a swooping pass by a mosquito big as a dragonfly brought him to instant alertness, and with a single super-speed swat he disposed of the biggest predator he'd seen yet. He looked up at the sky as he rose, turning back to rejoin the crew. -Feels strange to be here and not doing anything about the asteroid- he admitted by thought to Paige, realizing just how much time had passed during his little nap. -But a whole new timeline won't help the ratings.-

It's not a dealbreaker as such - I'd be happy with it with a stronger justification (since it's not the sort of name the media would just hand out to a new superhero), but if you're fine with switching, no worries here. I'd have no issue with you having the character work to assume the title in-character, just as KD is doing with Nevermore (the future Raven III!).

I'd like to hear more about how she gets away with calling herself Centuria - _we_ know she shares a common ancestry with him, but she does not, and it's something NPCs/other PCs may find to be in bad taste.

La Tiradora PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 10 + 8 + 10 + 0 + 4 + 4 = 36 PP STR 20 (+5) DEX 18 (+4) CON 20 (+5) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 16 + 16 = 32 PP ATK: +8 (+13 Ranged, +15 Bow) DEF: +13 (+5 Dodge, +8 Base, +4 flat-footed) Init: +8 Grapple: +14 Knockback: -3/-2 Saves: 3 + 4 + 5 = 12 PP TOU +7/+5 (+5 Con, +2 Defensive Roll) FORT: +8 (+5 Con, +3) REF: +8 (+4 Dex, +4) WILL: +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 72 r = 18 PP Acrobatics 11 (+15, SM) Climb 5 (+10) Disable Device 8 (+8) Drive 4 (+8) Escape Artist 4 (+8) Language 1 (English, Base: Spanish) Gather Info 4 (+6) Notice 10 (+12, SM) Sense Motive 10 (+12, SM) Stealth 11 (+15, SM) Swim 4 (+8) Feats: 18 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Ranged 5 Attack Specialization: Bow 1 Dodge Focus 5 Evasion Improved Initiative Precise Shot Skill Mastery (Acrobatics, Notice, Sense Motive, Stealth) Quick Draw [draw] Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 4 + 2 + 3 + 20 + 5 = 34PP Device 1 (Bow, Flaw: Hard to Lose) [4PP] Enhanced Magnetic Control 0 (PFs: Alternate Powers 5) [5DP] AP: Blast 5 (Extras: Autofire, Penetrating) {20/20} AP: Blast 5 (Extra: Autofire, PFs: Improved Crit 2, Indirect 3, Variable Descriptor 1 [bludgeoning/piercing/slashing]) {20/20} AP: Blast 5 (Extras: Area [Targeted, Burst], Selective) {20/20} AP: Snare 5 (Extras: Autofire, Constricting) {20/20} AP: Stun 5 (Extras: Range [Ranged], Penetrating) {20/20} Enhanced Feat 1 (Defensive Roll, PF: Subtle) [2PP] Flight 1 (10 MPH/100 feet per move, PF: Subtle) [3PP] Magnetic Control 6 (Str 30, Hvy Load 1500 lbs; Extra: Damaging, PFs: Indirect, Subtle) [20PP] Super-Senses 2 (Detect Metal 2 [mental], Extras: Acute, Radius, Ranged) [5PP] costs abilities 36 + combat 32 + saves 12 + skills 18/72 + feats 18 + powers 34 = 150 pts ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Design Notes: La Tiradora is, or was, the latest in a long line of challengers to El Spectro. Esmeralda Romero de Terreros, the daughter of a noble family with roots stretching far back in Mexican history, was an Olympian archer at London when a terrorist attack by Guy Fawkes caused her magnetic powers to erupt in a spectacularly public fashion. Acclaimed as a national hero, hailed by the Mexican right as an exemplar of good Catholic womanhood, she went home to Mexico as its newest superhero, determined to outshine the old, soft El Spectro and help her family build a new Mexico free of corruption, sentimentality, and the coddling of inferiors that had held the nation back for so long. But then came the day that her father, El Hierro Duque, moved against the Mexican government - and revealed himself (in the final confrontation in the Bosque de Chapultepec) as a pawn of Overshadow, planning to make Mexico his puppet nation! As the other Forasteros battled the Duke's hired super-thugs, as he explained to her that now they could build a Mexico _truly_ free of the inferiors just as they'd wanted for so long...she put an arrow through his eye. Though El Spectro offered her a place on the team once it was done, she fled into the night and acts now as a solo operative in Mexico City - hunting criminals and terrorists with fanatical devotion to the cause...but what IS the cause, now that everything she has ever believed in has been proven to be a lie? La Tiradora is posed on the edge of either hero or villain, depending on where fate takes her. OK, so inspired by TT's use of Jeremy Renner as a magnetic controller a while back, here's an archer with magnetic powers - sure she 'cheats' by use of ferrous materials in her arrows, but she's still a world-class marksman and archer in her own right. Her powers are a supplement to her strong training, giving her something to stunt off and an unexpected hole card. She can make great acrobatic 'leaps' and run along walls in a faux-parkour style, as well as detect hidden metals and use them to her advantage. As the epitome of a Badass Abnormal, I think she'd be pretty fun to play - even with a backstory that makes her one of the most complicated of Mexico's heroes...

Their enemy was a subtle one, as it happened - the night passed, giving Tensile ample time to patrol grounds that were at once achingly familiar and alien strange, and the rest to patrol the house that had, at one time or another, been their home since birth. It was a strange situation for all of them, and other circumstances, a call for action might have been a welcome one. When it did come, though, it came in a form so unexpectedly mundane as to take all the heroes off-guard. Zipping along the street outside the Mansion, a big, blocky vehicle - an armored car marked with the Brinks colors, came speeding wildly down the street and smashed directly into the Mansion's closed iron gates with a deep boom! The solid gates, which had been reinforced even before Travis began upgrading it (and which had since been upgraded by Trevor, Erin, and just a little genie magic) held - but the armored car began backing off for another try, its tires squealing on the streets. Mystery, from her position by the window, tensed. "Something is wrong with that thing," she called, her voice unusually confident...for a moment. "I mean...be careful going out there." Her brow furrowed. "...the people in that truck aren't who they think they are...I don't know, does that even make any sense...?"

Fast-Forward had spent most of the prep time "off-camera", popping up with a different 80s-inspired outfit every time he was needed for a shot. (There had even been a joke about that in which Hologram had 'confronted' him about being a clothes-horse). Once everyone was ready and together out on the blacktop behind the suburban studio, the Freedom City skyline visible behind him, Richard zipped out to give everyone his own encouraging speech. "All right, kids, even though I am the fastest man on the West Coast, it would take me all day to zip you all down to Chicxulub - and time spent in transit is time not spent with dinosaurs, am I right?" Reaching into his leather jacket, he snapped open a small, journal-sized leather-bound book. "Hang tight, we're going to ride the magic train to get where we're going!" He zipped around the group impossibly fast, chanting in a high-pitched chirp like a video on fast-forward, leaving glowing patterns on the ground behind him. As he chanted, stars suddenly seemed to fall from the sky, surrounding the group in a flash of brilliant stellar light - and then they reappeared in a circle of yellow tape right in the middle of a Central American village. "Hey, everybody!" Fast-Forward waved to the crowd of villagers, most of whom were taking pictures either with old cameras or new smartphones. Putting the spellbook away, he grinned. "All right, this is gonna cost me, so hang on...it's time to REWIND!" And with that he started running, running so fast he vanished from view as he circled the small group of heroes and camera crews, a blur of motion that zipped along impossibly fast. Outside that blur, the world seemed to slow down, then stop altogether - and then gradually run backwards, faster and faster as the years peeled away in reverse! First the people blurred and vanished, then the buildings themselves seemed to disassemble and fall backwards into a jungle that had come boiling down from the hills above the village. The sky flicked light and dark until it all blurred together faster than the eye could make out. Overhead the stars wheeled in occasional glimpses, gradually moving in their fixed places - and suddenly the jungle flooded! For a long few minutes they were clearly underwater, glimpses of great fish and whales overhead, with only the blurred motion of Fast-Forward's running keeping the tides out. And then the water was receding, and they were in the jungle again - night and day flickered again and again, trees growing and shrinking around them as eons passed in the space of seconds. And their trip was still speeding up until the outside was all one great blur. "Ten million years!" called one of the camera techs, monitoring their travel by means of an ASTRO Labs device slaved to Fast-Forward's movements - but now they were going too fast to track. The lights, the noise from outside, rose to the level of an almost unbearable whine for a long instant... And then, with a sound like thunder, they were ELSEWHERE. Not wanting to show just how exhausted he was, Richard slumped against a big moss-covered rock, letting the others (and himself) take in the scene. The beach, the jungle, the clear blue sky overhead, it all looked familiar at first glance, especially with the base camp of survival tents and equipment established by the first unit team nearby. At least until you took a close look around and really saw the place - the jungle was pine trees, not palm trees, long-dead plants reaching up to a sky that beat down with heat and moisture that had to be over 100 degrees and over 95% humidity! The Cretaceous period was hot, far hotter than the world they'd left even with man-made climate change, and the oxygen-rich air was invigorating as he sucked it in. "Welcome to Isla del Supercrime!" The beach was swarming with critters, crabs and scaled birds, creatures familiar and alien all at once - and finally, one that showed an interest in them. A small, bipedal creature with feathered limbs and clawed feet scampered up to the group curiously...at least until it saw Tiamat, which prompted a shriek of terror and flight back towards a cluster of similiar chicken-sized dinosaurs by the edge of the water. "Sorry, they've been scavaging...welcome to April, 64,502,042 BCE! We're so glad to meet you all." Frank Devlin, a muscular, balding African-American man in his late fifties, the first unit director, shook everyone's hand with a firm grip. "Come in and stretch your legs for a while, or explore the island, for that matter - we won't start filming for a few hours yet."

Between the ticks of a clock, Richard ticked off the points in a life now falling apart. Blackstone was still in flame, patrolled by swarms of Omegadrones so vast he couldn't even get close. Providence, empty - either evacuated or worse, there were no signs he could tell in the few seconds he had to search. In a dying city, carnage frozen all around him as he ran back to where he'd left his girl and his companions, his badass criminal career seemed like a hollow lie against real slaughter, against real disaster. There was so much happening, and he wasn't fast enough to stop it, not even fast enough to run away. By the time he got back to Lincoln, the thoughts of abandonment, of simply grabbing Paige and running, had faded beneath the weight of the burning city around them. A lifetime of horrors - and he'd had time to see them all in the seconds it had taken Paige to get her hand stitched up. He was unaccountably quiet when he rejoined the others in their makeshift shelter, somewhat brokenly reporting on the conditions in the city before he walked a slow, careful way over to Paige to join her - without a word, he put his arms around her and closed his eyes. They'd been in bad places before, in those awful few months after her family's murder, but nothing like this. A moment's rest was all they could get - but that moment could last, and last, and last. As the pair blurred like a hummingbird's wings, he finally said, "Get some sleep, Paigey. We'll get through this." Across from them, Archer was slowly, methodically restringing his bow, his dark face a mask of control with only his eyes showing what he'd seen that day An exhausted Lady Liberty, barely able to speak, walked into the shelter and ungently laid her hands on Keith, her glowing energies briefly suffusing him as she healed the worst of Wail's wounds. For the healer and powerhouse, who had had the power but not the time to save everyone, this had been a long day's work. Without another word for the other heroes, she went around healing the rest - finding the energy to reassure the children and families, at least, that everything would be all right. "We'll get through this, all of us, if we stick together. You couldn't be in better hands."

Vector charged, full of fervor, to avenge the murdered Australian hero - but suddenly that impossibly fast pike came down and drove itself into her leg. The now-armored Newman whipped Vector up, smashing her against the stone floor of his office with a bone-chilling crack, alongside the body of the hero he'd killed out of hand. He dropped her there, unconscious, just in time to bring up the pike and catch Caradoc's avulsive strike with his own blade. Energy crackled against each other, dueling entropic reactors dulling the holographic generators that disguised Caradoc's attack, revealing the burning-hot powerpike underneath. "How many kids you kill with that thing?" sneered Newman, trying psychological warfare as he gloated behind his armor at the other drone. His voice lacked the sepulchral quality of Steve's, and in fact it sounded as if he'd had long practice sounding exactly like a man. "Now you think you're some kinda hero? What is this, your woman?" he laughed. "You'll live long enough to watch her and this whole town burn!" "Monster!" hissed Harrier in reply, fire burning in his mechanical voice. He felt as if he was at war with himself, at war with the face he saw in the mirror every morning. "Free people will stop you, as they have stopped you and yours whenever they have come to this place. Your empire, your murders, your crimes - they end tonight!"

Vector goes first and is, well, sundered. Harrier: Startles as a Move Action: That's a DC 30 Intimidate check...that Newman passes with his own Skill Mastery! Standard Action: Harrier is sufficiently wroth to go for a full-out attack - http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4475927/ = 9 I'll take that miss! Newman will attempt to bait Harrier with his own Startle, but it also fails. Argonaut is up.

With a roar, Gamma hurled his mighty fist against the super-charged plastic that held Ember in place. At first the atomic powerhouse's mighty blow did nothing more than drive a hole through the door big enough for a child to crawl through - but then, green, spidery cracks shot through the damaged partition with an ominous sizzling sound. Her eyes wide, Ember stepped back - then grinned as the plastic fell entirely away, leaving her with only her power nullifiers holding her inside the cell. "Well, it's about pʼaqyng time! Hey, Gamma, unlock me!" She held up her wrists, a grin on her face, but Gamma suddenly looked not-so-sure of himself. "I...I don't know about this..." Gamma shot a look at Sandstone, who was busy with her own enemies to face. "C'mon! Unlock me!" "Can't we just take her out and take the cuffs off back at the base?" demanded Gamma, his voice rising nervously. "She's crazy!"

Gamma Power Attacks Ember's cell. 19 + 15 = 34 The TOU 15 door is injured... And his Aura inflicts another 17 + 15 = 32 The door shatters! Breaker is up.

Clouds of ice and insects swarmed around each other, looking for purchase - before suddenly Frost solidified long enough to stamp his booted foot against the grassy ground! Instantly, a chilling wave erupted from his feet and sunk deeply into the ground beneath their feet, the grass browning and blackening where he stood, the holy ground beneath his feet flash-freezing into a crunchy morass of dead, frozen soil and hard-packed earth. "Come to me, insect," Frost sneered, his red eyes wild and fangs bulging behind his teeth. "There is no rock under which you may lay your eggs, there is no tree where you may raise your young, there is no crops that you may devour. It is I who have become the plague lo these many years. WINTER IS HERE!" And with that, he erupted back into the icy blizzard, and fell upon Famine like the wrath of an angry god.

Frost misses his first attack: but uses extra effort to switch to his Vampiric Strike and attacks the scenery! I believe that allows a recovery check of +12, allowing Frost to heal his Injured condition.

Remembering all-too-vividly what it had been like to be sixteen with his head full of girls and speed, Richard explained what they were doing. "You and I go up north on the mainland and do the T-Rex speed tests, and see if we can test with any little velociraptors there, while the other guys make sure that nothing eats the launch team." They were going to get actual photographs of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, if that story turned out to be true. "We were going to put a protected camera in and have it send pictures right before the blastwave hit, but then we figured out I'd have to be sitting right there when the big rock came down." He made a gesture with his fist brought down on the table and grinned. "Our insurance guys wouldn't allow it." Suddenly, he snapped his fingers. "Hey, there's a thought!" He turned to Gaian Knight and Tiamat. "You guys are both fliers - what's your ceiling? Can you get up high enough to-" "We did include an aerial camera," offered Tanzin, with the slightly weary air of a professional dealing with eccentric talent, "but that's a responsibility of the first unit. Right now we're just here for the intro photography..." As he spoke, he and the rest of the crew stepped back out of frame, giving the camera crews a good position to set up. Used to working with talents in masks, the camera crew seemed to take an interest in Crimson Tiger first, helping spray her mask to make sure it shined on-camera. "Let us know when you're ready, Miss!"

That misses by 1