Avenger Assembled

Clock Queen winked and raised a finger to her lips. "Sssh. You're gonna get me back in the hoosegow, Seky." She didn't seem too concerned by the prospect, and indeed, she wandered into the kitchen and opened up the fridge. "Hey, champagne! Nice deal this guy has." She produced a bottle from the fridge, and glasses from up above. "I can change out of the costume faster than any chucklehead walking in the door can see me, so no worries. I try telling people I'm a senior citizen and I don't always know what I'm doing, but people look at me and think "Oh, she's just somebody's crazy mom." She shook her head, pouring three glasses. "You know my Dickie has two kids now? Oldest one looks about as old as you," she added with a nod to Set. "All right, here we go." Zipping over to join the others, she handed the two gods a glass and raised her own. "Here's to past, present, and future. Cheers!" When the proverbial bottoms had gone up, she added, "So what's this I hear about you going straight?" It was a serious question, the kind one might ask a friend who had undergone a recent career change. "Just because you've got your big sister here watching?" she asked. Anna knew all about big sisters, she'd been the big sister to the younger women in the Crime League most of the time. "I mean, you don't want to summon your crocodile army to eat the capes, that's square with me, not even stealing a little Set-Pez? There's gotta be one of those still on the market somewhere. C'mon," she added with a wink at Sekhmet. "You gotta great gimmick there, but surely kitty likes a little shiny toy now and again?"

All right, what have you got in your brain-box, Radical?

"They had become the master race," said Tomorrow, bitterness creeping into his voice. "Ready to move where they wished, explore where they wish, but with no care for what they left behind them. It is," he added wryly, trying to stay light, "the problem with too much life of the mind." When they were both outside the pod and beneath the cool air of a far-future world, Tomorrow pointed to a distant star Sunset didn't recognize in the blueness overhead. "Gliese. Close as she is, she will never be brighter than Old Venus to the eyes on Earth. Such is the fate of stars." He walked around for a moment, testing his weight on the crunchy light snow beneath their feet. "The crystal itself is in one of these buildings," he said, and admitted, "I cannot find it. It is constructed so that the mental emanations of someone without psychic abilities, even one trained by beings from other ties, render it completely invisible and out of phase with reality. The Ooxmal did the universe that service...but there are beings left in the Milky Way that have the power to read minds, and much else besides. _Tomorrow_, the Ark will be found by the dragon, an ancient being of unspeakable psychic power, and her flames will scorch the fabric of the multiverse." Tomorrow smiled as a distant bird, if that was a bird, shrieked with delight. "That is, unless we find it first."

Richard reminded himself that he was fifty years old and Midnight probably didn't take away villain kids and make them work in his secret midnight mist factory, whatever his mom used to tell him. Not even creepy medieval Midnight, probably. Aw, jeez, she blabbed to a local. That's gonna be a pain in the butt..."I'm Fast-Forward, I'm a speedster and I have...a few other assets," he added, tapping the book he'd stuck in his leotard's little belt once they were out of danger. "This isn't my first time crisis either," he said with a nod to Wander. "What with my powers, I guess you could say I'm faster than the speed of time itself." He thought for a minute, then added quickly, "Listen, I think you all should know that I have a permanent psychic link with a lady who is one of the most powerful psychics in the world, and she got medievalized just like all the other peasants out there. If I start doing anything weird, take me out fast before she can zero in." "All right, all right!" said Medea suddenly from her cage, sitting up and raising her hands. Between the savage beating, the lightning strikes, and the punches she'd taken, the alleged high queen of Camelot. "Enough about your Levite wife, Dickie," she sneered, before addressing the others. "You've got me in some alchemical anti-magic nonsense, and I'm not stupid. Go ahead and open the door, and I won't..." Suddenly, she threw back her head and laughed. "Bwa-haha-ha-ha! All right, seriously this time. Look at you people," she added, "you look like you're on the way to some page's funeral. Can't you just accept that we have a much better version of your precious Freedom City here and not worry so much? Look at you all! Nobles, jesters, warriors; practically gods! Did you know there are parts of this empire," she inquired, "where everyone is legally required to _bow_ because of what you can do? You could live like kings here, and be loved for it! Isn't that just delicious?"

Unarchived

"You've got a lot more zip than the Set I remember," said Anna, smiling at the muscular boy the way she would at Will when he was in a "look-at-me, grandma!" mood. She seemed to accept his recognition instantly and wrapped her arms around the kid, Anna smelling like vintage Chanel. "Dress better, too! And you're a lot less serpentine than the girls that usually hung around Snake-Boy. You should have seen them," she added to Sekhmet, "they had these green rattlesnake leather bustiers with giant fangs hanging off the girls," she cupped her hands over her own chest for emphasis. "Half the time they looked like they were going to stab themselves when they tried to run!" She laughed, then half-turned to slide open the balcony door, scoping out the rich guy's apartment on the other side. "C'mon in and tell me how you turned back the clock. We've got nothing but time. And tell me about your kitty friend!" She watched Set go and succumbed to temptation and smacked him right on the ass, an innocent look on her face in the instant anyone looked back.

GM The crown she was legally barred in public as a condition of her parole. The fur-lined miniskirt with the red fabric and yellow and black clockfaces - and the twin swords, carefully packed into a walking stick, that an old lady needed in a city like Freedom where the heroes were evidently packing heat again. Clock Queen was ready. Taking advantage of Holly's sleepover, Paige's distraction, and Dickie on the phone, the grand-dame of super-speed super-crime zipped out of her son's house, down icy Freedom streets, and onto the sidewalk in front of the former warehouse that was now Waterside Apartments. Ticktickticktick! From the alley, taking all the time in the world, she caught sight of Set (who did indeed look a lot like his pictures) and somebody who was Hmm, maybe Lady Set? Set-Girl? Set-Woman? and smacked the ground with the metal tip of her stick to get their attention. All this debating was taking entirely too long, and she made a snap decision in between the sound of the stick hitting the pavement and the feel of it shocking up her arm. "Hey! You kids!" When they looked her way from across the street, she pointed straight up and said, "I'm movin' on up!" And with that, she zipped straight up the brick wall and into the open balcony of the penthouse apartment. Whew! Good thing the guy who lives here isn't here.

GM January 19th, 2014 Freedom City Fingers fly over a keyboard faster than the eye can see. "Dear Set II? Set Jr? This is Clock Queen, and it's high TIME we got together and talked about your old man. I'm in Freedom City right now and it's gloomsville around here. If you remember where the old Set put his stuff, you should meet me tonight at eight in the warehouse where the old Set kept that helicopter with the giant snake face. He really dug those snakes, hah-hah. Don't keep me waiting! Your good friend, Clock Queen. PS: Is it true you're just seventeen? BUMMER." With the email message set, Anne Cline sat back in her son's house and sighed. She'd been in this house nearly a week now; Paige was grieving her father, Dickie was helping Paige, and the kids knew their parents were going ape without hardly knowing the reasons why. She'd come up immediately from Florida when she'd heard they needed help, and was glad to do it. But it was sooooooo booooorrrriiiinnngggg.

All right, are you guys using any sneaky measures to head over to Litwack's place? Or just trusting in darkness and speed?

With a zip and a sound like the patter of impossibly fast feet, suddenly the blueclad Richard Cline appeared on the roof alongside the heroes and Psions. Argent startled at the sight of him, then frowned, standing protectively between the baby Kit was carrying and the new arrival. "Richard?" she demanded. "What are you doing here? Where's Aunt Paige?" "...I just ran the continental United States in four minutes," said the speedster, clearly out-of-breath. "That's what I'm doing here. We came running as soon as we heard your grandfather die. She's downstairs, and somebody better go down and explain to her what happened." Deep down in his core, Richard Cline was glad his wife's evil, murderous father (who had tried to kill them both at least once) was dead, emotions he was doing his best to repress before she opened the psychic link up between them again. "Jesus Christ," he demanded as he caught his breath, "what the hell happened here?" Contemptously ignoring Tesla Atom, who had landed at Maximus' side a few moments earlier, Argent said, "We came to lay a trap for the Atoms. To show them how wrong they were to live the way they did, to abandon their genetic destiny as the superior race." She looked down at the baby Kit held, and reached to take it. "And for that, Jack Wolf murdered my grandfather," she went on with a sharp glare at Tesla. "Where is he, anyway? Testing his aim?" "He's sedated," said Tesla, her voice tight and clipped. "He was obviously being mind-controlled, my uncle would never kill anyone: even a murderous zealot like Parker Psion." She looked at Maximus and went on, "Chase and Victoria will be here within ten minutes. You better take her to the Freedom League, or call in the meta-cops," she added to Solar Sentinel. "When she wakes up, she won't be happy."

When Sunset was fully armored, Tomorrow nodded and pressed a button on his console, rolling up the canopy over their heads and letting in the cool, crisp air of a million and a half years in the future. 1,459,000 CE (April 19) was a lovely, albeit bracing spring afternoon, the air cool and crisp with the promise of a new future for humanity. Tomorrow slipped out of the cockpit and opened a compartment in the side of his craft, withdrawing a pack that he strapped over his back, jet-nozzles down. "All these ruins, here, these belonged to a civilization called the Ooxmal. Magnificent people, brilliant architects, engineers, who arose from those who stayed behind after the Ascension. They had no written language," he went on, admiringly as he studied the great cylindrical ruins all around them, the overgrown buildings all some variant on that same cylindrical formation, some tall, some small as a house, "only their thoughts. They were the greatest telepaths of the age!" he went on, "all of them, from birth! They lived in peace together, in harmony with the world and the Solar System, and built a great Ark to cast their consciousnesses across the multiverse!" He smiled, then gave Sunset a serious look. "Then left it behind them, when they were gone. A crystal artifact the size of my timepod," he said with a nod in its direction, "capable of allowing a telepath to open a mental connection to any place within the nearest thousand or so meta-universal strands. You see the problem."

Fast-Forward: http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4392227/ 39 Unferth: http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4392228/ 23 Cobalt Templar: 19 Medea: http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4392232/ 17 Shadowblade: 17 Temperance: 13 Stronghold: 9 Well, okay! Fast-Forward is going to go ahead and target Medea, who he knows perfectly well is the greater threat. He can't use anything from the Tome of Theurgy without hitting her, however, so instead he has to just run past her and punch her. http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4392236/ = 23 That hits, using the stats I'm currently using for Medea. It exceeds her defense by 5 (using his Autofire attack) so +2 is added. DC 27 Tou save! http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4392237/ = 13! Well, I'm certainly not ready for that! OK, so Medea is bruised and dazed (and Fast-Forward, now about fifty feet on the other side of the clearing, gets an HP) Unferth: attempts to Startle Stronghold: http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4392239/ = 34 OK, DC 34 to resist that... He will go ahead and All Out/Power Attack for +5 to try and intimidate the heroes even further http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4392240/ = 16 ...well, that's not good. DC 36 Tou save. Does anyone have Interpose who can take that hit for her?

You agree with Hronos

I...I...no! Frost felt the great, crushing weight of starvation and want fall across his shoulders like a yoke across an ox's forefront. If not for the weight of the cold, hungry horse beneath him, he might have been broken by it at once, but even then it was a nearly impossible burden to drag his impossible load forward a step, then another step, then another. The dead called out to him in their hundreds of thousands and he saw their faces even as he saw, brighter than any godly power, the faces of all those left behind in cold Ukranian ditches and the burning remains of collective farms. Never again! NEVER AGAIN! And with a proletarian's roar in his ears, Frost grabbed the yoke and pulled with inhuman strength, rage and denial giving him the sheer, indomitable fortitude to drag his plow of the damned out of its furrow and onto entirely new soil! In an exclusive Nigerian neighborhood, a septic tank erupted impossibly upwards into the heart of the water filtration plant, forcing the fat-cat locals and expats to drink the same groundwater as their poorer neighbors. Botulism ruined the dinner of a high-ranking Burmese general and his personal staff, sending the officers to bed hungry while the men crept away to eat at local markets spared the general's fury. Again and again, through sheer force of will and lifetimes of rage, Frost pulled the plow further and further to one side, denying the hungry bellies of the poor, denying the dying children, the dead eyes that pleaded for mercy and found none. He began to chant. I am a man of ice and snow I will not melt I will not blow! I am a man of ice and snow I will not melt I will not blow! Writhing with cramps, the 'sex tourist' thrashed on the cot at the Indonesian hospital while the disgusted doctors called the American embassy. No more! Not today!

Ooh, exceeded the DC by 5. Aura and Empath did not leave voluntarily - Jump popped them away. Jump seemed very concerned about something, something that didn't have anything to do with the heroes there, his family, or even the imminently arriving Atoms - it seemed to have something to do with his watch alarm going off at just that moment.

Let's see a Bluff or Sense Motive check. DC is 25 for both.

Up on the roof, heroes and villains were reunited as Solar Sentinel's descent met Argent Psion's ascent, the former coming from the sky while the latter smoothly ascended through the rooftop hole that Ember had burned on the way down. Argent's telekinetic carry really had been smooth and easy; the Psion obviously well-experienced at being her group's backup mass transit system. Jump, Empath, and Aura were standing in a triangle formation with the women at two ends in the back and Jump immediately facing the group, Alef Psion having transferred to his mother Empath upon Jump's return. At the sight of Ember in Solar Sentinel's arms, Jump pointed and yelled, "Drop her, you alien bastard! Haven't you people done enough damage today?" At her cousin's words, Argent tensed. "Josh, wait, they're on our side! You know you can't talk Frankie down when she's-" "They murdered him, Argent!" yelled Jump, his youthful face twisted with a sneering contempt as he glared at the heroes, reserving special venom for Maximus Atom. "They murdered an old man under a flag of truce, for nothing! They nearly killed all those hostages for some foolish grudge between old men! I see now I was wrong about them, and wrong about everything else! You think you've won something today?" he demanded of Maximus Atom, who was smart enough not to answer the question. "All you've done is show the world what murdering scum the Atom Family are, and how right Parker Psion was! The human herd needs shepherds, and that's exactly what we have to be now! Come on, Argent, we're leaving before they can hurt any more innocent people!" "I..." Argent looked torn, looking from the heroes to her family, and especially at her identical twin; the white-faced, still nearly-silent Aura distinguished from her cousin now by the spatter of blood and gore across her uniform and her face. "No, wait, this doesn't make any sense. These people aren't with the Atoms, and they-" Empath shot a frowning look at her male cousin, and tried to take over. "Then come home with us so everything can make sense, Argent," she said in a voice that nearly made Henry and Kit step forward themselves, "You know who you can trust. You know whose side you're on." Argent nearly stepped forward, then clutched the baby to her chest. "Look, you can have Gimel, but I'm staying here. We can't just run away, we have to figure out what happened! None of this makes any sense, it-" At that point, a variety of things happened - there was a flash of green light in the sky, the returning Tesla Atom, and Jump's watch alarm, an odd moment of mundanity, went off. "There's no time! We'll come back for you!" Jump promised, his eyes taking in Gimel, Argent, and the still-unconscious Ember, "All of you! You have my word as a Psion!" And with that, he grabbed the hands of the other two and they all vanished over Empath's startled exclamation - and they were gone.

One more post from both of you, and fight's over - we are out of initiative.

Maximus gave Kit a searching look for a moment, but then handed her the baby, shirt and all. "All right, we'll keep the kid where they can see it. Too cold down here for a baby anyway, poor little girl." They headed upstairs only to walk into the end of a scene of violence as Argent was blasting a hole in the concrete wall, shouting "No!" The toddler who'd been with her, the brown-eyed boy of maybe two or three, was gone. Wide-eyed, hands still glowing with telekinetic power, she exclaimed, "Jump took Alef! He just popped in and took him! Why would he...why is everyone trying to take the babies?!" she demanded, advancing on Maximus and Kit. "Hold on, hold on, did he say anything?" Maximus demanded. "Anything at all? He's on our side." "Yeah, he said I should fly up and meet him on the roof; that it was time for us to go!" She blinked, and added, "I can carry both of you there! Come on, let's go." Up in the sky overhead, another punch knocked Ember unconscious entirely - the pyrokinetic's flames snuffing themselves as she fell from the sky, right into Solar Sentinel's arms. Up close, with the flames out, she was a pretty woman in her mid-twenties with deeply tanned skin, her orange hair closer to brown with the flames out. Flying down, Solar Sentinel could see a large group forming on the roof - he could easily pick out Jump and Aura, as well as the woman who had to be Empath, clutching a squirming toddler in her arms.

APPROVED

Tomorrow looked surprised, but not at all displeased, at her readiness to join him in the machine - the look on his face was like a collector finding the one other person in the world who shared his hobby. Once they were inside the machine, he in the front and her in the jumpseat in the back, he handed her a pair of red goggles to match his own, one that stretched to fit right over her suit. "We are traveling forward in time nearly one and a half million years!" he told her dramatically, punctuating the date like an old-fashioned melodramatic radio announcer. He reached down and slid a series of three lightbars on the console sideways, and a thrilling low rumble of energy shot through the temporal craft. "Past the age of the Legion! Past the Terran Unity!" The canopy overhead had turned opaque as soon as Sunset sat down, but the consoles near Sam showed her what was happening outside - a vision of images of Freedom City, flashing by far too fast to make narrative sense of; a city rising to the sky in crystal spires, that same city burning and wrecked, a mighty forest,and then another city built on top of that. "Past the great hypernova! Past the Age of Ascension!" The thrumming whine of energy seemed to be slowing. "A million years since your departure...we are entering the era of the Great Bombardment," he told Sam seriously. "Do you know the star Gliese 710? In this age it has entered the Kuiper Belt of your Solar System and deflected comets into the inner Solar System. The civilizations of previous eras might have deflected them, but this is...not a priority for the current population of the Solar System," he said carefully. The screens outside showed Sam a dark-skied landscape that looked very little like her own Freedom City; a rocky, snow-covered and tree-covered landscape studded with the ruins of great buildings that towered dozens of stories high. It looked more like Alaska than New Jersey. "But things are getting better! The great bombardment has ended and the winters have begun to die down. This is a new age for Earth, an age of growth and life. If we are successful, that is."

Badass: APPROVED

Hey Tony, I've cleaned some things up, like the skills and the grapple. His Enhanced STR seems different in the powers section than the abilities section. Getting it up to STR 26 (+8) would make him PL 10, which is definitely what you want. You should add the range of his ESP.

V: Physical Sciences: Your sensors are still fried - but that time machine you saw looked really crude and badly built, as if it was built for a one-way trip. You're not surprised there was enough chroniton leakage to affect you and the other heroes. Frankly, it's lucky the machine worked at all, or that it didn't explode! It looked like the kind of machine that somebody with the resources of someone like Litwack might have had to build. History: Nothing there (the DC was 15...) Might be worth rolling for the rest of folks!.

"I will await your return!" declaimed Tomorrow. "But be quick, if you please - while time is usually a luxury we chrononauts have in ample quantity, today the very fate of a forgotten future lies within our hands! Thank you for your assistance, Sam Soma! And to you as well!" he added, evidently addressing an invisible form who just might have been The Radical. "History has judged Sunset fairly!" He waited patiently for Sunset to don her costume, leaving his time machine behind to stand and study her bookshelf with fascination. Free of his machine, he really did look as though someone had sculpted the perfect Nordic superman and put him in a skintight costume and inside a time machine. Upon her return, he said "Magnificent! I-...am I coming on too strongly?" he suddenly asked, his pale cheeks coloring a bright shade of pink. "It has been many subjective years since I was in the 2010s and I may have grown rusty with your means of communication."