Avenger Assembled

"On it, babe," said Richard with a grin. He was dressed, complete with costume and leather jacket, faster than the eye could see - and with a little help from him, Paige herself was in costume before a woman who wasn't married to a speedster could have gotten out of bed. He took the eyeblink time to actually get the story from her mentally before they left the house, having long since learned the problems with rushing off into danger without proper communication. Geez, poor kid. Maybe we're lucky and the doughnut squad out there doesn't know Spanish when they hear it or something...For all Richard's feelings about the police, though, he was pretty sure that wasn't the case. With the conversation done, he took Paige's hand and stepped outside, and together, as they'd been doing for over twenty years now, Fast-Forward and Hologram ran. It was a second's run across the Narrows to Kingston, only taking that long because Fast-Forward needed to briefly pause to make sure his memory of Freedom City geography was up-to-date: a lot of Kingston had been built up again after 1993! Smooth glass water under their feet, a brief suggestion of small houses and suburban streets, and they were at the front door of the police station. He pecked her on the cheek and said, "Just get me when you need me, and I'll be back here. Love you!" And with that he was gone again into the Freedom City night, with only Paige's connection to his mind letting her follow the now-impossibly fast trip back across the river.

Across town Not long after midnight By after midnight in the Cline household, Holly was long since in bed, and her parents, who were no spring chickens themselves, were in bed as well and winding down with the promise of work in the morning. Despite Richard's speed, Paige was the one who picked up the smartphone first - after all, she was reaching for it even before it started ringing. He looked up from his Book as the conversation began. "Paige Cline? Hello, this is the Freedom City Police Department. We need a psychic's services for an investigation in Kingston as soon as possible and yours is the first name on our contact list. Are you available?" Knowing he had all the time in the world, Richard went back to the book. The light of Corvus, known as Gienah or Gamma Corvi, will cleanse ungodly lies and deceit from the world, but must be summoned carefully lest it cast a terrible thirst on all who burn beneath the Light of Truth...

The police took the still-incomprehensible woman away, bringing the heroes along to get their story and so they could offer what aid they could in this grim situation. In the back of the cruiser, she continued to speak in that incomprehensible language, proving even unable to write in anything other than a florid script that reminded Corbin of Iron Age northern European woodcuts he'd seen: the only thing that came through clearly were occasional clear words like "cops" and "superheroes" and "pizza!" when they went by a neighborhood pizza joint. Kingston Police Sub-Station #8 wasn't exactly equipped to deal with superheroes, but they did have the resources to fingerprint the patchwork-looking young woman. The two superheroes in the small police station attracted a lot of attention; even in hero-rich Freedom City, there wasn't much call for their work out in the suburbs. But the officers were professional, especially with a subdued kidnapping victim in their company. Officer George Peterson, the officer who'd escorted them in, a mustachioed man in his mid-forties, looked up in surprise as the computer beeped. "Tonya? Tonya Morris?" Their victim looked up and exclaimed "Géa! Mec!" before launching into another stream of incomprehensible words. While a kindly older female officer took Tonya aside for some coffee and to contact her family on her behalf, Peterson took the two heroes aside to explain the situation. "Tonya Morris disappeared just after her shift at the Bayview Five Guys last night. If her parents hadn't called it in right away, we might not be looking yet, but we take MP seriously in Freedom City. She's nineteen, going to school at Freedom CC, never been in trouble with the law." He laid a thin file on the station's desk, then looked at Stronghold and Cobalt Templar before saying, "Tonya Morris is a native English speaker who I bet doesn't know a word of...whatever that is. And there's another thing..." He held up a picture of what looked like a high school graduation. The girl in the picture with her bright blue eyes, kinky black hair, and mahogany skin looked almost nothing like the girl they'd found in the woods - it took a close examination to reveal the identical facial features under the off-color eye, the lengthened hair, and the skin bleached chalk-white. "Look, you two are the heroes," he was starting to say, "If that's some kind of Grue in there, or a space robot, I need to get my people out so you can take this lady down..."

Init: Temperance: 21 (+1 HP for being a victim of circumstance!) Monster: 15 Temperance is up.

Archived

Archived - bummer!

Archived

Archived

Archived

Archived

Archived

Archived. =(

archived at player request

Archived due to inactivity

Archived due to inactivity

Archived due to inactivity.

Roll(1d20)+7: 12,+7 Total:19 They are shaken and disrupted and put at -3 for subsequent rolls... Roll(1d20)+7: 15,+7 Total:22 And with that, they are all stunned! Okay, group 3 is down

Roll(1d20)+13: 13,+13 Total:26 He passes the Tou save, even with the Autofire bonus! OK, go ahead and roll your initiative, then post, and we'll start formal combat.

The young woman stared at Cobalt Templar for a long moment, then shouted, "Fleardum! Loðrungum! Uncer wédenheortu!" before turning to Stronghold, who evidently looked like a more familiar face. She shouted "Fullæstum! Cwæ!" again, and when she saw the same lack of understanding, her white face crumpled. She looked down at her hands and seemed to find them terribly alarming, thrusting them in the heroes' faces as she yelled, "Hwa me álamp! Mec ferðeas!" All the shouting and superheroing had attracted the attention of the local cops, and a black and white cruiser with its lights flashing pulled up at the edge of the little park. At the sight of the cops, the young woman yelled in perfect English with a distinct Freedom City accent "Cops!" before turning and running towards the cruiser.

All right. Nobody speaks the language being spoken, so it is a mystery - and Temperance did not recognize the identity of the monster chasing her! We will use stats for my own Mystic Giant, with an ice rather than fire theme and with Flight 3. The ice eagle-giant gets Roll(1d20)+3: 12,+3 Total:15 15 on his initiative.

December 7, 2013 Kingston Midnight "Fullæstum! Cwæ, fullæstum mec!" The cry was coming from a deserted stretch of half-grown forest near a recent development as Cobalt Templar and Stronghold flew overhead, and as the ring-bearing sentinels flew low they soon found the source of the cry - a young woman about Corbin's apparent age, with long black hair cascading down her back and nearly chalk-white skin. Her clothes were a mess, a torn and slashed fast-food worker's uniform exposing half-healed wounds beneath as if she'd been attacked by a wild animal. Her eyes were the most striking; one an almost brilliant blue, the other a deep shade of purest black. When she caught sight of the descending heroes, she ran towards them, her eyes wide and her voice a scream. "Ellefnee, brega! Ic wédenheortu!" - December 7, 2013 Lincoln 1 AM Temperance was on patrol when the giant landed on the roof opposite her - there was no other way to describe the man-shaped, eagle-headed and magnificently-winged creature that towered at least twice her father's height as it pointed a taloned fist at her and spoke. The words were chilling like a winter squall, cold and wet as they slapped against her skin, the giant's voice like an avian shriek in an alien tongue. "Drýicge, for anlécas, ærfæder - Cume æt mec, or ic ábær ðu!" It shouted the words again, shaking those mighty wings, as it came closer and closer. Up close, she could feel the celestial chill that rose from those great wings, and see the ice that rimed the massive feathers - it was reaching for her, all right, as if planning to scoop her up into the night sky from which it had soundlessly come!

The heroes got their instructional video on their second day of training, a low-quality image that looked to be a phone-shot video of a broadcast on somebody's big screen TV. It showed four people in vaguely Greco-Roman dress, engaged in vigorous melee combat in a multi-tiered, scenery-heavy arena against a roaring half-man, half-bear that towered at least twelve feet tall. The giant man-bear was nude, save for the big metal collar around his neck, and was a formidable foe - knocking one of the combatants down and bending low to bite through bone with a sickening crunch - the pause gave another of the gladiators time to drive their blade through its head and kill it, but it was still a grim scene. Between the morbidly upbeat announcer and the interstitial clips with fighter interviews and stats, it was pretty clear this was an experienced, practiced operation - a real multimedia enterprise of murder and crime. Not actually Agrius. DNAscendent clone. Big monsters, fast kills. Collars have a control effect. Hope you've been practicing. See you soon. -R. In his room, Foreshadow II found that nobody had bothered to empty the trashcan in his attached bathroom - like any good detective, he caught sight of the positive home pregnancy test sitting on top of the pile.

Richard was practically dancing on the balls of his feet by the time his daughter hit the ground floor and he could zip past her, but he was a good dad and didn't let that on to her face - it wasn't good practice to let your kid know when they were bugging you. He'd learned that lesson the first time Will, at two, had figured out the particular shriek that played right on his father's enhanced nervous system. "I never actually met Leeroy Hawke, not to talk to, anyway." he admitted, speaking of the former Turbo-Boost, the sole villain on the school's payroll. "He was based mostly out of New York, and he got a lot more physical with supers than we usually did. He could only hit Mach 1, anyway." "It'll look a lot less lame once you're as old as Will," he added cheerily to his daughter, zipping down to join the family at the breakfast bar. "Just think of all the bragging rights you'll get with your friends, like what's her name, that little Jackson girl?" Holly made a face around her breakfast. "Celia Jackson thinks she really _is_ a fairy princess. No wonder she was the only one who talked to me."

"He's just a second away," Richard reassured his wife as much as himself, "faster if he's been working out. My boy, little supersonic! He'll do fine. And I know he won't miss Christmas, especially not if we have two this year!" He patted Will on the arm, then looked upstairs. "Breakfast is almost ready. I'll go get your sister." It would be easy enough for Paige to 'shout' Holly awake; sometimes the hardest part was making sure there was little enough psychic noise to let the girl rest. But that kind of thing didn't do much for the youngest Cline's peace-of-mind, something that everyone was worried about these days. He turned and zipped up the stairs, coming to a stop outside his daughter's room. Holly had brought her door stuff with her; the picture of Merida over the hand-markered sign. "Holly's Room - Keep Out!", her name spelled out in glitter stickers, and for a moment it was as if nothing had changed. And nothing had, really, nothing important. And yet... "Holly-girl, breakfast!" he called, knocking rat-a-tat-tat on the wood. "I made bacon and eggs, LA-style!"

The front line of the raptor clerics proved rather less formidable than their reputation might have suggested. It wasn't that they acted slowly - as soon as the heroes were inside the cathedral, hissing alarms bellowed from every corner as the raptor emergency sound echoed like an angry alligator's growl. The raptor clerics were fast-moving, aggressive fighters, some bearing the ritual scars and warpaints of their god, others still in what looked like ceremonial robes or military uniforms. (It was very tough to tell, with raptors). They were obviously experienced; the 'civilian' looking dinosaurs, either elderly, young, or herbiverous evacuated cleanly without panic, their escape guarded by the hissing, slashing war-priests with clear signs of long practice. They seemed to focus their attention on Runs-With and Thinks-And-Eats, particularly the former, but she gave as good as she got in the company of the heroes. But despite their best efforts, the raptors didn't seem to make a dent on the heroes - perhaps it was the difficulty that even razor-sharp claws had with bulletproof skin, or the lack of experience with fighting "hideous humanoid man-thingsss!" as one particularly stubborn cleric in gold and green put it as he futilely slashed at Cannonade, but so far the hundred-plus raptor clerics didn't seem to so much as be slowing the heroes down.