Avenger Assembled

Hestia "The hearth cannot be moved!" Abilities: 0 + 0 + 14 + 0 + 4 + 4 = 22 pp STR 10 (+0) DEX 10 (+0) CON 24 (+7) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 8 + 8 = 16 pp ATK: +4 (+10 Divine Power) DEF: +5 (+1 Dodge, +4 Base, +2 flat-footed) Init: +0 Grapple: +4 Knockback: -12 Saves: 0 + 5 + 8 = 13 pp TOU +15 (+7 Con, +8 Protection) FORT +7 (+7 Con) REF +5 (+0 Ref, +5) WILL +10 (+2 Wis, +8) Skills: 13 pp=52 r Craft (Cooking) 8 (+10) Diplomacy 12 (+14) Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) 4 (+4) Medicine 8 (+10) Languages 2 (English, Latin, Base: Attic Greek) Notice 6 (+8) Sense Motive 12 (+14) Feats: 9 pp Dodge Focus Interpose Luck Move-By Action Second Chance 2 (Medicine checks, Sense Motive checks) Ultimate Skill 2 (Craft [Cooking], Sense Motive) Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 6 + 41 + 2 + 3 + 10 + 8 + 3 + 4 = 77 pp Comprehend 3 (speak and understand any language, anyone who hears you can understand you) [6PP] Divine Power Array 17 (34 pp, PFs: Accurate 3, Alternate Powers 4) [41PP] BE: Blast 10 (ever-burning hearth, Extra: Duration [Concentration], PFs: Improved Crit, Indirect 2, Precise) {34/34} AP: Healing 10 (Hestia's mercy, Extra: Restorative; PFs: Persistent, Regrowth) {32/34} AP: Paralyze 10 ("Behave yourselves!", Extras: Area [General, Burst], Linked [Trip, +0]; Flaw: Range [Touch], PF: Precise) + Trip 10 (Extras: Area [General, Burst], Linked [snare], Flaw: Range [Touch], PF: Improved Trip) {32/34} AP: Snare 10 ("into the hearth with you!", Extra: Constricting, PFs: Improved Crit 2) {32/34} AP: Stun 10 ("go to sleep!" Extra: Range [Perception], Flaw: Sense-Dependent [Auditory], PFs: Sedation, Variable Descriptor 1 [pain/sleep]) {32/34} Flight 1 (10 MPH, 100 fpm) [2PP] Immunity 3 (aging, disease, poison) [3PP] Impervious TOU 10 [10PP] Protection 8 [8PP] Regeneration 1 (Resurrection 1/week) (PFs: Persistent, Regrowth) [3PP] Super-Senses 4 (Detect Physical Condition 3 [visual] (Enhancement: Analytical)) [4PP] costs abilities 22+ combat 16 + saves 13 + skills 13/52 + feats 9 + powers 77 = 150 pts --------------------------------- Design Notes: One of my favorite superhero comics, PS238, includes a character who is an incarnation of the Greco-Roman goddess Hestia (Vesta to her friends). PS238's Hestia is there to illustrate how the titular superschool trains people with superpowers not really suitable for combat. Being the goddess of the hearth and home, Hestia's powers are more domestic in nature, though she is able to assure her teacher that she will one day find a husband and have many strong children with him. But that got me thinking; what would a Hestia built as a conventional superhero look like? Hestia was always the most likable and humble of the Olympian pantheon, and so she would plausibly be heroic even in the Freedom City setting where most Olympians, well, let's just say they stick pretty close to their standard mythological characterization. The hook to hang this build on, of course, is Hestia's mastery of the hearth. Of fire. She can summon ever-burning flames with a gesture or, if she's suitably wroth, summon a burning hearth to pin a target inside its cheery flames! She can also make household guests behave by knocking them to their feet, or put particular ne'er-do-wells down for the count with a word. She's a nice person and a good hostess, with the social skills to run a household of Olympians and tend the wounds of her teammates, both with and without her powers. She can welcome anyone in the door. She's not much for the kind of physical confrontations that her more martial brothers and sisters are all about, but she can take massive hits and (more importantly) take them for others. Good things to do might involve buying up her Charisma and adding Combat Diplomacy, so she really can talk down rampaging monsters before she has to resort to setting them ablaze. This works fine as a Hestia summoned to Earth to battle wrongdoers (perhaps to stave off some plot of her brother Hades), or as perhaps a demigod with only a portion of her mother's power. Since Hestia is supposed to be a virgin goddess like her sister Artemis, perhaps there's a very real reason why such a character has grown up on Earth and not on Olympus...

Edge walked as close to the edge of the leaking rim of the volcano as he could, feeling his costume start to heat up and his shoes stick slightly to the superheated rocks beneath his feet. He took a moment to stand there and stare, feeling the heat rising from the ever-active volcano overwarming his skin like standing outside on a bright summer day at the Equator, feeling the rumble of the volcano and thinking about where he was and why he was there. From the depths of the Terminus to dimensions overrun by radioactive Nazis, a good old-fashioned volcano still had the power to move him. And melt me! Better not mess around with this guy. "Okay, Boreas," he called, "start cooling!" The weather controller hadn't asked how Mark was going to patch the hole, which was good because Mark wasn't exactly sure how it worked either! All he knew was what happened when he wanted it to happen; a silvery-grey metal began flowing over and down into the lavaflow, glowing slightly but not melting as it gradually began to replace the lava inside the crack. "I'm patching the hole with tungsten!" he called up to Boreas, "it's something that doesn't melt inside lava! Aw man, that would be a cool power...I mean, anyway, make sure you're keeping the lake itself cold and sluggish, so it'll melt around the tungsten and plug it up instead of just pushing it all the way out!"

"Oh, they probably won't bother with their robes here," said Thinks-and-Eats. "But you'll know them if you see any with heads like his," he said with a nod towards Wail. "They pluck their feathers as proof of their devotion to the Bringer." The raptor party was, in itself, surprisingly recognizable. Children played with something shaped like a four-legged animal, laughing as they tumbled all over each other to try and get the treats that were spilling out now with every blow, while adults watched the kids play, laughing and taking pictures with big old-fashioned flash cameras. Behind them were triangular buffet tables laden with snacks and adults sitting at round ones, some socializing, some eating, while a big bronze sculpture of the family matriarch loomed over everything in the shadow of the big house. At the sight of the new arrivals, the crowd's heads came up as one - like so many hawks hearing a disturbance, they raised scaled and feathered heads to study the humanoid intruders. "I have brought the mammal heroes of Earth!" called Thinks-and-Eats ebulliently as he practically bounded in the air with glee. "They are my guests!" It was also, of course, an alien scene - those children, raptors the size of kindergarteners, were jumping and leaping at what looked like some sort of four-legged mammal that had once been alive. The smiling adults bore sharp teeth in long, scaly mouths, and the buffet tables behind them were equally laden with wet, red and brown meat. Unlike the car seats, the tables bore the occasional hole in the surrounding benches that seemed to be designed to accomodate particularly bountiful raptor tails. The sculpture that loomed overhead was another raptor, a heroic version of the small, knobbly-bodied old raptor sitting surrounded by young, sturdy-looking companions, the statue and raptor missing an arm and bearing instead what looked like a deep burn scar over the spot. On the other side of the 'pinata' field, some even smaller younglings were sitting with adults, watching a puppetmaster put on a show about T-Rexes and raptors against a futuristic city overrun with trees. One familiar face approached them that they could all recognize - the Commander of the expedition that had come to Earth-Prime was as imposing as ever, for all that she had drawn herself up to loom over little Thinks. "Well, this is an interesting display of your manly prowess, boy," she said with a raspy laugh before she politely exposed the back of her head to the visitors. "Welcome to the First City of the Empire. I must admit, I never thought I'd see any of _you_ again. These are the mammals I have been speaking of!" she added, raising her voice to the rest of the party guests. "Proof that Raptorkind is not alone in the multiverse! That not every word spoken in the Bringer's texts is true!" And this time, when the bravest in the crowd headed towards them, the curiosity in their eyes wasn't exactly predatory. Not _exactly_, anyway.

"Oh, sure, he can make ice, he can make steam, he can do anything with any state of water," said Edge affably, "he...oh." Picking up on Midnight's meaning, Edge shot a glance over at the waterfront, where Nina was flying around from sibling to sibling, organizing the al-Darsah family's protection of the bay. "Yeah, yeah," he said with a nod Midnight's way. "The only thing that's strange to me is that if he killed this, this thing, a giant, a god, whatever," he said with a gesture at the mountain-sized corpse, "you'd think he'd be right there!" Despite himself, his voice had fallen into a whisper, albeit loud enough for the other heroes to hear. "Waving the heart around like he's the champion...but that would explain where all the blood went," he said with a nod to Wander. "I don't know anything about magic," he went on to Cannonade, "but..." Mark was interrupted, however, when a giant flamed into existence on the chest of the fallen god - tall as a football field, with a massive goatee, ponytail, and red harem pants and vest, flame made an outline of the ifreet as he called in a voice that reached the edge of the docks where the heroes waited. "I AM AL-SHAHADA, FLAME-SHADOW MESSENGER OF THE GODS OF ALLAT! I HAVE COME TO SUMMON WITNESSES FOR THE TRIAL OF MUHAMMAD AL-DARSAH, THE MORTAL TYPHOON!" "Oh, crap, Nina!" Mark vanished in an instant, reappearing across the bay to try and talk his girlfriend down before the al-Darsah family went for the divine messenger!

The shining knight was the perfect choice for Peter Evans to see as he awoke, the wide-eyed, pale-faced and thin-cheeked man looking up at Steve as if unsure if he was going to be saved or damned for what had happened in Blackwater. "Ye have returned to the land of the living, Peter Evans," he told the former patient seriously, "The one you seek will be with you soon." Your sister...For a moment, Steve was lost, out of character as Peter himself sat up and looked around the airplane, looking first at the shining knight Caradoc, then at Thresher, still in his costume, and at the medical staff on the plane. How could he tell this man of the love he felt for his sister, of the broken man and the broken woman who had found each other in the shining world of peace that was Earth-Prime? Perhaps it was better, with all these people around, that he could say nothing at all. "Come, let us go," he urged Thresher as he heard movement inside the plane, "the one he has lost has come for him." And with that, perhaps out of sympathy for another's plight, or perhaps because he was just looking for the liberated members of his own team, Thresher joined Caradoc in exiting the plane. "And you as well! Go, go!" Shining knight or not, there was a darker iron in the urgency in Steve's voice. Still recovering from their brief bout with mind control, the rest of the medical staff left the plane too. Once outside, pushing himself beyond the limits of his usual withdrawn nature, Steve borrowed a radio to announce "Cavalier and Cobalt Templar, I will await...ye, on yon runway."

"Let's go!" said Edge with a boom in his voice. "Adventure awaits!" And with that, he took Boreas' hand - And they reappeared in scene like Hell itself! They stood on the slopes of a barren mountain that rose hundreds of feet above Boreas' head and stretched hundreds of feet below, a low, omnipresent rumble and cloud of billowing smoke rising from the peak showing that they were indeed on the slopes of one of the many volcanic peaks of the ever-active Erta Ale. It was dawn here where it had been after midnight in Freedom City, the star-dappled sky showing great handfuls of glowing orbs so far from the pollution of the city...if you didn't dwell too much on the volcanic plumes of smoke, barren mountain slopes, and strange, rugged desert that stretched as far as Boreas could see. "All right, you take to the air, I'll head for the volcano!" said Edge cheerfully, looking unphased by the exotic circumstances. He slowly trudged his way up, making his way along a rugged path cut by previous geological expeditions. "You've got your Claremont commlink, right?"

For his part, Mark wasn't above a little worry about the whole plan. Calling up and asking if there were any new weather controllers in the Claremont student body had been an impulsive act, and he'd been a little surprised when Mr. Summers (which he had to admit was what he would call the former headmaster in his head, probably forever) had agreed. But maybe the old man thought Boreas needed the guidance that came from doing service work in the larger superhero community; maybe he thought that Claremont students needed more job training before they went off to college...it was hard to tell! Either way, at a half-hour after midnight there was a gentle knock on Boreas' door - Edge had long since learned, after several attempts, that nobody liked having teleporters just show up in their bedroom.

"Right now, I'm going to take you back to Freedom City so you can make your classes. Tonight, I'm going to stop by and pick you up half an hour after midnight," replied Edge, glancing down at the old-fashioned wristwatch he wore. "That'll be a little after dawn Ethiopian time. Coolest part of the day, best time to do this kind of work. I'll brief you once we're out there. Make sure you bring a water bottle of your own. Just in case our powers fail, we don't want to get stuck out there in the desert with nothing but our costumes on, right?" He grinned, looking unruffled at the prospect. "But I'm sure between the two of us, we'll do just fine. Do you want to go straight back to Claremont?" he asked, "or back to where you were on patrol?"

"All right, well, that will work the best for what we want to do." Not wanting to dazzle the kid with the super-science they had available at UNISON (even that was less than what he'd probably run into if he was active in Freedom City long enough), Mark turned on his computer and opened up some images. "This volcano is called Erta Ale. It's one of the most active volcanoes in the world." The display showed Boreas a volcano that, unlike the ones he'd seen in the movies, seemed placed in a crater in the ground rather than towering over the landscape. "It generally doesn't erupt, but it does have one of the largest lava lakes in the world." He showed Boreas that image too and said, "There was an earthquake there recently, and there was some damage to one of the crater walls. I don't really follow the science," he admitted, "but in layman's terms, I need to go in and put a patch on the crater wall so that the lava doesn't spill out into that valley. The Afar people who live near the mountain, they have enough troubles, they don't need a wall of lava crushing their villages," he said as if that sort of thing happened every day. "So you don't need to go into the volcano, or even get that near it; you just need to get the air cool enough around the summit so that I can get close to do my work."

Thinks-and-Eats explained on the way, the hovercar phut-phutting along noticeably low to the ground once Wail was finally on board. He had a teenager's excitement as he spoke, obviously still thrilled to have the human (and otherwise) heroes there. "What we'll do first is we'll all go in and we'll socialize, and that will be...will be fun." He shook his long, pointed head like a dog shaking off water, his scaly fingers wrapped around the rubberized metal of the steering wheel. "It will mostly be people talking about things, like the holiday that's coming up, and how big Runs-With-Fangs-Bared is getting. She's the best hunter in our whole class, and she's sure to go to the warriors academy once she's an adult. She's just, she's just awesome, is what she is." Along the way, they passed through streets that were at once eerily familiar and terribly alien. The raptors had paved roads dotted with hovercars, but left their sidewalks unpaved, small packs of skittering hunters running back and forth on packed dirt beneath artificially planted giant ferns, the forest of skyscrapers above their heads a counterpoint to the natural ferns between sky and car. The raptors generally moved in packs of one or two smaller ones leading two or three larger ones. "So," he said curiously to Erin and Min, with the air of a smart kid who'd learned a new fact to wow his guests, "I understand human females give birth to their young live! That's very interesting!" Moving on from that subject, he cleared his throat with a scaly hiss as outside a small raptor bought something small and wriggling from a street vendor and tossed it to the bigger ones behind her, the large males seeming to laugh as they tore into the guinea pig-sized animal. "Anyway, ah, all you will have to do is be my guests. No one is going to try and eat you," he reassured them, "since that's not acceptable in a Fangs-Beared household. Commander Feeds-With-Rampant-Fangs-Bared will want to talk to you first, since you are surprise guests, but since you all have gifts, there will be no problem. Unless there is a problem! But that will be from the Orthodoxy clerics, not from anyone there," he added reassuringly. "They don't think humans are as good as people, but I know you guys are great," he said reassuringly. "If they serve food, you should ask for what Slayer-of-Machines-With-Fangs-Bared eats," he said, "she is the oldest of the family, and she has to eat her food dead and cooked all the time," he went on, sounding very sympathetic. As he talked, they pulled up in front of a large, round house cast in shades of purple, a mansion-sized dwelling that was obviously the home of the Fangs-Bared clan. The house itself stood on a nearly bare hillside, resting in the shade of those tall ferns that seemed to be favored in lieu of trees locally. He pulled up to the drop where the road became packed earth and rolled down his tinted window, pulling out keys and tossing them to a surprised-looking uniformed raptor who must have been the local valet. "They're with ME," he hissed with great pride, stretching out to his full height as they stepped out in front of the gates. As the iron structure swung open, the heroes could hear strange hissing, growling noises from behind the house, but their guide seemed unworried. "That's the early party, for the little ones."

"Oh, sure, I know how it is," said Mark seriously. "You never know who might be after you for your secret identity." He pulled his mask back down and faced Boreas, remembering again what it was like to be that young. Geez, just four years ago, Mark, he chided himself. Of course, a lot had happened since then. "To make a long story short, I've had an emergency come up that needs the services of a weather controller. Normally I'd go to one of the weather controllers who works here at UNISON, but right now they're all tied up on different missions. I don't need anything fancy; what I need is someone who can continuously keep temperatures at Arctic levels even in a desert during summer." He sat on his desk and looked at the younger man, unconsciously emulating some of his old teachers back at Claremont. "Now, I've cleared it with Mr, er, with Duncan Summers, so you'll be able to get away for the Labor Day weekend. But this is big stuff - you will be doing hero work outside the United States, and it will probably be an overnighter. Are you comfortable with that?"

"Sure. Take my hand and hang on just a second." Edge extended that firm hand to Boreas again, and when the younger man took it they both simply went away just as the megaphone had. When the lights came back on, they were in a small office looking over a city Boreas didn't recognize and a lake beyond it, with mountains rising just beyond the lake itself. The sun had seemed to move overhead, now settling in the west to reveal a lovely, mountain-dappled sunset. "Welcome to Switzerland!" said Edge cheerfully, clapping Boreas on the back before he took a seat behind what was evidently his desk. "This is my office in UNISON. You've learned about that, right?" Boreas had; UNISON was the UN agency that hired people with superpowers. "I do a lot of different stuff around here." The office itself was actually pretty sparse for someone like Edge, with just a cuckoo clock on the wall, a couple of books and a desktop computer, and a picture hanging on the wall of a whitebread suburban family - middle-aged father, younger wife, and son. "First, let me introduce myself." He pulled back his mask to reveal blonde hair and a perfect tan, and smiled with white teeth at Boreas. "I don't really worry about a secret identity with other superpeople, especially not people from Claremont. I'm Mark Lucas."

As far as Midnight can tell, whatever force drew the heart out of the body was being wielded by something much smaller than the corpse - from the extreme downward angle of its exit, perhaps no smaller than a man. It was by something tentacled and cold from the frost marks big enough to hide city buses all around the wound; something cold indeed, like the icy darkness of the Schattenwelt, or maybe the icy cold from the very bottom of the sea.

"That's me," said the blue and gold-clad man, reaching over to pump the teenager's hand with a firm politician's grip. For a half a moment, Mark remembered being sixteen - four years, a lifetime earlier. Geez, are all the new Claremont kids this young? "Listen, do you have time to talk?" They were high up, and Edge lacked the flight that kept Boreas up, but seemed utterly unafraid as he stood high above the river below. He made a little gesture, like shaking something off his hand, and the megaphone he'd been holding neatly faded into nothingness as it if had never been there at all. "I have an interest in people who go to my, er, alma mater." Not for the first time, he wished Claremont had had a sports team. Marcie probably had it much easier in conversations like this, with her involvement in the cheer squad. "And I might have a part-time job for you."

August 25, 2013 Pramas Bridge Between Riverside and Bayview It was probably a good day to be a weather controller, Edge decided. It was sunny, but not too sunny; warm, but not too warm. Hopefully that meant the guy he was there to meet would be interested in a little field trip. Standing fearlessly on top of the bridge's tallest super-structure, blue and gold cape fluttering in the breeze, Edge raised a megaphone to his lips and shouted up at the flying man overhead. "Hey! Boreas! Hello! Come on down!" He waved his free hand vigorously, heedless of the tremendous drop to the busy roadway below. It was a beautiful day; what could happen. Looking down, Boreas could clearly see Edge, the famous young hero with the good reputation and somewhat ill-defined superpowers, standing on top of a bridge piling hundreds of feet above the roadway below and trying to get his attention.

All around town, the weeping quieted. A moment later, there was talking - shouts, exclamations of fear and joy, but from the sound and look of things whatever hold Peter Evans had had over the people of Blackwater (and surrounding parts of Cooper County) had been lifted. By the bridge, Stormchaser and Casey Jones paused in mid-confrontation with Cavalier and Cobalt Templar. Experienced heroes that they were, they seemed to understand the situation without it having to be explained to them. Their first thought was not for themselves, but for their teammate. "Aw, jeez, Thresher!" exclaimed Stormchaser, shooting a wild look at Casey Jones. "They were right on top of him when we-" She did indeed have an accent much less thick than the locals here in rural Missouri. "He'll be fine," said Casey Jones reassuringly, "that young man has a lot of spark in him." He turned to Cavalier and Cobalt Templar and said, "Thank you, both, for making sure we didn't do any further damage." He smiled thinly. "This isn't the first time this has happened, but it never gets any easier. My colleague and I are going to reassure the townspeople that everything's all right now." And with that, he and Stormbreaker took off, heading for Blackwater's small city hall where they could more easily be seen by the crowd on the street. ----- The scene was much the same at the Evans house; people seeming to awaken from a light sleep with dreams of what they'd done, adults hugging their kids and each other as they took stock of the changed circumstances, kids happily embracing their restored parents. Tears and all, it was a happier scene than most of those that Gina had seen in her childhood. A startled Irons looked at Miss A then said, his eyes wide, "I...I gave a pretty heavy barbituate dose to the Evans parents. I'd better go check on their condition," said the doctor, grabbing protectively at the little black bag he'd been carrying before turning and almost running inside the crowded house. It was about that time that Steve's familiar voice came over Miss A's radio, broadcasting again through the plane. "The affliction has released who it held on the plane. And Peter Evans has awakened."

"You know what? I'm not interested in exploring whatever twisted world these people have made for themselves. Let's get in there and kick their butts. As far as I'm concerned, they sold their soul to the Devil and now they're sore because the place smells like sulfur. Grab on, everybody." Normally Mark wasn't quite so dogmatic, but these were Nazis and really powerful, earth-shakingly powerful Nazis to boot. He reached over and took Cannonade's hand, waiting until everyone had grabbed on before suddenly they were elsewhere - in this case, directly before the gate of that flickering castle, the air briefly crackling with a surge of wild magical energy like a massive lightning strike. "Hey!" Mark yelled. "I'm here to fumigate!"

"It was not us," said Frost, feeling an unaccustomed flicker of guilt. What was it about the woman that made her so maternal even when she was so many decades his junior? Feh. "He simply...murdered himself. The fool." He wasn't that worried by the accusations; even Fleur wouldn't think he'd break a corpse's neck instead of freezing it, and Tiamat would surely have smashed the body to ribbons if she'd been suitably wroth. Hmm, now there was an image. He looked disgustedly at the corpse, then said to the others, "In any event, one of us needs to be on the surface to see what is happening. I will go." With that, he billowed as a white cloud up the tunnel Gaian Knight had dug up towards the surface where Fleur had come from. He couldn't fly particularly fast, as he knew from long experience, but he could certainly outpace even a running man. Within a minute, perhaps two, he had boiled up onto the surface to see what was what, solidifying again so he could use his communicator.

I have no beef with the font! APPROVED

APPROVED

Sorry for the delay - using Environmental Control to make it uncomfortably (i.e., Fort save uncomfortably) cold - this is intense cold, which I believe is a DC 10 Fort save to avoid 1 point of temporary Con damage. A non-bystander will probably make that save easily, but OTOH it will probably be uncomfortable and might provoke them!

Frost walked into the room with a signal to the other heroes to wait outside, his misty body forming up again into the parka-clad Russian hero. "If you are in here, you should come out," he said out loud as he began to pace the perimeter of the room, the air in the room beginning to get colder and colder, until the breath of the warm-blooded heroes outside began to steam up in billowing clouds. "I can freeze so cold that your feet will slip on ice and your lungs will fill with frost...if you have any lungs, that is," he said with a red-eyed wink. "Otherwise I shall simply freeze and freeze until you are all ice and snow and blow away on the wind..." He wasn't sure if his strategy would work; he'd fought a great number of entities that were depressingly immune to his powers. If this one was, well, he was tough, hard to embarrass, and old to boot, and would come through just fine.

Once everyone was inside the white circle, an animated Thinks-and-Eats called out "Ready to go!" What followed was something novel. The universe, or at least the portions of it that were the sky, the parking lot, and the surrounding visitors center, seemed to stretch as if it were taffy being pulled by invisible hands, pulled so tight that everything outside the chalk circle took on the appearance of first stretched taffy, then spaghetti-like distortions stretching off into infinity, before there was a sudden SNAP - When there was light again, their little asphalt circle had moved to the center of a high-tech laboratory very much like one at HAX, some rooms in the Midnight Manor, or like some of the many labs Wail had seen over his long career. None of the heroes who'd come along on the mission were technicians themselves, but they could tell there was something 'retro' about this laboratory - there were crackling Jacob's Ladders and flasks of colored liquid labeled with curly, unreadable writing, and instead of computers there were electric typewriters surrounded by columns of paper. The room was big, but low-ceilinged, small enough that it "Hello there, hello there!" came a hissing voice from the other side of the big room, and from behind a tower of wired-together transitors covered with push-button switches came Thinks-and-Eats. The raptor padded up to the group, keeping his head pointed down as he made his approach. "You made it, hooray! I knew I could do it!" He made a hissing sound that was a laugh, peeking up with a cocked head like a bird. Up close the dinosaur was a little shabbier-looking than the proud warriors they'd seen before, smaller and a little plumper, with a rear leg that dragged behind him slightly as he skittered about the circle. "You are all here! Good good, good good!" Outside, through a thick curved window, the heroes could see a red clay road winding down a narrow hill towards a city in the distance, the yellow sun and blue sky looking just like Earth. Only a faint purple cast to the distant buildings, as if a skyscraper had been lightly painted royal colors, suggested they weren't in Kansas anymore. They looked to be about as far from the city as they had been from Freedom back home. What looked like a waterless hovercraft was sitting on a rocky hillside just outside the window, and the round door built into the wall next to it. When he stopped in front of Wail, he was about the size of one of Keith's younger students. "Let's go! I have a cargo hovercar that I can drive!"

Fleur de Joie: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>> > Wander: > > Miss A: >

Comrade Frost: > > Harrier: > '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>> Edge: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>