Avenger Assembled

VINCE reassured Min that this had come from checking around with his usual network of contacts, albeit from a third party none of the other programs knew. "I figured this was either a time travel thing or those dinosaur ladies again, and this means you don't have to hang out with any of those know-it-all 26th century guys." He winked, and pulled on a distinctly green dinosaur-themed baseball cap complete with what would have been felt fangs on the real thing. "If you see any dinosaur girls good with computers, send them my way, would ya? Cosmic Me knows this whole city full of reptiles and he says some of the ladies really have some bite." - Batsto Village was quiet as the heroes approached it late in the day on the evening of the 16th - the visitors center itself had closed some four hours before sunset and even the cleaners were mostly gone by now. With the doors locked and the woods quiet, it might have been ominous if not for the beautiful sunset to the west and the sound of birds in the air. It was...tranquil. The only sign of anything out of the ordinary was what looked like a white chalk circle drawn in the middle of the deserted parking lot with GUESTS OF RUNS WITH BEARED FANGS PARTY written in an awkward, stubby all-caps, as if by somebody who didn't have a great command of the English language - and maybe by somebody who didn't have hands at all.

Edge appeared in Cannonade's apartment foyer and found no sign of the pugilistic powerhouse. "Hey Joe! You here?" he called, ready with a cover story for his secret identity if someone not in on the 'game' was there. When there was no sign of an answer, he picked up Joe's house phone and called the emergency contact number Cannonade had given the League. There was no point in using his international phone right here in Freedom City, especially not when he was still waiting for a call from Nina to see if maybe her country was overrun by mountain-sized giant corpses. "Hey, Joe?" he said when Joe picked up. "It's Mark. We've got a situation. Can you make it over to the manor immediately? We need to take a little trip to Socotra about a giant corpse. I'm at your apartment, by the way, is that cool? I'm gonna go get our French friend in a minute, if you-know-who hasn't tagged her first."

Cavalier can tell that this beacon's disaster signal was activated by exposure to an incredibly powerful psychic entity not part of the Grue Collective - it's the kind of alarm that would be triggered by encountering a Grue Arcane cell, the Overmind of Luyten 726-8A-Alpha, or some other powerful force. There are probably a very few psychics he's familiar with on Earth with that kind of power, but none likely to be so obvious with their powers as to trigger this kind of alarm.

"The forensics people in Socotra had no idea what was going on," said Mark with a little shrug Trevor's way. "I mean they tried, but they only had a couple of days and anyway..." He winced at the memory. "They don't do that well with independent investigations with the royal family right there." He hmmed. "I was pretty busy when it popped in, but from what I heard, it just...appeared there in the harbor, with the hole in its chest, falling over. We just managed to catch it. It was like it just came out of thin air, and a lot of thin air at that." He shook his head in response to Erin's question. "Nope, I came right here. Socotra's libraries are pretty heavily edited, so I couldn't get much there, and of course they and the League block Internet access to each other. And besides, Nina's _whole_ family is there. Even the ones that don't have diplomatic immunity like her dad, and who still have international arrest warrants. You know what the League can be like sometimes." He smiled thinly. "I may not be super-discreet or anything, but I know people who are." "What worries me," he admitted, folding his arms as he looked at the picture, "is Typhoon going away just before the corpse fell. I mean, sure, he's a killer, but you guys know his record. If he killed a giant, he'd be standing on the dead body and pronouncing it "Dead Giant Day", and maybe organizing a parade, not running and hiding. Nina won't admit it, but she's worried too, she was pretty...ahem. Hey, uh, should I go get Joe and Eve?" he asked suddenly. "We should probably make this a team thing. Yeah, I'll do that. Be right back!" And with that he popped away, leaving the other two to plan for the trip while he rounded up the rest of the Liberty League.

April 4, 2013 Albany Subway Station Freedom City The deed was done and the heroes had returned triumphant, rescuing dozens of people from extra-dimensional enslavement in a world cast like a mockery of their own planet's grim past. The Freedom League was already working to strengthen the world's magical defenses with the help of magically inclined independent heroes; and the castaway from FLSCH that Caradoc had crossed dimensional boundaries to rescue was back home with his delighted lover. Steve had gone back to Gina, told the story of exactly what had happened to his Caradoc emitter, and promised to avoid deliberately standing under showers of molten steel "to prove some kind of ridiculous point". But the job wasn't done yet. It had been easy enough, once he borrowed Gina's computer, for Steve to look up something of Wail's history - the veteran hero who had fought alongside others in the Terminus invasion of 1993. That had been the greatest crisis in the history of this world, the public face of the horror of it all still burned into the minds of many of the Freedomians who had fought in it, lived through it, seen others die in it. Would such a man really be interested in talking with him? Steve had already been shamed enough by the open hands and welcomes of so many heroes. Sitting alone in the subway station, his brown skin and scarred face keeping away most of the passersby, Steve was comfortable in his solitude. Fortunately, it didn't have to last forever.

"Well, it's...it's like this." Mark took a moment to collect himself, spreading his hands as he usually did before he started into a story. "So, the other day, I stopped by Nina's place. You know, her mansion in Socotra. And we," he knew from experience that his friends weren't interested in that part of the story, so he went on, "we decided to go sneak around Socotra for a while and see the sights. You know, get a real feel for the place." He coughed. "And so while we were out, suddenly this freak windstorm breaks out over the islands, and Nina gets really angry. She stands up right there in the cafe and yells 'There's no storm scheduled for today! What fool dares interrupt my date?! I will rip the water from his lungs!'" Mark did a pretty good imitation of his on-again off-again girlfriend after hooking up with her for over a year now. "And so I told her to call her dad, because maybe something came up, and anyway it's getting creepy now that people are bowing to her, and so I take us over to the palace and Typhoon is gone." He swallowed. "I asked around, and his guards don't want to talk to me because of that one time that...well, Nina said they heard some kind of commotion in his study, and then he was gone, armor and all. But that's not the worst part. Nina's brothers Durian and Pakhar show up when she sends out the family emergency signal, and just as Durian is calling in the rest of the family with their teleporter, a body falls in the harbor. A really, really, really big body." He thought for a moment, reached into his costume pocket, and took out a zip drive. "This is kind of unbelievable, so I took some pictures and..." When a suitable medium was found, Mark plugged it in and called up a still image of the main harbor of Typhoon City, the largest port in Socotra. There were the famous skyscrapers with their multinational conglomerates, casinos and drug parlors; the statues of Typhoon with the perpetually flowing fountains all around them, a symbol of the intimate tie between the royal family and the very survival of the kingdom... And there, nose reaching higher than any of the skyscrapers and attached to something infinitely more massive, was a head - a head attached to a body that stretched almost out of camera range in the subsequent shots, evidently taken from a very high point in the city. The body was human-like but with bright red skin and a single massive golden fist; it was that of an Arabian-looking man with a fierce mustache and beard, his eyes widened in what looked like shock. He was dressed in what looked like traditional Arabian clothing, all flowing robes and headpiece, albeit with cloth that glittered in the half-light overhead. On his head was still affixed a simple golden circlet, like the beginnings of a crown. There was a crater in the being's chest deep enough to park several jets in. "It's...maybe three miles long?" said Mark, sounding a little shaken. "The head is maybe a thousand feet high, see here?" he pointed. "The...the al-Darsahs showed up just in time, we _just_ managed to stop a tidal wave, and now most of them are holding up the body to stop it displacing all the water...and I didn't know what to do!" he admitted. "I can probably destroy something that big, I guess? But then we won't know what it is, or what it's doing there, and what happened with Typhoon...and I know he's really bad, but can you imagine his kids fighting over that country? Especially since they take turns making sure the water supply actually works? That's a couple million people whose taps are going to stop working...not to mention get sick if that body stays there long enough. It's pretty warm in Socotra this week..."

Let's see some Knowledge (Galactic Lore) or Knowledge (Technology) checks, gentlemen.

With that news in mind, Miss Americana touched down in the backyard of the house where Gina Evans had grown up and could immediately tell that something was wrong. The backyard was covered in boxes covered by tacked-down tarps, as if someone had gone through her mother's house and cleared out the lifetime's worth of cardboard she'd been accumulating there for years. The house was otherwise how she remembered it; tacky decorations that aped good taste, a little shabby now that there was no one around who could regularly fix the place up, albeit with considerably more cars parked outside on the asphalt driveway and on the street adjoining. Out the back door somebody almost immediately came running - she immediately recognized Charlie III, the oldest of her brothers' kids. "It's Miss Americana! Woo-hoo! She came to help Nan and Grandpa!" The boy hugged her, looked her in the eyes as Dr. Irons came out the backdoor behind him, and mouthed a distinct "Help us."

ooc

August 15, 2013 The messages arrived in different ways for different heroes - Cannonade and Wander had theirs delivered to one of the anonymous tip drop boxes the Liberty League used to collect correspondance, Wail had his delivered by standard mail to Keith LaMarr's home address, while Willow's came via a scanned copy emailed directly to Vince. They were instantly recognizable as odd - the envelopes weren't paper but vellum, some sort of processed animal skin, and the stamps affixed to them were wildly overpaid, as if someone had bought a chunk of postage and slapped it on an envelope without knowing how the value of postage actually worked. Inside the envelopes lay a simple message written in thick, heavy block printing - again on vellum, albeit by something that looked more like a pencil. HELLO YOU ARE INVITED TO THE ADULTED HOOD CELEBRATION OF RUNS-WITH-FANGS-BARED. PLEASE COME TO BATSTO VISITOR CENTER AT SUNSET TOMORROW IF YOU WANT TO COME. WITNESS MIGHTS OF WITH-FANGS-BARED CLAN AND RAPTOR EMPIRE. A quick trip to Google found the Batsto Vistor Center easily enough; a historic "living history" village deep in the heart of the Wharton State Forest. Heroes who remember the encounter with emissaries of the Raptor Empire will recall Runs-With-Fangs-Bared, the teenage daughter of the raptor commander who learned a lesson about not calling humans apes all the time.

OOC content here

September 1, 2013 Typhoon City (formerly Qalansiyah), Free Kingdom of Socotra From the perspective of Freedom City, anyway, it started small. A freak storm in the northwestern Indian Ocean, lashing coasts as far as the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. A sudden media blackout on the island-nation of Socotra; with even its ample (and often illegal) Internet going dark. Socotra was on the radar of only a few people in the city with its lord and master gone largely into retirement, and a brief blackout was an occasion for concern, but not alarm. Of course, some people had closer ties to the Socotran royal family than others. Standing on the roof of the royal palace of Typhoon, on its best days a magnificent palace of Arabian and Indian styles, surrounded by ever-flowing fountains of fresh water that were among the tallest such in the world, Mark Lucas stared at what lay in Qalansiyah harbor, and beyond it, and for one of the few times in his life honestly had no idea what to say. He took the hand of his girlfriend Nina al-Darsah, princess-turned-college-student, and when he made eye contact and saw the fear she would never, ever, ever admit to having, he said the only thing that made sense. "I'm going to call for help." "Well...I suppose," said Nina, putting her arm around him, the shadows in which they both stood casting her dark face into gloom. "Normally this is something the royal family would handle amongst ourselves, of course, but this, yes, this is something that your friends could help with." She hugged him, stepped aside so he could disappear without her, because what princess would leave her kingdom in a time line this? and said "Hurry." With a nod, Mark's costume flashed up around him before he vanised himself - reappearing in the main foyer of the famous Midnight Manor! "Trevor, Erin!" he called out loud as his shoes creaked on hardwood floors. He'd been gone just half a day, but what a day it had been! "I need your help with something! Something...big!" He had to laugh at the absurdity of it.

Hoodoo Doctor PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 0 + 2 + 2 + 4 + 6 + 6 = 24 pp STR 10 (+0) DEX 14 (+2) CON 14 (+2) INT 14 (+2) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 16 (+3) Combat: 8 + 12 = 20 pp ATK: +4 DEF: +10 (+4 Dodge Focus, +6 Base, +3 flat-footed) Init: +2 Grapple: +4 Saves: 6 + 3 + 8 = 17 pp TOU +10 (+2 Con, +8 Protection) FORT +8 (+2 Con, +6) REF +5 (+2 Dex, +3) WILL +11 (+3 Wis, +8) Skills: 15 pp=60 r Diplomacy 7 (+10, SM) Intimidate 12 (+15, SM) Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 8 (+10) Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) 13 (+15, SM) Language 2 (Greek, Hebrew, Base [English]) Medicine 2 (+5) Notice 7 (+10, SM) Sense Motive 7 (+10) Survival 2 (+5) Feats: 10 pp Benefit (Use Theology/Philosophy for Ritualist checks) Dodge Focus 4 Luck Startle [castigate] Ritualist Skill Mastery (Diplomacy, Intimidate, Knowledge [Theology and Philosophy], Notice) Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 3 + 47 + 1 + 8 + 4 = 64 pp Flight 1 (air-walking, 10 MPH/100 fps, PF: Subtle) [3PP] Hoodoo Array 22 (42 pp, PFs: Alternate Powers 5) [47 PP] BE: Healing 10 (healing, Extra: Range 2 [Perception], PFs: Persistent, Stabilize) {42/42} AP: Blast 10 (blight, Extras: Penetrating, Range [Perception], PFs: Subtle, Variable Descriptor 1 [any divine]) {42/42} AP: Drain All Ability Scores 10 (curse, Extra: Range 2 [Perception], Flaw: Action [Full], PFs: Slow Fade 1 [5 rounds], Variable Descriptor 1 [any divine]) {42/42} AP: Nullify Mind Control 10 (casting out, Extras: Duration [sustained], Effortless, PFs: Second Chance (Nullify), Ultimate Check [Nullify]) {42/42} AP: Obscure (visual and auditory, 1 mile) 10 (plagues, Extra: Selective, PFs: Precise, Variable Descriptor 1 [any divine]) {42/42} AP: Teleport 10 (parting the waters, Earth to Moon, Extra: Portal [+2], PFs: Progression 2) {42/42} Immunity 1 (aging) [1PP] Protection 8 [8 PP] Super-Senses 4 (Detect Infernal 2 [olfactory, Enhancements [Acute, Analytical]]) [4PP] cost abilities 24 + combat 20 + saves 17 + skills 15/60 + feats 10 + powers 64 = 150 pts ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Design Notes: Hoodoo, the long-misunderstood cousin of voodoo, is what happens to traditional African religions when they evolve together with Protestantism rather than Catholicism. (When it's with Catholicism, you get voodoo). Hoodoo is even more strongly integrated with Christianity than its Catholic cousin, with the Bible in particular as a key component of its rituals and Biblical figures like Moses considered some of the leading hoodoo doctors of history. It's a rich system of folk beliefs incorporating everything from early 20th century popular culture (when many of the first hoodoo books were published by the African-American press) to Pennsylvania Dutch folk charms (because those books were in the public domain when the first hoodoo texts were published). Why isn't hoodoo as famous as voodoo? Maybe because it lacked a metropolis like New Orleans, exotic Catholicism, or maybe it just had a better press agent. It's not a religion in its own right like voodoo, but it is still an important system of beliefs for many people. Hoodoo doctors use subtle magics to let people influence their own destiny; but that's a little boring in the context of a superhero comic book, so instead I've built this fellow with powers drawn from the Old and New Testament - he can heal the sick, summon blinding plagues of frogs or locusts, or castigate his enemies with blights and curses to strike at their too-mortal flesh. He can cast out demons, too, and find them where they're lurking - he can also open up a gateway to let his allies cross over, then close in the faces of an oncoming enemy army. This is a man chosen by a higher power for a greater purpose, one calling on the words of the Bible itself as his arms and armor. Obviously someone like this is potentially controversial in a shared setting, but strongly-held religious beliefs don't mean there's anything wrong with the character. Just as Superman doesn't go telling people about the glories of Rao, neither should this character for his personal pantheon - he knows who's on the side of right and the side of wrong, and doesn't need them calling on righteousness in the same language he uses to know what a good person is. If you don't want to play a person of faith, there's no reason you can't play someone chosen by a higher power he may not have believed in before he first picked up his great-grandpappy's heavily annotated Bible - the reluctant employee of the Almighty is a common enough trope in these kinds of stories. As a villain, of course, this is an odious fellow, a charismatic cult leader with powers to seemingly match the promises he makes to his followers. Of course, a bad guy is probably not calling on the God of the Bible...but he might believe that he is.

Ice crawled up the walls of the tunnel around Comrade Frost, who took a step back from the chilling aftereffects of his own power but didn't back away from his work as chilling, killing cold spread up the blackening vines. Too slow too slow - Fleur has the right idea. Frost was growing impatient with this fiend; this smiling avatar of a false god that had done so much horrors to this world and had sought to do so much more to other places, and other peoples. "<Come to me and die, you miserable bastard,>" he said in venomous Russian, his eyes turning red for just a moment beneath his hood before he shouted in English, "Target what lies beneath the armor! Woody skin is tough but flesh beneath will freeze or crush just as well as any flower!"

Searches include "Gina Evans actress", "Gina Evans beauty queen", and the occasional "Gina Evans exotic dancer". They include locations like Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago, with the occasional New York City. As far as where they came from; they start in Boonville and then quickly 'pop up' in Blackwater, until they seem to be most computers in towns of any size in Cooper County. So far there are virtually none outside the county, just at its fringes. There are none from the IP addresses she recognizes as belonging to her parents or her brother Peter. The first searches she can find are on the Boonville hospital computers, almost immediately after Peter was brought in.

The Evans family - There's nothing until a few days ago; at least, nothing she wouldn't expect. Just as usual, this part of the country is way too far out for there to be any serious supervillian activity. But then suddenly, in just the last 48 hours, people all over Cooper County have started doing searches - searches for HER! Gina Evans is too general a name for her to look for all the time, but there are too many here to ignore - Googling, Peoplefinder, white pages, people flailing around all over the Internet for her. Somebody even put out an APB for someone matching her description from some years ago. The weird thing is, for all that hundreds of people are searching, it's all so clumsy it had escaped her attention before. It's as if somebody, or a group of somebodies, with no real understanding of technology have spent the last day and a half trying to find her by looking for her online. Cooper County police radio traffic - She finds some highway patrolmen passing by on I-70. Some ambulances from Pettis County and others near the edge of the city. Otherwise, as far as she can tell, there is no emergency radio traffic at _all_ in Cooper County.

Swiftly removing a glove, Frost glided over to the bound car and gripped its bumper tightly with one hand. "Stop what you are doing," he told the animate object, hoping it was sentient enough to listen to reason. When it did not listen, he unhesitatingly drew inward the heat of the car - first its revving engine, then its lights and battery, and then deeper still. The car crashed suddenly to the earth and stopped its momentum, Silver Spider's strands and vehicle both suddenly wrapped in a coating of pure white ice, the temperature around Frost dropping hard and fast enough to frost over teller windows and make peoples' breath mist in the air. When a frozen door snapped off and struck the earth, shattering like glass, Frost whirled on the others. "Animated objects have a master! We must find him; and stop crazy things as your cartoons do say."

Vampiric Strike vs the Green God, inflicting lethal so as to heal his own injuries. http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4158663/= 19 http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4158664/ = 24 w/HP, so that hits and inflicts a DC 27 Tou save. C'mon now, Green God, we've been fighting you for a couple of months now, let's flush you down.

If the car appears to be breaking through the snare, Frost will target it with an attack - http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4157438/. If a 17 hits, given its current condition (is it entangled or helpless from the snare?), that's a DC 27 Tou save for it. And the snare too; ah well.

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4157390/ Steve did quite poorly on his Search, but with a 27 on Stealth and Concealment, is able to hide aboard the plane for now.

There was a lot Steve wanted to say to Gina, but in the field was never a good time - especially not now. "You have my radio frequency. Call me if there is a problem." At that he erupted into the air on a column of brilliant flame, vanishing into the northwest after taking a few moments in the air to orient himself. It was a short flight to Marshall, even with his relatively slow speed, but he wasn't able to find the ambulance until just before reaching the airport - criss-crossing the many small country roads that lay between Blackwater and the town itself produced no sign of the missing vehicle until he finally caught it at the airport itself. He landed beneath the plane itself and held his position, his silence broken by startled exclamations from the crew of mechanics working on the plane itself. From their tone, they thought a plane had passed by the grounded jet! But with no plane in the sky and an invisible Omegadrone hiding in the shadows beneath, they went back to their work just seconds before the ambulance itself arrived. Invisible, Caradoc watched the medical team and their assistants still on the plane begin loading the unconscious Peter Evans aboard the plane. Something about the process struck him as peculiar, and he moved closer to watch. They were efficient, hard-working, and eager to get Peter Evans aboard the plane as quickly as possible, albeit as eerily silent as the rest of the town. He briefly considered climbing aboard before deciding to stay where he could handle emergencies; he took up an invisible position along one wing, ready to keep up with the flight while watching through the open windows of the flight itself. He shot glances at the cargo hold, wondering briefly what lay inside that was so important to Gina. Had she actually come out to this place? It boggled the mind, but if family was threatened, perhaps that had been reason enough for her. At that thought, just as the plane's doors began to close, Caradoc pushed the limits of his invisibility circuits to the limits and leaped - waiting until the airport's refueling truck was just about to touch the plane, he simply moved from his position by the wing and moved through the still-open door into the body of the plane proper. The confusion as people aboard shouted at the 'clumsy driver' was enough to let him find an unoccupied corner and lurk invisibly - a plane this large surely had the spare fuel capacity to absorb his extra weight!

Arichamus: El Heraldo [18] = 2PP King of Suits [7] =1PP + 25 GM posts = 32 = 3PP Red Moon [2] =1PP Wave-Eye [3] =1PP GM [25, to King of Suits, Red Moon, Wave Eye] (not enough to help anybody but KoS) AvengerAssembled: Edge 1 Post = 1 PP Citizen 3 Posts = 1 PP Comrade Frost 1 + 1 + 2 = 4 Posts = 1 PP +1 Ref PP = 2 PP Harrier 4 Posts = 1 PP Blue Rose Kit 2 Posts = 1 PP Stormbreaker 1 Post = 1PP Darksider42: Riff: 8 Posts = 1 PP Electra Fleur de Joie = 2 Posts = 1 PP Wander = 20 + 1 = 21 Posts Papercut no posts Miss Americana = 2 Posts = 1 PP Geez3r: Maxima [18] = 2PP GranspearZX: Arcturus 5 Posts = 1PP [+1 20Q] = 2 PP HG Morrison: Omen [20] + 8 GM = 3PP Glamazon [0] + 1 GM = 1PP GM [9] Jackgarprime: Victory: 1 Post = 1 PP KnightDisciple: Cobalt Templar = 1PP Fenris [7, to Cobalt Templar] =1 PP Gabriel [7] = 1 PP Raveled: Blue Jay: 1 + 3 = 4 Posts = 1 PP Ironclad: 5 + 2 = 7 Posts + 12 GM = 19 Posts = 2 PP Starlight: 0 Posts GM: 4 + 2 + 4 + 2 = 12 Posts. No designation assigned so rolling over to Ironclad Sorus: Blue Fox 6 Posts (+1 Refpoint) = 2 PP Willow = 5 Posts = 1 PP Supercape: Supercape 2 posts + 50 (GM) = 52 posts = 4pp + 1 (ref point) = 5pp Lord Steam 3 posts = 1pp Rene DeSaens 22 posts + 28 (28/52 Supercape Rollover) = 50 posts = 4pp + 1 (ref point rollover, Supercape) = 5pp Bloody Mess/The Hound 4 posts + 15 (15/52 Supercape Rollover) = 19 posts = 2pp Pitch 41 posts + 9 (9/52 Supercape Rollover) = 50 posts = 4pp GM 50 posts Thevshi: Velocity [40] = 3PP Tsunami [12+16 GM] 28 = 2PP TiffanyKorta: Blodeuwedd [14] +1 GM =2 pp Merge Trois [7] =1PP Revenant [7] remaining GM = 35 = 3PP Young Britannia [8] =1PP GM [29] TheAbsurdist: Asad [1] = 1PP Errant [4] = 1PP Trollthumper: Cannonade [7] = 1PP Nick C [2] = 1PP Cavalier [1+1 Refpoint] = 2PP Temperance [11 + 5] = 2PP GM: [5] Vahnyu: Hronos [7] =1 PP Net Fly [2 + 20 GM] = 2PP GM [20] If you passed a milestone this month, make sure to let us know so we can edit that onto your sheet for you.

"I'll start packing both the parents for medical transport to Freedom City," agreed Irons, his voice tense, but professional despite the emergency. "Peter's sister-in-law and two nieces are both unaffected," Irons informed her worriedly, "but I'm concerned about Little Chuck, er, Charlie Jr. He left the area and returned to Kansas City yesterday, and if he is contaminated by a Grue virus, it could be a serious problem. The whole family may potentially be at risk. If you could contact the Barnstormers, perhaps one of them could intercede and bring Charlie to Freedom City for treatment along with the rest of the Evans family. The ones we have, anyway." Irons sighed. "There's still that missing sister. If she's still in Kansas City and exposed to the Grue virus, who knows what could be happening?" At the look on Miss Americana's face, Caradoc interceded. He didn't know the Star Knight well, but Cavalier seemed to be an upright man, trusted by Gina, and certainly knowledgeable about technology. "Cavalier," he suggested, his voice losing its medieval tones entirely, "take over here for a moment. Miss Americana has business to attend to elsewhere." He'd failed enough today; he wasn't going to let Gina face this while wearing her new robotic face before Cavalier and her employees.

It didn't take long for the Kansas City cops to arrive on scene; the super-fight with cops in their area had gotten their attention pretty early on. But Cobalt Templar was a trustworthy guy and they didn't dispute his story for long - as a well-suited team of EMTs took the unconscious police officers away for study, Charlie and Corbin gave their statements. The KC cops promised they'd call the Barnstormers personally, but evidently the team had been occupied with some hero business over the 4th of July holiday and didn't seem to be available at the moment. This far from Freedom City, there weren't that many reinforcements to call in. For his part, Charlie didn't seem inclined to move far from his protector. "Listen, you've gotta get out there," he was telling Corbin. "Mah whole family is there and Ah don't know what's gonna happen. Ah'm...Ah'm not a man who asks for help easy, but Ah need your help here, Cobalt Templar."

The unconscious officers inside the car were no good target for Cobalt Templar's taunting - their eyes rolling and drool coming from their mouths, they looked dead to the world even through the windshield. The man in the back was still putting up quite a fight, yelling for help as Templar set the car down. "Oh, thank God!" he exclaimed. "Some superhero is actually paying attention." Once free, he kept his distance from the car and the unconscious officers, scrubbing his hands on his dirty jeans as if he was worried he'd catch some kind of disease. As soon as he was out of the car, he said, "Listen, uh, buddy, this is all going back to my hometown, Blackwater. I moved out a couple of years ago and got hitched here." He took off his trucker hat and ran his hand through his blonde crewcut. "My kid brother was in a truck wreck there this week, and I took the family back to visit. But everything was all...messed up, even more so than usual. I wanted to leave, but my wife and boy, they both wanted to stay with their grandpa for a little while. Next thing ah know, nobody's leavin' town! And they want me to come back, all urgent-like. That's when I started calling the Barnstormers, when the cops weren't no help." His accent was getting thicker. "Ah...ah didn't know whut to do before you got here."