Avenger Assembled

The deputy was briefly startled by Caradoc's transformation - this sort of thing didn't happen every day out in the middle of the Show-Me State. But after a moment, she frowned and didn't look impressed, peering at the armored figure without any hesitation. "Sir, this isn't Freedom City. Law enforcement doesn't jump every time somebody in a costume says 'Boo.' Now, if you think I'm a Grue, you're welcome to go to Judge Parker with evidence and try and get a blood screening. But right now, I'm gonna take this citizen of our town to the drunk tank where he can sober up. You know, mah job." And with that, she turned and loaded the drunk man back into her squad car and headed off to pick up her partner from where he was just leaving a conversation with the Archetechnicians. As Kyle watched, the armored knight, who he recognized as a Freedom City hero, seemed to shrink ever so slightly before turning and heading for the alleyway between two local convenience stores, his transformation having seemingly gone unnoticed despite the quiet day in the otherwise empty small town. Meanwhile, his still-open radio signal gave him insight into the police - Cooper County was broadcasting an alien sighting at the Cooper County Hospital! - Suri hissed again and looked around, wild-eyed, before settling his gaze on Miss Americana. "However hard you try, you'll never find our gateway! Give up! You can't escape the power of the Unity. We won't hurt you - we only want to free you of the tyranny of your emotions. Imagine a world without love, desire, ambition, faith - only service to the Unity! You have no choice," he added, his voice full of burnt emotion, like a faith healer calming down at the end of a wild revival. "We came here from a dying world. We drift through the universe, from planet to planet, pushed on by the solar winds. We adapt and we survive. The function of life is survival. Can't you understand?" Miss A had backup by now, the Cooper County cops posted to the hospital had arrived to hold guns on the suspected Grue. Even this far out, everyone knew the famous Miss Americana, and the whisper of Grue was enough to send the hospital on edge even so far from Freedom City. After all, Grue were scary soul-stealing monsters out here - not the familiar, albeit threatening aliens, that had attacked Freedom City so many times. "I'm calling for backup," a mustachioed officer who Gina remembered from high school said, "They say they're on their way. Something about trouble at the bridge."

An Omegadrone came shrieking out of the sky, riding a column of fire that screamed like a damned soul as he came in for a landing alongside the others. Taking a moment to orient himself, and once he had learned that the others had also found the way home, Harrier hesitated just a moment before he spoke. "Leave her," he said to Cannonade. "Her dimension has been invaded. Her city set alight, her slaves liberated. I have...knowledge of this sort of people." That armored head seemed to swivel as he took in the scene around them, standing safely behind the other heroes so as not to alarm the civilians they were rescuing. "If she does not oppose us, her subjects will replace her and find a ruler more to their liking. If she comes out to meet us, we there destroy her power." He could have said more, spoken of his experience with worlds so vastly wicked that they devoured the very souls and character of the heroes who came to liberate them, but he suspected such a discussion would be fruitless.

Miss Americana had brought a crack team of medical specialists with her from Freedom City, the kind of people who were used to strange sights because they lived in a strange city. Nonetheless, they were as surprised as anyone else when, just as they entered the room, the previously mild-mannered hospital chief hissed like a snake and bolted for the door, shouting "The Gruen will prevail! All hail the Arcane!" Outside, the hallway was in confusion as the previously quiet hospital seemed to come alive, shouts of "Oh my god, what's wrong with Dr. Suri!" echoing in the air as the doctor howled and kicked in a way that might have done some damage if half-a-dozen specialists and a powerful superhero hadn't been in the same room with him. Across the county, the deputy gave a shrug and turned away from the engineer. "All right, I'll talk to your boss too. No use makin' a big hoot'n'holler about it on such a nice day. You folks have a nice day." He turned and headed back to his squad car, leaving his colleague to walk Kyle down off the bridge to the roadside, patting his arm a few times as they went. She froze briefly as they walked, seeming to catch herself on something, then continued as if nothing had happened. Whatever had passed between them, perhaps just a passing fancy, had seemingly passed. "We try to be welcoming here in Cooper County," she told Kyle warmly. "Stay a while, you might find a home here...aw hey. Vernon!" She straightened up as she saw a little ways down the street, an overweight local wobbling and waving a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey as he talked to a scar-faced man whose brown skin set him apart from the more whitebread-looking locals. "You come sober up and leave that nice man alone." Kyle couldn't tell much without having the equipment in hand; all he was picking up was a ship's transponder signal. --- "He's not hurting me," Steve offered as the deputy approached, seeing something like fear flash in the man's eyes as the uniformed officer approached. He wanted very badly to call his boss, or perhaps Gina in the bargain. "She's onna them!" the drunk said in an urgent whisper to Steve before adding loudly, "Aw shoot Clarice, you cain't blame me for what I say when I'm drinkin! You know I'm plum addicted to this stuff!" He sloshed the bottle around, then sighed as she took his arm to start leading him to the cruiser. "Not my fault I'm this way," he was muttering. "Pardon me, deputy," said Steve, thinking about what had crashed here - he knew the Grue only too well. Glad to be out of his own skin, he stepped back as silvery-white armor seemed to pour over his body in a flash, transforming the strange-looking man into Caradoc, noble hero of song and story, armored knight of a techno-magic Camelot! "But ye man has made certain accusations about yon constabularly. Hast thou proof that ye are not of the Grue people?"

"Dr. Irons felt he had become too close to the family and withdrew himself from the case at his own request," said Suri with a little shrug. "When a physician comes to me and says that, I generally take him at his word." Listening to Miss A, he nodded and said "The family situation is very tense, from what I have observed. It is a potential hazard to his recovery, as the arguments are distressing him during his recovery period. As Miss Americana listened to Dr. Suri talk, a closer look at the monitors revealed a surprise. As she watched, Peter Evans' brain activity monitor rolled over. The fast-moving EEG would have been almost impossible for anyone else to follow, but she distinctly saw the faint stutter as the machine's beeping readout briefly paused and its numeric values rolled over to where they had been when she came into the room. --- As Steve watched, fork suspended above his newly-arrived cherry pie, a curl of uneasiness at the back of his mind finally drove him to wordlessly rise to his feet, fling a rumpled ten dollar bill to the counter, and simply walk out of the diner, heedless of the rudeness of the act. He had been in many strange places in his life, some of them fantastically dangerous, and something about this quiet rural town was setting him on edge. As he watched, a pair of white panel trucks and beige SUV zipped by him along the town's main drag towards the bridge. Wondering if they were a work crew sent from one of the other companies that had been a planned target of the alien shipment, he turned and began to walk over there when suddenly a figure burst out at him from a nearby alley. Steve had no idea who the fat man with the Confederate flag T-shirt and American flag trucker hat was, but he had been around enough to know what smell of liquor, rising even through Steve's attenuated nostrils, meant - this man was drunk! But for all that, he looked Steve in the eye and said, "Hey, hey buddy, y'all ain't one of them, are ya? Ya gotta get outta here, buddy!" --- Over by the bridge, the arrival of the Archtechnicians was briefly interrupted by the arrival of a Cooper County sheriff's squad car, the two deputies inside breaking up, one to talk to the lead engineer and the other to approach the solitary figure of Kyle. "Howdy! Y'all new in town, stranger?" asked the deputy, a young woman with curly red hair and bright freckles. "This here's a restricted area what with the accident and all. Not much for sight-seeing." She reached out to take Kyle's arm in a friendly sort of way, just as his sensor began beeping ever so slightly. There was indeed a Grue transmission going on not far beneath his feet. Across the road, the other deputy, a portly African-American gentleman with a silvery-black beard, was telling the hazmat-suited lead engineer, "So anyway, I know this is just foolishness from the state, but I need y'all to to take off your helmet real quick so I can compare your picture to the files I've got to make sure y'all are who you say you are..."

Edge looked appalled, briefly covering his mouth with his hands as if Midnight had just said something awful. And he had. "Oh man, they sold their souls to Nazis? That's awful." He scratched his head. "Well...can we find out what it is and see if we can give it back to them?" he hazarded. He looked at the team, realizing how that sounded. "I'm not one to pay back a bunch of thieves, especially not ones wearing swastikas, but undoing something the Nazis did is in our job description." His smile hardened. "Of course, if it turns out they gave up something that belongs to somebody else now, I say we cross over there and give them a lesson about why it was a bad idea to make deals with Nazis in the first place." He bent down and studied the unconscious leprechaun. "Could you figure out how they got here?" he asked the blue-clad acrobat and Midnight, treating them almost as a unit for this conversation. "I figure if there's a door, we can lock it...or kick it down and beat up whoever's on the other side, depending. "

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4123427/ Steve is down an HP, but makes his Will save for the day, oh my yes.

The bridge over the river was still partially blocked off after the recent accident - highway tape and orange barrels cordoned off the section of eastbound rail that Peter Evans had plunged through on his short trip into the river. With one lane partially blocked, a busier town would have stationed a uniformed officer to direct traffic, or perhaps put a highway crew in place to get started repairing the damage, but as it was people just went slowly and carefully as the technically two-lane bridge briefly became a one-and-a-half lane one in the middle of its short span. Broken fragments of the damaged section were still attached to the side of the bridge. Standing this close to the town, Kyle could get a pretty good idea of just how big Blackwater was - not very big at all. Firemen were washing the town's old-fashioned red firetruck behind the firehouse, antique stores and specialty shops made up the short Main Street he could see before him. But other than that things seemed quiet, cars sedately parked on the street or in the parking lot of a 50s-looking diner named Ruth's, the nearest business to the bridge. He'd seen more bustling metropolises on worlds that were just discovering agriculture. - Dr. Suri froze for a moment as he looked at Miss A, patting her hand for a too-long moment before he released it. "Certainly, by all means come with me." He led the way down the corridors of the quiet, very quiet regional hospital. "Mr. Evans has shown no sign of waking up, it is true, but we have found no sign of lasting injury. There is no sign of internal bleeding or pressure on the brain, and his concussion has already nearly healed. We are concerned, of course, but I am confident we can bring about his recovery." When they reached the door, he added, "As for visitors, he has been seen by his mother and father, his wife, as well as one brother, I believe. They seemed to be taking the situation...very hard. We are concerned about them," he admitted, "as we would be for anyone in this case." Peter looked smaller than Gina remembered, his face covered in healing bruises - with tubes in his nose and mouth, and an IV drip in his arm, he looked like any other coma patient. His vitals looked steady at Gina's first glance, heart, brain, and respiratory activity all normal for a young man in his condition. With his condition. "His mother visited most recently, but I think she found conditions in the hospital...uncomfortable," said Suri almost apologetically. - "Howdy, stranger!" Ruth, the titular owner of the diner, greeted Steve with a friendly, almost maternal smile. "Welcome to Blackwater!" She smiled and touched his arm as he walked in, the former Omegadrone tensing briefly at the surprise contact. "Come on in and sit a spell. Let me show you our specials..." Wondering if he'd made a mistake coming here instead of heading straight to the police station, Steve let himself be guided to a booth, listening to the wood slats beneath groan against his weight. "What brings y'all to Blackwater?" "Business," he replied carefully, not wanting to share details with the scattered customers in the small diner all looking with great interest at the strange-looking new arrival. "I will not be staying long," he added as a seeming promise. "Perhaps, ah, just the cherry pie," he went on, picking at random a pictured item from the menu. The regard of others was not something he enjoyed bearing when acting on his own. This was a strange sort of town.

For his part, while his girlfriend was embarking on a journey entirely unknown to him, Harrier spent a long, difficult day flying around a very remote part of North America - north-central Missouri. The lost shipment of Grue technology had originally been destined for HAX, necessitating that somebody from the company go out to find out what had happened to their lost equipment. With the boss engaged in 4th of July projects, Erin had delegated the task to Steve. He'd flown all night across eastern North America, invisible to human eyes and too low for military radar, letting the civilian GPS he'd brought with him and his ability to see in darkness guide his flight. The trip had proven a difficult one given his unfamiliarity with the terrain, and his flight had not gone unmarred. He landed upstream of the town near the river for which it was named, letting the invisibility circuits in his pike disguise his appearance, and slipped into the water to bathe. He had gotten very dirty indeed on the way in. Birdstrike was a serious problem away from Freedom City skies. ---- Miss Americana found the Cooper County Memorial Hospital buzzing with activity, a surprise given the usual quiet around the rural hospital. Two Cooper County sheriffs' cars were in the parking lot and a couple of uniformed deputies were stationed in the corridors near the private room that held Peter Evans. While her team of specialists went to check in with the hospital staff, the director, Dr. Ahmad Suri, was on the scene to greet her. "Welcome to Cooper County," said the Pakistani-American who had joined the hospital staff some years after Gina Evans had left the area, "it is a pleasure to meet you. Very much a pleasure indeed! I had not thought we would have help like yours." He took her hand and shook it with a firm grip, giving her a searching look. "You can be assured that we are doing everything we can for Mr. Evans."

Sharl only had an intellectual understanding of what was going on, but tried to be adult about it. "Well, uh, okay sir," he said with a nod to Michael. He thought suddenly of Gina's anger at him before the trip to Erde that had evidently gone so spectacularly south, and decided that there were definitely other models of parenting on Earth-Prime. "Thanks for having me. Eliza..." He smiled, knowing there were some pleasures about the evening that would just have to stay between the two of them. "We'll have to do this again sometime. Later," he amended with a look at Michael. "Email me when you can, okay?" He turned and headed for the door, already wondering how he was going to tell this story to Koshiro.

July 2013 Greetings, everyone. Your July 2013 Vignette Theme for Freedom City Play By Post is: PATRIOTISM A cultural attachment to one's homeland! Devotion to one's country! The last refuge of a scoundrel! It can be all this and more, depending on your character's nature and where exactly is they are from. Heroes in the world of Freedom generally don't work directly for governments (except for Victory and sometimes Cannonade), but some wear their colors like Miss Americana or Lady Liberty, and all of them have a relationship with patriotism - even the ones born in no nation at all still live in one now. Some heroes are proud citizens of their native land; some are refugees from a native land that spat them out like a peach pit. There's a lot to say on this subject. If you don't want to delve into that kind of deep character development, concentrating on more serious threats like an alien PC's reaction to all the funny red white and blue bunting hanging around the city in early July, or a team of bank robbers in Uncle Sam on Stilts costumes taking advantage of the holiday to do some bad stuff, that's just fine too. This should not be political. (You should know this already.) Your vignette should be posted by the end of July 31, 2013, EST. Go ahead and post them to this thread. Do it for the original Freedom Eagle...Sam.

Regenerating Paragon PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 20 + 4 + 20 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 56 pp STR 30 (+10) DEX 14 (+2) CON 30 (+10) INT 14 (+2) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 12 + 12 = 24 pp ATK: +6 (+10 Melee) DEF: +10 (+4 Dodge, +6 Base, +3 flat-footed) Init: +2 Grapple: +20-+25 Knockback: -5 Saves: 0 + 3 + 7 = 10 pp TOU +10 (+10 Con) FORT +10 (+10 Con) REF +5 (+2 Dex, +3) WILL +9 (+2 Wis, +7) Skills: 60 pp=15 r Bluff 8 (+10, SM) Diplomacy 8 (+10, SM) Intimidate 8 (+10, SM) Knowledge (History) 15 (+17, SM) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 13 (+15) Feats: 18 pp Attack Focus: Melee 4 Beginner's Luck Connected Dodge Focus 4 Eidetic Memory Jack-of-All-Trades Leadership Luck Second Chance (Sense Motive) Skill Mastery (Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Knowledge [History]) Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 7 + 3 + 13 + 4 = 27 pp Comprehend 3 (speak, read, and understand all languages, PF: Innate) [7PP] Immunity 3 (aging, disease, poison) [3PP] Paragon Array 5 (10 PP, PFs: Dynamic, Dynamic Alternate Power 1) [13PP] Flight 5 (250 MPH/2500 feet per move) {10/10} DAP: Super-Strength 5 (Effective STR 30-55, Heavy Load: 800 lbs-24 tons) {10/10} Regeneration 2 (Resurrection 1/1 day [2], PFs: Persistent, Regrowth) [4PP] costs abilities 55 + combat 24 + saves 10 + skills 15/60 + feats 18 + powers 27 = 150 pts --------------------------------- Design Notes: What if Vandal Savage was a paragon? What if Abraham Lincoln was Superman? All these questions and more are answered by my favorite character from the Invincible universe, The Immortal. He's a bit crabbier than Abraham Lincoln really ought to be, but on the other hand after thousands of years (Lincoln was just one of his many lives) of dealing with human beings, maybe we'd all be a little cranky too. Originally just an experienced paragon who could actually come back from the Viltrumite massacre of Earth's heroes, the Immortal finally was confirmed as Abraham Lincoln when people kept asking questions about the beard and hairstyle. He's got some problems with people and one time he became supreme dictator of Earth in a dystopian far future, but doesn't that happen to most superheroes eventually? He's basically an OK Joe most of the time. So I built this guy to have the skill set of an immortal character - his abilities may look weak, but with Beginner's Luck, Eidetic Memory, and Jack of all Trades, he can try his hand at just about anything and do OK at it. After all, he's been around the block a few times. (The book suggests that he can only remember about one and a half human lifetimes with any real accuracy at once, which might be a good plot seed for you playing an immortal character to explain why they're not maxed out in everything.) He can speak every language, can remember most things about history because he was there, and of course he's also a good paragon with super-strength, flight, and the ability to lead a team. His lack of Impervious may hurt, but OTOH that probably did make it easier to fake his death all those times. As a paragon with no damage tradeoffs, he's just about right for a guy with years of experience who needs some help if he's going to throw down with something Kryptonian and above. Note that his Regeneration will keep him from dying, or rather from making dying stick, but it's not much good in a fight. Stunt something off his Paragon array if he's taking a savage beating and you want to get him back in the game. If you're playing him up as an immortal hero, buying some Equipment (to represent his headquarters) or even more social skills (he's already a good face-man) would make a lot of sense - more Impervious and Immunities (not to mention Super-Strength!) might make throwing someone into space (one of the Immortal's favorite moves vs. Acceptable Targets) even easier on you.

Oh, and to answer the question posed last night in chat - Gina recognizes the name of Dr. Hubert Irons pretty well - he's the son of Dr. Frank Irons, who was the town doctor/GP when Gina lived in Blackwater. Hubert was just starting in his own practice when she left town. Amiable, caring, not too quick on the uptake.

Miss A's Online Research is enough to tell her that The driver's condition is a bit of a puzzle to Cooper County doctors - he seems healthy, but is unconscious. On the 4th, a neurological specialist in Kansas City was called by staff at the CC hospital, but that call was canceled abruptly early on the morning of the 5th. They don't know what caused the accident, but it appears to be driver error. The truck just turned and drove right off the bridge as if it had gone out of control, but there was no mechanical defect in the truck itself. She (and Cavalier, thanks to his League connections vis-a-vis alien technology) also know that the truck was carrying a collection of Grue ship parts seized by the Champions after the invasion of 1968. They were on their way to Freedom City to be compared against Grue parts seized after the most recent attack on FC, the better to see if Grue technology is advancing as fast as has been predicted.

They deal with issues, yes, issues.

July 2013 There are thousands of big-rig accidents in the continental United States every year. And no wonder - America's roads are among the busiest in the world, and the vast majority of America's shipping takes place on the asphalt highways that bind the nation together. Sometimes these are terrible accidents near major cities, crashes that lead to multicar pileups or dangerous chemical spills that force evacuations of whole neighborhoods. These make all the papers. The small crashes, though, hardly anyone notices them, especially not the ones in cities most people, especially people in far-off Freedom City, couldn't find on a map. Not much goes on in Blackwater, Missouri these days. The town is small, with just over 150 inhabitants, and it's the kind of place barely hanging onto tourist dollars and people wanting a rural getaway. They do a lot of Wild West recreation these days, calling back to an imagined past that was rarely rural Missouri's to begin with. But it gets the tourists in and gets them to spend money at the antique stores and bed and breakfasts in town, or at the Volunteer Fireman's Whole Hog and Beef Barbecue. People born here tend to try and get away, pulled away by cities as small as 8000-strong Boonville at the heart of Cooper County, or even real cities like St. Louis or Kansas City. A small number, by some quirk of fate or other, find themselves in Freedom City, but not many, not many. Not a lot of super-people come here. It's right about between Maverick in Kansas City and Aquifer in St. Louis, and neither of them have ever needed to come within thirty miles of the area. Even super-criminals on the lam from big cities prefer to have some luxuries, and there's not a lot of local crime even of the mundane variety. The local cops are nice enough, but they don't have a lot to do most days - why would they? But sometimes things change. On July 3, 2013, in Blackwater, Missouri, there was a big rig accident. A tractor trailer driven by local man Peter Evans struck the rail on the small bridge over the nearby Blackwater River, sending truck, trailer, and driver plunging into the small river. The badly-damaged trailer spilled its 'machine parts' contents into the small river and the driver, new to the profession, was taken to Cooper County Memorial Hospital. As the 4th of July holiday began, the Cooper County sheriff's office promised a full investigation into the causes of the accident. But the sheriff is all the way over in Boonville, a solid twenty minute drive By the 5th, there was hardly any news. Unless you care about Missouri, and who cares about that?

Frost will deliberately fail, the better to take his enemy off-guard.

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4112149/ Comrade Frost goes on 13

Oooh, this is awkward. Sharl had told his own parents about his powers, they and his sister were among a very, very small circle of Tronikians (smaller now that Leroj had died defending the city, died doing what Sharl was supposed to be doing as Tronik's native hero, he realized with a stab of guilt) who knew a part of the truth - that Tronik was imprisoned in an alien dimension by the mad computer-god the Curator. He had never actually asked Eliza why she hadn't told her father about her powers, figuring it was just one of those weird things humans did like burying their dead. "She's really awesome, though, sir," he said reassuringly. "I mean she and I have fought a lot of bad guys, and she is really impressively badass. She obviously knows what she's doing out there."

Frost folded his hands for a moment, studying the 'sleeping' man, his form a strange mash of colors against the thermovore's infrared vision. They were in the belly of the great beast that had devoured this world's California and had reached its tendrils out to his own. "The root," he said quietly, and with great feeling. "Were there more below, victims or some sort, we would have seen earlier in expedition." Underground, in the depths of rock and soil, it was cold indeed next to the Soviet hero. Figuring he could sort out his teammates and their goals with his words, he said, "I suggest we hit it now. Fast and hard, before root system can convulse around us. Eliminate problem at its source, and save Fleur de Joie from whatever has delayed her on the surface. If not, we go above and we _negotiate_ with intelligence now that its secret is known to us."

"Well, we can summon telepath, I suppose," said Frost, chewing on this information carefully. "Gaian Knight and Fleur de Joie, do you think you could speak to such beast and persuade it to resume slumber for a few more millenia?" He hmmed. "Of course, that leaves with operating question, no. We do not seem to know if it thinks, and if it does not think and we cannot persuade it to resume its slumbers, porheps we can just..." He made a little thumb and finger gun with his gloved hand, fired it, and shrugged. He'd have been far more explicit when dealing with a team from his own country, but Americans could be so squeamish about these things. "It is only idea. Creature that large moves, tidal disruptions across all this part of Pacific. Lacking an al-Darsan or Atlantean, could drown half the islands in these parts."

Standard Action: +5 Power Attack http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4109273/ 30! Oh my. Well, that was a 19 on the roll, so I'll spend an HP for Improved Crit. 5+5+8=18=DC 33 Tou Save for the Duke I guess it's fate.

"Man, your phony-baloney magic laws don't have any power here in civilized lands," said Sharl, laying it on a little thick to try and draw attention away from Eliza's display. He ducked and weaved, shoes visibly passing through the carpet as he briefly let his concentration slip, trying to keep the Duke's attention on him and not on the family behind him. "You think you're so great with your spells and fairies and grimoires; why don't you just shrink my head while you're at it?" he added, proud of the pop culture bit he'd learned from listening to some of Kimber's music. "C'mon, Gandalf, let's do this thing!" He threw a punch to the jaw that connected, hard, then followed it up with a solid kick to the knees.

I don't suppose there's any chance you've sent this major in-game event out to the Refs for approval, Arichamus?

Hmm. "Feh, I have seen bigger guns than they can bring to bear and come away only unscathed. Come, let us all ride together next time." Frost snapped his fingers as he led the way to an closed top armored car temporarily abandoned by its military occupants. "You, American jet-man, you can pick us up in car and fly to destination, yes? Then let us do so." Beaming, and pulling his hood up around his head, Frost took a position in the driver's seat. "Or else I could use rusty skills and drive us to Baghdad! Seems a dangerous phenomenon." How interesting that local heroes show up just as we have foes in hand and artifact unrecovered. Better to keep it to ourselves. "Say, pass it to the witch-girl, would you? Best to let magic stay in magic's grip, eh?" He winked at Equinox, red eyes just visible beneath his hood. It wasn't quite salaciously, more like somebody's old grandfather sharing a humorous story.

With the situation with Wail resolved, and much more importantly with the people under Gabriel's protection and ready to leave the dimension, the scarred-face drone looked for a moment like he was ready to retreat into the shadows before he said, "The way out. The coachman escaped." Steve blinked, audibly even over the sound of the crowd, before his armor erupted from his body again. "If one can do it, more can do it. Need a prisoner. Better I am there than on the street here." And with that he took off, an armored figure of horror riding a shrieking column of fire, and headed not for the heart of the burning factory district but for its edge. He passed Cannonade briefly on the way before slamming down in the middle of a crowded street, finding a fleeing native by his pointed ears and gold pocketwatch. Without hesitation, he interposed between the man and his freedom and pointed with a single spiked finger. "Where are your dimensional transports?"