Avenger Assembled

"How did you die? Was it Geb?" Frost took a seat in his usual chair, the one with the built-in heater, and pulled back his parka to study Set and Sekhmet with red eyes. "You have given him some cause for it over years, you must admit. A shame when fathers and sons quarrel, but if you must die, how better than at command of the great gods, eh?" He put a hand inside his parka, frowned momentarily, then removed it, again all smiles. "Heliopolis had been quiet lately, at least in channels which I monitor." Which I will evidently have to expand, he thought with a trace of irritation. "You are not what you once were, in more ways than just your actions. If we are to assist you in your transformation," he offered, "it is vital information for us."

OK: Curtis uses the Blast in his ring to summon a monster to bite Erin. Normally it would hit since she's flat-footed, but Edge spends an HP on her behalf to restore her dodge bonus. (We've let people do that before) On Edge's turn, he stunts Blast 20 (spending an HP to cancel fatigue), CDGs Curtis (who can't make such a roll, especially not with Edge anti-LCing him) and takes the guy out

Curtis responded with the sort of lewd comment about Erin riding him that might have gotten his head pulped back in Erin's days of heavy psych treatment, then added, "Typhona, attend me! Show these interlopers who their master is!" At his words, a man-sized humanoid with bizarrely mammalian secondary sexual characteristics seemed to wriggle out of the air and bite at Erin, fangs coming perilously close to her flesh before flinching away at the last minute. "Oh no you don't, you freak!" yelled Edge, the lights overhead visibly flickering for a long and perilous moment as he ran up there and got right next to Curtis. "No more weird monsters, no more warped heroes, and no more Alan Curtis!" And with that, a bolt of lightning cracked down from the ceiling and struck the wizard between Erin's arms, knocking him finally unconscious with a powerful jolt of electricity. "And stay down!" Edge yelled with great satisfaction as the serpent-woman faded from existence, the crowd gasping as Curtis' spell seemed to break.

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4036277/ -grappled!

Edge goes on 8 - http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4036208/ D'oh! I will be treating this fellow as a PL 13 version of with ATK +10/DMG +16 and DEF +10/TOU +16. 9 http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4036229/ Hah-hah... Okay, let's call this - Wander: 19 Alan Curtis: 9 Edge: 8

Bad snake juju!

Knowing that Curtis had some sort of mind control effect built into his walking stick, they waited just outside the door as they heard his act begin - odds were good they had a moment or two, at least, and bursting in too soon would risk giving Adrian Eldritch two more big problems to fight along with whatever dire magic the cultist-comic book writer was trying to work out there. When they heard the first shouting outside, Erin and Mark exchanged a look and Mark stepped back just enough to let Wander kick in the door. Normally two superheroes bursting onto the stage would have gotten the attention of everyone in the auditorium, but they were rather occupied with the rippling dimensional portal in the air - some of them still hypnotically staring straight ahead like so many frozen mice in a snake pen, others screaming and running for the exits, a few particularly credulous souls seeming to watch the entire display with fascination as they watched what was surely the show of a lifetime. The crowd on stage was frozen in place; some of the 'assistants' in robes shaking off the effects of the spell that had been holding them, the blonde ingenue Curtis had been flirting with earlier trying to pull herself free from the ropes that tied her to the altar, a few still locked in place but not actually moving now that their 'master' was busy with other things. Eldritch was in the air, chanting in a language neither Mark nor Erin could understanding, glowing sigils of mystic energy pouring from his fingers and wrapping themselves around a warping distortion in the air that looked as if someone had tried to push in a portion of the universe but hadn't gone far enough, stretching rather than tearing it. Eldritch added as he cast his spell, "You'll not have this day, dark serpent lady!" There came a deep, guttural hiss from inside the ripple, but nothing actually crossed the barrier. It was as if they had come in halfway through the movie, but that was one thing Mark was happy enough to miss. Especially when he caught sight of Alan Curtis, the dark wizard biting his lip nervously as he began to make a break for it, edging slowly towards the doorway where Erin and Mark were waiting for him. "You!" Curtis shouted, seeming to recover at the sight of the young heroes. "You may have foiled me now, but you'll never-" "Not on my watch, you gross hippie!" yelled Mark as he reached out and grabbed the hand of the nearest bystander, calling over the chanting. "Everybody hold hands!" Most of them did, at that, and vanished in a flash of light as Mark snapped his fingers. It wasn't enough to get all the people on stage, not with some of them still zonked out by serpentine hypnosis, or whatever it was, but soon there was only a a small handful of bystanders and the cornered cultist on stage with Edge and Wander.

Mark followed Erin away from the table, nattering about the club soda and how he was sure they'd get the dress fixed, no problem, until they were out of sight. He glanced at the program and nodded, "Looks like Curtis is up next," he said, and sure enough the emcee was already "introducing a man that needs no instruction." Mark bit his lip and glanced in the direction of the stage for a long moment before turning back to Erin as they stepped into the corridor. He and Wander had been in this situation often enough that she didn't need to speak, even as distracted as he was - with a snap of his fingers, he was in costume and so was she, and without the flashy accouterments that some of his counterparts liked to add to their costumes. "I can't get us anywhere specific without looking, but I can probably pop us right back onto the stage," he said to Erin.

Init for Harrier: http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4035983/ =25 His modifier is 1 higher than Gabriel, so he goes first (not that it really matters, since we're doing two combats, I guess?)

"This is a grave situation," agreed Eldritch, furrowing his eyebrows in concentration as he looked past the curtain to the scene beyond it. "I know As-as-ra of old and her rage is both vast and terrible. And even beyond that, the serpentine gods have been agitated since Set's return." He frowned. "Even an aspect of As-as-ra could summon tens of thousands of poisonous vipers to fill this entire room, especially if Curtis does have a magical hold over these people. You need not fear waiting for some dire act; I will interrupt his summoning once it begins and I can chart his particular incantations." He hmmed. "But what you will need to do is be ready for his escape. An interrupted summoning will still require my presence here to prevent an incursion from the Minoan Plane of Shadow, rather than let the..." He trailed off, looked at Erin and Mark, and said, very carefully, "I won't be able to catch him myself, so the two of you will have to do that." "We'll be ready," promised Mark without hesitation. "Even if he runs, he won't get far." He looked at Erin, then back at Eldritch. "Then we can just take him to jail, right? Magical summoning's a crime if it's for dangerous purposes," he told Erin, "it's been illegal since the 40s when they didn't have any other way of busting Nazi sorcerers. It's the same as if he was planning on letting a caged giant snake loose in here...which I guess might happen if we're not careful."

As the man spoke, Frost knelt down on the dirty floor, sketching a crude map of the region in colored ice on the floor. When the scientist was finished, Frost frowned, a dark look on his white-blue face .When he spoke, there was none of his usual near-playfulness - this was a soldier faced with a powerful enemy. "This is bad," he said. "We are dealing with intelligence great enough to swallow region of millions while same time plotting infestation of billions more. It must be destroyed here, at its root, before other worlds can be infected. While I am capable of generating sufficient cold to sterilize even so large a region, the human cost would be...unacceptable." He looked up at the others, a question on his face, before turning to the bound scientist. "Your heroes. The empowered defenders of this world. You said Champions joined Great Mother. What of others?"

When he was on, as he was the moment they were back inside, Mark was such a dazzlingly perfect all-American boy that it was hard to believe he'd been holding back such anger back in the car. He finished making Erin's introductions to the crew of writers, artists, and staffers that he'd obviously known since he was a little boy, laughed at jokes that were about as old as the Andi Comics company, and chowed down on buffet food that had been out long enough to wither ever so slightly in the warm headlamps. He smoothly shielded Erin from any inquiries into her personal life or much about her knowledge of comics - the former seemed to be of special interest to the people curious about whether or not she worked with Mark through UNISON. It wasn't hard to guess that they thought she might be another super-agent, Mark's secret ID being rather thin for somebody who was otherwise so determined to keep with superhero conventions. When the show started, Victor Goldwater, the owner of the company, came out to give a short speech about how well things were going and how much money he'd hoped they raise for their cause - a fund that would help raise money for students to go to art school. There was no mention of his long-time artist and writer's recent mental breakdown, which was probably for the best but still made Mark shift a little uneasily in his seat. The first act to go on was an elderly man who Mark murmured to Erin was one of the company's night janitors, who gave a passable baritone rendition of Danny Boy. Behind him, covered almost too negligently by a cloth, Mark and Erin could make out the draped forms of the barbaric altars Curtis had planned to use in his act. At the ten minute mark, just as the singer was finishing his encore, a middle-aged man in a distinguished, old-fashioned suit quietly came in and sat next to Mark and Erin - it was easy enough to recognize the Master Mage of Earth if you had met him face-to-face, but not if you were a civilian looking at him in the dark. "Hello," he said warmly, "I hope I haven't missed anything. Tell me what you saw." The civilians at the table kept up their conversation as if Eldritch wasn't there at all.

"C'mon, team," Edge exulted. "We can take these guys!" He looked up at the T-Rex and suddenly said, "Hey, wait a minute! You're some kind of _fake dinosaur!_ That is the worst!" He clapped his hands together. "Here I thought you were some kind of cool animated skeleton, but you're just some shapeshifting jerk, you big faker! Okay, guys, new plan - hit him where it hurts, organic being style! I bet he's got something soft and squishy tucked away under there after all!" Mark made good his words by joining in the fight, snapping his finger as somehow the T-Rex stumbled backwards and smashed its head into a support pillar, leaving it knocked silly for a moment as it forced itself back to its feet. He wasn't sure what everyone else on the team was doing, but he was sure it had to be vital. "Yeah, I bet you've got a brain in there somewhere, and soon we'll punch you right in it!" he added to the shapeshifted brute.

Sharl talked about his school projects, carefully phrasing things so as not to give away just how super Claremont really was. "What I'm really excited about is my internship with Archetech," he said, "I've been working with Miss Americana there for over two years now, and things are really going well. It's helped me make a lot of connections, and it's going to do great things for my career. I hope, anyway!" he said with a smile. He pitched in the kitchen as best he could, but this wasn't really part of his skill-set. When the food was going on the plates and in the pot for serving, he helped carry things to the table, remembering at the last second not to show off the near-superhuman strength of his electronic body. When the table was set, he sat next to Eliza and looked expectantly at the others - he couldn't remember if her family prayed to their gods before they ate, but he didn't want to commit a faux pas.

While his verbose friend demolished the fae for their sins, 'Caradoc' was silent inside his armor as the full implications of this place sunk in for him. "They have done this for fun. For fun." The words were, in their own way, as much a castigation as what Gabriel had said. Picking his words carefully, like a man walking through a minefield holding nitroglycerin, the former Omegadrone said, "I go to free the slaves. They are potential. hostages." He pointed an armored finger at the coachman and said, "You. Go to your home. Pray to your gods for mercy." He struck the blade of his sword on the ground and rocketed upwards, his dragon-headed backpack giving an oddly familiar shriek as he disappeared above the rooftops, leaving behind him only a distinct pair of blackened footprints on the ground below. In the sky above the city, Harrier drew on his knowledge of urban architecture and the kind of technology these being pretended to have. Towers of smoke. Engine noises. Dark clouds. The smell of misery. THERE! He turned and pivoted in the air, roaring towards the factory district of this city.

Screw that noise, Edge spends an HP to make the T-Rex reroll and take the worst of the two rolls.

Frost didn't hit the great beast so much as he collided with it, but that did the trick all the same - with a puff of mist, ice began forming on the wings of the monster, the beast snapping and biting without effect at the patch of freezing cold that enveloped its body. Only a few people still alive knew Frost had once been a veterinarian, many long years ago, and Dimitri regretted having to cause pain to the animal with which he fought. But he'd put down enough wild dogs, and fought enough giant monsters, to know that you couldn't pull your punches at times like this. "<Come on,>" he called in Russian as he slid over it like the patch of fog he was. "<Fall down!>"

Ice crystals crept up the side of the van as Haboob shivered, chunks of frozen sand falling from his body as Comrade Frost swept his way into the back of the canvas-wrapped vehicle, frigid mist trailing behind his misty humanoid form like a long white cape. Frost considered his own vulnerabilities versus that of the all-too-solid American powerhouse who was his ally for now, and realized there was only one choice to make. With an arrogant commissar's sneer on his face, the sort he had had many decades to practice, he taunted the woman with "Feh, your icy words would be much colder if you backed them up with wit or will. Come at me if you think you are so mighty, and we shall see who will stand frozen in defeat at end. Perhaps it will be Iraqi champions? Yes, how familiar!" And then he laughed with the cutting sound of arctic winds.

Mark counted off the seconds on his watch, something he wore but most people their age didn't. There was a good reason for that - he'd inherited it from his father. Right on the money, he snapped his fingers again and they vanished, reappearing inside his car. "Oh my god, I can't believe that actually happened..." He pointed down at Erin's bare feet and slowly shoes crept back onto them, just like a fairy godmother casting a spell. "They might think the door thing was weird, but as bad as the light is I don't think anyone could tell it was actually concrete for a minute. They'll just think it was stuck and then unstuck." He shook his head. "That bastard," he said with a sudden heat that was very unusual for Mark. "He must have picked on my mom because he thought no one would believe her. For fun."

Despite Edge's many contacts in the hero community, it was actually Erin who had the Master Mage's telephone number in her cell as an emergency contact from her time working for the Farettis. The phone rang several times, then she heard a deep, accented voice on the other end. "Hello, Miss Wander, how may I help you?" Sallah, Eldritch's loyal butler, quickly handed the phone off to his employer to hear Erin explain the situation. As she did so, there was a sudden rattle at the stage door - people were coming! Mark snapped his fingers and laid down some real magic, however, transforming the door into a solid block of concrete. At Erin's look, he shrugged a little desperately. "I couldn't just let them come in!" he whispered as he hurried over to her side, the sound of pounding at the door growing louder. "What does he say?" "That does sound like a serious problem," said Eldritch as Erin finished her explanation. "Your timing is fortuitous - I'm currently engaged myself in negotiations with Mucalinda, the naga king, that may prove helpful in your situation. Can you hold out without me for another ten minutes or so?"

I'll go ahead and use that as a DC 30 Intimidate check to get the guy to spill his guts.

Caradoc was silent as they stepped through the gateway, the Victorian iconography all around them meaning essentially nothing to the former Omegadrone. The prostitutes were equally meaningless in their own way, and he ignored them as he leveled on the coachman. He knelt down and brought his face to the level of the grappled servant, and somehow that reflective silvery helmet he wore didn't seem quite so chivalrous. When he brought his face close to the coachman's, the fae's fear was reflected on the polished metal. When he spoke, his voice was flat and cold, only the last word igniting like a match put to gunpowder - "Where is your master? WHERE?"

"It's quite good, thank you," said Sharl with a nod to Eliza's mom, whose name briefly escaped him. Oh yeah, Julia! "I go to Claremont, the private school in Bayview, for computer programming and advanced systems design. It's a little weird sometimes," he admitted, "I was...homeschooled till I went there," he said truthfully, "but I'm doing really well. I recently worked on a project that had to do with advanced systems recovery from a extraterrestrial computer that had been badly modified by human hackers. They think it'll be a good career move for me." He smiled a little, then went on, "I'm going to be sorry to have to move back home when I graduate this summer. Especially now that I've met Eliza."

Okay, so I don't need to go, and we're waiting on Equinox?

Full Action: Edge Inspires (-1 HP) Surge Standard Action: Edge blasts the T-Rex. DC 30 Tou save.