Avenger Assembled
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When he had finished greeting the civilian scientists and engineers who had arrived with the rest of the young heroes, Edge turned back to face them. "All of us have something to contribute here," he said seriously. "Whether from your powers, your education, your job experience, or your hero skills, all of you can do a lot of good here. What we do here isn't going to get any of us on the cover of Time or make us interdimensional champions, but it'll do a lot of good for a lot of people. There are bad guys called hunger, and poverty, and want, and those are who we'll be throwing down with this week." He thought for a minute, then went on, "We are a little bit concerned about possibly encountering super-mercs or something, but so far there's been no sign of that yet. If you do see somebody like that, get with your team and protect what we're building here."
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"That makes a lot of sense..." Sharl looked Eliza in the eye and put his hand on hers, taking just a moment to gather his courage before he went on. "I'm sure whatever it was in the Tronik stock program anyway, so I'm fine. So anyway, now that that's happened, I've been doing some thinking about you and me and our relationship." He glanced around to make sure no one was listening, realizing with a little embarassment that he was more worried about people hearing this than their earlier conversation. "I really like you a whole lot, Eliza, and getting blown up made me think about all the things we want to do but never quite get around to doing, and how much missing out on that would suck. So what I was thinking is that, maybe sometime this week, you and I could take things to the next level. You know."
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Everybody from Claremont knows Edge - he's dynamite! Tall, handsome, incredibly successful with the ladies and a powerful hero on a respected super-team, he is somebody your teachers still compare you to. And look at him, with his fancy job and international travel, and barely 21, if that. But you gotta love him, because he's just so awesome!
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"Well, luckily Miss A had a full scan of my memories and personal information on file from just before we left," said Sharl with a little shrug. "So, she took that information, plugged it into a base Tronik file, and here I am. I've talked to my friends and I've watched what we have recorded, but I don't remember anything between being scanned by Miss A and waking up in her laboratory after the Day of Wrath." He looked down at his coffee for a moment, then shrugged again. "So I guess, you know, that was really weird. Some of my friends were really freaked out because of how I came back. But all people are is the sum of their memories, right? It's not like I'd have a soul anyway, even if they are real."
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Just before the delay could get awkward, the elevator doors opened again - this time revealing both doctors ."Hello, Erin, Jessie, Mr. Lucas," said Dr. Franklin warmly, the always-slightly frazzled Ellis just nodding hello as she came up just behind him. "I'm sorry for the delay," he went on in his deep voice. "It's my fault," said Ellis with a shake of her head. "I forgot I needed two forms of photo ID for the medical passthrough and nearly had to wait in Outer Receiving. I'm just glad I was still wearing my lanyard from Providence or I'd still be out there." "The important thing is, we're here," said Franklin, looking casual as always in a blue and green sweater Erin remembered him wearing during their long-ago sessions. Looking up at Jessie in her cell, he asked, "Are you ready to go?" "Do you need me to take everyone straight there?" asked Mark. "I've been to Project Freedom a couple of times, I can probably hit the halfway house without any problem."
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Construction projects weren't easy for Mark, who despite his great power had never been much good at doing anything precise. But he'd carefully studied the blueprints, checked and double-checked everything, and luckily gotten everything mostly right in the assembly process. Maybe it hadn't gone as fast as magically summoning a warehouse full of food every couple of hours, but looking around he certainly felt satisfied for all the good work he'd accomplished. He'd missed out on some things by not going to college and by not being a full-time Freedom City hero, but right now he couldn't have felt more satisfied. "Call me Edge, Lieutenant!" he said with a bright smile, feeling a little awkward about the older man calling him a Mister. "Let's go meet the kids!" Mark was waiting at the helicopter door when it landed, cape fluttering in the breeze and ready with a big smile and handshake for everybody as they got off. "Hey Jubatus, hey Tsumani, nice to see you again. Blue Jay, hey, my friend Wander told me great things about you! John, Marcus, hey, how you doing?" In blue and white and gold, in a mask and with a cape down his back, Edge might have looked gaudy, even ridiculous against the subdued backdrop of the base, but somehow he pulled it off - perhaps it was the dazzling smile. "Welcome to Mozambique!" he declaimed dramatically. "This is Lieutenant Lidimo," he said by way of introduction, "He's on loan from the Mozambiquian Army to help us out. If any of you don't know me, by the way, I'm Edge, aka Mark Lucas. I'm so glad to see so many of you out here. We could really use your help. How was your trip?"
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"We came back during the Day of Wrath," replied Sharl frankly. "Our school was already under attack, and we were carrying not just the other Tronik but biological weapons we'd liberated from Erde. We went to the Sanctum, fighting our way out of a trap the Curator had left for us. And when we got there, he was waiting for us." When he got his coffee, Sharl stared down into it in undisguised fascination before looking up at Eliza again. "He sent those robots to kill people here, but he _came_ for Tronik in person. He was already loaded into the program matrix when my friends got there. He'd gone...crazy, I guess, he wanted them to worship him as a god and was going to drag them back to his mainframe forever. Hundreds of people died. My best friend died. But my friends stopped his machines, and I fought him in Tronik with my friend Gal Vanic. At the end of the fight, as far as we can figure out, I found a way to use my own program to overwrite the Curator's. To make him leave Tronik alone and abandon his plans for this world. And he went away, and I...well, I died. In Tronik, I died, fighting the Curator."
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Steve removed his soaking-wet, reddened hands from the sink and dabbed at them with a towel; the barrier he'd put between himself and Gina suddenly seeming less than pointless. "That other people have survived a fall does not sweeten hitting the ground," he said seriously, approaching his sometime-lover slowly, so as not to further pressure her already fragile soul. "I love you. And Sharl loves you. Those who know you love you. That does not make the past any better, but it exists today. The weak do not suffer. The weak die of suffering. You have suffered, and you are still here, and have done all the things you have done. Scars..." And just for a moment, he caught a glimpse of his own hand as he reached for her. "are nothing to be ashamed of."
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Stratos's eyes narrowed. "You're a real jerk, you know that?" He turned back to his meditations and left Erin to catch up with Mark and Jessie, the former still carefully sussing out the conversation. "Jessie's a nice name," said Mark easily, giving her a warm smile to set her at ease. "You should practice saying it to yourself in front of a mirror so you can remember it whenever you need to. That's how superheroes memorize their supernames, and it works pretty well." It was how he did it, anyway, and so far that had gone pretty well. "I'm glad you're doing so well. It sounds like you're on the right track." He shot his Erin a look; everything seemed to be going okay? When she nodded, he turned back to the now ex-Singularity. "Are you excited about moving to a new place? It must be pretty weird to think about moving after you've been living in here so long."
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"Yes," said Steve, "that would be acceptable." He was tense, like a vibrating wire, but even so managed not to snap any of the dishes as he loaded them into the sink and began running scalding-hot water over them. When his hands were buried in steaming-hot water, he looked up at Gina and said abruptly, "I am a freak. I have survived the depths of Nihilor and emerged broken from the pit. Do not compare yourself to me. It is pointless." Over a clatter of dishes, he added, "You are not less because something about me is more than msot. My wounds do not heal yours. Even if you will not say what they are, I know they are there! You are not less for me for that."
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Mark shot a look at Erin for confirmation, then walked down to Singularity's cell. "Hiya," he said with a wave and a smile, keeping his distance so he wouldn't scare her as his own Erin followed him. "I heard you get out of here today. That's pretty great. I guess we didn't meet under the best of circumstances, but I'm really happy for you...do you go by Erin?" he asked Singularity curiously. "I mean it's a perfectly good name, but I just don't want to call you by the wrong name." "She goes by-oh hey, it's you!" Dr. Sebastian Stratos turned around in his cell. "Good to see you kids in a fine establishment like this. Is this that boyfriend of yours without the mask?" inquired Stratos as he got up and loitered near the cell entrance. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone...except everybody! Heh-heh-heh!" He winked at Wander.
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"Not really, I..." Sharl looked around for a moment, checking to see who might be listening, then focused on Eliza. "It's a long story. You know how I told you about that other dimension where the National Socialists won World War II? Well, my friends and I, we went there," he added in a soft voice that the murmur of the coffee shop blotted out past their table before he went on, "and we rescued the Tronik of that dimension. The National Socialists were holding it captive and experimenting on the inhabitants, and I couldn't allow that. So my friends and I, we went there, we defeated their commando team, and we rescued a whole city full of my people. It's resting safely on Earth-Prime now. That's twenty million people." He smiled thinly. "From what everyone tells me, it was a really good day."
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"I know, I heard about Leroj," said Sharl, his face falling for a moment. "I wish I'd been there. I wish I could go there _now_, but Miss A wants to make sure my program is stabilized before I interact with Tronik's systems. Much less the Erde-Tronik again. Anyway, it was bad...but we saved everybody we could, and now both Troniks are safe from the Curator. That's worth a little downtime, right?" He smiled faintly, though his heart wasn't quite in it. "And yeah, I mean, I did...shut down there, so Miss A took my backup program, put it in a new Tronik matrix, and got me going again." He shrugged. "Like I said, we're just the sum of our memories, right? It's not that weird. Well, maybe a little weird..."
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"You are in another place, child," said Frost, not unkindly as he circled around behind her. Having the woman hurl herself off the side of the building, as she looked like to do from the look in her eyes, would certainly accomplish nothing. Frowning, he slipped his spectacles off and put them in his parka pocket. "You have come far from your home, and are stranger here. Tell us where you are from, and perhaps we can reunite you with your Great Mother," When he was standing behind her, briefly facing the rest of the group, he mouthed exaggeratedly, "NOT MAGIC" and pointed to the woman before continuing. "This place is called Freedom City, in nation called United States, in city called Freedom City."
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"Any time," said Mark seriously. "Anything I can do for you, you know I'm only happy to help." He still felt bad about not recognizing the Erin-bot for what she was, though he knew it wasn't anything Erin herself would make an issue of. Between that, and the fact that Erin was one of his best friends in the world, he'd have blown down the walls of the prison if she asked. Probably good they weren't going to do that, though. "Ready to go?" Mark put them down in the standard arrival place for teleporters at Blackstone, an 'Arrival Lounge' whose bland decor masked the high security in the walls. Blackstone had been dealing with superpeople for a long time and were wise to their tricks. "Hello," said the uniformed guard professionally, aiming a portable scanning device at them. "No ferrics, no internal cybernetics...okay, looks like you're good to enter." She stepped aside from the sliding steel door that she'd been standing in front of at their approach. "Retinal scans, please."
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"I guess it's better to be a strange person than be no kind of person...or a person you wish you weren't," said Mark thoughtfully, or as thoughtfully as he ever got. "The important thing is, she'll be out of jail and she'll be living somewhere where she can be herself again. It must be weird being watched and studied all the time, and even in a halfway house she won't have to do quite so much of that. As long as you think I can help her, I'll do whatever I can to help her get out and have a life. I owe her for what Hex helped do to her." He smiled thinly. "And besides, I've done pretty well for myself making friends with Erins. The more the merrier, right?"
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"That's really great," said Mark sincerely. "I know how hard you've been working with Singularity, and it's so awesome they're finally letting her out. I guess sometimes saving the day takes a couple of years, but things will usually work out for the best." Erin had lost track of that particular duty while she was an evil robot, he'd heard, but then you never could count on an evil robot being good for much of anything except evil. He got to his feet and stretched his back. "What's she going to do after the halfway house?" he asked Erin. "I guess she probably can't be a security guard, even now. Are they going to put her up in the Kline building?"
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Neospell (PL 10) - ChrisClark13
Avenger Assembled replied to ChrisClark13's topic in Archived Characters
APPROVED -
"This morning, my mom asked me if I thought maybe my dad had been a robot all along," Mark admitted, remembering the look on her face vividly. "And that's why he did all the bad stuff. So things were rough for a while there." He put on a convincing smile, though, and said, "But things are better now, she's at work and Nina called me from her father's palace. She said she's coming back when spring break is done with some big news." He stretched and threw another little pebble into the shallows. "So things are okay. How are things with you? Did you get everything set up in the prison okay?"
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March 2013 Mark sat alone on the beach, his heavy jacket keeping the chill of a Freedom City spring off his body. He was out of costume today, resting after a long morning with his mother. He knew his mother was sick, knew it in that twisting place inside of him that all the good intentions in the world couldn't fix, and it was a bad feeling. His mom had done some bad stuff, but that had been because she had problems, not because she had a problem. Whatever had happened, Martha Lucas was still his mom. And that was good, because she needed a friend. He skipped stones for a while, his mind wandering as he in fact lost track of why he was on the beach at all. The ocean made him think of Nina these days, his girlfriend having gone back to Socotra for Typhoon's birthday celebration. Nina wasn't exactly a conventional girl, either, but she was still his girl. Maybe he needed to do more things for her....
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I like the idea here, Ari. I like the idea of a mystic who is robust! I wish there were some more cost-effective way for you to model the dual source of his powers; maybe do something like the Enhanced Vampiric Arrays from Dok's vampire heroes builds? What are his feelings about the magic of Freedom City? Malador, Eldritch, etc?
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pc Cavalier (PL10/13) - Trollthumper (Gold)
Avenger Assembled replied to trollthumper's topic in Heroes
HTML's a little weird in your DC table, though I have no idea how to fix that at the moment. Math looks good, build looks good. APPROVED -
Neospell (PL 10) - ChrisClark13
Avenger Assembled replied to ChrisClark13's topic in Archived Characters
This looks like a solid sheet, Chris. I have to say, I have been very impressed at how the quality of your ideas has blossomed here - kudos! I like the costume; there's no danger of his being mistaken as a disciple of White Knight. (If anything he's more like a whitewashed Darth Vader). HTML tags are busted in your sunglasses build. I like the devices, I like the powerset, I would like it if you came up with slightly better names for them. They seem like something the character _would_ come up with, yeah, but they're a little...too precious, you know? Alphabetize your feats, specify your base language. he could really benefit from skill mastery if you can scrape up the points. I like that he has Artificer and not Inventor. -
When Sharl did arrive, he didn't look any different than he usually did. When he wasn't in the Matrix-style black trenchcoat and sunglasses that she'd come to accept as his typical mode of dress, he generally stuck with some variation on the theme. In sunglasses and black leather jacket and jeans today, he looked more like a teenager of the 1950s than his usual 90s look. "Hey, Eliza..." He sat down across from her, his emitter humming almost inaudibly as the seat moved underneath him. He looked across the table at his girlfriend, who he hadn't seen since before the crisis on Erde even began, and found himself leaning across the table to kiss her on the lips. "You'll never guess where I've been!"
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"I spent the entire night sitting in your bathtub because I was unable to stop seeing your body burning in the fires of the charnel pits of Nihilor," replied Steve as he folded his arms, voice going cold. "Do you think I have the capacity for normal? The imagination of it? You suggested a day out somewhere peaceful and content, I suggested you might want to come. That is the end of it." He looked away. "Do you think I have some...some pathetic fantasy of a life in your suburbs? You are not an inferior copy of a normal woman. I do not want to change you into someone you are not." He rose to his feet and began gathering his dishes. "And I hoped you would not believe that I would...connive against you as you seem to imagine me capable of doing."