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Avenger Assembled

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  1. "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..."
  2. "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."
  3. "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."
  4. "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?"
  5. "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?"
  6. "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?"
  7. 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....
  8. 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?
  9. 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
  10. 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.
  11. 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!"
  12. "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."
  13. This was not an easy conversation for Steve, who preferred to stay far away from things that might blow up in his face most of the time. But having done one brave thing already, Steve pushed the point. "Not Miss Americana. You." He gave her a searching look. "When I heard your voice in the depths of space, I was amazed that you had built a machine that let you speak to me. When I saw it was you, I was...overwhelmed. " He put his hand on the table next to hers. "I know what it was for you to do that, more than anyone else. Take one more step with me," he urged her. "Together. The children will delight in meeting the woman I love, and Yolanda will treasure you. She already wants a suit of her own one day."
  14. "I doubt they will have any complaints," said Steve with a little shrug. "They have never been anything but welcoming to me, and I have told them of my work with the Orphans and their reintegration into society." He set down his fork and gathered both his words and his thoughts. "You know," he hazarded on the unsubtle way he had that meant this was obviously a suggestion, "I have an idea. You should come with us. You said it yourself, there will be few people, a pleasant spring day, and only those who we care for around. The children will be interested in playing together and in seeing the place, not in anything else. And their parents are grateful just to have them in their lives."
  15. "All right, well, I'll see what I can do.. You hang tight here, and I'll go find my friend and we'll see if we can deal with the monster." Outside the computer, figuring that this was a crisis bigger than a jammed-up vehicle, Citizen 'popped' into view again and relayed the conversation to Temperance. Sharl had a good memory and was trying his best, but it was pretty obvious he didn't really understand what was going on. "So I guess there's some kind of void...thing, floating around this dimension? Something like Doctor Metropolis? I don't know!" He threw up his hands. "I don't know what we'd see if we went back to Earth-Prime. It's really weird. The guy seemed nice enough if you want to talk to him, he was a little weirder than most things I've met in a computer but not that strange."
  16. Spending an HP to have a Detect Magic [visual] ritual up, TT, if that's okay with you.
  17. "This is not my first action," snapped Frost, a little peevish himself in the crisis. "She has dysautonomia, which means her autonomic functions have become disconnected with each other. She needs hospitalization. Fleur, can you transport her to the League clinic? Treatment fast, or this becomes worse." He stood up and reached into his parka's front pocket, coming out with what looked for all the world like a pair of old-fashioned bifocals. "Hmm. Many causes for this condition. I could not see what happened from below - did she overpower herself in attacking you?"
  18. A cloud of icy mist came pouring in over the balcony railing seconds later, instantly forming into the hooded shape of Comrade Frost. He'd headed straight up here at the sign of trouble, leaving a thin line of ice on the windows trailing all the way back down to ground level. Frost relaxed at the sight of the fallen woman and standing heroes, albeit just a little. "Gaian Knight and Tiamat have the helicopter crew. What happened here?" he asked, making a beeline for the unconscious would-be jumper they'd all come to save. "I'm a doctor," he said without preamble as he bent down and began examining her with his red eyes narrowed, though he was careful not to remove his gloves. "You are safe now," he said to the victim, though for all he knew it was a lie. "Are you two all right?"
  19. "What was once my organic body has been altered nearly beyond my recognition. I doubt there is much to see," said Steve, but he didn't say no. Instead he carefully took his usual seat across the table from Gina, careful not to overburden the chair he sat on. "Speaking of children," he said thoughtfully, "I have been thinking of taking those who have been under my care out together. Yolanda has shown no fear of Omegadrones from her rescue, and the Omegaorphans would benefit from time out together. They have done well at their school and with their adoptive families, but they have rare chances to socialize together. The school...is concerned about them damaging each other. In here," he added, tapping his temple. "There has been some difficulty in reversing the policies that my replicant agreed to."
  20. Steve noticed the name first, and then the food. Both discussion of her past, and eating, were rare things from his girlfriend. "I never knew my father in his prime, only the man he was in the Black Ghetto. He loved me as much as he was able, as did my mother. For all that they were...not like mothers and fathers here, I could do worse for examples." He began to eat from his own plate, relaxed enough not to hoard, stirring everything together on his plate before eating. "A parent should be able to put their child above all else, without hesitation. When I can slip the bonds that are in here..." he tapped the side of his head. "I will be ready then. Faster, with you."
  21. "I know." Steve reached out and hugged her, pulling her tightly to his broad chest for just a moment. "But I am a son of that place, and it will be with me till the end of my days. Even knowing there is no rational way that you could share her fate, I remember what was lost and...I fear enough for you, and for me, when we are together," he confessed. "They have come together for us in a way I thought was lost. I could not risk going any further with that. With anyone else." He released Gina and turned back to their food. "I have seen fathers at work. Before, and here, with men like Jack and so many others. I am not brave enough to be a father." He dished up, adding, "We have the lives that we have. I am content with mine today."
  22. "Because the last woman I loved died of having a child," said Steve suddenly, nearly dropping his glass as he set it down on the counter before him. He looked down at his lined hands and said, "There, I...I have said it, and I did not break. The words cannot hurt me." He looked at Gina and said, "It was before. After my parents were dead, before I was taken. We were young, and we were all the other had, and when she became pregnant she killed herself so that she would not birth a child into the misery of the Black Ghetto." He flattened his free hand on the counter next to him. "She had saved some of the poison for me but I could not make myself take it. So instead I took her body to where it could be burned, and I did it so that predators could not take her. Aaand when I lay awake and looked at you tonight, I remembered what I had lost and how I could lose that again. And so I could not sleep."
  23. "Well, then, you have no problem," said Murdock with a shrug. "You have defended the weak against the strong and done so for what is right, you helped save the city from an attack by a cruel adversary who made a point to hunt the weak for his sport. There are many walking around the city who have done far less and know nothing but pride." He rose to his feet, briefly looming over the girl. "You will find, I think, that an origin of the Terminus will matter less these days as the public turns its eyes to other fears. As for the legacy of destruction you fear, let me say..." He gathered his thought for a moment before saying, with great firmness. "You will talk to those who will try and tell you that the Terminus is not evil. This is false. But _you_" he said, pointing to her, "are not evil. Your powers, and their use for good, are not evil. Remember that."
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