Avenger Assembled
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Cobalt Templar, the Liberty League, and Eve Martel deal with some bad medicine.
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The night of January 15, 2013 2 AM The call went out to le Renard Rouge's, Cobalt Templar's, and the Liberty League's line, one after the other, at a time that just happened to catch them all when they were otherwise indisposed. The woman's voice on the other end is rough and raspy, with the tension clear as she speaks. "
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Wharton Hill Harrier watched, as amazed as anyone else, as the Curator's ships gathered up the severed Freedom City and began to carry it away into the perpetually grey sky overhead. Over the distant rumble, he called, "We should not remain this area long! The subsidence from the city's removal may cause a collapse...and if the Curator's ships do come hunting for the missing ones who probed the sky, they will pass through this area early in whatever search they make. We should avoid being taken by the Curator...again," he added, chewing on that thought unpleasantly. "His attentions will not be in our favor." He was carefully not looking at Blue Jay or Bee-Keeper, eager not to resume the arguments that had nearly gotten the armored warrior and young (so young, was I ever that age?) archer captured by the collecting vessels.
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As Bee-Keeper's words fell on what seemed for a moment like silent air, there was no noise in the dead Freedom City but a deep rumbling from beneath the Earth and the loud radioactive hiss of the rising dome of energy outside. A moment later, a wide-eyed, pale-faced young teenager appeared from mid-air just feet from his face and said, "Hang on! We're going to-" And then they disappeared. "make a quick trip!" Quickstep and the Bee-Keeper popped into view again in the middle of the group of heroes outside the hill, Dorothy depositing Baxter (still in his armor, of course) in between Jill and Wander. "I'll be right back!" she said gamely, vanishing again and leaving the Bee-Keeper alone with the two young women and the strange-looking, heavily-scarred man who had to be their last remaining companion... - "Hey, Blue Jay!" yelled Dorothy as she popped into being in front of Tona, "Let's go!" On closer inspection, Tona recognized Dorothy, a second-year student who had been expelled after a criminal attack on another student just a few days before...well, it was hard to remember exactly what had happened! Dorothy reached for her, and teleporter and archer popped back into being right in the middle of the little group on the distant hill. Tona recognized Wander and Jill O'Cure from their pictures, Quickstep from the school, and she knew what an Omegadrone without its armor deployed looked like well enough and there it was right there! Behind them came a low rumble that turned into a deep bass vibration, hard enough to make the nearby trees sway and buildings crack: and no wonder! The now-completely encased Freedom City was rising out of the ground, green-wrapped rock rising higher and higher in the sky, the very ocean rushing in with a roar to take the place of the stolen dead city that was high enough now to cast a deep shadow against the small group of heroes on the hill in the distant forest, dwarfed by the sheer power of the transition taking place before their eyes. Among them, a very tired Quickstep took this opportunity to sit down.
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ic And Countless Screaming Argonauts [IC]
Avenger Assembled replied to trollthumper's topic in Midtown
"They teach us that you're a joke," said Edge fiercely in response to the immortal warrior's taunts, dodging the falling ceiling like so much falling raindrops. "You're just another old man trying to reshape the world in his own twisted image. And it's even worse than that, because you're a soldier!" he added, leaping over a blow from one of the Spartoi as if it had barely swiped at him. "Look at you! How many millennia have you fought this war and you can't even finish the job! I should be really mad at you, and I was earlier, because you were a faker and a liar who couldn't be trusted to keep his word, but now I'm just disappointed! I mean come on now, can't you do _anything_ right? Well, maybe," he looked around at the others. "You picked the best enemies to have in Freedom City; the Liberty League! C'mon, team, let's show this guy what a legacy of heroism is all about! And Medea, come on, show him you have a life outside your old relationship! Give him the old Greek fire!" -
ooc And Countless Screaming Argonauts [OOC]
Avenger Assembled replied to trollthumper's topic in Archives
Mark is going to take a full-round action to Inspire the others. -
While loading incredibly toxic biological weapons hadn't been on anyone's agenda for the trip, it wasn't long before the big storage refrigerator in the Wonderbus (which Bigfoot never really had explained) was carrying enough crates of Ragnorak to kill -"Oh, I wouldn't let it break," was Rogue's breezy explanation when asked how many people the virus samples could potentially kill on Earth-Prime in the event of an accident. With her silvery thumb on her chin as she stood outside the Wonderbus, she said, "Otherwise I'd be tempted to keep a few vials here just as a precaution in case the local humans do prove troublesome. But if they are as trustworthy as you kids, and if they are as willing to work with us for what we are...I'm sure we won't need it. We have other emergency measures." "Well...let's just hope it doesn't come to that," said Sharl a little awkwardly, stepping out of the Bus once Erde-Tronik was secure. "In the meantime, we'll get our people safely to our world, and get the two Troniks together." He took her hand and shook it firmly, then bowed in that awkward Tronik way from the shoulders. "Whatever happens," he promised her, "we survive. We are the city pulled from the burning planet. We will overcome, and we will survive. And some day, our Tronik and yours will live together under the same skies...far away from any of this." She nodded at that, and bowed back. "Take your words seriously, Sharl," she went on, speaking in English as a gesture of trust for the non-robots all around her. "And all of you," she added with a look at the rest of the team. "Tens of millions of our people go with you. Don't let us down." Raising her voice, she added, "My people are going to move out to try and make contact with those anti-National Socialist warriors you spoke of. If you have any business in this area, now's the time!"
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Harrier crashed back to the pavement fast and hard enough to crack the asphalt across the street, his armored body rising from the crater immediately as he ran over to join the others. Startled, both by the moment and by Harrier's arrival, Quickstep stuttered, "I-I-I...not all of you at once! But I can do it!" She grabbed Wander and they vanished together, reappearing in a deserted campground an instant before Dorothy vanished again. This time she took Jill's hand, saying "This was where-" "-we used to come for summer camp!" she exclaimed before disappearing again. When she appeared the last time, it was with Steve, whose armor was just retracting as he looked back at the Freedom City now completely surrounded by a circle of alien ships, the trench they had dug around Freedom City complete. From their hilltop view at the edge of Wharton State Forest, the heroes outside watched as the ships began to glow an eerie shade of green. The glow was answered by a verdegris wash of light that seemed to begin rising up from the landscape below. "The Curator is a thief," replied Harrier, "a gatherer of places, peoples, and things from across the cosmos. Miss Americana's sidekick, Citizen, his homeworld was stolen by the Curator centuries ago," he went on, trying his damnedest to remember the history of a young man who generally fell into an embarrassed silence around him. "His ringworld incorporates the material from an entire star system, and things stolen from across all realities together. He has been a...rival of the Terminus, but only for his own gain, not for the benefit of all. He...he still has the others!" Inside the carved-out city, Bee-Keeper and Blue Jay could see the glow too: a slowly-rising wall of brilliant, shimmering green that was bright enough to cast even shadows in the city into daylight and was clearly going to encompass a massive circle that included them and all of the city in its effects. Rising all around the city in the beginnings of a dome shape, it was clear that within a few minutes they were going to be completely cut off from the outside world.
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Definitely, the circle the ships are digging will incorporate Claremont as well as their current location.
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A moment later, Harrier's view whirled frantically in the air. "Incoming starships," he said simply as his engines roared and the grey clouds swooped up to greet him, swallowing the mad vision of the ringworld above. He turned back to provide perspective for his words, still roaring downwards, and displayed a flickering image of a rapidly approaching, impossibly fast swarm of black ships that had to be coming in faster than any Earthly rocket given the sheer impossible distance between what had been a high solar orbit and the Earth-distant planet beneath. Grey skies filled his vision as he disappeared into the cloudbank again, keeping up a regular report schedule as he flew. "Believe they are using protonic reversion drive. High acceleration. No living crew. Intentions unknown." Behind him his jetpack screamed like a damned soul, the sound of the spaceships following him into the atmosphere like twin distant explosions that never quite settled down. "Coming in fast." - Minutes later, before Blue Jay and Bee-Keeper could decide where to go, and well before Steve had actually broken cloud cover, the alien ships broke through the perpetual cloud cover over 'Freedom City', circling the city's edge like a flock of gigantic metallic birds. A few moments later, the energy discharges began: silent red beams that blasted into what had to be the rock and dirt at the edge of the city, the distant grey seas, followed closely by black, spongy balls that were just visible as they plunged into the rents dug by the lasers. They weren't approaching the city, rather, they were circling it.
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Steve walked to her closed door and said simply, "I will see you again," before he turned and headed for the door. Perhaps his handling had been rough, but the ending had gone as well as he could expected. Gina and Steve's relationship had always been a very complicated one, but taking it to the next level, even in words alone, would more than suit his purposes for the moment. And if she chooses to break it off, or never see me again? The thought wasn't a pleasant one, it certainly wasn't one that would please the heart of the former Omegadrone. If she does, well, then I will have learned all I need to know about this relationship. It was a cold thought, but as Steve braced himself against the chill outside, he decided that it was a very cold night.
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Steve flinched; his shoulders seeming to slump at Gina's words. "I...perhaps it was a mistake to bring it up at all." He looked away, composing himself as he seemed to give up on something he'd been holding onto. "I had thought that things might be different after all this time, with all we have done for each other, but if it cannot be done, it cannot be done, and mere words will not change the facts. I will not ask you to say or do things that are beyond your power to do, even if they are things that I desire myself. I have stayed away because I knew I would...hurt you if I came too close. I...I love you, Gina." Silence fell, something he was evidently content to let lie in Gina's quiet house forever.
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On the small monitor they'd rigged up, the heroes watched Harrier's painfully slow descent through layer upon layer of featureless grey cloud. He was not a fast flyer, which might have been the best argument against taking to the sky, but the speedier Bee-Keeper had evidently opted not to join him. "These clouds are unbroken. They are unnatural," he opined over the radio as he ascended higher and higher. Not much of a talker, for the longest time there was nothing but the grey sky and the roar of Harrier's jets over the video signal. It was long enough, alone in the deep alien sky overhead, that Harrier was almost ready to believe that he'd been wrong about what lay above the atmosphere and that he needed to fly back down and rejoin the others. Until suddenly came the moment when he finally broke through that oceans-high cloud cover and, for a moment, the flare from the sun overhead blocked both his transmission and his vision. "I..." His view returned after a moment, and down below on what had been VINCE's flickering display, an alien sight swarmed into view for Wander, Jill, and Quickstep: the horizon curved _upwards_ as Steve rose, curling up towards infinity on either side as he swiveled around in the air to take in the sheer size of the planet, no, the _structure_ on which they were all embedded. The scale slowly became visible as Harrier's flight ascended; those were not islands but continents distant, that was no ocean but a world distant, laid out flat like a map and stretching on as far as the eye could see. There were 'maps' visible that hazily resembled Earth, others that were completely alien, the sheer suggestion of impossible bulk almost stupefying for someone born on a planet. Steve turned his head again to the sides where, far, far distant, multiple Earth-lengths away, massive walls that must have been big enough to swallow a planet towered above the landscape, holding in the atmosphere, and then looked up again at the 'sun': this close, the silvery line of the space-ring was visible behind the off-yellow star, its bulk partially blocked by a series of great black squares between them and the star itself. "Cosmic Entity 045," said Harrier over the radio, his normally impassive voice tight at the awesome, terrifying sight of the cosmic superstructure all around them. "The Curator's Ringworld." An instant later, "I am being pinged by active radar."
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"We have made it a year," Steve agreed with a nod, having had good cause to pay close attention to the date in the recent past. "And your robot disguise holds no terrors for me," he assured her with complete frankness, reinforcing a subject he'd never actually engaged her on. The thought of her disguising herself as the beautiful gynoid, given the manifold frailities of her human body, was only logical. "I would not force you to walk the streets as the woman you are, knowing how you feel. I am grateful for your present. Those clothes will let me do things, be a man, I otherwise could not be. But if I am to go beyond what I have been for your sake, and for mine, don't you think we should take that step beyond what we have been...together?"
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I have something in mind for Young Freedom, yes.
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"I do like it," Steve assured her, his back to her as he walked into the room to run his scarred hands over the fine clothes. He could tell at first glance how well made they all were. A perfect fit, most likely, given Gina's experience with his measurements and her intelligence. "There are well-made, and beautiful to look at. I am grateful that you had them made for me." He turned and walked to her, giving her that serious look again. "I would dress however you wanted to be with some version of you where others can see. But I am glad you have dressed me this way." A faint smile tugged at his lips, briefly, before he went on. "But what about _this_?" he asked her, putting his hand on her heart, and then on his. "What about what we have when no one can see?"
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Okay: The Liberty League and Cobalt Templar deal with Grant Pharmaceuticals, whose founder has a terrible secret. Blue Jay, Warp, Heraldo, Kit, and Blod deal with misguided T-babies who have taken to the streets in response to the scare about Terminus contamination. (You want this one, Ari?) Harrier, Gabriel, and Rev. meet Shadivan Steelgrave's clone. Jubatus, Bee-Keeper III, Silver Spider, and Velocity fight drugs on the street! (I can give you this one, Tiff) The Interceptors and Dragonfly deal with the arms trade on the same! Anyone I didn't catch, don't worry, you'll have a role.
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I'm planning a big, site-level event which I describe this way. It comes as an infiltration from another dimension, a subtle one this time. There are no armies waiting at the door, no hordes of Omegadrones waiting to pour in from just across a dimensional barrier. This is not an invasion. Instead it's a corruption, leaking its way into the underbelly of the city: in the illegal street drugs that people take to get superpowers, the antidotes that frightened T-babies take to hold back their own terrible abilities, (Grant Pharmaceuticals!) in the illegal super-technology that arms thugs and gangsters, and in a dozen other ways. The touch of the Terminus is spreading in Freedom City. And laughing in his cell in Blackstone, what does the clone of Shadivan Steelgrave have to say about it? Just shout out if you're interested. This story should be able to find a role for everybody, even vignettes for those not in the main story.
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There was a card showing a smiling bunny rabbit on a snowy field on the outside, signed with Steve's erratic block printing. "To Gina, From Steve." The box turned out to hold a snow globe from the New Year's 2012, a big fluffy one with sparkly white 'snow' on the inside and the date 2012 prominently painted on the glass cover over the model Freedom City within. It was real glass, too, this was not a cheap snow globe but rather a legitimate work of art, mounted in what looked like a real wood-carved frame. "I bought it as a commemoration of the beginning of our relationship. It was on eBay." He gave her a very serious look, and said, "I wanted you to know that our relationship is very important to me. That it is is very meaningful, and that it should not be forgotten. Do you agree?"
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"Tomorrow, we take to the sky." Steve replied to Jill when they changed shifts, nodding at her suggestion. - The next morning, walking out among the debris in front of the 'Brownstone', Steve spoke over the radio commlink. He was wearing a video hookup that would hopefully hold together long enough to send a signal back down to VINCE's display in the building beneath, VINCE himself now resting comfortably in the hard drive Jill had successfully detached. With Quickstep looking on, just behind the older heroes, Steve spoke into the microphone in his dry, steely voice. "This message is for Blue Jay and her companion. You recognize my voice even with my voder inert. I am the Omegadrone with whom you battled yesterday. My name is Stephen Franklin Murdock. I was born on the streets of dread Nihilor. When I was the age you are now, I was...taken." He swallowed and said, "I am a free drone now. I was changed by a stroke of fate, and am no longer Omega's pawn. I am..." he looked back at Jill and Erin and Quickstep and said, "I am a superhero. We are in the hands of an alien threat that is different than the Terminus, one that watches us from above the grey sky above. To the black and armored warrior who is Blue Jay's companion...you have my apologies. I should have let you strike me." From anyone else it might have been sarcasm. "But that is in the past. Our enemies are in the sky, watching us now. They pull at the wounds of the past, and laugh as we twitch. I will go above the clouds to see them. If you can fly, join me there." And with that, steel armor erupted around his skin, from his skin, as Omegadrone armor powered its way through his body and replaced his flesh with its own terrible spiked shape. Harrier rose into the sky on a black and red pillar of belching smoke and flame, disappearing into the clouds above.
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When the battle was done and the commandos defeated, Citizen floated out of the warehouse with his precious cargo tucked beneath one arm. "I've got it, guys!" He had both the truncated Erde-Tronik drive and the gold boxy storage medium from Earth-Prime in the same big black case. It would be up to he and Gina over the next few months, (probably as what would incidentally count as his graduation project) to integrate the Troniks together successfully but for now the backup was complete and the City of the Future (as he still sometimes thought of it, the very old motto that Tronik had kept even after the Exodus) was safe from the National Socialists. Assuming they got out there in time! "Wow!" He wasn't so focused as to not be impressed when he saw the battle with his own eyes; the smoking helicopters, the fleeing commando, the crack Nazi strike team that Young Freedom had taken apart with all of the skill and power of a master artist painting a portrait. "Nice, you guys," he said with a grin before disappearing into the Wonder Bus. "Now let me get the systems in here rebooted..." As the lights inside the Bus came back on, the other machines came out, Rogue in the lead in a humanoid body that looked like a human woman cast in the featureless nude, like something from a German Expressionist movie. With no explanation for the new shape, she cast her gaze from the scene of the battle to the heroes, back and forth, and for the first time seemed almost uncertain. "You did this. All of this, when you could have taken your Sharl and that city and..." She opened and closed mechanical hands before saying, decisively, "All right. All right, maybe you're right. Maybe there is another way to prosecute our war against the National Socialists." The group of robots behind her, which did not include her Sharl (who was in that system his counterpart was carrying) startled at that, but Rogue pressed on. "If you can fight the Nazis like this, teach them _fear_ without destroying them all, maybe we can try it ourselves. At least once, anyway. But you'd better take the Ragnorak with you. If we're not going to prune the humans back, it'll just look bad if we have it in our possession."
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And yes, that signal is audible to folks.
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Night fell over Freedom City, the sky darkening, but an eerie night. There was no perceptible sunset and no moon or stars rose, and the city around them remained as dark and silent as a tomb. In the darkened night, only those with enhanced senses on the ground below could still see the grey cloud cover that continued to blanket the sky in a featureless shroud. Bunking down inside the battered Brownstone was no picnic, but most of the people involved had certainly done much worse. With his cybernetically enhanced physiology significantly cutting down on his need for sleep, Steve took the first watch, sitting alone in the lobby of the Brownstone with his ears open against the night. "I have been in worse places than this," he reassured the others when they were concerned about his solitude, "I will be fine." Down below, VINCE certainly appreciated the company, particularly from Quickstep who shared at least something of his isolationism. He still wasn't interested in talking much about what had happened, but he was able to point out the emergency supplies and sleeping bags left below just so "you kids" could stay comfortable. With the glow from the emergency lanterns down below, it wasn't exactly homey, but at least it cut the stillness of the almost Platonic night outside. It was a little rougher on the street for Blue Jay and Bee-Keeper, only one of whom was really used to this style of living. The night was eerie still, without even the winds one would normally expect for Freedom City at night, with only Blue Jay's torch and Bee-Keeper's armor as their sources of illumination. There weren't many remains still on the street, certainly not as much as one would expect for a Freedom City murdered, but as they went more than a few skeletons of people, buildings, cars, and lives loomed out of them in the darkness as they made their way to the Bee-Keeper's stronghold. There was no sign of Omegadrones in the sky, but then, as Blue Jay remembered, some of them could make themselves invisible.
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it's getting about time for everybody to bed down for the night.
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Stratos glared at Bee-Keeper, eyes bugging out in an almost comical paroxysm of rage, before suddenly calming, so fast it was as if a balloon had popped somewhere inside him. "Didn't anyone care, Barry?" he asked, reaching out to pat the armored apian on the arm, a look of deep, manifold pain in his eyes. "It has to have been over a year by now. I know Thunder and his friends probably thought it was funny, but didn't anyone ever come looking for me? Medea, or Shadow, or even old Roman? That's just terrible. What have I been doing with my life?" He slumped, seeming to deflate even further. "You don't have to worry about Omegadrones, girl. No matter how hard I try to make them care about me, no one ever does. I...I don't think I can help you kids any. Just don't go in the water. They've got some of those laser-eyed sharks from Epilson Eridani that Blackstar was always going on about and they really like human flesh. Yuck." And with that, the mad scientist flew away as suddenly as he'd arrived, whiffing off into the opening he'd blown in the wall and vanishing up into the eerie grey sky overhead.