Avenger Assembled

"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?"

I have something in mind for Young Freedom, yes.

"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?"

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.

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.

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?"

"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.

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."

And yes, that signal is audible to folks.

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.

it's getting about time for everybody to bed down for the night.

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.

As he cleared the fogbank, a lone Nazi commando realized what had just happened to his crack division. In his body armor and carrying a heavy, magnetically-empowered rifle capable of punching through steel or killing a computer program with a single shot, the gas-masked figure first looked at the assembled teens before him, then behind, the eerie silence from his own men puncturing the night, the scene lit by the burning helicopters that had fallen behind him as a grim reminder of the fate of the rest. "Leutnant?...Hans..." He waved the rifle around, the menacing avatar of National Socialist power looking a little lost. "...Mutti?" And with that, he turned and ran, boots squishing in the mud as he ran for his life from the unstoppable group that had taken his unit apart like a hot knife through butter. "100%!" came Sharl's final exclamation through the commlink. "We did it! Upload is complete!" EDIT: Continued in WAR OF THE WORLDS in the Lands Beyond

"Spending time with your family around the holiday would be good, Jill," said Steve seriously, who evidently found nothing to argue with in Jill's assessment of his emotional health. "This is an important season for all of us, and we should find ways to work together as friends. It has been too long since I was together with your family. As for Yolanda..." He hmmed. "Do you have someone to dress as Santa Claus for that evening?" he asked her. "I know I cannot pass, but that would make it less bizarre for her. And be more honest. I have not seen her enough lately." The CD on the room stereo started skipping at that point, and Steve headed promptly over there to skip from Burl Ives to Alvin and the Chimpmunks singing "Jingle Bells." Steve didn't really follow how those worked, but it seemed popular so he'd had them go on the mix CD for the party.

"It's all right, I know you're very busy," said Steve seriously. "HAX has been very demanding of my time as well this season. I am glad we could get together now. Here, I bought you some things for the season." He handed her first the box of chocolates, then the weighty present. "I know these things are very important for the holidays, and I didn't want you to miss out on anything." He looked around the house for a moment, smelling the air and nodding with satisfaction. From the sound of whirring robots in the corner to the soft glow of computers, it was just as he remembered. With a few additions! "It smells good here. How have you been?" he asked her with a smile that seemed to stretch his lined face.

"No, he's going to the Air and Space Museum in Washington once his weapons have been removed," said the scientist with a smile. "There was some debate about that, but since he could fly when his jet-boots were operational, all that class of robot was listened as a flying machine. He's a vital part of our nation's machine heritage, and we're not going to let him rust in a junkyard somewhere. Who knows?" Dr. Green's eyes lit up as he spoke, "With any luck, maybe the legacy of the old AEGIS robots won't be stuck in the museum, either. Perhaps in the future, all our wars will be fought by giant robots instead of by human beings. Think of the savings in men, material, and human lives, not to mention the technological achievements!"

BEE-Keeper is up!

Init for Stratos: 6 D'oh! Blue Jay is up first. Blue Jay: 21 Bee-Keeper: 16 Stratos: 6

That will hit them all, thanks to the magic of targeted area effects. one poor sucker is still standing

Gimmie some initiative, you crazy Freedom Hall kids.

"Yeah, sure," said VINCE almost casually, waving his hand at a bank of drives along one way. "It's the green one. I've backed myself up there three times today, so I know it's all still hunky-dory in there. Not much else to do down here." He smiled faintly at Jill and said, "Listen, dimensional shenanigans or not, you're the first Jill since that day who I'm pretty sure isn't just something screwy in my personality servos, so I'll take what I can get. You, and your friends. Even if I don't know you guys, you're with Jill and that makes you okay in my book." He thought hard in response to Erin's question, as if bringing up things he hadn't considered in a long time. "I don't know," he admitted. "If there are any Omegadrones upstairs, you'd have seen them sometime in the last few months, right? As far as I can tell the building's not going to fall down any time soon. Doc A wanted to make the whole place disaster-proof. Too bad the rest of the world didn't get the memo." He rubbed his eyes at that, evidently wanting to leave that story unsaid, and added, "It's, uh, a mini-fission plant, down in the subbasement. Should still have another five, ten years in it, I guess. Engineering wasn't really my thing," he admitted. "It's still hooked up to all the emergency equipment, the climate control, the water purifier, even the still...Long as the place has power, it'll stay running. Guess I had an advantage over the Atom kids. Their system's got no power at all, and their geothermal thing was supposed to run forever. I haven't heard anything from them, or anyone else on the network, since that big flash hit." At VINCE's words, Steve slipped down below to check out the power plant, checking in with his commlink to confirm that everything was still active. VINCE wasn't quite done. "Uh, as far as everything else...power's down almost everywhere in the city. And the networks outside are gone. Not just dead, I know what that looks like, but gone. If you're here from another dimension, you probably know about the Omegadrones, so...other stuff...I managed to find one working camera at Freedom Hall, pointed up, and it's been ninety days and the sky hasn't changed color. Just grey, grey, grey. I always figured a robot afterlife at least wouldn't be boring, so seeing you guys makes sense." He fell silent for a moment, then said seriously, "Listen, kids, if you take my drive, and you can't get back to a place where you can plug it in somewhere, anywhere that isn't this, I want you to promise me something. Break it." Coming up from upstairs, Steve didn't interrupt the conversation, just make a quiet report to Erin. "The power plants all show green. This building should be able to sustain itself for years afterwards. And there are supplies enough below for a few months if we ration it carefully. No one's been at it, not even animal scavengers or mice. Just like everything on the surface." ------ Blue Jay and the Bee-Keeper walked into the unfortified computer room of Freedom Hall, one place left almost completely untouched by the disaster that had afflicted everything else. No one would bother locking down a system in a place this secure, and sure enough on the monitors and computers they could see prominently displayed (if in darkened low-power mode) the hordes of Omegadrones that had poured from the sky over the space of the last few hours on this world, ripping and tearing it asunder, the sky turning red as heroes died in agony across the face of the planet and then suddenly a great flash and a city in torment abruptly became a city in silence. And then Dr. Stratos blew in the wall. "STRATOS CALLING!" he boomed, lightning flashing from his fingers. "WHO WANTS TO GO FIRST?"

Team 3 advances 30 feet forward! Glow is up.

There was an explosion of gunfire and curses in German from Wraith's position, then a dead and eerie silence as the silver sentinel stood alone in victory. A few dozen yards away, the last remaining Nazi commando team went into action. They still couldn't see, but with a shout of "Schnell! Schnell!" they charged the last thing they could see: Kimber's former position! Bullets passed right through the spectral spirit to ricochet off the remains of the Nazi base, harmless to her but a grim portent of the fate of what lay inside if they and the Nazis did indeed clash! "95%!" Sharl was calling through their commlinks. "Almost there, guys!"

Group 2 is DOWN, as the elite Nazi minions turn out to be just minions.

It was easy enough to get the giant robot back to ASTRO Labs after that, the scientist looking grateful for the rescue and with no ethical questions about who'd cut who in half with a sword during the big fight. They landed in a large open area near the edge of the ASTRO property, While ASTRO techs with anti-grav lifters mobilized to move the big robot into one of the nearby hangers, their host turned to Erin and Corbin. "Thanks again for the rescue," he said seriously, the weather overhead having evened out enough that he could talk to them without getting drenched or frozen. "I have no idea what Hades would want with one of these old things, but we'll make sure no gods come in and steal our giant robots. We've had some practice dealing with his kind before."