Avenger Assembled
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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
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"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.
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"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.
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"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!"
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BEE-Keeper is up!
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Init for Stratos: 6 D'oh! Blue Jay is up first. Blue Jay: 21 Bee-Keeper: 16 Stratos: 6
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That will hit them all, thanks to the magic of targeted area effects. one poor sucker is still standing
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Gimmie some initiative, you crazy Freedom Hall kids.
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"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?"
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Team 3 advances 30 feet forward! Glow is up.
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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!"
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Group 2 is DOWN, as the elite Nazi minions turn out to be just minions.
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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."
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As the icy fog poured across the battlefield, the two remaining Nazi commando teams vanished beneath its chilling embrace. The heroes could hear shouts in German and running feet from within, proof that the fight wasn't over, but from the sound of things the Germans had no idea where they were going. It was only a matter of time before they used some of their heavier weaponry, but for the moment they did indeed have some time."75%!" Citizen was yelling on everyone's commlink, even as the robots around him assumed the combat positions with murderous tension visible in cybernetic limbs. "The first German in the room is dead," called Rogue to the others, a look of determination on her projected face as she flitted from body to body. "Make sure the others can see it done, so they remember! " came the chant, a mechanical echo on the commlink.
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Nazi Commando Team 1 is down! Nazi Commando Team 2 will make a break for it towards the source of the obscuring effect. Wraith is up as soon as I make a Gm post
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The enormous crash of the distant lightning bolt, clearly audible even inside the ruined Brownstone, made everyone jump and cut any response from below. When the echoes cleared, everyone could distantly hear the sound of a clearly identifiable voice singing, "Daisy, daisy, give me your answer true..." Opening the door revealed a Brownstone basement that was untouched by the attack, albeit with a musty smell to the air that suggested just how long it had been abandoned. The untouched room was almost entirely dark after this many months off the grid, with just a few red glowing emergency lights here and there and a single, half-visible electronic spectre sitting on the table. VINCE looked up at them with hollow eyes as they approached, his Archetech jumpsuit looking as tired and tattered as the rest of him, as if not only his signal but his program itself had degraded. "Hey, Jill," he said wearily. "I don't suppose you're here to tell me that this is all just been one really bad feedback loop and you're gonna drop me back in the real world? Gonna have some laughs about ol' Vince, stuck in the end of the world on his hard drive?"
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Ghost Girl is up
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Sure, why not, AA said portentously:
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They're both down, with the bonus from Autofire
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Freedom Hall was an eerie place as Bee-Keeper and Blue Jay explored it. Opened storage lockers with their contents spilled on the ground, security robots in position at the broken windows, decayed food in the cafeteria still on turned-over trays, heavy security doors long since slammed shut and sealed, all speaking to frantic activity and an alert against a disaster that had swept everything away anyway. The building was still secure despite what looked like months of abandonment; as sturdy as Freedom Hall was, the building would stand for years without any further repair. But there was still something _off_ about it: there were no people, no animals, and no remains inside: despite the months-decayed carnage outside, the inside of the Hall had no bodies, no bones, and no sign that any had ever been there. Behind them, Dr. Stratos (who was not a young man) was resting inside the garden, walking around and chuckling over the statues of dead heroes. - Steve didn't look satisfied with his conversation with Erin, but fell silent and kept rear watch without a word of complaint once they were inside the building. Perhaps I'm wrong, he thought disconsolately as they walked through the wildly disordered lower floors of the Brownstone. The building looked subtly _wrong_ to Jill's eyes, it was certainly not the place that she had left behind however long ago that had been. There were clearly signs of wild activity here; scorchmarks inside the building itself, but still no bodies or visible remains of anyone she'd known. She did find the melted remains of what might have been one of Colt's rifles near the window, but otherwise the place was eerily silent. Despite the damage outside, the place was largely intact. They were just reaching the doorway downstairs when Steve suddenly spoke aloud. "Careful. There is a trap below, one that might still be active if the batteries in the lower areas are still empowered. A machine intelligence wielding advanced weaponry." It was getting harder and harder to forget as they got closer and closer. "It was well-armed." - "Wait a minute." Blue Jay and Bee-Keeper could hear Stratos in the garden, his voice echoing through the broken windows as they explored the building. "He's dead? He's DEAD?" Stratos was standing before the statue of the dead Captain Thunder, a gleam of pure fury dawning in his eyes. "NO! I won't be tricked by Thunder and his lies! He's not dead! It's this place that's dead! DEAD! I'LL KILL YOU AGAIN THUNDER!" he shouted and suddenly there was a BOOM and flash of light as a bolt of lightning struck the ground inside the hall, hitting Stratos again and again, blue-white electrical fire sizzling around his body and into his eyes as he floated up into the air, the light and sound show visible even across town in the Brownstone: after all, the lightning strikes were the first real 'weather' anyone had seen in the city. "First I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll BLOW YOUR HOUSE IN!"
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"And I have something for you as well," Steve promised without hesitation. If he showed any sign of thinking about what an important day this was for a social butterfly like Miss Americana, he showed no sign of it as he spoke to her handler. "I will see you tonight, Gina." And sure enough, around the eight o'clock that was his usual time Steve marched up Gina's shoveled walkway with box of chocolates under one arm and wrapped present under the other. It had been a while since he'd seen Gina's house but there was no mistaking its familiar shape in the darkness. He wondered where Gina's electronic sidekick was today, but supposed that wasn't too likely to be an issue. Since catching the two of them together, Sharl had generally avoided Gina's house at night. Particularly with him with such ruffled relations with his mentor, too. Steve had heard all about that, taking note of how upset Gina had been about her security being violated. Was that why he'd stayed away, in retrospect? It was tough to say.
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Prompted by his conversations with Mara, Erin, and Jill, Steve finally did call Gina on the night of the 22nd. In retrospect he'd gone too far in his desire not to shake up their relationship with a lot of visits, avoiding her could cause as many problems for what they had together as being there too much. He certainly didn't want to make Gina unhappy with him, especially when so much was already going on in December and January. Making her upset now could ruin all their plans for the future. "Hello, Gina, it's me," he said on the phone in his usual dry, flat voice. "I was wondering if you'd like me to come over tonight. I have a supply of holiday-themed chocolates, and thought we could watch a Christmas movie." He fell silent at that, listening for her response patiently.
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Busy as she was helping her still-in-the-doghouse sidekick organize his January expedition to Erde, Gina didn't see much of her boyfriend as the month of December rolled on and as the holiday season approached. Spending the holidays together was one thing they'd never really discussed, since for all she'd seen Steve didn't celebrate any Earth holidays. It certainly seemed like he was busy enough at HAX, or maybe with FLSCH, given that he wasn't coming over and wasn't calling. And indeed Steve was quite busy with his work at HAX and elsewhere, putting in time at the soup kitchen where he volunteered or just walking around as he took in Freedom City in December. His relationship with Gina, and with Miss A, was certainly on his mind, but there was so much else to deal with during the holidays in Freedom City. Dating Gina was a potentially dangerous thing with emotions occasionally so raw between them, and with her formidable mind always at work. So he kept his distance, figuring it was better to do that than risk a blowup during the holidays. It wasn't that his feelings for Gina had changed, but he wanted to make sure she stayed happy. It was very important to him that she not think that anything had changed between them, and it was easier for him to believe that when they weren't together. Maybe it wasn't the right decision to make, but when he was honest with himself, his grasp of romantic behavior among people on Earth wasn't the best. So he walked the streets and worked late every night in December as the snow began to pile high on the streets around him, his mind occasionally going back to Gina as he wondered what she was doing.
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Papercut is up
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Two left standing Okay, two left of Group #1