Avenger Assembled

Disable Device check, Fox! DC 25!

With Firebug in custody, Caradoc borrowed a police radio to report to the others. "Ye fiery man is in the hands of the authorities of yon realm," he said with a grandness that sounded false to him even now. How did heroes simply stand here and talk like this with no hesitation in their voices? "His suit of foul infernal heat will be taken away to the custody of the sheriff and the reeve." Miss Americana had gotten him some books on medieval history and he'd studied them as best he could, but he was not at all sure what this culture found so romantic about what seemed to be a deeply unpleasant era. "I will return to yon Camelot," he added, before heading off into the sky on a curtain of flame and smoke to slide out of view of the humans below so that Murdock the security guard could eventually return to his employer's side.

"We can do it if you help us," said Sharl quietly, giving Miss A an earnest look. "There's no way we can screw up the technical side if you're managing it, and that'll give me time to keep analyzing the tactical maps I got from Claremont's files. Blue Moon makes sure a copy of her reports still go to the school's archives, so we've got everything the Resistance has on the rump National Socialist government. That's their military strength, some of their defenses, where their remaining Ubersoldaten are. Their main processing center is in central Missouri, and I'm betting whatever system they have Tronik on is running near there." He didn't need to say how easily Gina could stop him; how a word from her could get Young Freedom broken up and his friends punished, or get him personally in very hot water. They wouldn't boot him back to Tronik, most likely, but there'd be no future for him on Earth-Prime at all.

Let's call this a straightforward punch. 19 Whew! DC 23 tou save for Gremlin 1.

Citizen and the spirit noble traded punches, neither of them holding back as it soon became clear just how evenly matched they were. As electrical discharges sizzled off his armored skin, Sharl punched his way 'upstream' towards the Marchesa, eyes glowing behind his mirrorshades with righteous fury. "Listen, lady, you may be some hot stuff inside your crazy alternate dimension! But this is a real computer! In the real world! And there are heroes here to stop you and keep you from exploiting anyone else. That means that science wins!" When he was within punching distance, he did just that, landing a devastating blow that sent the Marchesa smashing backwards against the wall of her stronghold so hard that the structure itself began to shatter and quake. "And magic loses!" A devastating beam of pure blazing heat erupted from the paragon's eyes and struck the spirit noble in the chest, and as it did so the whole room shattered into spinning fragments of energy. He turned with a triumphant shout and erupted from the computer screen as the spirit world behind him imploded, throwing a right cross at the gremlin attacking Temperance. "Who's next!?!" he demanded.

Wander's massive blow sent Firebug's head ringing inside his suit, and he staggered back as his flames went out, unable to do much of anything despite the fiery tank he'd been walking around in. Before he could gather himself, Caradoc landed before him, golden sword shimmering with holographic energy. "Time to go," said Steve, his flat voice throwing the quip off for a moment before he swung a wide, massive blow that struck the armored pyromaniac in the midsection and lifted him high into the air with a massive concussion like the world's biggest bat hitting a baseball. (Steve had been watching a lot of human sports lately.) Firebug still didn't make it quite as far as the distant park, but he went hurtling end over end and smashed back first into a cleared area of street just behind the police barricade. The AEGIS agents moved in quickly to restrain him and get him out of the suit, and it looked like the lovesick villain would be no more threat that day. "Excellent work, fair maid," said Caradoc. "I thinkest thee should check on your boss. You have the radio," he added, before flying over to assist the AEGIS agents and Freedom City cops in making sure this particular Lothario would be spending his romantic evenings with his attorney in the near future.

Firebug is stunned and does nothing. hah-hah! Harrier enters into melee. He All-Out Power Attacks the flat-footed Firebug and hits him! He hits him massively, too; that's a DC 32 + 5 Autofire =DC 37 Tou save. 16 He's out, sportsfans!

Sharl opted to treat the question seriously, answering it as he would a test. "Well...I would have deactivated the transducer's neutronio generator, hooked the transducer up to the power grid on the 13th Floor, and used one of the discarded wiring boards the team from that Erde left behind when they were here," said Sharl carefully, judging Miss A for a reaction. "That way I could activate the transducer in a controlled manner using a measured power source, and I could make sure it was tuned to the proper dimensional variant so that we reached the right Erde." He swallowed hard. "With a built-in timer, we could all come back after a set interval with the other Tronik. I've got, uh, one of the emergency backup drives you gave me for safekeeping, so I was going to put them on there for the duration. I got a good look at the tech they use on the other side, and so far the systems look compatible."

"I just...I just didn't want anything to happen to you too," Sharl confessed, his voice tight. "I thought I could just get it done and you wouldn't have to know anything! So many of my friends are already risking themselves over this thing, and you're my best friend. You're my teacher, you're my mentor...You've already done so much for me, risked so much for me, and asking yourself to do it all over again made me feel so..." He looked away and took a deep breath. "I'm, I'm sorry, G-I'm sorry. I should have trusted you and come to you with this. I thought I could handle it, but I was wrong. I promise I'll never try to go behind your back again. Not for this, not for anything."

Sense Motive: 33 Ow! So he's not flat-footed. The autofire still exceeds his defense by 5, so that's +2 to the DC Fort vs. DC 24 16 All right! So he is actually stunned.

For a moment, Sharl felt like a little boy confronted by an angry parent, but he fought off that impulse: Gina was not the sort to show mercy to that kind of caving-in. Besides, no one would get that angry at a small child who didn't know any better. "Because...because I'm really sorry, first of all," he said, his voice tight. "I should have come to you first about this, and not tried to work around you. I just didn't want you to get in trouble too." He fisted his hands at his sides and forced himself to meet the robot's eyes, no, Gina's eyes, by sheer force of will. "Those people on Erde are all alone. Nobody cares about them here except to feel sorry for them, and nobody on that world thinks of them as anything more than disposable garbage. Even my friends are only going because they want to stand with me. Somebody has to stand up for the people who can't stand up for themselves."

Scared and guilty as he was, Sharl did his best to master himself in the face of Miss A's very impressive anger. "I...I came looking for the dimensional technology that the Next-Gen brought back from their last extra-dimensional trip, the drive core and stuff. I got ahold of the blueprints on the school's files, and I was going to use it to build a Hermetic gateway to another world," he said, using the technical term the first Daedalus had coined for them back in the 1960s. It wasn't an idle notion; Gina knew enough about Sharl's technical competence to know that a project like that was within his realm of expertise, especially with the facilities at Claremont and in the Young Freedom headquarters. "My team and I are going to Erde to rescue the other Tronik," he finally said, strength returning to his voice. "I know what the League said, and I know how much trouble we could get into, but I'm not going to let any version of my people suffer like that."

Sure enough, she got the code answer that told her everything was okay. They'd been working together long enough that Sharl knew that one right off the top of his head. "All systems are nominal," said Sharl, the pained look on his face and slight tremor in his voice certainly sounding authentic for how he sounded when he was scared and upset. "I, uh, guess I didn't know as much about security here as I thought, huh?" he said with an awkward laugh that was quickly stilled as he imagined the look on Gina's face. "Sorry...listen, we...we need to talk. I was trying to keep this a secret, but now that you know, there's no reason not to tell you everything." They'd talked through sensors and codes often enough that he was no stranger to it, but this was a moment that called for a little more than that.

For all that he'd arrived there by clandestine means, Sharl was neither cowardly enough nor foolish enough to attempt to evade Miss Americana's eye. When the doors slammed shut and the magnetic barriers zitzed into place, fortifications he knew well enough were there even if he evidently hadn't known everything about their structure, he sat down on the floor in front of the open security locker and put his head briefly in his hands as the tension he'd felt since he'd gotten the idea for this independent break-in erupted in a wash of brief, memorable terror. Oh, no. This isn't going to be good at all... He was looking up in the direction of one of the security cameras when Gina reactivated them; there was no mistaking her erstwhile sidekick, or the carefully-suppressed (in that not-so-subtle teenage boy way) look of dread. "I'm here, Miss Americana," he said out loud for the benefit of the audio sensors he was sure she'd kicked back on too, "it's just me."

"And even if you don't take that stance," said Edge with a nod as he agreed with Jubatus, "Sharktopus has caused a lot of problems for heroes in the past. It's a little much for one man to handle, even someone as able beneath the waves as Wave-Eye here." He hmmed. "Look, I'm here for First Contact purposes through the UN, but you're from a recognized species and you're here on Freedom League business. That takes you out of my jurisdiction. Why don't I get you guys over to the League, and then I can come back here with a UNISON team and we can try and do something about chasing off Sharktopus? It sounds like you already know where you're going, Philo, and these guys can probably help you get there as well as I could," he went on without hesitation.

Inside the computer of the 13th Floor, Sharl and Sharla sat around the table in Sharla's house and talked. It made things easier to deal with when they were in a system rather than outside dealing with the others, it also made it much easier for them to talk where no one could hear. "I guess it would be different in human culture if I was a girl and Gina was a woman," said Sharl with a little frown as he heard Sharla's story. "I still go back and visit her all the time, and stay over if we've been working late together. There's never been any issues with that." "George made sure I moved out to Clairemont as soon as I was enrolled here," said Sharla, her eyes narrowing in judgement of the human culture that had made her friend's life so difficult. "He said people would talk if a teenage girl program that he could edit whenever he wanted to lived in his place, even though he's never been anything but good to me. I feel really sorry for him," she confessed suddenly. "He's got so many problems that could be fixed in a second if he were from Tronik, but he doesn't want to hear about getting changed. He's happy the way he is, or at least that's what he wants me to think. If it wasn't for Lady Freebooter, I don't know if he'd talk to anyone when he wasn't inhabiting the robot." "That's really a shame," said Sharl sympathetically. "Gina has it a little better, she's got a boyfriend and everything, but she's still working on...everything," He winced, then asked, "So, how about you? You getting anywhere with your Crimson Tiger or Glow?" "No way, Kotone's got a thing for Malian this big, and Glow...you know, I hadn't thought about it," she admitted, Loran her dog barking out in the field behind the computer house as he chased butterlifes. "He is pretty cute, and he does have that crazy red hair!" "I know, right? It's crazy how different humans look from each other."

Citizen didn't need to take a shower, of course, so by the time Koshiro and Mali had changed back into street clothes, Sharl was already standing in the corridor talking to a very animated little girl. "" said Eira, waving her arms for emphasis. "" she added with the ingenous loyalty of a little sister with her big brother wrapped around her finger. She switched back to English, and so did Sharl, when the others came out to the hallway. "Can I meet the rest of your team, pleaaaase? I know you said they were probably on campus, and it will not take too long. I would like to meet the girl from India, and the ghost!" "She's not really a ghost," said Sharl patiently, "but I bet we can probably find them...Mali really should meet them anyway if she's going to be on the team. I'll message your dad on the way," he added as they headed to the elevator and back upstairs. "I was going to be a ghost too," Eira informed Mali and Koshiro sociably, "but Miss Americana and Sharl and Dragonfly made me a robot instead."

"I think that's our cue," said Edge with a glance at Cannonade and a look up at Wander, who he knew had gotten the message as clearly as he had. "Everybody get close!" One everyone was together, Edge concentrated on Midnight's last message and what little they knew of his friend's last location. If stealth wasn't working anymore, it was time for the application for force: and that was one thing the Liberty League did with great skill. He closed his eyes, and opened them in the depths of Medea's lair alongside his friends, the Liberty League lined up just a few feet behind Midnight in the battle-ready pose they had honed so well through months of training and battle. "This is the part where normally I'd say something really badass," he said with a confident smirk in Medea's direction, "but when the Liberty League's around, it's the bad guys who do all the talking."

"Difficult years," said Dimitri grimly. "Stalin had arrested tens of thousands, and killed as many. He saw enemies everywhere, even among those who had once been closest allies. Even I was briefly relieved of post and held under, what do you say, house arrest?, in Moscow." Comrade Frost smiled thinly, and for just a moment his teeth looked very sharp. "When finally he had stroke, his guards feared to awaken him and he died alone in bed. A fitting fate." It was a cold-blooded way to describe a man who had been his master for many years, but no less true for that. "As for space mission, there were many in those years. It was covered by another agency. Beyond my purview. Strange it was forgotten by Korolev and successors. But," he went on, "if mission was assembled and launched, and planners killed in purges of '53-'54, it could have fallen from records. Much good was lost in those years." He nodded. "I will go on mission. But what exactly would you have us do? Space is big. Do you need planet so badly?"

Comrade Frost started briefly at the sight of the Lor, but his face went cold and impenetrable as Siberian ice as they showed the Soviet colony on the forgotten homeworld. Dimitri steepled his fingers and closed his eyes, thinking back to briefings he'd barely paid attention to decades ago. After all, Lady Winter was a child of Russia and Wisp a legacy of the old Soviet Union; he was the only one in the room who had actually held a post in the forces of that gone-away nation. "Mir meant world peace," he said out loud in the English he assumed the Lor had been trained in. So easily they'd learned the language of the Americans, as if it was the world tongue instead of all the others. "Something Americans forgot. And Soviets." He hmmed and studied the planet over his steepled fingers. "What is date of colony?" he inquired of the Lor. "Even with eff-tee-el drive, you should know how long has sat on alien planet," he said with a gesture, trusting in the technical competence of the aliens. "At what star system are we looking?"

"I don't know, he read whatever he could get his hands on," said Tommy with a shake of his head. "I didn't even pay attention to most of that stuff. My powers make more sense, I can drain energy and use it to speed myself up, so I can run really fast and leave a trail behind. Billy started reading the magic stuff when he was young. That's how we got picked up by Claremont in the first place, when we were breaking into an old magic shop to get what he wanted out of it. He, uh, wow..." He concentrated, running his hands through his pale white hair. "He can set things on fire, and fix them up again, and he can fire blasts of, like, nails out of his hand to pin things down. And turn things into blood. Yeah, that part was really creepy," he added with a shudder. "The thing in the basement? It...it goes to our old family place in North Bay, I think. Gramma S lived there till she died there last year, and it's been sealed up ever since." Miss Americana found that, as far as she could tell, Tommy's story checked out. He was a normal human, albeit one with obvious entropic mutations under the skin that accounted for the superpowers that Nick's spell was currently suppressing. He was also very drunk, and probably shouldn't be so much as running unaided for a while. As for whether he was from Earth, it was tough to tell. Like most Terminus babies, enough entropic radiation flooded his cells to make a definitive match nearly impossible to make. He had certainly spent the last twenty years on Earth, at least, and if he'd come from the Terminus it must have been as a very small baby. There were none of the long-hidden legacies of malnutrition that she'd found deep in Steve's cells during close examinations, no hint he'd once lived beneath red skies and entropic fires. If he was from the Terminus, it was hidden very well indeed.

"" Comrade Frost pulled up his parka and peered at the new arrival. "" He extended a gloved hand and shook hers, his touch cold even through the glove against Dasha's icy skin. "" He grinned, showing the crooked teeth that were a legacy of the dentistry of decades earlier, and went on, "

October 1, 2012 Gina's silent alarm went off late one night when most of the rest of North Freedom was sleeping. Someone was tampering with some of the equipment stored in her lab; not her facility at Archetech or at the Lab proper, but at the personal workspace that only she, Harrier, and Citizen among a very small, select group had ever actually visited. Whoever was doing it was good; they'd disabled most of the obvious security systems in place around the restricted equipment: the laser eyes, the cameras, the touch-sensors, the air-current trackers, and even the hidden electromagnetic readers that she'd concealed inside the walls around the sealed equipment room. But they'd missed the backup IR readers in the light fixtures, an easy mistake to make if you weren't as smart as Gina. Most people wouldn't bother to look for sensors that were only active when everything else had been turned off. This was potentially a high-risk theft; the material stored in that particular locker were high-tech items she had confiscated from supervillains over the years she'd been active: Grue reactor cores, Terminus tech of gruesome provenance, dimensional reactors, hard radiation, and various other items that she would have preferred not to have out on the street.

"Great! Take that, you Foundry jerks!" said Citizen with some heat as he went around disabling the fallen drones before they could get up to do any more harm. "I hate these guys, especially when they go after people like Dr. Atom," he muttered as he went around the street cleaning up the damage the robots had made. He paid special attention to Keres, making sure to break up the specialized robot body before any internal booby traps could be triggered to do more harm. If there was a program wiper built in to the elite Foundry-bot, that was an additional hazard he had to fix, since a security measure designed to clear away spare Foundry programming was a potential hazard to his own life and limb. "I don't see why, like, half the robots I meet on this planet have to be evil. We need more people making good artificial life," he grumbled.

Outside, Edge stood up. "I've got a bad feeling about this, you guys," he said, shooting a glance at Cannonade behind his mask. "Midnight normally checks in by now, even when he's doing his super-sneaky thing. He can take Medea, but who knows what kind of crazy magic mojo she's got going on in there? Even if she hasn't seen him, he might be pinned down or dealing with something so big he hasn't had time to radio in. If he doesn't call in in two minutes, let's pop in and see if we can help," he suggested. Having trained alongside these people for years, Trevor in particular, Mark knew better than to simply have them disappear out of the alley where they were concealed and pop into the theater without checking first.