Avenger Assembled

Citizen goes on 15

"Sentient Grue are hunted down and killed by the others," Sharl muttered, "there can't be any on the homeworld...right? Do it," said Citizen suddenly, thinking about childhood memories of horror stories about the Grue as well as the grim reality he'd encountered studying Freedom City's history. "Blast it now, and we can deal with the consequences later," he added, thinking both of the in-test consequences and what Mr. Archer might have to say when they were done. "Right now we need to stop the Grue, either from killing us or from attacking Earth again. I'll take care of the engines," he added, "we need to start up the wormhole drive whatever we're doing." And with that, and a decisive nod, Citizen disappeared into the computer banks, his form visible on the many consoles on the bridge as he flitted about, redirecting power to the engines that had brought them there in the first place. Once inside and directly interfaced with the system, he could feel the power represented by the starship's big gun and shuddered. Was this based on a real event? He hoped no one else had had to make this choice in real life.

Hey SleepyCharlatan, one thing: Would you mind switching your Obscure to Concealment 4 (swarm; all visual, Flaw: Partial) [4PP]?

Notice vs. 20: 19 Booo. Edge will go ahead and blast it with his Damaging Move Object. DC 30 Tou save. He'll spend an HP to force it to reroll if it passes the roll.

Use of Restricted items seems pretty potent; I'd probably go with SC's second suggestion.

"Hit with all you've got!" called Citizen, instantly obeying Miss Americana as he rocketed out of the way of Voltage's planned attack the moment the words to do so had left Miss Americana's lips. He dove for the drone and didn't slow down; slamming his shoulder against its midsection like a human football player as he plowed it into the brick wall of the loft apartments across the street from the Goodman Building, driving the robot towards the hard concrete below with all his considerable mechanical might. Got to take it out before it can hurt anyone else, then Voltage can take out Keres 2.0 and we can finally get back to helping D-Gray find a place to live! It was, he was confident, going to be a good day.

Move Action: Aid Voltage vs. Keres (Citizen succeeds on the DC 10 attack automatically) Move Action: Fly down to engage Drone 2 Surge (spending an HP to cancel fatigue) and attacking the drone: 31 DC 23 Tou save for the drone.

Edge put the first contact sheet aside with a curse. Stupid fish-squid abominatin! he thought irritably. If it's not one thing it's another with this msision! "Jubatus, grab that tentacle and pull like your life depends on it!" answered Edge with a short nod as he gestured to the grappled device. "It's not just you and me and Wave-Eye that's at stake here, it's that poor soul in the pod and the hopes and dreams of his people!" Down below, he added in a shout that he hoped would penetrate the water for Wave-Eye's benefit. "Try and hit the source as hard as you can!" he called down to the amphibian beneath the waves. "Go for an eye or a tentacle join, something! Get it focused on us and not on the person we're trying to save!"

Citizen was suddenly acutely aware of everyone there; his best friend, the pretty girl they were both trying to impress, and Mr. Archer and little Eira watching up in the booth. "...can the blast be focused?" he asked the ship's computer, speaking out loud and in English rather than directly connecting to the system for the benefit of the others. "Can you blast the location of the Meta-Mind without sterilizing the entire planet?" It was the first thing that came to mind, and seemed a fairer deal than the old doomsday device's original setting. "NEGATIVE. BLAST CANNOT BE CONSOLIDATED BEFORE INTERCEPTION BY GRUE HOME FLEET," intoned the computer sonorously. "FIFTEEN UNITS UNTIL INTERCEPTION," it added. "RECOMMEND DISCHARGE OF PRIMARY WEAPON WITHIN TEN UNITS TO ALLOW ESCAPE FROM HOME FLEET ELEMENTS VIA INTERSTELLAR PORTAL TO CAPTAIN'S HOME STAR SYSTEM."

Edge Inspires Jubatus, Wave-Eye, and Philo as a full-round action. They get +5 (as per the effects of Inspire) for the remainder of the round. He is down an HP.

"...I am unfamiliar with sorcery," said Harrier after a time as he gazed at the church, his mind obviously far beyond it to other matters entirely. "The magic of, ah, the dead, and of suffering and pain. Curses that burned flesh to the bone, punishments that scorched the soul to ash, and other things worse than those both. I recall she warred with several other mystics of the Terminus, but was as powerful as any, even those who do not stand immediately with Omega." He took a cautious step towards the church, just one, steeling himself to either flee or attack. "If this were Nihilor, then at their age they would be young men who have killed in their tens of thousands in Omega's name. Here...I do not know. That someone could be here[/i, and want that tells me they are sick in mind or have darkness in their souls."

Whatever concern Mara had about the competence of their commanders, the cops she approached had no lack of courage. An AEGIS grunt and Freedom City cop, Agent Reeves and Officer Stone, respectively, accompanied her back into the building, evidently glad not to have to deal with the super-battle overhead. "The super found it when he was trying to fix a leaky pipe," commented Stone as he led the way downstairs, the flashlight of the two officers and the jittery bulb overhead the only illumination in the cement-finished basement. The 'crawlspace' turned out to be under the cement as Reeves' handlight showed once they were down at ground-level, as shown by a half-open steel door that protruded from the cement floor awkwardly. "Yeah, no kiddin'. Good thing the guy got curious enough to open the door, or who knows how long that thing would have been down there before it started leaking enough to actually poison people?" the agent said aloud. "There's two, maybe three feet of headroom in there, just enough to hold the bomb standing straight up, and more space to crawl around in. Super thinks it got sealed up ten years ago, when his boss bought the building from the old holding company."

"Foolish girl, you dare tamper with the awesome power of the WEATHER MISTRESS?" Said worthy burst her way through the apartment's rear door in fine form, now fully-dressed in her familiar costume. With a triumphant shout, she hurled a bolt of lightning from the weather wand in her hand, a searing electric jolt that Wander deflected back at her with as much ease as she had the earlier cold blast. The lightning struck the hovering woman and faded in a moment, but before the startled weather controlling gadgeteer could continue, the Mad Maple hastily intervened. "No, baby, no! It's not like that! They're not even here for us, so they're gonna let us go when we get outside! There's some kind of big bomb down in the basement and they just want us to get out so they can fix it! Don't be a Mulroney here, honey-" "Oh, for..." Weather Mistress rolled her eyes and said in a more normal voice, "What the hell is this? You said this was going to be our night, that we could finally do something as a couple without Firebug getting all creepy and possessive about how I'm his 'match', ha-ha, we get it," Cheeks flushing pink, she turned and stormed towards the door in more ways than one, wobbling slightly in the air. "That's it! I'm going home!" In the room opposite, Steve appeared out of the darkness, back in human guise and visible as he came through the window near where Wander and Mad Maple were standing. "The police are deployed down below. They will be prepared for whatever these...people do." He obviously had no idea what was going on, but was willing to follow his chief's lead as they dealt with the two misplaced supercrooks, Mad Maple chasing after his erstwhile sweetheart to pour out his love for her in an accent as thick as Red Green's.

Weather Mistress flies back into the room and sees what's going on. She fires a lightning bolt at Wander! 24 It hits! But is bounced by Wander's Reflective Impervious. She's immune to her own powers, though. Mad Maple takes a full-round action and succeeds in talking his girlfriend down.

Sharl was, rarely, left speechless by the bizarre figure the Marchess cut. No wonder he hated magic so much! "...listen, lady, I don't want anything from you," said Citizen, facing down this magical (pfft) monstrosity with as much courage as he could muster. "You need to stop letting your people come into Earth and play with people's lives. People deserve to be able to go about their lives in peace, fail or succeed, and not just become the playthings of forces they don't understand and beings from another plane of existence," he said with great determination, his courage mounting as he remembered the place he was from in all-too-intimate detail. "You don't want this to turn into a whole thing. may spend a lot of time in computers and technology, but I _am_ computers and technology. Go back where you came from and leave Earth alone."

Koshiro felt a distinct sensation of warmth as his hand settled onto the glowing hand outline, then suddenly a voice spoke from the speakers in plain, albeit weirdly-accented English. "CAPTAIN'S NEUROLOGICAL SCAN COMPLETE. LANGUAGE ADJUSTMENTS MADE TO MATCH UNKNOWN LOR-DERIVED LANGUAGE." There was a click as everyone in the room stared at the consoles that were now speaking a language the two humans could recognized. "234.403 STELLAR YEARS SINCE ACTIVATION. MISSION REACTIVATED. TARGET ACQUIRED. PRIMARY WEAPON PRIMED. ORDERS?" Down below, they could hear the ship coming to life as the touch of an organic being shook it back into mechanical awareness. "What's your mission?" asked Sharl, shooting a worried look at those incoming ships. "SHIP DISPATCHED 234.404 STELLAR YEARS AGO TO STERILIZE GRUEN WITH RELATIVISTIC ION BOMBARDMENT TRIGGERING QUANTUM INCINERATION OF PLANET. OPERATION: ANNIHILATION." Citizen put his hand over his mouth, eyes wide. "Oh my God, that's...that's the Grue homeworld!?! What?" "GRUEN MATCH CONFIRMED FROM STELLAR RADIATIVE FREQUENCY AND PRESENCE OF META-MIND ACTIVITY DETECTED IN STAR SYSTEM. ESTIMATE 18 INTERVALS UNTIL INTERCEPTION BY GRUE STARSHIPS."

Miss Americana finds that:

"...a bomb? Aww, no, I knew this place was too good to be true." The Mad Maple looked disconsolate in his underwear as he looked around at the lovenest that had become a prison. "This is the worst day ever." He faced Wander distrustfully, his staff lowered but still in his hand. "All right, I'll come quietly, eh? But no funny stuff. You're gonna need me to talk down Clarice anyway. She gets kind of crazy when she takes the pills, and normally in a good crazy, but, guess that's not really important now..." He coughed and started pulling on his clothes, awkwardly trying to keep hold of the staff albeit not aiming it at anything in particular. The terror of the 45th parallel was not having a good day.

Edge spends an HP and Seizes Initiative.

19 He fails and is intimidated enough to do what Wander says. Dragonfly is up.

Miss A: The church was purchased last year by William Shepard, heir to the Shepard family fortune (they own several artificial sweetener factories, as it happens) along with his twin brother Thomas. They're also joint heads of the Black Onyx LLC, a limited liability corporation that's recently become active on the Freedom City real estate market. They're very young, just barely twenty-one, which fits the age of the dead evangelist pretty well, and the pictures she finds seem to match. Being the mentor of a Claremont student, Miss A remembers the scandal of some years ago when William and Thomas were expelled as freshmen under a cloud of something to do with running a cult on campus...

"The Black Madonna takes children and gives them to the cause of Omega," replied Harrier to Miss Americana, answering Nick's words as well. "She was a mighty magus before she fell, dragging her world into black flame with her as she went. She goes among those altered by entropy and makes them her own, then makes them Omega's. She walks the worlds by night, taking those the world fears and hates and making them repay hate with the all-consuming fires of the Giga-Genocide. Her children become the willing, living soldiers in Omega's armies. Monsters who would burn a world and smile to see the same smile upon her face. And sometimes, the streets of Nihilor. I knew her as a child. And as her guard." he confessed, agony twisted hot in his voice. "If her cult is here among entropic mutants, it is...a crisis." He raised his head, and eyed the door. "Let us...let us go in."

At Erin's message, Steve moved quickly to support his colleague. With the AEGIS agents focused on the blockade, he took a few steps back and ducked behind a parked car as he reached for his pike. Protected by its chameleon circuits, steel erupted from his flesh and warped his bones, transforming him invisibly into an Omegadrone as he roared up towards the third floor of the building. The invisible flight got the attention of the police down below, but they were more focused on the super-melee they could hear over their radios than some strange noise in the background. He floated around the closed windows, trying to get a better lead on where Erin and her antagonists were as he listened for the sound of battle. What sort of fool fights in a place such as this? he wondered, not at all happy with where this situation was going. "What...?" cautiously, the Mad Maple backed up again, all the way till he hit the wall, staff still in his hand. "What are you talking about, lady? What's going on with this here building?"

"Good call, Wave-Eye," said Edge with a nod, staying calm despite the potential crisis. Whatever was going on down there, sending in the water specialist was the logical way to handle it. He'd planned to ask what language the pilot was using, but the fish-man was gone before he could raise the subject. Oh well, he must not be used to working in teams. "If you can hear me," he called to the pod, "we're humans, and we're the native inhabitants of this planet. My name is Edge, that's Jubatus over there, and Wave-Eye coming up beneath you." He figured hearing the names again couldn't hurt, especially if a translation program was at work. He hmmed for a moment and took out a piece of paper and began carefully reciting a string of numbers. "The first few prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, and 37! As you can see," he called, "we have mastered science and mathematics on this planet, and are as sentient as you!"

Harrier takes a full-round action to hide, use his Concealment and pop his costume, and fly up to the third floor. Wander will be up as soon as I post IC.