Avenger Assembled

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.

20 And the Mad Maple is bruised again.

TT: There is the legend of Die Kindersdieb, The Witch Who Walks Between Worlds, who takes children back to her realm and transforms them into fiends or simply devours them alive. Some people have connected her to the ur-myths of the child-stealing witch, but it's hard to say if that was her or if she's just representing that particular cultural archetype as a conscious choice. It would explain some things if she's from the Terminus, given how mighty she is against even other mystics, and that would explain how she's managed to be active for so very long. She's very bad news.

Give me an Arcane Lore check, TT.

Harrier: 24 Wander: 17 Dragonfly: 14 Weather Mistress: 10 Mad Maple: 9 Police: 5 You can go ahead and write the use of your Reflective, Electra.

Once they reached the 13th Floor, the team broke up to tour the alternate headquarters and talk. It didn't look too dissimilar from the 13th Floor back home; the Miss Americana poster by Sharl's work area had been replaced by the tall, strapping, clean-cut Mister Olympic on the far wall, and it looked like Roy and Indi preferred playing HALO on the big video game station to Kimber and Indira's usual fare, but all in all things weren't too different on the gross level. Sharl and Sharla quickly closeted themselves away inside the computer, leaving the others to explore the building and see how different the 'home away from home' of their counterparts was. The news was playing on the kitchenette TV someone had left running; Mr. America and Captain Thunder were at the opening of a new exhibit at the Hero Museum in Midtown, while President Robinson was in town for a campaign speech. A typical day in Freedom City...almost.

"Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap...other wormhole signatures just opened up," said Citizen, getting into the moment easily, perhaps because it was something he'd spent most of his early life imagining. "The other side of the star system, though. We've got maybe twenty minutes till they're inbound. The coordinates, though...I don't know, this is _weird_. This area's never been charted because it's so deep in Grue space. It's only ever been seen on super-intense scans. I don't know why a ship like this would be pointed here in the first place!" As Citizen spoke, distracted by the displays in front of him, a panel rose out of the crash couch near where Koshiro and Mali had taken shelter, a square shape with a glowing humanoid hand outline visible on it. "It just doesn't make any sense," Sharl muttered as the hand outline started to glow.

Harrier brooded silently on the trip, lost in the grim memories of the dark streets of Nihilor, landing on the church's front walkway with a solid thump as massive steel body made contact with asphalt at speed. As his jetpack's flames died down behind him, he hesitated, briefly considering simply blasting down the front doors before remembering where he was and who he was with. As Miss A and Nick joined him, he took the moment to read the sign for the 'non-denominational' church. "The Church of the All-Loving Onyx Mother." When he turned from the sign, simple gold letters beneath a wood carving of a female form cast in black with red drapings, there was loathing in his voice. "Yes. Yes, this is in her name. The Black Madonna. A taker of children."

"I'm going in," said Citizen decisively. "I'm a machine intelligence; I can fight it on its own turf and drive it out here so you can deal with it. I'm a whole lot tougher inside a system than out, anyway. You saw how she nearly fried my projector. If it kicks me out, we can still fight it out here." With a nod and a Centurion wink, Citizen turned and dived straight into the sea of faces above, merging with the program inside and casting about his gaze for the technological phantom that had caused so many problems. Outside, Temperance could see him for a moment on the various screens, flitting around like a technological ghost himself. "You want a fight!" he called to the sea of electronic movement all around him, audible inside the system and out. "Let's fight!"

That's a good point, SC! While the current construction is legal, it does seem odd he can't detect Hiroshima Shadow. If you don't want to sink more points into it, Thaum, I'd switch it to visual or auditory. (Sure, most 'real' radiation is invisible to the unaided eye, but this IS comics...)

For his part, Edge was getting worried. "Hmm, I don't _see_ any leaks...Wave-Eye, can you tell if that pod's taking on water? If it is and starts flooding, we'll have to get in there fast." He sat on the edge of his bridge and studied the fallen spacecraft, toes almost touching the ocean water beneath his feet. "The current's calm here in this part of the day, but once the wind kicks up it might get pulled out to sea. if that happens, I'll crack open the hull if I have to, we're not going to lose whoever this is. The only reason I'm not trying to get in now," he said out loud to the other two men, and they were men even if they had funny shapes, "is that I don't know what kind of security protocols they have. They might be scanning _us_, they might be waiting the ritual five minutes before they open the door...aliens can be strange that way."

The cops stayed back for the moment, letting the obvious super handle this crisis, while Harrier gave the click of acknowledge that let Wander know he'd gotten the message. On her end of things, the half-naked woman disappeared into the apartment's back room, the door slamming and locking shut behind her. The Mad Maple, meanwhile, was proving to be a tough nut to crack. "Pfft! You must think I'm pretty stupid, eh? Sure, you track me and Courtney down the one day we're fooling around away from the Thieves' Guild!" He fired another blast Wander's way, backing up frantically from her bat, and this time proved to be a less than competent marksman. "That jerk Firebug doesn't know how to treat a lady!" Say what you will for Maple Leaf, despite the purpling bruise on his body and his distance from his discarded clothes, he wasn't running despite what a really good idea that might have been.

Weather Mistress runs 30 feet into the back of the apartment, grabs her gear and puts it on. Mad Maple: He backs up and tries for another blast. 14 That's a miss, but I'll say Wander can let that hit her and use the Reflective if necessary. Harrier goes on 24 next round. Go ahead and roll initiative, Fox

He can't beat that! That hits by 1, so no Autofire bonus. But! 23 He rolled well, but he's in bad trouble without his costume: he's bruised and dazed.

"I am familiar with the person you describe," said Harrier in a mechanical voice like death warmed over. "Not the cultists. The goddess they worship. An Annihilist who I do not believe has been active on this planet. I am glad you are here, Miss Americana, and you as well, Nick. We must...we must deal with this, and quickly, before whatever they worship there can spread. There are evil gods in the world of men." And with that, he took off into the air, hovering on a jet of black and red flame for a moment before the others followed him.

Wander: 17 Weather Mistress: 10 Mad Maple: 9 Officers: 5 each Wander is up. I'll say the melee makes enough noise, and the officers call out on their radios, that people can hear it outside the building.

Now that I know what you were doing, have an HP for the Fiat. He teleported away, Nick doesn't know where.

The Mad Maple goes on nine; Weather Mistress goes on ten His sheet's pretty terrible. We'll call this a straight-up Blast 8, ATK 12, no power attacking. 32 Well, darn! Ah well, there'll be other attacks to bat later. DC 28 Tou save.

Erin's scan for threats was easy enough, even as the two cops came in behind her: a man and a woman were slumped together on the big couch in the middle of the living room, a few half-open bottles of pills on the table in front of them and the smell of sweat and drugs in the air. From what Erin could see underneath the blanket they were under, neither of them were wearing much clothes. They were just waking up, the guy did first; something familiar about his thin face and wavy blonde hair as he started up and gazed at Erin with bloodshot eyes before he turned to his curvaceous sweetheart and yelled, "Courtney, leave your dressing gown and run for the vane! I'll hold these hosers off!" He tossed aside the blanket as his lingerie-wearing girlfriend ran for a rear door, revealing a man clad only in red and white maple leaf boxers and wielding a bat of his own: his with a serrated triple tip that glowed blue with sizzling cold fire. "You messed with the wrong man when you messed with the Maple Leaf, you American pigs!" And with that, he fired a blast of icy cold radiation directly at Erin!

Mark nodded, understanding Trevor's words implicitly. He and Midnight had been friends and allies for many years, and he felt pretty good about being able to read his subtle hints so easily. That's what teamwork is all about. Cannonade's a good man, and I'm proud to fight by his side, but he's not exactly subtle. "We'll find a way to keep ourselves busy, I'm sure. You've got that anti-mind control device of yours still, right, Trevor? That'll probably come in handy." Once that issue was settled, he looked around the others. "Are we ready to go? I can put us down somewhere near the theater, far enough away that she probably won't notice our coming. There's a lot of magic in that area and she'd have to be looking pretty hard to know it was me." With his team's permission, Mark did just that, walking them right out of the Manor's lair and into a Fens alleyway near the river, the smell of urban poverty and despair sharp in their nostrils.

"I am fine. The cultist created a false corpse in order to spread terror, then detonated a bomb." said Steve without hesitation, but of course Gina knew that he wouldn't complain if he was on fire. "Disquieted by the news that there are Omegan cultists loose in Freedom City, much less ones with the confidence to stage an attack like this." Distracted as he was, it took Harrier a moment to realize that Miss Americana was nearly embracing him, horror and all, in public view of everyone, and despite everything else that made him feel better. "It is good to see you, Miss Americana," he said, relaxing a fraction from his usual ramrod-stiff posture in her embrace. Nick followed the young evangelist's path like a ghost, eventually ending his 'scan' in what looked like a converted church in Lantern Hill. He could feel the magic in the room, a hint of hoodoo and Egyptian, with something else, a hateful curl of entropic darkness that was all-too-familiar to any magician who battled the dead. The black-haired young man was arguing with someone, a white-haired young man in a green work shirt, their silent argument growing heated before the interlocuter turned and seemed to vanish out the door like smoke, the evangelist taking a moment to gather himself before the object before the altar that was the strange holy symbol of the church: a woman with skin black like obsidian, in a strange red garment that hung oddly on her body. When he was done, he smiled, turned, and walked out of the church and into his encounter with Harrier, Nick, and the crowd.

"Great, now your consultant is telling me to do the job I'd have done an hour ago if your stupid Fed squad had called us in when they were supposed to," snapped Patrick, glaring at Petty with real anger in his eyes. "Murphy, Weller," he shouted to two uniformed officers who with their short haircuts and bland white features looked weirdly like twins, "go in with Miss Bossy here and clear out the building!" Across the way, a red-faced Petty was doing the same with his AEGIS crew, the armored federal agents setting up a perimeter in the street and gradually, efficiently pushing the people back out of the cul-de-sac to clear out space for both the spooks and the supers to do their job. Steve went to help with that, his intimidating, albeit helpful, presence ensuring that people backed away and out of the immediate area even before they'd consciously realized they were evading him. Inside the building, Wander found that most of the residents had in fact cleared out with the first pass the cops had made. No one wanted to be around an unexploded bomb, especially one of Grue provenance. From the conversation between the two police officers, both of whom were sourly sharing stories about their last encounter with the Grue during the recent invasion, they hadn't been told the truth about what lay beneath the building. The cops helped a few older folks who'd still been packing out of the building, and one weedy-looking younger guy hiding inside a stairwell who swore he "just wanted to see the bomb! That was all!" The last serious holdout turned out to be Apartment 36 on the third floor, where despite repeated knocking, no one came to open the locked apartment door. "We could hear him shuffling around in there earlier," muttered Murphy. "And his name's not on the list. Ready to do this thing?"

"TO BEE WIZE IZ GOOD," pronounced the queen, her cable-thick antennae dangling in Baxter's direction. "A FRIEND OF FLEUR DE JOIE IZ A FRIEND OF THE HIVE. IF YOU HAVE COME TO BEE A FRIEND, THEN THAT IZ WHAT ZHALL BEE." There was, at that, a general noise of approval from the other bees, a briefly deafening echo of apian applause as they rubbed massive forelegs together. When it was done, the Queen backed away to her roost, a massive enclosure along the far wall that took up half of her deep inner chamber. "YOU WEAR IMPORTANT COLORZ, BEE-KEEPER," she added, and as she spoke Super-Bee helpfully provided a puff of fire from her mouth that lit up the room in a cheery glow. Baxter could see his own colors, and the deep yellow and black of the bees, shaded by the reddish light of Super-Bee's fiery breath to match the colorview that an insect's eyes might have. "REMEMBER ALL THAT HAZ BEEN DONE, THE GOOD AND THE BAD, AND YOU ZHALL BEE WORTHY OF THEM."

With a superhero like Nick Cimiterie backing up his story, the police reluctantly lowered their weapons and went to help with emergency services: tending the two dozen or people injured by the blast that had 'killed' the cultist. There were several severe injuries, but with the police on the scene those hurt were soon whisked off to hospital. His pike retrieved, Harrier stood a mute sentinel of terror on the blasted street corner, face, body, and pose all invisible beneath the spiked armor that was today not much protection at all. The moment; the explosion, the 'corpse', the screams of the wounded innocents, it had all been too terribly vital, so much like the horrors of his past that it was hard to pull himself away from them. When Nick passed by, the Omegadrone murmured to him. "I have heard his kind before. In other places, other times, beneath the shadow of the towers of Nihilor. To see him here, now, and for it to end like that is...grim." He fell silent, then that great spiked head turned and seemed to study Nick. "I did not recognize him. Can your spells find where he went, or what his purpose was here?"

The Action flaw (in this case, making it a full-round action to use the drain) will be a more useful flaw for you as well.