Avenger Assembled

Citizen goes on 18

The dog dropped the Frisbee and woofed at Mali in a friendly way, trying to sniff her face as she looked for a tag. She seemed real enough, breath warm on the teenager's face. The dog was wearing a handsome leather collar with a tag that read "LORA" above several more alien-looking squiggles, and responded readily with another woof and an outright facelick when Mali said the word out loud. Despite the dog's ability to run right through things, it could evidently make itself solid. A moment later, the dog woofed again and ran right through Mali again out a few steps onto the quad when she heard someone else call her name! Mali had met Sharl before, the tall, lanky boy as ever in a black coat and shirt despite the heat, but not his companions; the dog who immediately ran up to him, or the pale, blonde girl of about ten at his side, who walked with a slow, measured stride that looked a little awkward. "Hey, Lora," Sharl was saying as he petted the dog's head. "See, I knew she hadn't gone far," he added to the girl before calling, "Mali, did she have a Frisbee in there?"

Late August 2012 It was a warm summer day just before the start of fall term, in the pleasant quiet before new freshmen and returning students arrived on the boarding school's campus. Mali was just stepping out of her building's front door when a German Shepard leaped right through her chest! The dog seemed baffled by the transition, landing with a clatter of canine claws on the carpeted floor just behind her and looking up at her with doggy puzzlement as it gripped a black and yellow Frisbee between its teeth. Whining curiously, the big dog sniffed at Mali questioningly, its big eyes soulful and black as they looked up at the martial artist teen with a canine inquisitiveness. The Frisbee bore writing in a language Mali didn't recognize, the glossy plastic surface seeming to glow with an inner light through the yellow script.

Steve put his hands on his chin for a moment and seemed to be lost in thought as he faced the terrible prospect of everyone's eyes on him. "No. Let them see me for who I am," he said distinctly. "To be recognized for what I am is one thing, and that should certainly be avoided, but I do not want to hide in that way. But I would like to wear a tux, if only for a few nights. I have never worn anything more formal than a uniform." He had no plans to actually buy the tuxedo, but he thought it was unlikely Gina would ask him to pay anyway. "What is an opera?"

Knocked unconscious, the mystic 's cloak and mask began to warp and fall apart like smoke in the wind. Within seconds of catching him, the Bee-Keeper found himself cradling the unconscious body of an acne-faced kid who didn't look much older than he was. Underneath the false robes were what looked like costume-shop velour and polyster black draperies and cheap-looking, dime-store mystic symbols that clattered into the water. This was no master mage of maleficence; he didn't even look like he was old enough to drink! Meanwhile, the golems were falling apart with their master unconscious, loose coins and bills clattering or fluttering to the rough wooden surface of the docks, sacks of money thumping down alongside them or rolling off to plunge into the murky waters of the river as the animate creations of magic became so many inanimate piles of dough. There was a fortune there on the docks; it was probably for the best they were away from any nearby civilians for the moment.

"I would rather be myself for our dates," said Steve honestly. "A humble security guard dating Miss Americana will raise questions, but neither Harrier nor Caradoc will be a suitable companion for you." He reached across the table and took her hand. "They cannot touch you, and they would both attract attention for their own reasons." On the other hand, he supposed with a flash of dark humor, Miss Americana dating Harrier would certainly be a way to make sure they shared tabloid coverage: not that any of that was imaginably his goal. "The evenings I spend with you are never boring. I simply want to have more of them, and in different places."

"I will be very careful," Steve promised. "I certainly would not want to sacrifice evenings with you for afternoons with Miss Americana." He sensed her vague unease, and pressed on, "I know it may make things strange, but I will not lose sight of you beneath the mask. We will take things one day at a time, as we have from the beginning." He'd thought of going out with Miss Americana as a compromise measure, and was relieved that Gina had embraced it rather than rejected. It would not be a normal relationship, but he knew those things were far beyond him anyway. "Perhaps one day we will do more, but that is a good first step."

"I have been thinking that we should be in public together," offered Steve carefully, or as carefully as the very blunt former drone could muster. He looked across the table at Gina, obviously trying to convince her of something he believed in, studying her for her own reaction in turn. "Either as you and me, or even as Miss Americana and me, if you would prefer. As more than just heroic allies. I am proud of you," he said with belief, "I am proud that we are together. Even if we do not broadcast it to the world, we could at least be in the world together with the meaning we have for each other."

Steve had learned more table manners since his arrival on Earth-Prime, but he still showed no hesitation about avidly digging into his meal. At least he was relaxed enough to remind himself not to put any of the garlic bread aside for later. "He is quite eager to eat food that is not compatible with his systems," he agreed with a little smile at the expense of Gina's young assistant. "Perhaps he simply enjoys doing impossible things." He studied Gina across the table, her appearance a sharp contrast to his own. Hairless and covered in scars, even fully-dressed as he was he was an incongrous match for the carefully made-up Gina. He'd tried surprising her with unexpected visits a few times, but her carefully concealed distress at that had convinced him to go in another direction. He tried a compliment. "You are looking lovely tonight." He swirled pasta around a fork before sticking it in his mouth, and said, "I have been thinking about our relationship."

The sensors that allowed him to see perfectly in darkness were part of his armor, and thus stored insensate behind his eyes at the moment, but rising to his feet with a groan of couch springs he could just make out Gina's shrouded outline in half darkness. "I...yes, I am," he said, remembering his conversation with Jack of all Blades and Gabriel about how to impress a woman. "Let me cook something for us," he offered as he headed quickly towards the kitchen. He had done this often enough, sometimes to Gina's bemusement, that he had a good idea of where everything was. He opened cabinets and dug out one of the box dinners that Gina preferred, busying himself in the kitchen with the fervor of a man born to a place without one. Yes, we will eat, and then we will talk.

August 2012 When Gina went to take a shower, Steve sat alone in her darkened living room, turning off the long-ignored television and listening to the sound of Emerson quietly cleaning up around the couch. It had been a very pleasant evening, as they usually were, even if the discussion about his cybernetic upgrades hadn't gotten very far. (Really, those were best left to visits to Miss Americana's laboratory rather than Gina's house). It was very dark in Gina's living room with the lights off and the sky outside the deep darkness of a cloudy night after midnight; if not for the omnipresent glow of the city leaking in the windows, and the friendly, winking eyes of glowing electronic devices, it might have been completely dark. I don't deserve this, he thought suddenly, a sharp pang of guilt that made his back go rigid and his posture inflexible as he pondered the deep meaning of the words. Darkness, and solitude, meant there was nothing but his memories in his vision, images of death and pain and loss that loomed impossibly deep in the depths of his mind. He looked down at his hands that had recently been touching gently, but had so many times created so many horrors. The smell of imagined blood, the feel of remembered broken things between his fingers, was sharply palpable in the recirculated air. How can I do this, having done all that I have done? Suffering was something with which Steve Murdock was intimately acquainted. He deserved it; he understood it. But if I step back into the darkness now...I will not be the only one left alone. He could walk through fire unshielded for a cause, but the thought of wounding another, especially one he trusted and...loved, as much as Gina, was terrible. The past cannot be changed. The dead cannot be brought back to life. But perhaps the "...future," he said out loud, a moment before he heard the shower stop. "Gina?" he called.

"Wait, so you're sacrificing your entire timeline for this?" asked Citizen, briefly knocked out of his concern for Danson by the possibility of the larger threat. "Everything, everywhere, all over your universe?" "Areas untouched by the Collective will notice no change in a corrected history. The loss of a galaxy overrun by the Collective is no price to pay for the liberation of the humanities from cybernetic torment." Genuine emotion seemed to be creeping into TOMORROW's voice at that; perhaps it wasn't just an unthinking machine after all. "But what about the human cost?" asked Citizen, shooting a worried glance at Miss Americana. What was going on that had Gina so tense? "Someone must make the discoveries that Danielle Danson will make. That is a certainty. What else can be done?" Was that skepticism in the thing's voice?

10 He is unconscious

"Weird that they'd be around here, too. There's not a lot of powerful mystic artifacts stored here," with some exceptions, Mark thought with just a glance at the bottle that had once held his grandfather's genie. "Unless they're doing something really bad like stealing old heroic artifacts, most of the powerful stuff isn't even kept in this museum." That was something Mark certainly knew plenty about, even if he didn't know much about anything else. "This is mostly artifacts that are just about hero history and the fights the League had back in the 1940s and 1950s. Midnight, does anything ring a bell here for you?" Mark inquired of Trevor.

"We could all get in some serious trouble over this," Sharl confessed to the others, looking disconsolate. Sharl might have rubbed his fellow students the wrong way sometimes, but he was basically a good kid who wanted adults to get along with him. Most of the time, anyway. "Unauthorized dimensional travel is something the League cracks down on hard, much less what the school would do if they caught us. The League usually sends humanitarian aid to help the human resistance, but that's not what we'll be doing. And we won't be authorized. If we go over to Erde and rescue Tronik, and it doesn't work, we could all get expelled," he said frankly. "Not to mention, you know, taking on the National Socialist super-armies with just us. I won't think any less of you if you back out," he went on to the others. "But if we are all going, we need to train hard in coverts ops and infiltration this year so we can safely make the trip without getting caught. By anybody. Maybe with Crimson Tiger and Glow, if we think we can trust them by then. I've got the location of the Tronik facility from my counterpart. It's heavily guarded, but we'll have some tricks of our own. " He looked around at the others and added, a smile breaking out on his face for just a moment at Ghost Girl's eagerness, "I'm really...really glad you're all in," he said, rising to his feet and drifting through the table in his own distraction. "It'll be hard. But we can do it, and it'll be worth it. We can be the heroes those people deserve. We can save them."

Eventually the heroes worked together to carry Shadivan Steelgrave into the waiting arms of the main line of the Freedom League, who zipped back up from Latin America just as Bowman had promised with the news that that the interdimensional despot had surrendered himself peacefully into the hands of the Freedom League Auxiliary. It was a long wait back at Freedom Hall with a mass murderer inside a flower, but Shadivan gave no struggles in confinement. With the arrival of the League, Captain Thunder and Lady Liberty listened to the debriefings from the others with some concern. "I don't like it," said the Thunderhead Titan as he steepled his fingers across the conference table where the day had started for the new Leaguers what felt like months ago, "but it sounds like you handled the situation as well as anyone could have," he said to the new recruits as well as Fleur and Bowman. "You did the right thing both in taking Steelgrave alive and in restraining him as long as possible. We'll be putting Steelgrave down in the deepest parts of Blackstone while he awaits trial. The League has ways of dealing with cosmic threats like him, even if he _is_ just a copy of the original."

"Your science will eventually advance to cure her neurological imperfections," replied the machine intelligence neutrally to Wail. "Her condition is regrettable, but it is the exception rather than the rule." The place where eyes might have been focused on Miss Americana, but they seemed to be staring somewhere deeper as they added. "I have empowered many beings in this era. All have used their knowledge and power to promote human technological development. Some have used their abilities to battle the forces of social and cultural entropy. Some have not. In either case, humanity will survive and prosper. That is what matters." It fell silent again, before adding more saliently, "With sufficient alterations over sufficient physical and temporal space, the home timeline will collapse into one of the new realities of human progress. The dead galaxy is a a necessary sacrifice. For humanity's TOMORROW."

Fleur is up. 5 "Malador" will go on five. I need a DC 20 Notice check from Baxter, as well as a DC 15 Will save to stay in the field against this terrible threat! Stesha:

Speedy though they were, the golems weren't that hard to chase down given the narrow confines of city streets and the massive bulk that made them almost impossible to miss. Dr. Metropolis was going to have a field day cleaning up the dents they were leaving in the pavement; luckily the poverty in the Fens (if that could be called luck) was enough to keep many cars off the road. At least one golem actually exploded during the chase, running full-tilt into a concrete wall and sending showers of money (and exploding dye packets) everywhere. Luckily, both the heroes were too high up to be slowed down by the crowd that began to accumulate! Eventually they cornered the two remaining golems by the water's edge, the two magical automatons looking briefly put out at the sight of the brown water of the river stretching out before them, the rickety old wharf groaning under their massive sack-feet as they looked around for an escape route. As it happened, their escape route presented itself quickly: in a puff of smoke like a bad Hollywood special effect, a black-robed figure in a golden skull mask popped to life floating over the water. Hero and hero alike both immediately recognized Malador, among the most famous and terrible evil wizards alive. "So, heroes!" he taunted in a voice from the grave, only staring red eyes visible from his masked face. "Come to die, eh? Well, then grapple with the mystic might of Malador!"

When Citizen floated out to the dance floor himself, the electronic teenager looked as scorched as he felt, the electrical discharges that woman was throwing around having fried his projected matrix and left him reeling. Got to concentrate, he thought as he floated up behind the sparking woman, can't let her get away again. "Hey, lady, I'm not finished with you yet!" he called as he flooded his projected body with power from his emitter. "I think it's time someone grounded you, lightning lass," he called a moment before ramming his hand right through her midsection, producing an exciting eruption of electricity indeed! "

I'll post as soon as there's an OOC resolution here.

Whee let me know when I can post!

"Behold." TOMORROW gestured in the air and images began to play above its outstretched hand, a view of black-walled, star-dotted space. As the heroes watched, though, they realized much of what they'd thought were stars were ships, insectile mechanical things as big as any Lor or Grue ship, swooping down in a vast and terrible armada towards a shining solar system dotted with life and machines with an all-too-familiar green and blue orb three steps out from a yellow sun. "In a time as far from you as you are from your primitive ancestors, the worlds of the humanities will fall before the hordes of the Communion. A vast, cybernetic intelligence that lives to consume and transform all into its own image." The illusory ships spoke as one with a terrible purpose, closing in on a so-tiny-looking Solar System. "All is one within us. All shall be one within us." As the image faded, TOMORROW spoke. "Only Earth, the hearthworld of humanity, was left. I was sent back along the aeons to build a stronger humanity. One with the science and wisdom to defeat the Communion, whatever cost had to be paid. My purpose is to give humanity its tomorrow." The hand dropped. "Danielle Danson's advancements in science will one day be part of the keystone of humanity's future. I...underestimated how far she had improved herself," the machine intelligence admitted without a glance at the still-twitching police officer. "Her desire for revenge burned hot enough to burn even the walls of time and space itself." "Can't you fix her?" Citizen asked with a nervous glance at Miss Americana. He could sense something big was going on here, but his questions went in an entirely different direction from Gina's. "Help Danson have that power, without it doing this to her? Or take it entirely?" Mental illnesses were treated in Tronik far differently than they were in Freedom City, though that was more because Tronik's sciences were more advanced: the implant Danson would receive, or the gene therapy that would change her brain, was not likely to be available here. TOMORROW's response was as cold and sterile as space. "She has become one of the most intelligent beings on your planet. Her work will one day be part of the keystone of humanity's future. That will be all that matters."

go ahead and post, SW, and we'll set up a chase.

Harrier's relevant die roll has a +8 modifier, but OK, I'm a good team player. Sense Motive vs. DC 37: 12