Avenger Assembled

"Bold words," sneered the Madrigal as she faced off against Midnight, matching his stance with her own as she sussed out the smoky costumed adventurer for any sign of weakness. "Something you have in common with the dozen Midnights I've fought before, on a hundred worlds as dead as this one. Man, woman, robot or Grue, another thing you all have in common is that you die like anyone else with my hands around your throat." Midnight caught a smile beneath that helmet as the whirling vortexes overhead continued to spin, a thousand torturous fates played out in intimate detail for all to see, again and again and again. "I don't need to threaten you, boy. You will die in agony for what you've done. Today, tomorrow, it doesn't really matter; I'm going to win, and you're going to die. Now. Let's finish this."

The sight of the falling bauble and falling supervillain shocked Citizen, so much so that he nearly fell completely out of the projected body he'd so carefully rebuilt around himself! The world bloomed blue fire all around him as the ring threatened to devour his consciousness again, and for a moment he was falling as helplessly as Fathom! Struggling mightily, he pulled himself back together, albeit at normal size, just in time to see the Bauble hit the water in one direction and Fathom hit the water further out to sea, falling bonelessly into the big bay. Sorely tempting as it was to leave the man who was probably the architect of the current disaster to his fate, there really was only one reasonable option. Citizen dived from the sky like a flaming falcon and shot beneath the waves, grabbing Fathom by the wrist and rocketing out of the water seconds later, still clinging tightly to the fallen foe. "When we get out of this, and we will, I am going to have some serious words with you, mister," he said aloud as the two of them zoomed back towards the museum.

Flight: 14 Growth: 10 I'll choose to extra-effort the Flight, and shrink down to normal size. Citizen flies down and grabs the falling Fathom, then heads back with him towards the museum at top speed.

"All right, keep an eye out for space monsters!" Edge called to the others, his voice coming over the comm systems, hanging back to get a better view of the battlefield. Mark had been to space before, of course; his first visit had been when he was just a little kid with his dad, but generally they weren't in combat with space-horrors at the time. That would be a terrible father-son trip. Good choice, dad."This seems like the kind of thing that might have unspeakable creatures from beyond space and time hanging out to scavenge anyone who gets too close." He studied the solid thing that drifted obscenely there amid the swirling, unable to suppress a shudder of disgust. "That thing's really gross. If you've still got those charges, Midnight, this is probably a good time for them. Everyone else, blow it up!"

With a DC 36 Disable Device, as discussed with me, Miss A is able to shut the robot down, and we are out of initiative.

"He needs to be punished! They all need to be punished! I could understand if you were protecting the cops, but him?" The flaming robot twisted in Miss Americana's grasp, but didn't escape, even when the robot itself briefly erupted into red scorching flame, nearly igniting the tough skin of Miss Americana herself. "Stupid piece of trash," she spat, eyes turning red. "You think you can take away from ten years and three hundred man-hours with your stupid costumes? I'll take you all with me first, and come back for more! Deslegrate Muri Tempi et Intervalia!" Miss Americana felt the robot in her arms begin to heat up again, hotter and hotter, and this time took action: a hard yank at the base of the spine severed the radio connection between "Black Flame" and her distant pilot, the robot rapidly cooling down as it slumped bonelessly in Miss Americana's arms. "She was a robot," said Sharl, suddenly mindful of the need not to dwell on who else there might be mechanical. "Could she have been in hibernation somewhere all this time?" "Holy...wait, fire girl wasn't a robot back then!" said Grayson, the old man having opted not to flee with the others despite the robot's efforts to target him personally. "I know I saw her bleed a couple of times, and that one time she..." He coughed, suddenly aware of all the superheroes in the room. "But that was forty years ago now."

"Got it," said Citizen, swooping down towards the nearest drone and shoving his hand through its midsection, right where the central processing unit was on most Foundry models. (He'd learned that from Gina, who'd often had a lot to say about the would-be robot overlords of Earth, none of it good) The drone turned, leveling its rifle on Citizen, but with a little smirk Sharl pushed, overloading the drone's internal subsystems and shutting it down with as much speed as Miss A had used with Chimera. Just with a lot more finality, he mused as the smoking robot fell at his feet. "Who's next?"

Edge goes ahead and inspires everybody (-1 HP)

Microphone in his hand, Edge stared up at the image of himself as an Annihilist, briefly mesmerized by that unfamiliar sneer on that too-familiar face. It was disheartening at first, and he certainly didn't relish the idea of being tortured forever by an evil version of himself (and who would, really?), but after a moment's pause he gathered himself. It's a big multiverse, so there's got to be some version of me out there that's that evil. And sure he's probably really powerful and has done lots of bad stuff, but I've dealt with people like that before. Besides, Midnight will be fine. "No cheating here. Let's put an end to this." Raising the microphone to his lips, Mark said aloud, "Here we are, sports fans, and Round 2 will be between our greatest champions: Midnight, the dark and mysterious, the brilliant and beautiful, the master planner whose genius brought down no less than Omega, if only for a time, and the Madrigal Martinet, general of Omega's armies. Today," he said with total assurance, "you're going to watch Midnight beat the Madrigal. We've done this before. We can do it again. If you see anything else, if you see the transmission cut off, you'll know that your leaders aren't just monsters. You'll know they lack conviction." He smiled a hard smile, and went on. "this is Freedom TV, Terminus edition, on the air, everywhere."

DC 20 Current Events or Technology (I'm open to other die rolls...) for the Erde kids to recognize where they are.

Citizen stared at the new arrivals in shock, the bizarre costumes keeping him from recognizing any familiar faces for the moment. Chest glowing blue, he floated into the air, almost after the fleeing beast that had dived into the base of the building. "Who are you?" When he caught sight of his own face looking back at him from the new arrivals, albeit with nearly shaved head and pale face, he was reminded again of Koshiro's talk about ghosts. "And what was that thing? Did it kill that man?" he asked, focusing on the monster they'd so briefly seen and the mangled corpse now nearly at his feet. _Listen to him, taking the lead without a look at his commander_ thought Soldat, automatically reaching out for the local computer networks, the ones rebuilt by the Resistance...with extradimensional technology. Between that memory, and the eerie sight of his own face staring back at him, Sharl was able to start making some guesses about the nature of what had happened. The sight of bloody slaughter didn't phase him. He'd seen worse. Much worse. The electronic super-soldier murmured quietly in German, Everything's in English, before saying questioningly aloud in that language, "Sharl Tulink?"

That's fine with me, Fox.

Prime As the guitar-wielding hero burst in through the window, Citizen shifted automatically into his costume, chest symbol glowing blue and sunglasses shining in the light, saying a bad word in his native language at the arrival of the new guy. "Hey, aren't you Rift?" he said in surprise, recognizing the teenage hero and musician after quickly running his way through the beginning of a few Youtube videos. "Hey guys, this is Rift; he's a Claremont graduate too...hey wait a minute, did Summers send both of you? Wait, no, that doesn't make any sense." Sharl rubbed his eyes, trying to think of what Miss Americana would do here. "Look, maybe we're getting off on the wrong foot here-" Interrupted yet again, Sharl raised his head as a low whine became audible to him, and all the others there besides Rift, for the first time. "And what's that?" Erde "No, I weren't followed," replied the contact, picking up the box and plopping it down on a dusty workbench, reaching inside to pop open the box and reveal its contents. Inside was a strange assembly of metal that telescoped up and open now that it had the space to do so; revealing its inner structure as two metal hoops about as big as a man's fist, each resting on several raised spikes out of a base of some exotic alien metal. The technical expert on the team, Soldat leaned down to study the box as the man continued to speak. "Resistance found it in a burned-up Reich lab in old Providence. Said it's old, maybe even older than the Reich, and tough as all hell. Called it the Tindalos." "It's not Lor technology," murmured Soldat, that particular hope having died aborning. Everyone from Tronik knew how to build a transmitter. "or sternjuden," he added, using the Reich's term for Grue. "But it is old, look at the vacumn tubes inside. This looks like something done with prewar technology," he was muttering. "Amazing! This shouldn't have been possible for humans before the 1940s..." Suddenly, he raised his head as that whine became audible to him, too, and all the others. "Was?" "Damnit!" the contact swore, backing away. "Not this! No, they said what would happen if this-" A moment later, Sharl jerked backwards as the unit erupted in a shocking cascade of blue-white light, twin circles of energy erupting from the loops and growing wider and wider apart, one hovering over the unit and another over the opposite side of the table. When they reached their full distance apart, suddenly something erupted from the air over the unit, a monstrous hound that seemed to flow bizarrely as it leapt from energy circle to energy circle, and when it hit the second field suddenly everything seemed to fold, and when it was done, the warehouse stood empty! Prime Suddenly, the air nearby seemed to fold and warp as if an origami flower were opening from the very stuff of the universe, space swapping with space as a blank spot on the floor near Citizen, Papercut, Cobalt Templar, and Rift was replaced with a quartet of teenagers in strange costumes, a battered wooden table, a bizarre-looking device, and a monstrous dog! With a roar, the huge beast bounded down right through the half-open trapdoor and underneath the warehouse; gone in an instant, leaving the four teenagers and the new arrivals alone with each other. It wasn't until the dog had gone that they all saw the corpse: or what was left of one, the pile of blood and things on the floor beneath their feet beginning to spread...

The mindless automaton turned under the water, its faceless head turning in his direction. And then it spoke, its voice stretching out to Wave-Eye under the water, distorted both by the surrounding medium and the drone's own body into something flat, cold, and mechanical, and unmistakably a threat, or rather, cold promise. "I have no quarrel with you, son of Dagon, and weighty business elsewhere." said Harrier, using the words he'd memorized after his own battle with the Deep Ones. "Go back to your people, and tell them that fearsome champions, as ever, rule the surface. I am the drone that destroyed the submarine taken by your people during their war with the surface last summer. Do not risk yourself for nothing."

Earth-Prime In addition to that building noise, Warren could definitely hear raised voices coming from inside the boarded-up warehouse, coming in particular through a half-open door from which thin light streamed out: it sounded like a couple of guys close to his own age. Of course, thanks to when he'd gone to school, he'd never actually met any of the teenagers inside the warehouse. It was hard to hear them, though, as that noise from inside grew ever louder. When Corbin appeared like the vengeful specter of Summers' wrath, for a moment Sharl regretted all his disbelief in angry ghosts! When he realized who it was, though, he mastered his surprise, biting back an unheroic shout of alarm (and perhaps a few bad words) to focus on the problem of Cobalt Templar. "...hey Corbin," said Sharl casually, putting his hands in his pockets and turning away from the trapdoor. "We were just trying to get down into the old speakeasy to see what's down there. There's a lot of history in this building, you know." He looked at Koshiro, then back at Corbin. "We're just checking the place out. If there are any bad guys, better to come in in civilian gear first to see what they're made of, right?" He blinked, finishing the rehearsed speech, and added, "Wait, Summers sent you?" Erde "Negative," replied the machine intelligence called Soldat, looking around the darkened warehouse. "But I have only Volk-normal senses when projected, so perhaps it's-" The warehouse door swung open, interrupting the teenager, and a man stepped in, carrying a heavy metal square by a handle along the top, looking a little like a giant toolbox. With his weather-beaten features and the Tyrone Power mustache beloved by American revolutionaries, he certainly looked like the picture of the local contact who'd promised to pass on captured technology to the Reich. He eyed the plain-clothed teenage agents and said aloud, "“Those who want to live, let them fight." "...and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live," said Sharl, completing the code phrase, originally written by the dead god-king of the Reich. Meanwhile, Leutenant Wilder could easily hear that whine now, clearly coming from the mystery box the contact carried. Having said his place, Sharl hung back, letting the Aryans finish this conversation.

Citizen is going to go ahead and try to use his Corrosion 10 (EMP) power on the drones. He'll start with Drone 1. 15 I'll surge and spend an HP to reroll. +2 Power Attack with Corrosion 10=25 I believe that hits.

His armored eyes piercing the gloom underwater, Harrier was briefly taken aback by the sight of the obvious Deep One. What am I to do? He surely cannot be working for the US Navy... He thought for a moment, wondering if this was about the fight aboard the submarine the previous summer, the one where he'd made hundreds of Deep Ones flee in terror against the unstoppable Omeagadrone, then decided to press onward despite the potential threat. I cannot fight ship and creature at once, and I have a much higher purpose. I can speak with him later about his roe. He made a smooth manuever under the water, veering to avoid the fishman.

1. Where is Corbin secreted in the warehouse? 2. Corbin hears voices from the main room; a DC 20 Notice check will tell him that it is Papercut and Citizen, doing who knows what. Maybe stuff!

June 2012 A close encounter of the Erde kind! With special guest star, the hounds of Tindalos

Earth-Prime Anderson and Company Warehouse June 2012 Two Days Before Claremont Graduation Midnight Citizen shone his flashlight up at the wrought-iron gargoyles that leered down at the deserted concrete-lined behind him, by now familiar enough with Freedom City architecture to be amazed by what he saw. With its sordid past of 'occult' rituals, its time as a Mob warehouse, speakeasy, and supervillain headquarters in the 1960s, the abandoned shipping warehouse had been on his and Koshiro's list for quite some time, even if Indira was occupied this particular day. "The workmanship is impressive, especially with the sixty years since they were installed. They must have used a distinctive alloy to keep the iron from corroding in the decade since the building was abandoned." He floated up towards the gargoyle, leaving Koshiro on the ground with his camera to take pictures, particularly of the nearby half-open trapdoor that led to the passages beneath the warehouse proper. "I'm surprised none of those metal thieves you've told me about have come for this statues. They must really be superstitious to believe the building is haunted..." A block away GPSs were generally pretty reliable in Freedom City, but they could go wrong, especially when you drove under the many over-and-underpasses near the waterfront. And it was a bad GPS that had put Warren Wilder, rock star and superhero, circling around this damn sidestreet for the second time, with it becoming increasingly obvious he was going to have to circle back to the interstate if he ever wanted to find the secret party that he'd heard about through Freedom City's club scene. At least until he heard it. A low, building whine coming in so loud he could hear it through his window and over the sound of his car's engine, coming from a warehouse just a block down the street. Six Hours Earlier "I want you to be at the Anderson and Company warehouse tonight," Headmaster Summers was telling the soon-to-be graduated Corbin Hughes, having called him into his office not long after the dinner hour, "on a...personal matter for me mine." He hmmed, as if looking for a better explanation. "Find a secure place to conceal yourself and wait out the night. You'll know what to deal with when you see it. There's a situation there, a potentially costly one, that I would prefer you find a way to resolve. Consider this your final test as team co-leader," he added gravely. "Not for school. For yourself as a man, and for you as a hero. Good luck, Cobalt Templar." And sure enough, Corbin had taken his headmaster at his word, and there were familiar voices from elsewhere in the warehouse. Erde-J-Nazi-1 Anderson and Company Warehouse June 2012 Midnight Soldat floated in mid-air as he and the others awaited the arrival of their contact, growing more and more uneasy in this dark room in this formerly occupied city, knowing what the American Resistance would do to an alien computer program in the hands of the Reich. Deploying super-agents to what had once been Arbeitstadt might normally have been a sign of the Reich's power, but one look at his human colleagues (they preferred masters) had told him this wasn't the triumphant secret raid it might have looked like back in the Reich's temporary capitol of St. Louis. Leutnant Wilder was the oldest of them and he couldn't have been more than twenty years old, while Inquisitor Corbin Hughes, resplendent in a golden force field, wasn't much better. Koshiro Watanabe wasn't much older than Sharl Tulink himself, but at least he hadn't asked a lot of obnoxious questions on the plane ride over. Koshiro evidently didn't want to talk about why a Japanese teen soldier was working with the agents of the American Reich, and Sharl didn't particularly want to know. Bad enough when he was asked questions about his _own_ life. What business was it of these damn savages what his life was like back in Tronik? Cruel fate had dragged them from their civilized society and plunged them into the nightmare of bondage to monstrous savages whose only interest was using their technology to slaughter one another. Animals who have befouled their own den, who eat their young and have dragged us down with them. At least these other boys were in the same boat as he was, even if they had no way of realizing it. They deploy their own children to wars, they've already lost. Too bad they don't know it yet. Meanwhile, Leutnant Wilder was definitely beginning to hear something at the edges of his uber-hearing; a distinct low, building whine. Not a grenade or a bomb, he'd been trained to hear those and pick out the sounds, but something else...

Suddenly, the crevice spoke, a voice echoing up from the hellish-insect-swarming depths from an invisible speaker as the bugs hissed and leapt towards the confines of the seal that held them in, only to burn around the edges of the pentagram. "IF YOU WILL NOT DISMISS MY SUMMONING, MY SERVANTS WILL EVENTUALLY OVERRUN THE SEALS AND DEVOUR THE FLESH OF YOUR CREATION." It was a grating, hissing, booming voice all at once, the unwholesome whisper of a demon clearly enough to both Jack and Gabriel. And yet, despite all that, there was something terribly amused by it. "I GROW VERY BORED HERE. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD OPEN THE GATE ALL THE WAY AND LET ME INTO YOUR CREATION, SO THAT YOU MAY HAVE A DEATH FASTER AND MORE GLORIOUS."

While Doctor Archeville analyzed the science, it was actually Edge who found the lab, luckily once both of them had moved beyond the sight of Nina and Fafnir. As the old metal doors slid open, Edge snapped on a flashlight to reveal a rusted super-science facility like something out of his father's generation. Rusted old robots stood like acolytes around a circular platform that held brown, dry grass and something more bizarre, the decaying remnants of _something_, brown fragments piled high in the middle of the dead grass, the scent of decaying flesh strong among the remains. Wrinkling his nose, ignorant of what the computers and beakers all around represented, Edge bent his head and sniffed, shaking his head in disgust. "Gross....is this what a dragon nest looks like?"

DC 41, okay. This is a SHADOW facility constructed back in the late 1960s if Dok's knowledge of mid-20th century architectural stylings can be trusted, and it can! A Jet Age facility for a Jet Age world, faded chrome and colorful faux marble on the floors a callback to the classic days of the Patriot and Overshadow. Checking inside those fancy sliding metal doors, now rusted with sheer age, Dok can see mostly old-fashioned robots inside, the big boxy humanoid sort originally patented by Alexander Atom. There's no sign of the installations for human habitation Dok would expect from a human-populated facility; from the dust on the ground it doesn't look like many people have been here in the intervening years. The lab is a cloning facility, sure enough; albeit one of the first generation of super-cloning projects. This is _not_ a place where a new creature or creatres was created; rather, it's one where lots more of an existing creature were made. It looks like a lot of the nearby equipment has burned out just from age; there are several shorts in the old computers along the walls and in the robots.

Though it wasn't every day that Midnight, Wander, and Edge dealt with serpentine intermarriage into a powerful metahuman royal family and the revelation that one of their former, er, acquaintances had been transformed into a vampire, by now turning criminals over to the police and dealing with rogue elements from their own age group was something perilously like routine for them. Avenger and Phantom came to take Daisy Gibbons away, a smiling JJ waving to Erin from his mom's arms as Avenger took Daisy aside for some hard words about responsibility and respectability. Nina went with her brother and Nepthys to help do damage control at the embassy itself, kissing Mark on the cheek and promising to call him later. "Well, not the best time I've ever shown you guys," muttered Mark to Erin, "but at least it was a memorable night...do you think Trevor needs a hand out there?" Outside, the Serpent Man had been taken away by STAR Squad, and the injured people were being treated: it wasn't that hard to see a pale Meaghan being treated by EMTs with oxygen, an officer's jacket over her torn dress and her family on the scene.

Just to keep things interesting, Edge goes ahead and spends an HP to Seize Initiative.