Avenger Assembled

PC Meetup (Citizen/Harrier [guest-starring Gina Evans]) Quacks Like a Duck Gina’s typical Friday night plans were simple ones. Barring emergency superheroics or a hot engineering project, she liked to catch up on some newsgroups and gaming, dabble in investments, maybe cruise around the internet as Cyberknife and chat with fellow cyberkinetics or track down a few criminals. Not necessarily the most exciting life, but a routine she enjoyed and one that had served her well for years. Her typical Friday night definitely didn’t include sitting on her living room couch with a large cyborg man, a bowl of popcorn between them as they watched a truly terrible comedy movie. Then again, none of her days and nights had the large cyborg man as part of the routine, and yet he kept popping up. Ever since the night she’d let him sleep over, Steve had been returning every couple of days, for dinner or after dinner, or simply stopping by the house. She wasn’t sure whether she liked it or not, but she hadn’t been turning him away, either. Gina’s house had become something of a sanctuary for Steve, though not quite in the same way he sensed it was for Gina. He could sit in silence alongside Gina for an hour or more, sometimes his hand on hers or his arm around her shoulders, many times without touching at all, and the whispering veils that came with true solitude stayed away; the idle conversation that so often paralyzed him among ‘normal’ people, wasn’t necessary here. “I don’t understand why all these movies tell the same story. Of course she will not marry the prosperous man, she will decide that the man playing the guitar on the street is the man she will wed.” He hmmed and speculated, “Do they ever tell the story of the man or woman who is dumped?” Gina looked, he decided, lovely by the light of her television; the electronic glow seeming a natural place for her. “Of course not,” Gina told him. “It’s not funny or romantic if you’re the one being abandoned on a whim because of a rival with greater audience appeal. If the story is about someone who gets dumped, the dumper is set up to be a nasty, shallow person who doesn’t deserve happiness, and then the dumpee ends up with someone better.” She shrugged and lifted the remote to stop the Blu-Ray player. “Anyway, you nailed the end of the movie, so there’s no point putting ourselves through it. Want to do something else?” Steve wasn’t much of a talker, but he knew he didn’t always send Gina the right signals. She was, at times, easy to spook. So he found it was best to make his intentions clear from the beginning. He gave her a long look, scarred eyes on hers, and said, “I have many plans.” He leaned over and turned off the overhead lamp, casting them both into a pleasant blue dimness from the still-glowing television, and turned to Gina. “All best done with you in darkness.” The discovery that he could still be with a woman had been very delightful, and the start of several he and Gina had made together. He leaned in and kissed her on the lips. “Well then, by all means...” Gina was instantly more comfortable once the darkness settled in around them. She knew it was stupid, but it was also very freeing. Sliding her arms around his neck, she leaned into the kiss, ready to forget herself for a little while in this safe place. It had been a late night for Sharl, especially since he and Koshiro had made an evening out of exploring one of the underground Freedom City subway stations left abandoned in the 1990s after the Terminus Invasion. The subway stations were the perfect place for two young heroes with an interest in abandoned architecture as much as supervillains; they’d been used as lairs enough that Citizen and Papercut could easily have told any teachers or cops who asked that they were down there patrolling. Luckily, they hadn’t run into any trouble, just decaying old architecture that Koshiro had taken a lot of pictures of. He could have popped back to the dorm easily enough once they were done, but he and KG had agreed it was better if there wasn’t even a hint they were arriving back together at the same time. So while Koshiro wafted his way back home, Sharl decided to pop back to Gina’s place for a little while. It was late, but she was usually still up at nine. He used an open wireless line to pop back towards Gina’s place, disappearing in an instant and reappearing in Gina’s darkened living room. He could hear noises and movement as he did so, and surprised, leaned down to flick on a nearby lamp. “Gina?” As the light flickered on, Sharl was greeted by a most unexpected sight. Gina, not Miss A, but Gina herself, was not alone. She and Harrier, the Omegadrone who was often visiting the lab for one thing or another, were tangled up on the couch, clothing in disarray, a spilled bowl of popcorn on the floor nearby. Both of them were staring at him. Sharl jumped, the sight of Gina with anyone, much less in such a state, as shocking as if he’d come in to find her riding around on the back of a horse.. “Holy cow! Gina! Are you-okay?!” Sharl was no fool, but the idea that Gina might have anyone over was thoroughly bizarre. “What’s going on?!?!” He faced down the interloper, ready to leap to Gina’s defense. For his part, Harrier had flushed red along his implant scars and had pulled away enough from Gina to start rebuttoning his shirt. He knew Gina’s young ward well enough, having occasionally conversed with the young machine intelligence around the Lab, but he had certainly not expected to meet the young man in these circumstances. He looked to Gina for what to say, not wanting to further agitate the very surprised teenager. “Sharl!” Gina sat bolt upright on the couch, clutching her arms to her chest as though to cover herself, even though she wasn’t exposing anything unseemly. “You... what...” Her face flushed red, then drained to white as she stared from Sharl to Steve and back again, both of them just here, in her home, looking at her. With a soft, inarticulate cry of distress, she bolted from the couch and ran through the kitchen and down the hall, retreating into her bedroom with the echo of a slammed door. “Look what you did!” declared Sharl accusingly, his eyes widening in shock at the horror on Gina’s face. Both men knew Gina well enough to recognize when she’d been overloaded. “What _I_ did?” Steve gave the teenager a sharp look and bounded to his feet, floor creaking beneath his great weight. He didn’t care a fraction for his own sake, but Gina...“If you hadn’t barged in on us without so much as a word-” “I live here! This is my house, and that was my friend you were...” They glared at each other for a moment, then teenager and cyborg settled down, retracting their respective hackles. Neither of them were the biggest problem here. “Wow,” Sharl finally said after a moment, looking away. “So, you and Gina, huh? That’s great.” He meant it, too, even though he found himself worrying absurdly that Gina wouldn’t want to spend so much time with him if she had a boyfriend! “Man. I guess I messed up...” It was Sharl, ultimately, who cautiously knocked on Gina’s bedroom door, a worried Steve standing not far behind him. “Gina, are you okay?” he asked worriedly, knowing better than to go inside. Steve _had_ been inside, but he knew that privilege did not come with the rights to barge in. “I’m sorry, I should have called first.” It took a moment for Gina to answer, though it was better than no answer at all, even with her voice muffled and thick-sounding. “I’m fine,” she called back, “just leave me alone!” Inside her bedroom, totally buried under several layers of covers, Gina pulled a pillow over her head and wished heartily to disappear. A more detached part of her great intellect wondered what exactly was going on outside her door, but the two men who’d wormed their ways into her life were just going to have to settle that themselves, because there was no way she was venturing out any time soon. Sharl and Steve wound up in Gina’s living room, teenager and man looking at each other suspiciously across the coffee table for a moment before Steve sighed softly and slid out of the seat to begin gathering up the fallen popcorn. He wasn’t much of a talker, and wasn’t sure what he could say to the young man. As he and Gina had just discussed, romantic comedies were not actually very helpful in these situations, and by his old standards it was Sharl’s responsibility to challenge him for his relationship with his ‘sister’. Sharl, after a moment’s hesitation, got down to get on the floor with Steve. “Hey, uh, sorry about earlier,” Sharl said, giving the older man an assessing look. “About all the yelling, and, uh, accusations. I didn’t expect to find you, or anyone else here, ever, and I just...I just didn’t realize what was going on. What _is_ going on?” he asked, knowing it would be a long time, like days, before he could ask Gina anything like that question and get a straight answer. “You are a young man of your people,” replied Steve calmly. “I am sure you are aware of what men and women do together.” He was gratified to see the teenager blush at that. “Gina and I have been dating for some time.” He carefully, methodically picked up the fallen popcorn, Emerson watching them to make sure he didn’t miss a spot. He preferred to clean his own messes. “Oh.” Sharl blinked at that, taking in what had been a very surprising day. “I just...like I said before, that’s great. Gina’s really great, and she should definitely have someone. I just...never thought she actually would, not for a long time, anyway. Or that I’d meet them like this. She doesn’t like to go out and meet people.” He didn’t need to say why he’d doubted Gina’s romantic prospects; Steve was no fool. “I never thought I would have someone like Gina either. But sometimes fate is a friend, and not an enemy. We found a way to meet, and it has been...very fine, together.” And it had been, Steve decided, for all that he didn’t want to get into any further with Gina’s teenage sidekick. He felt an odd kinship with the young man; certainly not paternal, more...fraternal than anything else. When the mess was clean, he rose to his feet. “I will stay here for a while longer. I do not want Gina to believe she is alone.” “Yeah, I guess....” Sharl looked guilty for a moment, running his fingers through his hair. “I guess I thought of this place as my home for so long, I forgot that Gina does actually live here too, and she has a life beyond being my friend. Next time I show up late at night, I’ll message Gina ahead. So do you...come here often?” he asked curiously. “From day to day. You know how busy Gina is, and I have my own work. There will be plenty of nights you can have your time with your mentor. She speaks very highly of you,” he added. “I would never think of coming between you.” “Good to hear. Tell Gina I’ll be by again in a day or two...and I _will_ call ahead first.” Sharl shook Steve’s hand, his grip firm in the cyborg’s. “Sorry, Gina!” he called out again, and then disappeared back to his dorm room. He opted not to explain the look on his face to Koshiro.

I'll say it takes 10, and takes another bruise, dropping its TOU to 13. Go ahead and post IC for Custos.

I certainly have no objection to the guy I'm fighting getting caught! (Stupid Fire!Fathom and his high Defense) I was just looking for a way to make that work with what had gone before, and that's fine.

Hmm, so where are Citizen and Fathom this round? I was under the impression they were two miles (10000 ft) away, having flown up through the hole the Four blasted in the building and out of sight.

None of the Hounds can hit DC 40. Custos is up.

DC 40 is still nothing to sneeze at! OK, Changeling, consider yourself Inspired. Go ahead and post IC, Sorus.

8 Harrier goes on 8. I guess he really is slow! Three Fliers: 27, 15, 11 Flier A: 27 Victory: 25, 4 HP w/Complications Flier B: 15 Flier C: 11 Harrier: 8, 4 HP w/Complications The fliers are all about five miles out to sea, making passes individually. (They can easily cover 25,000 ft as a move action, given their flight) Flier A sees Victory and flies up to him, switches his array to Flight 2, and punches him. 16 Meh, that's terrible! I'll fiat that's a hit (have an HP, JP) and ask for a DC 25 Tou save.

Citizen readies an action: a +5 Corrosion Power Attack 12 Which actually manages to be a miss! I'll just surge and have him reroll that. 20 Good thing that one was with the HP! That's a DC 23 Reflex save for the bound and helpless Chimera, with the possibility of losing up to 8 Tou depending on how badly she fails it, then a DC 23 Tou save in the aftermath. It will go off if "Chimera tries to break Miss A's grapple".

Sharl's usual resentment of 'that movie' was miles away right now. Was this guy some sort of uploaded personality? A copy of the real man that had gained some shadow of real intelligence? Either way, there was no point in telling him the full details of what was going on. "The Foundry is attacking the concert where you were just performing," he quickly filled the rapper in, "Miss Americana, my mentor, and I are fighting them. I'm going to get you out of here and back outside, but you're going to have to trust me. Everything will seem weird to you, like you're a ps...like you're a ghost, or they're just a 3-D virtual display, but just trust me." With those words, he took D-Gray's hand and concentrated, pulling both himself and the other man out of the virtual world around them and back into the concert. They appeared on the now vacant stage, both of them glowing slightly from the stage projectors, albeit considerably more solid than D-Gray had been earlier as just a projection. I'll let Miss A explain it, I guess...man, what IS going on here?"Just hold still there and don't touch anything! I'm going to go help out, and we'll be right back." He flew right up to the struggling Miss Americana and Chimera, glad to see Miss A had this lady well in hand. "We've got a lot bigger problems than your machine supremacist agenda, lady. Step down now and you can share a cell with your friend Rogue."

Citizen rocketed out of the museum, propelled by the sheer channeled power of Corbin's ring. It took him a few moments to realize he was easily flying far faster than he ever had before, easily keeping pace with and catching up to the rapidly retreating, now fire-wielding Professor Fathom. He reached out with a few desultory swipes, but just couldn't close the gap with the fleeing mad scientist. Sharl knew he was overextending himself, but even with everything messed up, he was pretty sure Fathom's allies couldn't catch them either. He was scared, really scared, but pushed past it as best he could with memories of his last great existential crisis, taunting Fathom to distract himself. I've been in the crucible before. "You think being taken apart and put back together will stop me, you primitive screwhead? That stuff is yesterday's freaking news for me! Yeah, you better run, because when I catch you, you're gonna be fixing what you did! "

One thing this form doesn't have is Affects Corporeal on STR, so Sharl's going to need to drop his Insub entirely for a moment. That'll be a surprise for him if he takes a hit. Concentration check for Growth: 21 Concentration check for Flight: 15 Citizen is going to try again with Professor Fathom, that jerk. Move Action: Fly over there. Fathom went 10000 ft, but with Flight 7, what took him a full round I can just do as a move action. Standard Action: punch him That was awful. Ah well.

The George Washington Carver Science Fair turned out to be surprisingly well-equipped given the school's Lincoln location and relative budget; schools in this area generally didn't have very much, but they knew how to spend what they had, and this was a big event. Kids from this area didn't get a lot of opportunities, so the chance for budding young geniuses to strut their stuff in public before potential college scouts was very compelling. Every exhibit, all of them watched over by nervous high-school students and generally a parent, was exceptional in one way or another: there was a tiny eighth-grade girl with a baking soda volcano who had worked out what sort of geological system would actually produce baking soda eruptions on an alien planet, a tall bespectacled boy who had laid out the _schematics_ for a home-based fission reactor without building one "obviously, heh-heh-heh", an East Indian boy who had built a respectable working copy of one of the early Mars rovers, and many others. Even Sharl was impressed at all the hard work that had gone into the displays, though he'd have been loathe to admit it: primitive technology or not, this was just the sort of dreaming that got you lectures about not disrupting the social balance back home, and these kids got to do it for rewards! Most of the teenage boys (and a few of their fathers) and some of the girls (and their mothers) were obviously smitten with Miss Americana, the beautiful genius easily turning heads wherever she went. All the kids were especially eager to show off their work to the famous heroine, and with a few stutters and stammers, they all seemed to get through it pretty well: it was actually going to be tough to judge this crowd of hard-working students, each of whom had obviously put their heart and soul into their work. At the anti-grav table, Patrick Grayson spoke with a teenage genius' slightly terrified authority as he spoke to Miss Americana about the working model of Daedalus' original power cell he'd built. "I mean, uh, obviously, it doesn't have the kind of power that Daedalus' armor has, but on the other hand, it's a lot smaller since I didn't need to use those transistors he had in the 1960s, and it would be a lot cheaper to make if I had a factory to make all the parts in, uh, yeah." He swallowed hard, his face not ever having left Miss Americana's. "If I built a bigger one, and had square-cube negators, I could probably get it to lift really heavy stuff, more than just itself, well into the tonnage range..." Peter was watching with approval on his old man's face as his grandson held his own with a grownup genius. Citizen and Glow were both known as heroes in their own right, of course, and both found themselves answering questions from other students and teachers with an interest in what they were doing. "I do hero work with Young Freedom," said Sharl smoothly in response to a question about his work and his studies, "but Miss Americana keeps me very busy with my schooling. There's a lot to learn about Freedom City and the world before I can be a hero on my own; but luckily I've got some really good teachers." He was careful not to get into any more detail than that, not wanting to share stories about Claremont with people who weren't already in on the secret. Meanwhile, Glow had an interlocuter, a girl named Rosie of about fifteen with black hair and a ponytail who, when she spoke, turned out to have a definite Australian accent. "My mum is the American sales rep for Driza-Bone, so we moved up here two years ago to go to school. I'm really proud there's an Australian hero up here in Freedom City! Now everyone asks me if I know you instead of that mumbo-jumbo guy Dreamspeaker." Rosie was at the display next to Peter Grayson's, having been part of a duo of students that had done (by the standards of civilians with no particular access to Freedom League or Claremont records) a detailed analysis of extra-terrestrial animals that had appeared on Earth since first contact with the Grue in the 1940s.

Mark had given plenty of inspiring speeches to the rest of Young Freedom over the years, sometimes in good times, sometimes in bad. Being attacked by powerful assassins from the Terminus who planned to murder them all on interdimensional broadcasts for the benefit for the remainder of the population was one of the tougher situations, he had to admit; it wasn't easy to put a positive spin on this. But as the monsters who held them captive laughed at their suffering, Edge frowned, and knew what he had to do: maybe this was a bad situation, but they'd come through worse. We can take these guys. A lesser man would have wondered why the most powerful people in the multiverse had become his bitter enemies at the age of only 19, but Mar knew why exactly: because he was a HERO. "Listen to me," he called out, loud enough for everyone to hear thanks to the sheer power of his voice, his tone ringing across the noisy battlefield, as well as his mental network with Sage. "Listen to me! EVERYBODY! You think you have us? You think you've won? Look at you! All the grandeur of the Terminus and all your power, and you're hunting teenagers for sport! Examine your life and ask yourself; when did I FAIL? Was it when I decided to take on a united Young Freedom for ratings? RATINGS? Listen, if you want to bring any kind of doom to anybody, you've got to believe! Just like I believe in FREEDOM!" At Mark's shout, the bonds around him began to snap, energy giving way like popping popcorn. "And we're coming for you!"

Let's do this thing, chums. For ease of reference, I'll just say that the bad guys all keep their surprise round initiative this round Midnight and Madrigal will hit the grounds on their respective initiatives; Madrigal has pushed herself off about twenty feet from the falling Night Cycle. Edge: Seized Initiative, 8 HP Sage: 32, 6 HP Custos: 30, Wander: 25, 6 HP Cobalt Templar, 19, 6 HP Midnight: 19, 7 HP Discordia: 17, Hellstorm: 15, Changeling: 15, 3 HP Nightmare Doom: 14 Wraith: 11, 4 HP Omnibeast: 11 Razorwhip: 11 Madrigal: 10 Blood Diamond: 9 Redbird: 8 Edge is up. Full-Round Action: Inspire (Midnight, Wander, Sage, Cobalt Templar, and Wraith) SURGE (spending the HP to cancel Fatigue) Standard Action: Lacking the Concentration to pop himself out, Edge goes ahead and attacks the Snare with his Damaging Move Object 26. The Snare's Tou drops to +14 Mark is at 6 HP. Sage is up as soon as I post in-character for Edge.

:o The villains went into action like lightning, all carrying out what was evidently some long-crafted plan from deep in the sinister heart of the Terminus. "You have something of a cult in the alleys of Nihilor, you know," Madrigal taunted Midnight, "proles who die with your name on their lips, thinking you're the god-slayer. They're going to love watching you fall." She spun the gun around and shot, not Trevor, but the Night Cycle, the cosmically-empowered bullet ripping through augmented steel like a meteor through tissue paper, Redbird giving a startled exclamation as the bike began to disintegrate and fall from the sky! Dark hands reached up to catch him, Nightmare Doom's eyes having turned a malevolent black as she chanted his destruction below, but by sheer force of will he managed to work his way free: leaving gravity as his sole antagonist! As for Madrigal herself, she had already jumped from the falling bike. Meanwhile, Edge gasped as Discordia flipped over his head and suddenly blasted him from behind, shimmering energy cables lashing out of her big gun to wrap around Mark, slamming him hard enough against the rock column to knock the wind from his body as the cables pinned him tight as a stuck insect. He was all-too-vulnerable in that moment, but Discordia took the opportunity to dance, laughing madly. "Look at you, silly Marky! All tied up with nowhere to go! Must be a familiar feeling by now, ahahaha!" There were no good implications to that, but Mark was a little too busy trying to avoid getting killed to dwell on them. Omnibeast met Wander's gaze and Erin felt her heart break; those red, glowing eyes seeming to dig right into her soul and tear it apart as the other woman growled in amused triumph. She took a solid hit from Razorwhip for her troubles; her head rattling along with her soul. "She ain't even fallen down yet!" said Razorwhip, sounding annoyed. "Lousy dethroner, we'll show you what we do with your kind around here!" She advanced on Wander again, whip still firmly in hand, this time pulled tight around her hands as if to make it into a garrotte. "But before that, little boy, come and look at my pretty little stones!" At Blood Diamond's words, a shimmering opal rose from her outfit and hovered before Cobalt Templar's gaze: he didn't recognize the face that floated within, frozen in a silent scream, a moment before a blast of pearly white light rushed by inches from his face! The gem retreated, its work having failed, and Blood Diamond cursed. "Miserable little insect!" she sniffed. "I'll have your soul yet, and wear it in my crown too!" "Hah-hah-hah!" A flurry of fists battered Sage as Hellstorm proved that she had speed to go with her flight, slapping her around before swooping out of reach up into the sky. "Bet you wish you could still fly, slowpoke! You're not so fleet-footed!" she taunted. "You'll WISH you could run from me before I'm through with yoU!" As lightning cracked in the sky around her, Hellstorm looked prime to bring her threats into reality.

Trevor''s mighty blow took the fight out of the enemy in more ways than one. Ahmed dropped to the ground, knocked cold by the punch and shock, and he and the six mutated victims began to change. From the waiter who dropped from the ceiling to land, half-conscious, in Edge's arms to the others knocked out by the heroes in the fight, all the way to Meaghan who slowly transformed back to her human self, still in the tattered remnants of her dress, all those Ahmed had mutated began turning back into human beings. As for Meaghan's abortive swain himself, the unconscious 'Socotran''s face warped forward into a short serpentine muzzle, teeth sharpening to a predator's canines, while his eyes turned yellow and slitted: the unmistakable mark of the Serpent Man! "I thank you for your help, my friend," replied Morakot, his arms protectively around Nepthys, who was clinging to him with wide dark eyes, "and you as well, uh, miss, and the famous UNISON hero Edge and little Nina," he added, raising his voice to call to the others. He evidently had no idea who Trevor and Erin were, no surprise given who he'd been focused on. Nina bristled a little at what was evidently a childhood nickname, and not a popular one, but was too busy wiping the venom from her skin to complain. "You have done a great service tonight; for me, for my wife-to-be, and for our nation. I am forever in your debt." Despite the prince's words, it wasn't hard to tell that both he and his bride-to-be, twisting the gem of her ring back and forth, knew more than they were saying. "I don't understand," said Mark, thinking it out with the usual difficulty that caused him, his brow furrowing in concentration. "Serpent People do a lot of bad stuff, but they put a lot of time and effort into this, and it wasn't even summoning a giant snake monster to devour the Sun." He hmmed. "Why would Serpent People want to kill you?"

That sort of thing was more the work for the local team than Edge and Nick Cimiterie; the local UNISON agents after all having the local connections that let them get a surprise mass service for centuries-old murder victims set up, as well as a command of the native language. "Well, the exciting part may be about to wind down, unless you really have an urge to see me fill out the standard forms about agents encountering magical monstrosities in the field. You did great work today, Mr. Cimiterie," said the teenager, shaking the older man's hand firmly as the camp bustled around them with the activity of people returning after the giant skeleton attack. "I know some magic people who would just have kept blasting the monster until it was dead. I'll make sure we remember your name next time something big like this happens."

Some questions: Can Sharl pull 'D-Gray' out of the system and into the real world so they can share a holoemitter? If not, can he stunt something off his Tronik Array (I'm thinking a Create Object to represent making some kind of room for him) to keep him safe in the system while he goes to help Miss A and Voltage?

That's a good point, KD; just consider that as one bonus HP vis a vis the Terminus.

There was no sign of Sharl at first, no hint that the electronic teenager was still there after the explosion. And indeed, a close inspection of the area revealed the ominous sight of Cobalt Templar's still-glowing power ring embedded deep in Citizen's holoemitter, as if shot there from the barrel of a gun. The ring glowed and sparked, blue electricity swarming over it like ants, and fell out of the crumbling electronic gadget, rolling along the floor and sparking like a child's toy. It rolled until the vibrations caused by Sage's abrupt impact made it fall, whereupon which it landed on its side like a fallen coin. And then the fire broke out. With a roar, blue flames shot through with sparks erupted from the fallen ring into a blob of six feet of azure flame still sizzling with electrical impulses like a fire shot through with lightning, the floor beneath it bubbling and scorching as tile melted or caught fire. With agonizing slowness, the flames gradually resolved themselves into a figure with arms and legs, then a head, then a recognizable humanoid body, then finally what was clearly Sharl, cast now in holy fire and scorching lightning like a ghost wrapped in hellfire. His costume still looked familiar enough, a blue glowing chest symbol with coat hanging behind him, but his body looked thick and bulky, his undercostume looking more like armor than anything else, his head wrapped in glowing fire with just his face visible. When he spoke, he seemed to be shouting in gibberish before the stream of words resolved themselves into something recognizable. "00101101011110100110010101101110001001110111001100100000010011010110100101100111011010000111010000100001! I DID IT!" He pulled himself to his feet, still standing among the smouldering remains of his transformation. He was at least nine feet tall. "I'M STILL ALIVE!"

Edge spends an HP and seizes initiative; he'll go first in the regular round. But first! Surprise round time. I'm just going to go ahead and fiat that everyone is taken by surprise this round; everyone take an HP for your trouble! That'll give our ladies a chance to go. People with Uncanny Dodge are not, however, flat-footed! All the original members of YF get an HP here for the Terminus. Initiative for Madrigal and her Hounds: Discordia: 17 Hellstorm: 15 Nightmare Doom: 14 Omnibeast: 11 Razorwhip: 11 Madrigal: 10 Blood Diamond: 9 They're a veteran team; they wait to go until their leader has inspired them. (So Madrigal moves up to the top, and they all take 10 beneath her as their new place in the initiative order, yowsa.) Madrigal: Full Action: Inspire +3 (everyone take an HP for this) She then surges and shoots the Night Cycle. Normally deempowering equipment isn't worth an HP, but since Redbird's powers are sunk in there, I'll go ahead and call this a Fiat: Have an HP, Giz. (total of +2) Discordia: Move Action: Acrobatic Bluff Edge (I'll replace her Luck feat with Skill Mastery and Fast Bluff) Mark can't beat a 20 with a 3 She'll blast him with her proton stream A flat-footed Mark's Defense is 16, and his Tou is +5. Hmm. 13 Well, that's lucky! Too lucky. I'll fiat and have that hit Mark spends an HP on Ultimate Toughness vs DC 30. He's bruised and dazed, but surprisingly OK. There is also a snare in the mix. Mark is, for the moment, bound and helpless Hellstorm: +5 All-Out Attack's Sage with her Flying Fists 33 That hits by quite a bit. DC 27 Tou save (with Autofire) Move Action: Flies 5000 ft in the air Nightmare Doom: With Mark bound and helpless, Nightmare Doom turns her attention to Midnight with her Move Object. Grapple 34 Omnibeast: Standard: uses her gaze of Despair on Wander DC 20 Will save vs. Despair What does Despair do? Razorwhip: Standard: punches Wander I had to fiat this thanks to a bad roll, so take another HP, Wander. 27 Almost a crit! But not quite: that's a DC 30 Tou save for Wander, to be made after the Despair save. Razorwhip and Omnibeast both move into melee range with Wander using their Move Action. Blood Diamond: uses her opalescence attack vs. Cobalt Templar That's a DC 20 Reflex save vs. being blinded this round (as per Dazzle rules) and a DC 20 Will save vs. falling in love with Blood Diamond. Lot of fiating here, but it is supposed to be a dangerous situation! Go ahead and make your rolls first; Wraith, Custos, and Changeling have no attacks directed against them this round. Next round, we'll all be acting normally. That's +3 HP for Midnight, +3 for Wander (given her reduced power level complication, which is about to be broadcast to the whole freaking Terminus), +2 for Cobalt Templar, and +2 for Sage.

19, 14 Stunned and unconscious, a two-fer!

OK, give me initiative, JP.

The sheer power of Nick's spell made the mask crumple and groan, the green scaly flecks crumbling away into blackly shimmering ash that somehow did the _opposite_ of glowing, absorbing heat and light as it burned away into a thin scattering of ash, the underlying iron warping and bending in impossible angles as it crumpled up like a piece of paper in a toddler's hand. When it was done and the spell had run its course, a thin layer of unpleasant-looking metal left behind. Staring down at the remains of the mask, Edge was left without much to say for a moment. Luckily, such moments passed quickly. "Well, that's one problem solved. I guess we'll go get that Christian burial for all the bones, and put that monument up to the Inquisitor." Said Inquistor was still standing when Nick and Mark returned, his bones in that familiar parody of humanity at their approach. As soon as Mark let the water close up behind them, he said simply, "pedro" before his skeleton collapsed to a pile of bones and Nick felt the all-too-familiar sensation of a soul passing onto its eternal reward.

Edge: Faded Giant Double Date of Doom Lord of the Manor Old Bones and GMing Harrier: The Remade But What You Make It The Hard Hand of Fate Demon In A Bottle Citizen: Mile In My Shoes Pepper's Ghost Unfair Science Fair Future Soon GMing: Gathering Like Clouds Put extra points towards Harrier.