Avenger Assembled

"What? No." Having walked over to get away from all the dead robots looking at him, Sharl all but pressed his nose against the glass, leaving no smudge and no breath misting behind. "Unless," he added diplomatically with a glance over at Kimber, "that's some kind of Lor grave you've encountered?" Not every Lor planet was as civ...had a culture like his own, some still made use of grave markers like this. "It's definitely from off-Earth, I've never seen human sculpture like that. Rick Lucas did travel extensively into near-galactic space..." Hmming, he looked around for a label, reminding himself that it was unlikely to be holographic here the way it would be at home.

Steve eyed the bed with some concern for a moment; would it support his weight? At six hundred pounds, he was within the realm of human body mass, but his relatively compact size meant he had damaged furniture before. Breaking Gina's private sanctum would ruin the moment! Tentatively, he sat on the bed with great care as Gina closed her eyes and took deep breaths, and though the springs squeaked it and he stayed intact. He was intimately aware that he was in a very personal place of Gina's, the emotionally intimate moment far, far removed from the terrible events earlier in the day. How is it that I have come so far? All unspoken earlier had been the hard nubbin of thought that Gina deserved better than him; that his warped body and blood-soaked past meant he deserved nothing from her or any other human being. But here they were, past another barrier together. He patiently said nothing, his eyes on the wall and his hands on his lap, as he waited for Gina to recover or not. I still know nothing of what brought her to this. But she has come so far as well. It is enough. It will have to be, for now.

Sharl had started briefly at what looked for all the world like a version of his own programming up there on the stage, luckily having rested his cargo on a nearby concrete barrier before doing so. "Oh, okay. Wow, that's convincing!" Sharl wasn't easily impressed by Earthly technology that didn't come from Miss A or another super-scientist, but he was impressed at how such a low-tech illusion could look so real. Craning his neck, careful to keep his feet on the ground, he said, "Yeah, people can be pretty jumpy about that sort of thing. In most places," he hazarded, "they'd just think it was a special effect, but in Freedom City it could be anything." He couldn't help but smirk a little. "Heh, can't wait to see what Kimber thinks about this."

Electra and I are off to spend a week at my folks' place. We'll be online, just irregularly.

"Thank you, Gina. There are those who don't see the Omegadrone, but few enough who see the man. And as for Miss Americana, she's not real. You are." He squeezed her hand gently, mindful as ever of cybernetic strength against human, and looked at her. "When I look at Miss Americana, I see Gina Evans behind her, and I know who the real hero is. And the real woman." He leaned in and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "And I like what I see. I may not be pleasant company, but I would like to stay the night tonight. I would rather not be alone."

"With their loss, and the loss of...another I cared for, I decided that I should be more than just another survivor in the Ghetto. I tried to organize among the proles, with the idea that we had common enemies enough we should be working together as allies. I was eighteen when the drones came for me. Steelgrave himself had been watching me for this day. And then I was taken to the doomforges and broken there, and...you know how that story ends." He fell silent again, staring off at the far wall without blinking for several moments before he seemed to finally hear Gina. When he spoke, his hands shook slightly. "I am not so foolish as to think I can make amends for what has happened in my life. But I could help make that little girl happy, and save all those people, and do good in this shining paradise. And that...that is enough. It will have to be." He turned to look at her. "You are the first I have been able to talk to like this. I always could, even when we were speaking through her."

Citizen: auto 25 on Computers for Online Research checks (he currently has his Datalink active of his Tronik array) auto 20 on Notice 24 on Pop Culture, 11 on Technology

19 on Pop Culture 19 on Technology

Knowledge (History): Both of you: The Black Ring of Set was taken from the titular god in what Typhoon has presented to the West as a mighty conflict between himself and the god of all darkness. (Western heroes remember a wounded Set being backstabbed and left for dead by a younger Typhoon during a failed attempt to seize the Aswan Dam back in the 1960s). It has great power: Because Wander got a natural 20, she also remembers that the ring is a powerful tool for shapeshifters like Set and other serpentine creatures, allowing them to magnify their own shapeshifting abilities a hundred fold. Notice: (The DC is high here because of the distance) Trevor notices, just as she sits down, that the bride-to-be's eyes flick open and shut with nicitating membranes just like Meaghan's buddy over there. Did I mention Meaghan and that guy are sitting right across from Erin and Trevor? (Because they are.)

"No, I think they believed that Steelgrave would kill them," replied Steve frankly. "Or end the way they had lived in some other way. He had forbidden them to have a child, you see, all those centuries ago. Their lost world was complete within him, he said, and they existed only as reflections of his glory. To produce a child was proof that there was something they loved more than they loved him. They told me only that after uncounted centuries, they had simply grown tired of obeying. That they would choose to die alive rather than to live as the dead. But they lived, and so did I. They were cast out, and I was born in the Black Ghetto some months later." He sat down again, putting his cold hand on hers. "The streets of Nihilor were far to fall for ones who had once stood by Steelgrave's side. The survivors of a thousand dead worlds, cast together in the darkness below, some gone mad and become as bad as the monsters above, some worshippers of the grim god of death who had destroyed their world and all they loved, all hunted by Omegadrones, Terminus dragons, and a thousand other monsters. Such was my childhood." He fell silent for a moment, then admitted, "I was lucky. My parents taught me to read, and about the worlds that had once been, and that Omega was a monster, not a god. And they finally died there, as all do. My mother of disease, my father in a fight over food. I was fifteen when I was alone."

Gimmie a history check, folks. I'll even put Mark at -1 HP so Erin can do it too! (with a +4 modifier)

"They paid the price for their deeds, make no mistake. There was a rebellion some time afterwards, once it became clear to those that had survived that their suffering was not over. That if they wanted to live, they would have to help in the destruction of others. Heroes, criminals, all who might have stood against Steelgrave rose together against him one night. My parents...were afraid." Steve closed his eyes again and said, "So they hid in their room in Steelgrave's palace as battle raged around them. And when it was done, and all the others were dead, sent to the doomforges, or dying in the games, Steelgrave gave them the same life-extension drugs that Annihilists use, so that they could stay by his side and praise his name as they had done for so long in the old world. And so they did, through world after world and year after year, watching as all the worlds like their own died, forced to praise all they saw to all in Nihilor in order to prolong their own lives. They kept track of the years at first; a year, two, ten, a century...and then finally, numberless." The look of pain in his eyes was deep as they turned on Gina again, the memory of someone else's pain still sharp after all these years. "And then, one day, after all that, my parents decided to have a child."

That doesn't break his Impervious 15. New round; Crimson Tiger is up. For now, I'll say you get another Fort save (at +1) vs. the Nauseate effect. The snare is currently at TOU +14, and I'll say that makes the Escape Artist DC to get out 24. Changeling also can make that Fort save vs. her sickened condition!

Edge hmmed at that. From all he'd heard, he could certainly understand why someone would be angry at Dr. Archeville. But no hero would send a fire-breathing dragon to kill somebody, even one who turns out to be not that bad like Fafnir. "Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I never really put a lot of thought into the mechanics of making monsters to try and hunt down your enemies. All right, well, whoever it is that's behind this, we'd better get there sooner rather than later. Every minute we're here is another minute they could be destroying evidence...or breeding more dragons! I doubt Fafnir would have stopped with just us, and he was focused as it was..." Just then, the Screwdriver beeped as it finally homed it on the teleport signal that had brought Fafir there and displaced the rock in the process: it was a powerful beam, but it hadn't traveled far: the origin point had been about twenty miles away, in a site Doc recognized that was supposed to be underneath the old municipal waste treatment plant of the nearby Dunkelstadt, a deserted place where no one would have gone if they could help it.

I need Notice checks. You both need to actually roll it.

"That's rough, Trevor," said Mark quietly, giving his friend a sympathetic look. He knew that the last thing Trevor would want is him to dwell on past pains, but he couldn't let his friend's problems go unremarked. "I'll keep an eye out. Weird that there's someone with that kind of mutation associated with Socotra; Nina's mentioned her father is very watchful about Deep Ones and the like, and he excludes people who don't meet his standards of beauty." He was about to say more, but someone was taking the stage alongside the musicians! Daisy Gibbons was resplendent in a green and gold Socotran dress-and-pants, her voice musical as she raised it perfectly pitched above the crowd. "Can I have your attention, please?" she asked pleasantly. "It's time for the guests of honor to arrive, so please take your seats!" She certainly looked much of a muchness from her days as a teen pop star, those fifteen minutes having ended not long ago. At her words, almost everyone in the room got moving; Trevor caught sight of Meaghan glancing his way, but there was no time for banter across the room at this very public moment: Nina and Mark were separated from the others to sit at the elaborate royal table, a massive circular table cut entirely out of a single dragon's blood tree, but Mark promised to keep an eye out as Trevor and Erin were seated at a table reserved for the leading heirs of prominent Freedom City businessmen who just might invest in Socotra if suitably persuaded. They had company there too. And then the room's overhead lights darkened, and a spot came up aimed at the big double doors on the far wall. Daisy's sultry voice took up the chant: "Presenting! The Prince of Tides! The Lord of Tsumani! The Son of the Storm and Cousin of Neptune: PRINCE MORAKOT AL-DARSAH! And with him for the very first time, making her public debut, Nephthys al-Arima, bearer of the Black Ring of Set!" Prince Morakot looked pressed for the occasion in his Western-style suit and tie, his eyes for once clear and his steps sure, his mustache impeccably groomed as he stepped out of the elevator, holding hands with a regal-looking young woman a solid decade his junior, whose dark skin and short black hair suggested a Middle-Eastern upbringing similar to his own. Sure enough, on one finger the clearly recognizable Black Ring of Set, familiar to Claremont students and Mark's friends from stories of the 1960s, was visible as she and her husband-to-be made their way to the royal table.

"I was, beneath the grim towers of the Annihilists. But my parents were not." Steve closed his eyes, as if seeing a long-gone world he had only imagined in his mind. "When my parents came of age, their world was torn apart by a bitter civil war between its superhumans. The mighty Heroic Assembly, the guardians of that place, had fallen out into bloodshed and carnage, and the human population suffered. They went to work for a hero called Steelguard, an armored champion of justice, as his speechwriters and his propaganda ministers." He took a breath, let it out, and focused on her. "They found he was not the man they had believed. He had...cheated to help bring about the war, he had provoked it, in fact, so that all the world's heroes would answer to him. But he promised peace and order, as well as prosperity for his followers, and that was very attractive. So they stood by his side and praised his name as he broke the heroes of the world and made them his pawns, and were with him the day that the Terminus starships appeared in the sky. Steelguard went to meet Omega. Steelgrave returned. He gave them a choice between death and joining him and his allies in the Terminus as vassals of Omega. And so...they chose to live. And their world burned."

With Nick's Arcane Lore, he can recognize without a roll that this looks very much like Malador's mask! It's clearly not the same, cut with a much more Dagonite/Deep One look, but it's quite similar, perhaps made by the same ancient craftsman many years ago...

"No, I mostly do humanitarian work for UNISON," Edge replied. "I build homes and make foodstock, and occasionally chase off mercenaries or mobs who are trying to raid UNISON bases. It's not like AEGIS, UNISON tries not to get into fights if they can help it." Mark had nothing but an American patriot's respect for that institution, but there was no denying that the UN agency was far less openly confrontational than the gun-toting AEGIS agents most of the time. "They only called me in for this case because I've been working in Africa and I'm one of their big guns as far as major meta-crises. I mean, my powers are technically magic, I guess, but I don't know anything except how to find experts like you. Hmm, here we go." After a solid half-mile of undersea walking, the bay bottom notably chillier than the beach above, they approached their destination. This close, with no sheltering blanket of water, Nick could definitely feel the necromantic energies that had permeated into the bay bottom, a cold, dark, slimy pollution: if this had happened somewhere less isolated, it surely would have been an issue long since for the magically-inclined of the world. As it was, Nick and Edge were the first human being in a very long time to finally round the edge of the crag and find beneath the golden-hued, green-scaled mask of the sea-lich, looking like a Deep One's crown but with far more sinister magical imprecations coming from it. Even without the warning, Nick might not have picked it up: the completely uncorroded mask practically sizzled with buried unholy energies!

"The survivors of the lost world will be debriefed by the Freedom League to gain more information about the mechanics of a Terminus conquest, then put in Special Circumstances housing until they can find a home for themselves. One little girl, I think, may be going home with Jill O'Cure, they seemed to have a particularly special bond." He hadn't missed that little candle in the darkness, for all that there had been so much else to deal with. He put his hand on Gina's and squeezed it lightly, not quite turning to look at her. "The fate of the Terminus technicians is more...uncertain. They will be debriefed as well, and closely screened for biological and technological agents, and after that...most likely put in protective custody. They have committed no crime here, but they are bloody-handed murderers all the same." He turned and looked right at Gina for the first time. "I terrified them, and rightly so. A freed Omegadrone is vengeance incarnate to all who serve Omega. But I...I saw their faces, and I saw my parents reflected in them. I think...I think it is time I tell you their story." The weight of the past was obviously a heavy burden pressing on Steve, one he badly needed to unload.

Sharl was less impressed by the tree, not being a fan of all the natural pictures people in Freedom City seemed inclined to hang everywhere, but he certainly wasn't about to say that to Miss A! Instead he followed along, obediently carrying the pictures small enough that he and Miss A had kept them close instead of sending them along. He was stronger than he looked while projected, and easily able to manage the load. I suppose I probably look like Miss A's younger, not as attractive brother, he thought as the crowd watched his mentor, enjoying the reflected glory of being around the famous heroine as he usually did. With his sunglasses off and without his chest symbol, and with his projection particularly solid, he looked as human as anyone else. "I'm interested to see what they do with electronic music here," he offered as they made their way towards the set. "Some of the instruments look similar to home, just...built along more classic lines," he said euphemistically.

Steve took a drink, almost pure alcohol from her vodka bottle that would do no more than get him mildly buzzed, and sat on the couch next to Gina. "My day began when we at HAX made contact with a world in the last stages of destruction by the Terminus." He told her in a slow, methodical way of how they'd learned of the brutal invasion, the rapid destruction of civilization and life, and finally their own trip across dimensional barriers to try and rescue the few tiny fragments of human life left over after the flame deluge of Terminus conquest. "I had never been, free, to a world under attack by the Terminus. But when I saw their faces and felt their terrible despair, I remembered what it was to see that in other times, and other places, and be the instrument of their destruction. We captured civilians. Not refugees. Humans who worked for Shadivan Steelgrave, tending Omegaforges. And I was tempted..." He extended his hand half in front of him, fingers curling. "One dared beg me for mercy. And he got it, but it was...it was tempting."

"She can count on my utmost respect and discretion," said Daedalus with a wry chuckle from inside his armor. "And that she won't have to worry about my looking into her private affairs. After all, I can't even keep her name straight!" For the son of a previous generation's hero, he'd had a lot of time to work on his patter. "You have a fine building here, and a fine crew. I was honored to work with you, even by remove." And with that, he got back to work, the smooth, efficient veteran hero he'd been from the moment he arrived.

Steve had a pretty good idea where Gina was likely to be, but he knew better than to go down there and beard her in her den unless it was a serious emergency. And this wasn't an emergency, not in the sense that it would have justified frightening her that way. He walked inside the living room and said aloud, "No, things are not well with me tonight. I have had a very...difficult day, Gina. I need to talk to you." He sat down on the couch, the springs squeaking beneath his great weight, and looked at nothing as he sat his hands on his knees. "I apologize for the hour of my coming, and for not calling. I preferred not to be alone today."

"It's interesting," offered Sharl. His personal tastes didn't run much to the arts, but he'd absorbed a fair eye by osmosis from his sculptor sister. "Many of them are very talented, of course, and I'm impressed at how many colors they can make with just some plant derivatives and a few petrochemicals." It wasn't as good as what his sister could make, but Miss A had trained him far too well to make that sort of comment. He studied one particular painting that was an 'ironic' older Elvis on black velvet, hmming. "They certainly are creative." He was being very watchful today, and keeping his projection solid in this crowd of people. "Will we be looking to buy works of music the way we're buying the paintings and art? All that music piped into the lobby has to come from somewhere..."