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Avenger Assembled

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  1. Avenger Assembled
    Sorry for the delay. Crimson Tiger: 27 Green Man: 25 5 Animated Trees: 19 Citizen: 18 Changeling: 7 Go ahead, TK
  2. Avenger Assembled
    "It's just strange what you find when you grow up," said the 19 year old. "I spent my life sure I'd grow up to be on the Freedom League just like my father. I spent my high school years fighting Nazis from other dimensions, my own drunk classmates, gods from out of space, my own evil self, and then Omega." He gave Archeville a surprisingly thoughtful, maybe even intelligent, look "You ever have the feeling that you've reached a point in your life and it's all going downhill from here?" Mark never actually had felt that way, not for more than a few seconds, but he was smart enough to know a lot of people in his situation would have. It was instinctive to get Archeville in his corner when they were together like this, maybe because he thought he owed the man something it was impossible to fully repay. "So what exactly was it that-" Suddenly, a shriek of royal alarm made Mark jerk his head upwards as Nina came rocketing into view: she'd evidently gone exploring in a large cracked-open cave wall that she was now exiting in a hurry, swearing in Socotri as she surfed her way down the nearly sheer wall on a bank of water. "What the hell do you have in there, Archeville?" she demanded, a moment before a gout of flame erupted from the cave over their heads!
  3. Avenger Assembled
    26 Failed by nine, so bruised and dazed.
  4. Avenger Assembled
    "I have come a long way already," replied Steve, returning that look to his friend with something more than his usual flat gaze. He even smiled. "And today, a little further." He left under his own power, as usual in a part of the city where there were enough sensors that could penetrate both his holographic disguise and his chameleon circuits, a man among men as he joined the urban throng in Freedom City. His parents were long, long dead, and what they'd done and what had been done to them could never be undone. But through all that had happened, they'd always been themselves. It was good to remember that. THE PAST NIHILOR
  5. Avenger Assembled
    "No third kidneys," said Samson with the ghost of a smile. "I'm lucky to have two." Evidently gallows humor wasn't out of place here, probably because it was the only humor left. "We're all human in the Vault, minus some genetic engineering here and cybernetic enhancements there. As for magic, I couldn't tell you that. I don't know how things are where you're from, but most people with magical knowledge were in Europe or magical dimensions when the invasion happened. Some of them were the first to go, others...well, maybe they made it out, or hunkered down for the end like I did." He shrugged and admitted, "I have no way of knowing what would work and what wouldn't." The elevator went deep, deep into the mountain, far enough that the shaft seemed to heat up from the sheer crushing depths of rock over their heads. This far down, with the noises from the surface quiet, Murdock for a moment could believe they were safe. But only for a moment. This, and everything else in this planet, will be torn apart by the Doom Coil within days or less. We must work quickly. "What do you know about how the invasion happened?" he asked Power as they went, prompting the battered engineer to tell his story. Power, a wealthy geologist and inventor, had been leader of a team called Earth Corps, a group of armored heroes who fought subterranean monsters genetically engineered like what sounded like local versions of Terra-King and his Sub-Terrans. "Things have been pretty rough the last couple of years with all the magical disasters, but we've gotten through it. Or we did, anyway. There was no rhyme or reason to it that we could see; one day the sky opened up, and Hell followed. No talking, no posturing, no demands or negotiations...We only know who Mandragora himself is because he challenged our greatest warriors to a fight. Those poor brave Serpent bastards..." He shook his head. "And then they were everywhere; first on Guardian Island, then St. Fillmore, then everywhere else. I sent three of my team; Red Dog, Black Fist, and Whitesnake, to LA to try to hold the line when that damn starship came down to take out the West Coast. They didn't last two hours against those drones. None of them did. At least they didn't come back...changed." He shuddered, his already-battered face paling. And then they were there at the Vault, and the conversation shifted. The Vault itself was fairly sparse and utilitarian; a dozen rooms adding up in size to about as big as a single floor of the HAX building, once a shelter against nuclear armageddon that was now a refuge of perhaps the last living humans on this Earth. The survivors of this world were all shell-shocked, faces pale and clothing torn, a dead, haunted look in their eyes eerily familiar to the heroes with experience with disasters like this. Some were badly hurt, a haggard woman in medical fatigues carrying a sleeping newborn in a backpack tending to everything from children with broken limbs and hollow eyes to men and women with torn bodies barely held together by sutures, on shiny plastic emergency stretchers now gone dirty and stained. Everyone was doing all they could. Which wasn't much; there was little talking, and only a small amount of weeping: these people had had time to consider the end they'd all seen coming. "Everyone!" called Power, walking out of the elevator and leading the group. "I need your attention. I have a way out for all of us!" Someone laughed at that, a bitter sound that echoed through the cramped confines of the sweat-and-blood-and-waste smelling rooms, but Power pressed on. "These four heroes are from another dimension! They heard my distress call, and they're here to help us find a way to escape the Terminus!" There were no cheers at that, but everyone was paying attention now to what the heroes said and did. Don't think. Don't feel. Just act. Murdock's face was stone, but in his mind the world was burning. He smelled the fear and despair in the air, saw the broken bodies and suffering people packed so close together, and it was all so terribly familiar. Not so familiar, he thought, his mental voice dry and dead even to his own awareness. Before, you'd have been one of the things trying to get in.
  6. Avenger Assembled
    Both Gal Vanic and Cobalt Templar, take an HP for Keres making it personal. That's an All-Out Power Attack; his to-hit is currently 13. Of course, that's also a DC 36 Tou save for Cobalt Templar...
  7. Avenger Assembled
    Keres bore up well under Cobalt Templar's attacks, too well. So far nothing had brought the giant villain down! "So that's it?" he taunted. "Young Freedom's best? If this is what the next generation is like, maybe all we need to do in the Foundry is wait a few years for all the REAL heroes to die off! First I'll smash you, then I'll go help Rogue smash these race traitors back where they belong!" Growling, he went for Cobalt Templar, and just as he did so, the two heroes distinctly 'heard' Sage's cut-short cry of mental pain! That threw Corbin off, which was the opening Keres needed. Drawing back a mighty fist, he threw a massive punch to Corbin's midsection that the blueclad hero felt right through his armor.
  8. Avenger Assembled
    Drain vs. DC 16: 26 Tou vs DC 21: 24 Hokay.
  9. Avenger Assembled
    Xevon lights the Firewall as his full-round action, putting a barrier between the heroes in the cargo hold and the heroes outside. What kind of barrier? Poke it and see! Rogue punches Citizen and he takes a bruise.
  10. Avenger Assembled
    The armored cat hissed and giggled as it went for Citizen, Tronik's own paragon racing up towards the hole he'd torn in the roof of the cargo tank to get the badly injured Sage out of the fight, her coruscating contrail a mockery of the real menace in her slitted eyes. "Such regard for an organic!" she hissed with giggling malice. "How touching! Maybe we'll make you a zookeeper after Talos takes Earth for his own!" She landed a slice as Sharl finally rocketed through the hole, but her claws only tore at his costume. Sharl Tulink was made of stern stuff indeed in his home city. Flying desperately away from the oncoming attack, he set Sage down on an abandoned portion of the deck with as much care as he could muster, then suddenly turned and rocketed back towards the feline in power armor. Or whatever she was out there. But that, he realized as he landed a devastating blow to her armored midsection, didn't matter. "You should have listened to your boss," he spat. "This isn't your world! GET OUT!" He landed another blow, this one ringing out with a rocketing BOOM that echoed even down below in the cargo hold, the armored feline hurtling backwards and smashing into the boat's hull hard enough to dent even the supertough metal. As Rogue came at him out of the hull, Citizen turned on her. "You want a fight? Come get me!" he taunted, raising his fists again. "I'll take you and your stupid Foundry buddies on all at once if I have to. No one else suffers today!" Rogue faced him, eerily calm despite her brutal attack on Sage a moment earlier, and said simply, "All right, Citizen. But don't expect me to play fair with a friend to those stinking savages below. No help for you today." She whirled and yelled below, "XEVON! LIGHT THE FIREWALL!" And with that, the knife-bladed villain below seemed to stretch his mechanical limbs before his head erupted upwards in a wall of sizzling blue and white flame, one that rocketed up past the bound civilians below and the heroes who'd taken custody of the annihalation device, the fireball rising until it completely blocked the hole in the roof of the cargo hold. Papercut and Wraith were alone now with the hostages and the knife-creature, whose attention was focused primarily on maintaining the blue curtain of flame overhead, while Citizen and an unconscious, nearly dying Sage were alone as the blobby humanoid erupted out of the hole just behind Rogue and as Armorcat groaned and started to pick herself up off the deck. "Time to die!" Rogue called as she swooped up high in the air, briefly invisible behind Tronik's massive red sun before diving for Sharl at fantastic speed, her body a blur of black leather and blue light as she simply and brutally smashed her forehead into Citizen's, his sunglasses cracking as a lens shattered and he went staggering back.
  11. Avenger Assembled
    Tou vs 27: 31 Dang, Roid!Keres may be a little overly robusto here. Initiative in the Skyfight: Blobby: 21 Armorcat: 12 Citizen: 12 (2 HP via Complications) Knives: 9 Rogue: 3 Blobby McGee is slow, so he'll be spending his full round action getting up there. Armorcat has movement enough to fly up to Citizen and hit him. I'll Fiat that she does hit (inflicting a DC 25 Tou save), and giving Citizen another HP. Citizen passes Citizen: Move Action: Set Sage down Standard Action: Punch Armorcat 30 Welp, that's a crit Tou vs 34: 23 Sharl is inflicting full knockback into the side of the container. With a DMG 19 attack and Impervious 10, the total is 9: 500 ft. That's close enough to hit the hull of the ship. That's another DC 34 Tou save: 27 Injuredx2, Dazed until Sharl's round comes up again. Rogue is up next.
  12. Avenger Assembled
    Save vs. Paralyze: 16 Well dang! KD, I'll go ahead and just say the demon is slowed rather than actually paralyzed. (Just so we can keep the fight going a bit) Have an HP! Giz is up.
  13. Avenger Assembled
    It was a difficult dimensional transition, but by no means the roughest Steve Murdock had ever endured. When the light that came from no natural source ended and he opened his eyes again, the quartet of dimensional travelers found themselves in what looked like a high-tech command center from a good decade before most of their births: the green-screen monitors, heavy black plastic keyboards, big old-fashioned Cray computers lining the wall, and Formica writing surfaces all bespoke a decorating ethos and technological level close to their own 1980s. The only outlier was the wall panel that evidently was the Forever Planet technology, from which a bleary-eyed Samson Powers was turning to greet them in amazement. The world's decorating tastes and technology meant nothing to him, instead he closed his eyes briefly and listened to the booming that occasionally filtered down through layers of rock and the drop-ceiling overhead, calling on all his terrible memories to try and help save them all now. The room had been the scene of some chaos in recent days, that much was clear: most of the overhead tiles were broken or missing, many of the monitors were flat and dead, and there was a thin layer of dust over everything, probably caused by the occasional rumbles that shook the deep bunker. For his part, clad as he was in his industrial power armor, Samson Power took a moment to suss out the four new arrivals before saying with a grim smile, "Well, you're not Omegadrones, anyway. Welcome to Earth Corps, ladies and, er, gentleman. I'm Samson Power." Murdock shook the man's gauntleted hand, but was far more focused now on the still-active monitors that showed what had been done to this world. He could only catch glimpses of the unspeakable carnage, but he knew what he saw: the raised pikes bearing their grim trophies of fallen heroes to terrify what few civilians remained, the silent pleas for mercy that went unanswered, and the dragons of Mandragora in the red burning sky everywhere, their black scales sleek and bellies full. The red emergency lights overhead seemed to briefly cast the room itself in fire, or perhaps blood. "My name is Murdock. I am a survivor of Terminus invasions in other realities. Your facility is impressive to have survived even indirect assaults by the forces of the Terminus," he told the other man evenly. "Few survive this long, much less in their own strongholds." "I built this room, and the rest of this base, to help save the world. I came up here to watch it end," said Power, not hesitating to walk the others towards the white-walled elevator nearby, the walls decorated in murals of shining people in armor like his own and defending the terrestrial world from what looked like underground monsters were a legacy of what had been happier times. He gave Mara an imploring look. "Can you take my people back with you?"
  14. Avenger Assembled
    Vs. Feint: He passes Vs. 32: 33 Yowsa, passed it by one. Cobalt Templar is up.
  15. Avenger Assembled
    Keres Fight: Still waiting on that post, Giz! Rogue Fight: Sage is disabled and unconscious. Have an HP, Sorus! Sage just screamed in everyone's mind, but now that's done. Blobby: 21 Armorcat: 12 Knives: 9 Citizen: 12 Rogue: 3 All the minions are moving on the Rogue/Citizen fight, leaving Papercut and Wraith largely unmolested around the hostages, at least for now.
  16. Avenger Assembled
    Sage flew closer and closer to the arguing Tronik paragons, her crimson blades raised as she approached Rogue. But suddenly, the electronic supervillainess looked up and pierced her with her eyes, jerking backwards with blinding speed as Sage's blades whipped by her face. "I remember you," she hissed, a look of murderous fury on her face. "Eve Martel of the French Martels; lords and ladies of dung and filth. But you're in my world now, Eve Martel. MY WORLD!" And then it all happened between the blink of an eye; Rogue's eyes glowed red and fiery beams shot out through her mirrorshades, burning twin holes in the lenses and inches from Citizen's outstretched hand. Sage jerked away with all the speed she'd used to dodge Omega's Terminus blasts, but that had been in the real world. This was Tronik. The twin fiery blasts tore across Sage's upper body like a freight train, charring flesh and searing muscle, a hit that would have torn her in two if not for her lightning reflexes. It wasn't until her collarbone cracked, an all-too-familiar sensation, that Sage started to fall. "NO!" Reality caught up to Citizen a second later as he caught her by the waist, rocketing upwards with his injured teammate towards the safety of the cracked-open roof, his enemy in hot pursuit. Seeing the chance for some real action, Rogue's minions chose to help out their boss rather than guard increasingly boring hostaes: the blobby thing began bouncing off the walls up towards them, the cat-born zoomed upwards on a rainbow-colored trail, laughing wickedly, while the slow to move knife-thing peered upwards, trying to get a few of the combat while chuckling like scraping steel. The annihilation device seemed to tremble beneath the box around it; if something was going to be done with it, it had to happen soon...
  17. Avenger Assembled
    With the tinkling of broken glass and a hissing roar, the demon lord went for Harrier, running not along the floor but the ceiling, broken-glass-edged fingers digging into the wood like claws as it went for him. "None may ssstand againsst the powersss of pain and darknessss!" hissed the Lord of Broken Dreams as it brought its glassy spear down across Harrier's chest, cutting deep into skin but revealing beneath not flesh and blood, but cold Terminus steel. The glassy-eyed monster's jaggedly fanged mouth hung open in surprise for a moment as it stared at the man before it. No. Not a man. "You know nothing of pain," replied the former Omegadrone as metal erupted from his flesh and bone, skin and cloth giving way as his body transformed itself into nothing less than a monument to cold, spiked steel and death, a cybernetic killing machine from beyond the stars. "I show you." He thrust upwards and missed, the shocked demon-glass creature throwing itself out of the way of Harrier's shrieking power pike an instant before he could take off its head. Luckily, the bar was clearing itself out now!
  18. Avenger Assembled
    Harrier: 19 Hey, nice! 34 Well, dang. Demon: 34 Harrier: 19 Gabriel: 12 Jack of all Blades: 11 The Lord of Broken Dreams is going to run over (using his Speed) and go for Harrier. Attack vs DC 22: 33 Well, that ain't good: A crit! DC 31 Tou save for Harrier 33 Dude, sweet! Harrier goes ahead and engages this guy in melee. Attack vs DC 22: 18 Eh, I'll take it. Gabriel is up soon as I post IC.
  19. Avenger Assembled
    "You look fine, Corbin," said Mark, trying to reassure the younger teen who after all did look okay. Man, how long has it been since I've seen Corbin? Or Eve? The camaraderie they'd all forged together when saving the entire multiverse from the lord of the Terminus had slipped away thanks to his work and Eve and Corbin's schooling. It was unpleasant to think that such strong bonds could be pulled apart by something as mundane as scheduling, so instead of thinking about it Mark produced as if from nothing (and oh, Etain could feel the very stuff of magic being torn asunder and reshaped, like watching a chainsaw sculpture at work) a bright blue tie that matched Corbin's usual costume colors. "Here you go, have a tie," he said with a grin. To Trevor and Erin, he added, "Hey guys. I've been speaking French the last two weeks, my punning in English is a little rusty." He thought for a minute, then rang the bell as Corbin had suggested. "I know Eve said the place is open to us anytime, but I don't want to just barge in." Besides, Eve seemed like she'd take him catching her coming out of the shower pretty badly.
  20. Avenger Assembled
    The cockroach monster shook, but bore up under Cannonade's assault with the loss of only a few dozen insects on its outskirts. "YOU! JOE MACAYLE!" it spat with a sudden, unpleasant recognition as it focused what might have been eyes (after all, they were only writhing divots in the swarm) on the helmeted hero. "WE KNOW YOUR FAZE FROM EARTH HIZTORY! A HIZTORY WE WILL DEPRIVE YOU OF, JUZT BEFORE WE DEPRIVE IT OF ALL OTHERZ!" It threw a mighty blow at Cannonade, seeming to take a special interest in squashing the patriotic powerhouse like the proverbial cockroach, but despite mighty swings from tremendous arms-colonies as thick around as Joe's body, it couldn't quite make an impact.
  21. Avenger Assembled
    Reflex: 19 Almost! But not quite. Tou: 31 Tou, LCed: 30 Ouch! Mark is down an HP and the monster is unhurt. It's going to go ahead and lash out at the person who just went for it. 16 It doesn't do so well on its own go! Midnight's up once I post IC. Midnight is up now.
  22. Avenger Assembled
    Steve had already planned on not directly bringing this conversation up with Gina, but news that their conclave was about to be interrupted by some supernatural monster (he wasn't entirely sure what 'brimstone' was, but most of the references he could recall had been about the inhabitants of various magical sub-dimensions) convinced him that he would definitely be keeping it to himself. "A poor argument for the outside," he muttered almost inaudibly before turning to the others. He was about to make a suggestion about a diversion when the room did it for him. And then, with a sound like tinkling glass rubbing together through a stream, the broken glass and booze behind the bar reared up in a terrible humanoid shape that was all broken glass and swirling liquid, the clear spirits stained black and foul by dirt and some unnameable thing, like perhaps the fell sorcery that seemed to be seeping up from the very basement in waves that made the hair tingle even on the non-sensitives in the room. When it spoke from cracked and jagged lips and peered at them from behind colored-glass black button eyes, it spoke in the voice of a waterfall from Hell. "Yessss! The Lord of Broken Dreammmmms has been freed after a thousand years! Now, to conquer the world of the Lord!" It made a gesture and summoned from within its own warped, translucent body a spear of jagged glass, which it used to gesture at the others. "I am a symmmmmbol of pain and sssssufferring from beyond the starssss! Your world will be mmmmmmine!" And now the remaining patrons were retreating, eyes wide with terror at the monstrosity before him. "No, you're not!" replied Harrier firmly, his voice a security guard's bark that made sure anyone who wasn't running was looking at him rather than the other two heroes in the room. I am! he wanted to add, but even faced with this monster he would never boast. Not about that, anyway. Instead, he reached for his belt and snapped open his pike, armor erupting past his skin and clothes to transform his entire right arm into a spiky, armored monstrosity as the pike crackled to life with bubbling, hissing Terminus fire. "And mine's bigger." he added.
  23. Avenger Assembled
    Not only does doing damage without the attacked person noticing require the Insidious power feat, in general I find what you're describing to be a pretty unfair use of the Illusion power, Aoiroo. We're already pretty broad with what we let you do with Changeling's powers (an argument could be made, for example, that she shouldn't be able to hide (as opposed to disguise) things from her targets at all, since that's the Concealment power rather than the Illusion power) and what you're describing is further than I'm willing to go. (You might want to take a look at comic book illusionists like Mastermind and Mysterio to get an idea of stuff you can do with Changeling: while Mysterio might disguise Daredevil to look like the Kingpin so Spiderman will beat on him and look like a chucklehead, he doesn't give Spiderman invisible beatdowns.) So while you can keep your Illusions up, and he's going to need to work to see through them, no, I'm going to say you cannot attack from behind them in such a way that he doesn't even know he's taking damage. Go ahead and roll for initiative, folks. Citizen: 18 5 Animated Trees: (with the same stats as the monsters from earlier in the adventure)19 Green Man: 25
  24. Avenger Assembled
    "It's mostly industrial work," Mark admitted, "or close to it. My powers let me build emergency housing and base foodstock on a massive scale, so I'll usually warp myself to a given area and go to work making food and shelter. I've been working in the remoter parts of the Congo River valley the last few months, building and making for the displaced persons there." He found himself wanting to say a few words in Nina's defense, but he doubted she'd appreciate the effort even if she could hear it. Growing up with her father, she has a very well-developed sense of right and wrong; it's just not always right. "Sometimes mercenaries show up to raid the foodstock, but I'm good at surprising them. Most of UNISON's super-agents get a government job because they're not powerful enough to be superheroes or something on their own. Freedom City's still the place for big super-action."
  25. Avenger Assembled
    They talked into the afternoon, Steve eventually relaxing enough that he ate instead of storing the available food for later. It was good to talk to Viktor, and good to talk about subjects that didn't revolve around sorcerous corruption or the gigagenocide of a thousand worlds. That they could have serious discussions about the ethics of relationships, as well as occasional diversions into cybernetic male enhancement, was a sign they were both much closer to normal than they once had been. When they were done, and he was leaving to take up his afternoon shift at HAX, he finished, "Thank you for the company, Viktor, and the advice," he said seriously. "It is good to have friends in times like these."
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