Avenger Assembled

Sage's plan turned out to be to recon, keeping a silent connection to Papercut so he didn't feel abandoned in the alien factory. With the emergency lights beginning to snap on, one after the other, casting the factory into an eerie shade of red, at least it wasn't so dark anymore. As she crept along the ceiling, the figure standing on the big oxygen recycler came into focus in the light from the skylight overhead and the clicking-on emergency lights. It was instantly obvious the man didn't belong in Tronik; the man was dressed as a 17th century pirate, at least if you ignoring the cutlass at his hip that crackled with electric power. He looked like he'd cut a more swashbuckling air in happier times; as it was, the pirate looked tired and a little strung-out, like a man at the tailing end of a coffee bender. "Arr, will you look at that?" he was saying to himself in awe, obvious admiration on his face as he peered down into the recycler, tapping away at a computer pad in his hand. "Lor molecular fusion, down to the smallest detail! That'll fetch a fine haul on the open market!"

All right, the only changes I'd like are: Make the drawbacks Complications, they're too rare to be worth getting PP for. And put something in his Fort save. Once you get that, I'll be able to give you an approval!

Initiative time! Harrier: 19 Joseph: 14 Miss A, have an HP for the complication of needing to get the crowd out of the way on your turn. Harrier gets an additional HP for being a horrible monster.

Scanning the crowd, Harrier looked for anyone eager to hide themselves from the gathering crowd of onlookers. He finally found the man he was looking for in an ornamental bush, lurking inside the arboreal shield as his glowing eyes gave him away to the sharp-eyed cyborg. He didn't hesitate, pointing out the figure to Miss Americana as she pulled out her scanner, then advancing on him with raised pike. Before he could reach him, though, he stopped, momentarily stricken. "I know that man," he said aloud as Miss Americana reached his location, his voice as ever muffled and distant through his black, terrifying armor riven with spikes. "He lives in my building; his name is Joseph, he is a survivor of a branch timeline destroyed by the Terminus." Harrier voice hardened. "He has seen what he has seen. And he does this." And with that, his momentary doubts passed, Harrier advanced on the man, pike raised high. Too late, Harrier realized that a psychic would have more than one way of detecting foes. "No, no!" Joseph yelled, springing from the bushes and pointing at the invisible Harrier, evidently ignoring the obvious superheroine in the crowd in favor of the oncoming Omegadrone. "You won't get me!" yelled Joseph, his eyes wide. With his goatee and sweater vest, he looked almost professorial if you ignored the madness in his eyes. "You won't stop me here!" And with that, he fired a bolt of sickly green energy from his hands at Harrier, clanging against the armor of his invisible opponent hard enough to send shockwaves radiating through the man inside the machine.

OOC: Hayes Park There are a dozen mind-controlled builders. We'll use bystander stats for them if it becomes necessary to do so. The machine itself looks a bit like a metal globe on a stand about as large as a semi-trailer, half-built and laden with sharp spines and warped bits of metal on the inside. Even half-built, if this collapses with people inside it, there will be blood. I'll be using the stats for the Disdainful Psionic from the Villainous Archetypes 3 supplement, with his Impervious dropped to 13 so Miss Americana and Harrier will actually be able to hurt him in combat. Both Miss A and Harrier have Notice stats high enough to see the mind-controller lurking in the bushes near the construction project, and Miss A's detector if set to Super-Senses 5 (Detect Mind Control [mental], Acute Analytical Radius Ranged) [5 pp] (which I'm providing here because she's easily got the points for that, and because it's good to have that kind of sample construction in place for later) will be able to tell that there's psychic tampering going on in that spot.

Gina's reassurance was all that Harrier needed; faced with a resurrected doomforge in a park in Freedom City, only the approach of her death would have kept him on the spot. With her promise, he was gone, his heavy footsteps thudding down to Gina in the basement as he all but ran for the door: he did run outside, once he could snap open his pike and vanish beneath its chameleon circuits. Distracted as he was, he didn't even think to activate Caradoc's shell: this was no appearance before admiring children or battling muggers on the streets of Lincoln; this was an echo of living death, terrible and everlasting, and not one he would meet with any face other than his own. Once in the air, he made a beeline for Hayes Park, his jetpack roaring behind him though the man himself was invisible to most of the humans below, and took in the scene on the ground: nothing had changed, the 'mob' was still in the middle of building the bones and meat of their own destruction in steel and silver, their expressionless faces speaking to a sinister purpose as they worked in unison before a crowd that was appalling with its casual tourists' interests and occasional photographs. He could not simply land and destroy the sphere, not with the 'mob' working inside; they might well be innocent victims of whatever had brought this potential horror. No, get out! he wanted to scream as they hammered together sheet metal in a jagged metal shape familiar enough to make what had once been his bones ache. Instead, he hastily landed, still cloaked invisibly, and cast his eyes around wildly for any organizing this terrible scene.

"We do all right," said Harper with a hard smile. "Most of the kids, they make their bones in merc work, whether it's in costume in the States or in uniform for flatscan goosesteppers. But I suppose I don't have to tell the two of you that," she added with a wink in Lady Laser and Gateway's directions. "I put my time in the Middle East, keeping pretty boy thugs on the throne, then taking them down when the opposition boys had more money." She leaned back in her chair, looking perfectly relaxed as they drove past a widespread park dotted with holographic, ever-changing sculptures and genetically-engineered trees blended together in a pleasing pattern, the biggest statue of all a clearly recognizable image of the Colonel's late mother and predecessor as dictator of New Freedom.

"...that is a doomforge," said Harrier, as appalled as he would at the too-familiar sight in this unspoiled place, one of the few true blasphemies the misotheist former Omegadrone recognized. "It is not a weapon or a portal the League's sensors would recognize. They are not portable. None would have been built here in 1965 or 1993." His hands tightened into fists as he gave Gina a wide-eyed look, only just noticing her condition amid his own extreme focus. "It is part of the Omegadrone assimilation process. Without a connection to the Coil, it could not actually transform a person into a drone, but it could certainly kill anyone put inside. We must destroy what is happening there!" He was already turning and all but running for the door as he spoke, but at the sight of Gina's condition he bent low. This was too important for him to delay, but neither could he sacrifice Gina on the altar of urgency. "Gina? Gina, speak to me," he asked urgently. Behind him on the monitors, she could make out the construction process. For a trained engineer and scientist like Gina, the workers were decidedly odd to watch, moving with a singular purpose and with uncommon skill as they climbed and walked around the growing structure, which they seemed to be building out of car parts, scrap computer parts from a nearby donation bin, and even metallic items from the park itself. They didn't seem to be communicating with each other; instead moving with the unity of army ants as they went about their construction. When she looked up at Steve, his face was white, save for scars that had flushed red.

"Oh, you are from outside?" replied Keres, a look of cold amusement on his falsely-human face. "How remarkable! Rogue warned me her little boyfriend might bring in outside help, but I was expecting Miss Americana and Dragonfly, not teenagers with attitude." Keres stood up in his cell and stretched, looking relaxed despite his confinement and the glowering guards outside. "You might as well leave now, little boy. What's coming is going to be tough enough for the natives and machines like me, but you organic projectors are going to be in for a world of hurt. You might even get sucked right out of that meat sack of yours and into something more interesting." He grinned. "But you look like the type to get really offended by the loss of your flesh, so you may want to run home first."

The shapeshifter visibly flinched at Wraith's terrifying mien; evidently knowing what a Kinigosi was was no armor against fearing them. if anything, it seemed to make matters worse. "You...you can't actually hurt me," she said defensively, shrinking away as much as her bonds allowed. "Even if you tear this avatar up, I'll just wake up in my crib and you won't have a hostage anymore. You may have your little computerized friend here who makes you think this place is real," she went on with a nod towards Citizen, "but nothing you people do to me is going to stick once I'm out of here." "Well, then," said Citizen, turning to face his antagonist directly, "if we can't permanently hurt you, then we don't have any good reason to hold back," he said sharply, bending down next to her on the floor and giving her a steady-eyed glare behind his shades. "So you'd better start talking, or maybe we'll see how my friend here likes the taste of you?" Her teeth set, the shapeshifter reluctantly said, "Look, I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm just paying a debt I owe the Foundry." She slumped in her bonds. "Your friend Rogue's one of Talos' top people, and he's backing her play on her own turf. That's where all of us came from." "Wait a minute," Sharl went on, frowning. "Why would Rogue want to destroy Tronik? She's a technosupremacist, she knows killing us is just like killing a human-" "She doesn't want to kill the people, kid," said the shapeshifter irritably. "She wants to kill the city."

Lemme know when you finish editing. The flaw is just (Limited: When Denied Dodge Bonus). It basically does what you want, but also does so in a way that doesn't give you flaws you don't want.

Rayford's eyes widened at the sight of Rene's message, and involuntarily he shot a glance down towards his daughter. He didn't say a word, but his meaning was obvious to all the heroes. For her part, her eyebrows narrowed suspiciously at the look on his face, and she turned her gaze back at the heroes with a new look of suspicion in her eyes. She hadn't seen the message, that was for certain, but she still seemed wise to the idea that something suspicious was up. Though she let her father talk, she stepped back behind him, where she could watch all of their conversations. "I, uh, have just had a really hard time, is all, with everything that's been...happening." The civil servant ran his hands through his hair, tension, pain, and not a little fear clear on his face now that his daughter couldn't see it clearly. "Tell me why you're here?" he said, his voice almost a plea.

Harper looked thoughtful at Lady Laser's words, surprisingly so given the swagger the dictator had displayed so far. "All right, Lady, Gateway, we'll try it your way. Take him back to his cell," she said with a dismissive wave to her guards. "And get a psychic ready to interrogate him. Perhaps we can get more out of him if we squeeze him hard enouh. I'll give our guests a personal tour of the city." For his part, Citizen signaled his assent to Miss Americana and began a slow, careful hop from computer to computer that kept him close to the geologist-turned-prisoner. The technician, who the guards now addressed by name, Karl, certainly looked inordinately relieved: whatever cell he was going back to was better than whatever dire fate had been in store for him out here. Sharl and Karl wound up in a concrete blockhouse on the surface with iron bars in the windows of all things, Sharl himself in an old desktop computer a room away from the prisoner. He kept his ears open, the system around him reading to his eyes like standing in rooms full of dusty Earth filing cabinets, waiting for his chance to step out through the attached screen and explore the room beyond. For Gateway and Lady Laser, accommodations were far more pleasant inside the heated jeep-cum-limo that was the Patriotic Colonel's choice of transportation. If you were light on conscience, New Freedom did look like a fine place: private homes were mansion-sized and more as they drove beneath them, the Colonel assuring them how deep each went, while even the proles had access to hovercars and jetpacks overhead, with the powered people flying around under their own power like lords of the air, given a wide berth by the black-clad humans in the sky and on the ground. The hospitals and computer centers proved more advanced than the rest of what they'd seen there; the people were certainly in good health, looking well-fed and strong, while in the schools children learned from holographic teachers amid starscapes, projected laboratories, and a dozen other scenes designed to entertain and educate children. Truthfully, even the proles didn't seem to have it that bad: they all had access to technology not available to most people in the outside world, and they looked healthy too: it wasn't until one saw a street full of people ostentatiously look away as their lords and masters (notable because they didn't have to wear the black jumpsuits everyone else did) passed by, that something of the reality of the place began to sink in. For her part, Harper was eager to interrogate both women as much as she could get away with. "Now, as far as what we can do for you as new arrivals, there's plenty of space. If you can clear your own land and build your own house, anything you want is yours; if not, we can give you people for it, you'll just have to find your own ways to pay the nation back. We have our ways." She winked at that, and added more seriously, "Bring in what you want; no one's going to bust you for some coke or max here. As far as what you produce here, whether it's from scientific studies or anything else, you have total license to do as you please. We can arrange equipment, test subjects, anything else that's necessary for you, without having to get approval from some bureaucrat. All we ask is that you be there to defend the country when necessary, and that you put ten percent in to keep the operation going."

"Thank you," said Steve, nodding seriously at her words. "They have few advocates, and a word from Miss Americana will carry much more weight than a word from me. I have been a poor guardian," he confessed, remembering the long hours he'd put down in Antarctica as teacher for the refugee children and advocates for them with the Freedom League. "Sometimes they see me as the monster that took them from their families; other times, what I say on their behalf is dismissed as just one monster speaking on behalf of others. But they have done well despite that." He took a moment to sort his thoughts, putting them into words like this an unaccustomed effort. "The scars on their bodies and minds may never fade, but they can learn that there is a world beyond what they have endured, here in Freedom City." He fell silent after that, watching the television news and musing on their situation. He was aware of Gina's discomfort, but if she could stand to be so close to him, he would take it for all that. If they were both isolated by their pasts, whatever Gina's past had been, at least they were isolated together. He looked down at his hands, acutely conscious of the metal inside them and scars across the skin, but took handfuls of popcorn to eat. Their silence was finally interrupted, not by their own initiative, but by the news. Trish Tucker, a cheerful young cub reporter for one of the local newstations, Steve couldn't remember which one, was just reporting on a fascinating new development at nearby Hayes Park. Perky, blonde, and in her early twenties, it looked like Tucker was just starting out in the news business as she stood outside on the unusually warm February afternoon. "And on the lighter side, this "Flash Mob" has been at work in Hayes Park all day, building this contraption," she said, gesturing behind her, where some two dozen people from all walks of life were working together to build something: a half-finished contraption that looked a bit like a giant globe: a half-built sphere mounted inside a semi-circular frame with all sorts of glowing lights inside. "The organizers won't say what it's for, but they say it'll be a big surprise for the people of-" Steve was on his feet, his eyes widening at the sight, flushing red along the lines of his scars. "With your powers, can you see that spot again?" he murmured urgently. "That place in the park, and what they are working on there?"

Mandragora, Dragon of the Terminus Mandragora, Dragon of the Terminus, is uncomfortable around Omegadrones. Personally, they offend what remains of the sensibilities of Techno-Chivalry deep within his breast, strategically, they are tools created by his enemy Shadivan Steelgrave and their use lets Steelgrave sink his formidable talons into Mandragora's breast through the network of favors that is how Annihilists negotiate amongst themselves. When assigned to command them, he takes pains to use them up, happily sacrificing millions to snuff out a few hundred resistors. He prefers to rely on his dragons in combat, whether the heart-sworn servants who are descended from his old retainers or even better, the black-hued dragons raised in the heart of the Terminus itself. Perhaps because of this, his conquests tend to be a of a very different flavor than his rivals among Omega's vassals. When Mandragora lays siege to a world in Omega's name, he doesn't come to break the will of their heroes or transform their population: he comes to cleanse that world's surface in the ultimate flame of the Doom Coil. He makes his jaunts from the Terminus aboard his great dragon-headed starship, bombarding worlds from orbit before descending into the atmosphere to cleanse their surface in fire and flame. The dragons that are his vassals these days breathe black Terminus flame instead of true fire, their scaly hides obsidian black as they stalk dying worlds, incinerating all life in gouts of terrible black flame and gleefully devouring the ashes left behind. Mandragora himself only descends into personal combat when a conquest is threatened or when he has been personally challenged; after all, that's the time when he truly feels alive, when he can allow himself to believe that he is still the warrior-born he once was rather than the servant of gigagenocide that he has become. His retainers, generally clad in red lacquer armor bearing his golden dragon seal, their faces hidden behind masks, spend most of their time in his tower on Nihilor when they have not been deployed into battle. Their humanity has not led them to mercy: rather, they are intimately aware of the price of failure, and know that should they betray their master he will slay them with his own hands before the eyes of their family rather than allow them to weaken the others (and thus him) with other Annihilists through 'softness'. Carefully kept away from the proles, many of Mandragora's retainers believe that with the death of their world, they and the surviving dragons have become guardians of Hell, punishing the wicked and destroying worlds that have fallen into sin. He lets them believe this; knowing the alternative would be far worse...

Earth A-Green-90 (Draft) On Earth A-Green-90, superhumans stayed out of the public eye for many, many years. There were instances of fantastic stories throughout history; bears mystically empowered to battle dark sorcery during the Anarchy in England in the mid-1100s, another sorcerer whose wars against azure-skinned gnomes became legend in the Renaissance, and a great many others, but true superhumans first appeared in the public eye in the late 1980s. It started small at first: the Serpent People Warriors of the New York underground, the super-soldiers of Action Force and their nemesis the Terror Tarantulas, spiraling wider as wormholes were discovered to alien worlds after Halley's Comet struck a gateway and exploded in space, in one an American astronaut became a warrior queen, in another cyborg warriors battled a world-conquering tyrant in a future age of awe and wonder. Though the period was one of grim darkness on Earth-Prime, on Earth A-Green-90, the 1980s and 1990s were an age of fantastic wonder and imagination. The greatest of all the new age of heroes were the Guardians: six teenagers selected for greatness by the psychic gestalt spirit of Earth itself, Gaia. Wearing mystic armor bonded to the elemental forces of the world, they became the champions of a new age. There was Burton, the American, with the power of wood, Joey, the Australian, with the power of metal, Gina, the Brazilian, with the power of water, Pavel, the Russian, with the power of earth, Elizabeth, the Kenyan, with the power of fire, and Li, the Laotian, with the power of the Void. Guided by Gaia's wisdom and with the power to combine into the mighty giant Planet, the avatar of the elements united, they remade the world. Forests sprung up again where they had been clear-cut, scrapyards and junkheaps cleaned themselves up, mountains torn up by mining grew up again, rivers flowed into the desert, elemental fire heated homes and buildings, and the power of the void brought rain and snow across the planet. Those were good years. But as the Guardians aged, things grew more complicated; the mystic power they'd tapped with their armor spilled out across the world in a gradual corruption even more insidious than the polluters and dark wizards they'd fought as young people: lab animals gained tremendous and terrible intellects, whole towns of people were mutated into jaundiced sociopaths, and three terrible _things_ rose from downtown Los Angeles on the old Warner lot to wreak havoc through California. Though the Guardians did what they could to save lives and help, their powers only amplified their world's growing magical blight. They finally resigned their posts, leaving behind Planet, when one great blight swept across a seaside city, transforming millions of people into avian humanoids the like of which had never before been seen on Earth. Things did get better after they retired, only using their elemental powers for emergencies and to save lives, but there would be no easy solutions for this magical contamination: the very soul of the planet had been corrupted. At least, that's what it seemed until just a few months ago, when Li called the Guardians back together for one last great adventure. She had tapped deeply into the Void in retirement, going deeper than the others in her mastery of the element that had always been hers to control, and she had found something wonderful there: a clean, pure energy that could burn away the magical contamination of the world, giving the Guardians a chance to resume their old work as heroes and guides of the world, while not incidentally making life better for all the people of the globe. Only Burton was suspicious; the American had never been terribly bright or terribly observant as a teenager, but as an adult he had taught himself to think things through more carefully: where had this power come from? Had they practiced any in its use? But the others, eager to resume their old lives and save people again, made the fateful choice to go on without him. Burton left Gaia Island behind and headed home to his native New Jersey. And so the Guardians gathered together, once again wearing their armor, and opened up a portal to the very heart of the Void at the center of the magic of their world. And then the Omegadrones came.

Vampire Ape With A Power Ring PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 12 pp STR 30 [22] (+10/+6) DEX 14 (+2) CON n/a INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 12 (+1) Combat: 20 pp ATK: +5 [+4 w/Growth, +8 w/Ring blasts] DEF: +10 [+4 w/Growth, +6 w/Ring shield] Init: +2 Grapple: +14/+16 Saves: 7 pp TOU +14 (+10 Protection, +4 Ring) FORT n/a REF +5 (+2 Dex, +3) WILL +6 (+2 Wis, +4) Skills: 44 r=11 pp Climb 4 (+10, Skill Mastery) Intimidate 13 (+14/+15, Skill Mastery) Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 2 (+2) Language 1 (English; Base: Romanian) Notice 8 (+10, Skill Mastery) Sense Motive 8 (+10, Skill Mastery) Survival 8 (+10) Feats: 5 pp Challenge 2 (Accelerated Climb, Fast Startle) Power Attack Skill Mastery (Climb, Intimidate, Notice, Sense Motive) Startle Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 103 pp Comprehend 2 (speak to and understand animals) [4 pp] Device 9 (Power Ring, Hard to Lose, PF: Restricted [apes]) [36 pp] Blast 12 (PFs: Accurate 2) [26+1=27 dp] AP: Move Object 12 (Heavy Load: 48 tons) (PFs: Accurate 2) Feature 7 (Buys Off Sunlight Drawback) [7dp] Flight 1 (10 MPH) [2dp] Protection 4 [4dp] Shield 2 [2dp] Super-Senses 3 (Detect Magic 3 [visual]) [3dp] Growth 4 (Extra: Duration [Permanent], PF: Innate) [13 pp] Immunity 30 (Fort Saves) [30 pp] Protection 4 (Extra: Impervious, Flaw: Not Vs. Fire/Silver/Magic) [4 pp] Protection 6 [6 pp] Regeneration 6 (Recovery Bonus +0, Resurrection 1/week) (Flaw: Source [blood]) [3 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Movement 1 (Swinging) [2 pp] Super-Senses 3 (Acute Scent, Darkvision) [3 pp] Drawbacks: -10 pp Weakness (Holy Symbols; dazed by charisma check vs. holy symbols) [-3 pp] Weakness (Sunlight; destroyed in 1 minute) [-7 pp] costs abilities 12 + combat 24 + saves 7 + skills 11/44 + feats 5 + powers 103 -drawbacks 10= 150 pts ----- Design Notes: Look, I think this one is pretty self-explanatory.

A tiny edit for Harrier: He needs Eidetic Memory Sent down the Doom Coil by Trollthumper.

APPROVED

Ah yes, you're quite right about that. (I had forgotten your TK wasn't Damaging) So you're good there, but you do still need to fix the other stuff. Don't forget to put in his Grapple with it. Oh, and 16's the minimum age for PCs.

Perception range powers are capped at PL, so his TK can't be over 7. He should have a Fort save higher than +0. You forgot to put in his TOU! I would definitely _not_ use Ablative on his Force Field; that's not a good flaw at all to put on your only source of Tou, instead you should use the Dodge Bonus flaw from our sample Psychic build. He'll be denied his Tou altogether if caught flat-footed (it's basically Enhanced Feat: Defensive Roll) but v. good. Same cost, but much more effective! His super-senses are a bit costlier than you really need; consider something more like for TK radar.

KD: Keres is the name of an infiltrator and sophisticated corporate saboteur. Because of Corbin's superheroic connections (and his nat-20), Corbin recognizes that Keres is a robot, and an agent of the Foundry!

The guards are still unfriendly, but they're willing to give Corbin some rope here. Give me a...Knowledge: Business check. DC 20! Sage, Papercut?

Between the two of them, Citizen and Gal Vanic managed to calm down the frightened journalists. Gal Vanic also managed to calm down Sharl too, though maybe it was just because her obvious joy at her pun was infectious. Bad as this was, for him and everyone else in Tronik, at least he wasn't alone here the way he'd been in earlier crises. "Thanks. Hope you don't mind your face on the holos," he joked weakly to Kimber before turning back to the news crew. He wasn't very good at ordering adults around, but he could give it a try: these were his people. "We'll get through this. Tronik's faced a lot worse than some alien frea...invaders and a traitor with an ax to grind," he said decisively. He wasn't going to play Rogue's game anymore, and that meant not talking like that about people from Earth to their faces. The shapeshifter was just now drifting back to consciousness, and she gave Wraith a jaundiced look through a bloodshot eye. "I know you. What's a Kinigosi doing in a human simulation, anyway?" --- The militia didn't look mollified by Corbin's words, but they didn't look angered by them either. "We have captured another alien in the city," replied the militia commander evenly, his face still hidden behind his mask. "But you look like a person." Evidently for these people, that was enough to win the early stages of trust. "Perhaps he will talk when he sees you." With the militia's guns at his back, Cobalt Templar was escorted deeper into the militia headquarters. Corbin could easily see what a crisis he was walking into; armed militia occasionally ran back and forth through the narrow hallways, an alarm was blaring from somewhere, and everyone was obviously on edge. The walls looked decidedly odd to Corbin, as they would to any human: there was no sign of doors, the walls simply irised open to reveal rooms on the other side buzzing with activity and heavily-armed alien soldiers. Finally, they reached what at first looked like a blank wall, and then transformed itself into an open cell door: inside a figure in shockingly human garb lounged, a red-eyed man in a red jacket, white tee, and blue jeans. As the door opened, he turned and smirked at his captors, who looked ready to go in there and whip the smirk off his face. "Alien! This man would have words with you." "Are you going to beat me up, superhero?" asked the man with a wink. "I don't think we've met. My name is Keres."

In the kitchen, while the microwave popped and as Gina channel-surfed, Steve allowed himself a moment to relax. He'd worked very hard, over a great many weeks, to find himself back in this place with Gina, and now that he'd accomplished that...he had no idea what to do next! He had a feeling the lessons he'd learned about dating and relationships from television and movies weren't going to help him much here, and the personal relationships he'd learned about in his youth weren't going to be of much assistance. Maybe he would have to turn to friends after all. Back in the other room, he joined Gina on the couch with a bowl of popcorn that he carefully set between them. Sharing food was an easy romantic gesture; it was also a convenient barrier between the two of them. He still didn't know what experience had made Gina so fearful of others, but he wasn't going to pry; this quiet moment, for all the stress and fear behind it, was one of the best he'd had in a long time. He sat bolt-upright on the couch, occasionally looking from the television to Gina, when he wasn't eating the cheesy popcorn. After a few moments, he settled on the easiest sort of conversation: their work. "The children in Antarctica will be transferring to the Nicholson School. They might appreciate a visit from Miss Americana when they arrive. They have grown accustomed to my face."