Avenger Assembled

The HP was well-spent! The video looks like this: Most of the inside of the mech looks to be moving mechanical parts, all brass and iron and steel and a few things he doesn't quite recognize. There's a large steam engine in the belly rigged up to a system of dynamos inside the torso, but they all seem to be pumping energy directly into the large daka crystal embedded in the thing's chest. The passenger compartment isn't very big, about the size of the cab of a large truck. There are three people inside. Sitting next to each other in the rear and arguing over a large circular panel marked with carbon holes is a white woman in khaki dress cut in bright colors that look Dakanan to Ryder's admittedly inexpert eyes and a shirtless man in puffy trousers with a smear of coal dust across one side of his face. Actually working the controls is a dark-skinned woman in a Dakanan kitenge, goggles perched on her face. All three of the people inside are sweating and shouting at each other; it must be very loud and very hot inside the machine. There are actually four seats on the inside; all of them oddly lush, as if someone took a Victorian armchair and bolted it to a wrought-iron floor. You can do something else if you want!

That's Dakanan, if anyone speaks it or has Comprehend.

"Is it a dirigible?" asked Marcus hopefully. "Or one of Mr. Cayley's..." He looked from Stesha to Tarrant, then shook his head. "No, I don't suppose it is, is it? The world is so very big, isn't it...well. If there is some crisis with my machine, it is my responsibility to help in its repairs." He blinked, then focused on the communicator while the others were getting ready to go. "Is that a wireless telegraph? Amazing! How does it work?" - Up above Super-Bee had flown up to summon a swarm of her sisters and cousins, one that was relatively few in number but was thick enough to cast shadows below. There would still be trouble brewing if there was no further descalation. "THE TRAVELER CAME HERE!" declared the lion-mech, pointing in the direction of the time machine. "THAT IS HIS MACHINE! DOES HE LIVE?! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HIM, AND WHAT ARE THOSE MONSTROUS BEES?" There was a strange series of muffled noises inside the machine, as if an argument was taking place, and then the machine spoke again, this time with a distinctly deeper tone that sounded as if another person was talking. "WE KNOW THIS IS OUR FUTURE. WE HAVE COME FOR WHAT IS OURS. <And as for you, sister, magnificent, though you may be our foe! Does our reach spread so far?>"

The door went flying open and away, blasted away by Sparkler's flames. Then came the response, not from inside the building, but from the place they'd just left. "Stay out of that!" The robot Anna was fast enough that she seemed to be there one second when she hadn't been before, throwing a left jab that hit Sparkler in the stomach nearly hard enough to double her over. But she'd been taught how to fight speedsters by the best, and she dodged the punch came next that aimed at her face, and her midsection again, and her kneecaps. It helped that the robot had a habit of punctuating her blows with "That's mine! It's mine!" without actually making contact. "Ah jeezy-creezy!" Anna declared. "Screw secrecy!" She opened her bowling bag and took out the bizarre incongruity of an Egyptian crown, like something from a Pharonic statue, and dropped it on her head. A moment later there was a flash of golden light and the late-middle-aged woman was replaced by a female Egyptian warrior, face partially obscured by her mask, wielding two golden ankhs that lit up the night like giant glowsticks. She looked a bit like Horus, the hero from the 1970s Raina had learned about from Claremont, albeit a decidedly odd female copy. When she spoke, she sounded like someone doing bad Shakespeare - but very loudly! "LO! TIS THE AVENGER OF HELIOPOLIS! LAY NOT HANDS UPON MINE MYSTIC ALLY!" "What in the hell!" declared the robot a moment before one of those ankhs cut off the arm that had been about to punch Raina in the face, sending showers of sparks flying everywhere and the limb itself hurling high up to lodge in a nearby tree.

That's a bruise! Okay, regular Anna is up! Because the situation is all FUBAR she takes this opportunity to turn into Lady Horus why not! That's a free action for her, so now she stabs the robot. https://orokos.com/roll/900458 = 12 Well that's terrible. https://orokos.com/roll/900459 23! A palpable hit... 17 It failed by twelve, so it's staggered and stunned! Sparkler is up as soon as I post IC.

"Hmph." A corner of her mouth lifted even so. "God, I can only imagine. You saw what they put me in for 'loudmouthed teenage lesbian vigilante.' Good thing there's no time to change the branding. Or the costume." She considered Wail's words and added, taking another risk, "Vietnamese. As I was reminded at language camp every Saturday and two weeks in the summer." She didn't sound angry at the memory, just a little fatigued. "There's no way to make the pricks happy; so might as well go all out?" She smirked a little. "It is a little late in the day for the US government to decide they want to part with my services. Unless O'Connor wants to spend his reserved time tomorrow telling the story of the the time he got replaced by a Grue again." She turned the beer around in her hand and said, "You know, my mentor uses you and your team as an example to her pupils, the ones who have soaked up so much Freedom League stuff they think there's something wrong with getting paid to do what you do. If you're helping people, the whys don't matter so much as the hows."

"My truth is that I am a sister of four and an aunt of three, and out of all of them, I'm the only one who's ever put on a mask." She looked at her reflection in the bottle, then said, "So that part's out. I just..." She blinked and thought for a moment. "It has always really pissed me off when someone thinks I got anywhere because of who I was, just another goddamned diversity hire." She said it with the venom of someone who had been described that way to her face. "I don't want to be the gay Patriot, or the Asian patriot, or Lady Patriot, or some nonsense like that. But...Hell, how can I not be?"

"Christ. Of course the high school teacher is the only one who can actually tell teenagers apart," she grumped out loud. After that, Ashley was quiet for a moment, thinking about what was confidential because of her job and what was confidential because of a girl who'd have been infinitely happier as nothing more interesting than the first metahuman from the Oklahoma Panhandle. "It was actually Cahill who got the Patriot Project started," she admitted, "O'Connor just kept it going. Most people like superheroes; most of the time." she said with a shrug. "And as for Judith Cahill...well, she already told everybody her story. I helped her find her voice. That one wasn't a sonic joke, by the way," she added after a moment. "Thanks, I'll take whatever's cold." She'd already finished her tea, anyway. Guzzling your tea? Bà Tran would never approve. She hesitated, took a chance, and when she cracked open the beer said, "I became a cop because of my father. Back in the old country, he used to tell me, he'd have spent his life chopping wood in the jungle somewhere, but in America, he got to go to school, he got to wear a uniform, and he got to hold his head up. He was just so...proud of it. Here we were living in a Section 8 apartment in New Orleans East, and he would walk down the street and ask after people's grandmothers like he was the Asian Andy Griffith."

"You probably heard about the big announcement the President is making tomorrow," said Ashley. "It's about me." She reached up and rubbed the cut over her eye and admitted, "It was going to be about a different guy, but a couple of weeks ago he decided he had some issues with the current administration and is now a fugitive from justice. They're-we're bringing back the Patriot. Not the original, he's in the ground. But me." She hesitated, then went on. "I lived this life when I was a teenager because I thought it had to be done, and I did it again for a while because nobody else could do it, but I thought for sure I was finished." It was a frank admission. "I was really looking forward to doing the job I was hired to do again, and not have to pretend to be someone else every day of my life. But now there's an asshole running around in red white and blue who thinks that America needs to be made great again, and that he's just the man to do it now that he can punch through concrete. And it makes me goddamn sick, because people are going to buy it."

"The American public," she said with a thin smile as she gave what was obviously a familiar response, thinking of the conversations with Judy where she'd eventually explained to the girl that despite what her father might have implied, the Secret Service protected the President, they were not employed by him. "They don't always make good decisions, but I'll take them over anybody else I've called boss. And if that makes me as a fed, I don't really care," she added with a shrug. "I wouldn't have come here if I was planning on keeping a lot of secrets. I don't think anybody's ever called you quiet, right?" That, she decided, deserved another drink.

Ashley took the tea, took a sip, and was profoundly glad to find at least one person north of the Mason-Dixon Line actually knew to put sugar in their tea before you drank it. "I will, thank you. Good tea." She sat down herself on an easy chair that was solid enough to support three of her, feet flat on the ground and her glass in hand. I've been in worse bachelor pads than this. She caught several glimpses of 1-800-JUSTICE history on the walls, and several of Keith with the man she knew had been his late husband. She considered those, then the textbook. "Bart's History of New Jersey, huh? We had the same book back when I was in high school." She took a deep sip of her tea to hide the face she made at that comment. Better not to mention how different her high school experiences, both of them, had been from what LaMarr's students likely had. "But, uh, yeah," she went on. "I've only been out to myself for about two years now, much less the rest of the world. I've spent most of my life working in law enforcement," she added, giving LaMarr a look to see if he'd react to that. "It's better than it used to be, but it's not a great culture for gay people, especially if you're an Asian woman."

"I can come in," said Ashley, waiting until she actually got the signal that it was okay to step into the apartment before she did so. She looked around to each side as she stepped in, then up, casting her eyes over Keith LaMarr. She mused briefly that usually men who were giants in their communities weren't actually giants. Freedom always had a way of making the fantastic literally true. But she'd been the smallest person in the room most of her professional life (at least when she wasn't stuck working with teenagers, even if a lot of them were taller than her too!) so she was only a little bit intimidated. "Thanks for agreeing to see me." she added as the door closed behind her. "Except for Jill and Dragonfly, I don't actually know a lot of other queer people in Freedom," she admitted.

Okay, @EternalPhoenix and @RocketLord: Let's have a DC 22 Reflex save to avoid an area effect that inflicts DC 27 Damage. Have an HP if you like for the surprise!

Kaur and Revere talked over each other for just a moment before Revere smiled, raising his hands in mock-surrender. "Hey, I'm a good soldier. I follow orders. You better tell him the new plan, boss." His smile at Kaur did not seem terribly sincere. "We see the Patriot as acting primarily in a domestic capacity," said Kaur to Alek, putting her hands behind her back primly. "For search and rescue, counteracting metahuman threats, that sort of thing. With our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the recent downturn in the War on Terror, the emphasis needs to be on the super as much as the soldier these days. People need a symbol of America that means more than just a strong man with a gun." For his part, Revere shrugged. "Like I said, I follow orders. Raising national pride and pulling kids out of collapsing inner city buildings is honest work. But they tell me that the serum and radiation treatments mean I'm going to be active in the field a long time. If plans change in the next administration, I want to make sure I'm ready for anything." The conversation went on like that, Kaur laying out an agenda for the Patriot that sounded a bit like a government-managed Centurion, Revere obviously expecting something a little more combat-oriented. He never actually argued with her, was never openly disrespectful, but it was obvious his agenda was rather different than the Vice-President's. He was the sort of big man who was full of confidence and ready for a fight, a man who seemed professional, even, but there was a tension that crackled in the air between him and the Vice-President. "Mr. Nakani," Ashley spoke up, a hand to her earpiece, "if you and your staff are finished, I'm being told there's a messenger from your headquarters upstairs. I can escort you there, since I believe the Vice-President has a meeting with Director Bonham..." This was a prearranged code phrase to get them into a private meeting room.

As Wail talked to the kids, they were briefly interrupted by a passerby on motorcycle. The pink-haired girl in the biker jacket slowed down enough to shoot a hard glare at the teens talking to Keith, then pulled up next to the Claremont van at what was distinctly a firm Over there gesture from Callie Summers. "That is Ashley Smith," said the tall Black teen who'd introduced himself as Leroy. "She is also a student at Claremont, and sister to my heart, Judith Smith." Over by the van, Ashley was removing her sunglasses and giving a silent stare at an abashed-looking girl inside. She turned, shot a distinct look that was almost a smirk at the men being taken into custody, and then made a gesture inside. The abashed-looking girl, who with her dark complexion might have been a sister to the pink-haired Ashley, sighed and put on a bike helmet before climbing up behind Ashley. With that, the two of them zipped away from the van. "She watches her very closely," said Leroy. "I hope she is not in trouble as well...but you must understand, a confidence sworn on a heart is a confidence that can never be broken without breaking the heart." That seemed to be all he was willing to say on the subject.

"Mr. Nakani," said Revere with a smile, "it's a pleasure." His grip was firm, perhaps a little too firm, and the handshake went on just a little longer than it should have by any rational standard. "I know being the Patriot means you've got to make friends in high places, but it's all new to me. I'm just a cop from Maine who got picked for the greatest honor in this whole country." He had a distinct Maine accent when he spoke, the sort that made listeners from elsewhere really want to hear him talk about chowdah. "Come on, Agent Tran," he added cheerfully to Ashley, "not even a smile?" Ashley peered up at Revere and said cooly, "Mr. Revere, you should know by now that the United States Secret Service never smiles." That actually did get a few smiles from the detail, quickly stifled, before the Vice-President spoke, "She's right about that. Mr. Nakani, I'm sure you and your staff have questions for Mr. Revere, so I'll just sit back and watch the show if you don't mind. Would you prefer a private conference room, or out here?" "Oh I don't have any secrets!" said Revere easily, clapping Alek on the shoulder. "Let's just get down to business out heah. What can the Patriot do for your company, Alek?"

The lion mech seemed briefly indecisive, its head swiveling back and forth, though the weapon aimed at the time machine and the teens around it never lowered. In a sonorous mechanical voice, half-audible over the sound of a clanking engine from within, it declared "WHERE IS THE TRAVELER!?" Meanwhile, said traveler stared at Tarrant, then at Stesha, and said, "Well. Well. This is. This is just how the world is now, is it? Plants just...just growing everywhere, and dancing rocks. Why not? Why should these things not happen," he asked the universe in general, "when so many other things already have?" He put his hands to the side of his head and asked, "Do you...happen to still have laudanum? Or at least something stronger than coffee if you catch my meaning?" Just then, Stesha and Tarrant's alarms both chimed; something was going on with the teenagers out by the hive that required their attention.

Ooh, we can meet Eira's grandfather on a trip to Sweden. Well a trip to Sweden's super-prison, anyway.

Eira will go anywhere that has wifi! Judy is in college, and Ashley has other career considerations.

July 3, 2021 In between calling her mother, her sisters, and even Judith Claudia Cahill, who had certainly had enough things kept from her by adults in her life, Ashley Tran was left with the unavoidable reality that she had once again made a promise and she was going to have to live by it. But she wasn't the same woman she'd been when she agreed to be Judy's undercover escort at Claremont - and taking on the role of the Patriot the goddamned Patriot! was a little bigger than acting as an undercover high school student. So she'd reached out to Jill O'Cure, who'd reached out to somebody she knew, which turned out to be the elder statesman of Freedom City's queer hero community. Still doesn't sound right in my mouth, she thought as she studied her reflection in the Uber driver's window. But it's easier than spelling out 'hey I like men and also women.' She had a cut over her left eye and a fading bruise on that cheek, all stuff that the helmet and makeup would cover the next day, and the Uber driver hadn't said anything about it. She wasn't sure if that meant he deserved a bigger or smaller tip, but she left him one anyway as she stepped out onto the Lincoln street. There's only one person to talk to, she remembered Jill saying as she walked up to the front door of Keith LaMarr's apartment building. And okay, he saw you in character, but that was a couple of years ago and you had a whole different look. Her black skirt and white blouse could have been on any office worker, though they perhaps wouldn't have been wearing the blue and purple lapel pin and pronouns badge that she'd picked up at Pride. Even if he does recognize you, what's he going to say about it? Hardly any adult hero actually gives a crap about what goes down at Claremont as long as the kids are all right.

Eira's hand tightened spasmodically around the audio cable she held, her eyes briefly defocusing as her dataspike slithered up from under her wrist and entangled itself around the business end of the cable. She stood stock-still, lips and eyes closed, as she intersected with the electronic sound system she'd so recently been modifying. What happened next rang out clearly to all her friends, an amplified voice that they all recognized even if its particular nature would make it impossible to trace to any one person. "FOOL!" The sound system bellowed over the sound of a squealing guitar. "WE SEE YOU AND WE KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! WE WILL MAKE YOU EAT THAT THING AND THE SHOW! WILL! GO! ON!"

Eira's Master Plan roll: 23 Intimidate check: 19, oh what the heck might as well keep spending those HP! 29 Okay, IC post incoming.

Fast-Forward Family Matters "Ah jeez, Ma, a freakin' vampire!?" "Don't you go using that tone of voice with me, Dickie Cline! That ain't how I raised you!" "For the love of Pete Ma when I was a kid you told me that vampires were a buncha weepy blood junkies so I should always have a cross handy when Lenore came over!" "And that was just because every vampire I had ever met was a weepy blood junkie! Lenore died because she couldn't handle that the Raven wanted to get in bed with Dr. Sin insteada her!" "I do not think that is what happened with the Raven exactly Ma! So, okay, I'm gonna keep an open freakin' mind here. You and Nikki, how did you meet?" "We, uh, we met in the superhero business here in Bedlam-" "Ma do not give me that tone of voice I know your Shinola voice." "Okay, fine, we met in a bar, okay? A really sleazy dive bar that still had Sinatra on the juke box and smelled like cigarettes. And she made a pass at me, and I thought why not and we went to bed together." "And did she bite you?" "...you really askin' the details of yer Ma's sex life boy?" "Jesus Mary and Joseph!" "That's what she said!" "Goddammit Ma! Well okay you do sound like yerself, I gotta admit, and Paige's never picked up on any weird thoughts when she's scanned ya." "See! Perfect innocent! You think I could spend time with my daughter-in-law or my granddaughter, the two most powerful telepaths in the world as far as I'm concerned, and be running around with some vampire blood junkie thoughts in my head?" "Ma if I know anything about you, you gotta lotta thoughts in yer head. But...yeah, all right. You are a grown woman and it has never been my place to tell you how you live yer life. I love you, Ma." "Ah...ah jeez, Dickie..." "Ah jeez, Ma, don't cry on me, I'll have to run out there and bring you a box of tissues." "It's fine, honey, Espie brought me a box. Thanks, sweetie! She's really loosened up since we, uh, well I'd better not tell you that on the phone, but we ain't worried about the Hammer no more." "Ma you didn't-" "No! No, nothing like what yer thinkin. Anyway, I just...I just got tired of keeping this from you. You know I ain't got a lot of time left, as things go, and I don't...I don't want there to be any secrets. At least about things you oughta know about." "Well...I'm glad you said that, because I was about to sound like a real son of a gun and say no, there are gonna be some secrets!" "...how is the littlest shaver, anyway?" "He's real good, Ma. We decided we might as well send him to Nicholson, just in case. Not the only kid there who don't have any superpowers, at least not at first." "Yeah, well, a silver tongue and good fixin' hands ain't no superpower if you ask me, but that's good. He's a good boy, and he's got a good ma and pa." "Yeah, well....I never had no pa, and you know what Paige had. If I know anything about raising kids, it's from you. You were a good ma." "Now that is Shinola, Dickie."

Angelic: 21

Having returned just in time to get the big news, Riley wound up being the first to say "Well, making an honest demon of her! That's fine." The thought of getting married at their age was slightly appalling to the young man but he wasn't going to crap all over Cathy's big announcement. Especially since she and Phae had always been mushy over each other. "Better give my ticket to your favorite snow elf," he added as he leaned against the wall again, "I never did bother to get a passport."