Avenger Assembled

As Cole walked into the lobby, the Lab secretary nodded a cordial hello. "Good morning," she said sociably. "Someone will be with you in just a moment." And sure enough, someone was. A figure in a black coat flew through the ceiling overhead, giving Cole a chance to get a good look at his greeter. The young man was about his own age, tall and lanky with slicked-back black hair, his eyes hidden by dark glasses, and wore a glowing wi-fi symbol on his chest. His body fuzzed slightly as he passed through the ceiling, but settled back to normality afterwards as he landed on the ground next to him. "Hello, I'm Sharl," said the young man, shaking Cole's hand because that was what humans did. "Welcome to the Lab!" he said with a smile, leading the way to the elevator. "I'm Miss Americana's assistant. Nice to meet you."

Crimson Tarantula PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 28 pp STR 26 [16] (+8/+3) DEX 26 [16] (+8/+3) CON 26 [16] (+8/+3) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 16 (+3) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+12 Melee/Spider’s Bite) DEF: +12 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +8 Grapple: +20 Saves: 5 pp TOU +8 (+8 Con) FORT +8 (+8 Con) REF +8 (+8 Dex) WILL +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 64 r=16 pp Bluff 12 (+15) Intimidate 12 (+15) Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 5 (+5) Knowledge (History) 5 (+5) Language 2 (English, German) (Base: Russian) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth 12 (+20) Feats: 18 pp Attack Specialization: Melee 6 Challenge (Fast Feint) Dodge Focus 6 Power Attack Quick Draw [Draw] Stunning Attack Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (olfactory) Powers: 64 pp Device 4 (Spider’s Bite) (Easy to Lose) [12 pp] Blast 8 (PFs: Accurate 3, Precise) [20] Enhanced CON 10 [10 pp] Enhanced DEX 10 [10 pp] Enhanced STR 10 [10 pp] Flight 1 (10 MPH) [2 pp] Immunity 10 (aging, life support) [10 pp] Impervious TOU 8 (Flaw: Not vs. Fire/Silver/Wood) [4 pp] Regeneration 2 (Resurrection 1/day; PF: Regrowth) [3 pp] Super-Senses 3 (Acute Scent, Darkvision) [3 pp] Drawbacks: -6 pp Vulnerable (Wood [Piercing]; uncommon, major) [-3 pp] Vulnerable (vs. light-based Dazzles; uncommon, major) [-3 pp] ------ Design Notes: Here's Crimson Tarantula, one of my favorite characters from the Wargames universe (consisting of Wargames 1-4 and Defcon-1, published by Vigilance Press these days, I believe). Crimson Tarantula's backstory is this: a Soviet agent, she was sent to infiltrate the home of a prominent Romanian aristocrat to investigate strange rumors about his activities. It turned out, however, that said aristocrat was no less than Dracula, King of the Vampires! He saw through her deceptions and made her one of his immortal brides, but her commitment to the values of her mortal life (in this case, her devotion to Soviet Communism and the KGB) were enough to break her vampiric conditioning and fight her way free of Dracula's power. She presented herself to her former masters some months later, and now the superheroes of the Soviet Union include the Crimson Tarantula, an attractive, agile gun bunny who wears a full-body costume when she goes adventuring in daylight. The Wargames books are pretty Iron Age, but in a cheerful sort of way: CT's efforts to maintain her humanity are always getting hamstrung by the KGB's desire to have her just rip the throats out of dissidents and such. You'll have to dial that back some for our game, but I think you can keep the gist of it. She's basically Black Widow infected with Blade-style vampirism; she's a human with a disease rather than actual undead. I figure her Spider's Bite is some kind of high-tech super-gun she's picked up over the years, or was issued during her time in Soviet service: it shoots hard light or laser blasts, or maybe electrical bursts, rather than bullets, and so is fine under Comic Book Science for our site. She's quite a surprise for people expecting an unpowered agent and who get a vampire who can throw men twice her size across the room; she's also quite a surprise for people who may not expect a vampire to be a highly-trained and well-armed spy who responds to a cross by pulling out a gun and blasting them. (She's also based a little on Andy, one of my first M&M characters, a vampire vigilante who used guns to hide his teeth). She's fast, she's beautiful; she's a good ranged combatant and she's very good in melee. If you don't like the idea of her being a long-lived ex-Soviet agent, you could make her transformation of more recent vintage: this build would work fine for an AEGIS agent or a UNISON spook. Give her some Benefits like Security Clearance if she's still a spy for an active agency; AEGIS is pretty broad-minded and if one of their agents became a vampire, they might not necessarily boot them out as long as their behavior was under control. Her nature is a tremendous source of complications, ranging from the Secret of what she is to the Secret of who she works for, all the way up to how it is she gets the blood she needs. Being dependent on a serum of some kind, or on blood secured from blood banks, is probably of equal value to you as a Complication. Note that as written, I'd say her 'bite' represents a use of the Stunning Attack feat rather than Mind Control. She hasn't really developed more than the basic vampire powers, probably out of a concern for her own humanity.

"Bless you, baby," said Freedom Angel, folding his wings in so he didn't get in the way of everybody as they crowded in around the baby. Mindful of the new parents, he didn't want anything to be between Derrick, Stesha, and their little girl that day. He did reach down and lightly touch the newborn on the forehead, just for a moment, looking pleased as he pulled his hand back a second later. "Yes, everything is in order here. Congratulations, Stesha and Derrick. This is a blessed day for everyone. And you too, Mrs. Madison," he added with a smile for Stesha's mom. "A new member for your family, and the family of all people. What a blessed day this is!"

As the haze cleared all around them, the heroes of Young Freedom saw a winner in the struggle overhead: the big gleaming dot suddenly was in a death spiral towards the Earth, towards their location, in fact, while the half-dozen others in the sky turned and headed east. As the heroes pulled themselves out of the debris, the fallen craft crashed to Earth nearby, plunging into an assortment of rusted red pipes that had once been an abstract sculpture hereabouts. Keeping his distance from the broken-off stub of the Space Needle, Mark made his way towards the crash site where he found a bizarre figure and craft waiting for them stretched out on the ground. That had been no spaceship in the air, it had been a bike! Though scored with plasma fire and damaged from the crash landing, the gigantic motorcycle still hummed with the power of an engine that had let it fly through the air, its body large enough to hold a half-dozen people and the alien writing on its surface showing it came from no Earthly garage. Not that any garages on Earth-EZ01 these days were making anything...unable to make heads or tails of the machine, Mark concentrated on the fallen driver: a tall, muscular humanoid with a solid build, his shiny red outfit torn by crash damage and his body equally battered and broken from the fall and wounds that unmistakable came from Omegadrone pikes. Weakly, ignoring the concavity in his stomach that bled an alien purple blood, the rider looked up as the heroes approached. "Young...Young Freedom..." He coughed, his voice a shadow of what had once been heartiness. "I greet you on behalf of the Furions...my apologies for my appearance, but I was...I was not quite as clever as I thought I was over Freedom City. But the enemy will think me dead, and not trouble you here for the moment...and I think a moment is all I have..."

Continued from >Leaves from the Vine Earth-Z-Omega-1 Edge froze in shock as the toppling tower came down right where he was! Unable to dodge in time, instead he stood his ground and fired back. "NO!" His eyes glowing black, he fired straight upwards as the reality of this dead world warped around him at his will. He would not die because of a falling building! Mark Lucas would not let this, or anything else, stop his friends in their efforts to save all of existence from the dark machinations of Omega! At his command, the falling debris broke around him like a tide breaking around a rock, the so-small clear zone around him the only island of sanity beneath the avalanche of falling steel, concrete, and glass. A falling brick bounced against his back, knocking him to his knees, but Mark did not fall as the collapsing debris fell around him, his powers warping the very air and very rocks to keep his friends from being buried by the avalanche, even if he wasn't able to save all of them from the damage produced by the collapsing Needle. Before he even focused on the aerial battle, he called out over the echoes of the collapse, "Young Freedom! Sound off!"

The last things. Please make sure to carefully note all HP expenditure in this thread in the OOC. I'll call the collapsing space needle a rank 15 Area attack. I need Reflex saves vs. 25, please. 24 Unfortunately, Mark only has one rank of Evasion, so he takes full damage. DC 30 save. He spends an HP on his Ultimate TOU and passes.

"Well, looks like our ride's here," commented Lucky Strike as she looked up at the approaching skylifter. "And so's ours," added her father, his eyes widening at the sight of the shimmery black sphere descending towards the group. Mark had done his best to put this world's implications out of his mind. Not, for once, because they were depressing, but because there were more important things to worry about than his own personal life. "Thanks for everything," Mark told the group from the future. Much as part of him might have wished they were coming with them, he couldn't just bring them along on a fight against the Terminus. They deserved their own life, and their own world, and it was their job to make sure. "You've taught us a lot!" "And so did you!" called Lucky Strike in return. "About being heroes," added Psilent. And with that, in a flash of brilliant white light, the group was gone. Earth-EZO1 Edge found himself standing in a deserted complex, its age and grim condition suggesting long abandonment. He and the rest of Young Freedom were standing at the bottom of an ampitheatre-like bowl, grass and dirt poking up through the mortar beneath their feet. Glancing to one side, he saw a dry fountain overrun with leaves and rainwater, complete with startled doe deer eying him from what had been her undisturbed drinking. The sky overhead was grey and dark, the city they could see in the distance looking dead and empty. He didn't recognize it at first, but then he saw a flash of energy in the sky and looked up to see a wild melee of armored figures; that flash was brighter this time as it struck the massive hulk of a skyscraper behind them, and he looked back to see... END OF PART FIVE Continued in >The Earth Died Screaming

Numerous formatting problems, the fact that you haven't spent all your PP, and the issues with Mecha and Manga (a badly-written sourcebook and not really suitable for our game anyway. mean I need to move this to Character Building. Edrobot: Please build your characters based on American superhero tropes, not anime or stuff you see in Mecha and Manga. We've had almost nothing but awful experiences with anime-influenced characters, and we don't really have an interest in seeing them here.

Long as he _acts_ like a teenager (I don't need to tell you about the bad experiences we've had with people acting like adults when they're supposed to be high school kids ) APPROVED!

Warrior Angel PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 28 pp STR 16 (+3) DEX 10 (+0) CON 20 (+5) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 18 (+4) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+10 Angelic powers) DEF: +10 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +0 Grapple: +11 Saves: 14 pp TOU +10 (+5 Con, +5 Protection) FORT +8 (+5 Con, +3) REF +5 (+0 Dex, +5) WILL +8 (+2 Wis, +6) Skills: 9 pp=36 r Diplomacy 6 (+10) Knowledge: History 5 (+5) Knowledge: Theology and Philosophy 5 (+5) Intimidate 6 (+10) Languages 2 (Chinese, English) (Base: Latin) Notice 4 (+6) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Feats: 9 pp Dodge Focus 4 Fearless Power Attack Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Ultimate Save (Will) Powers: 64 pp Angelic Array 21 (42pp; PFs: Alternate Power 3) [42+3=45 pp] BE: Damage 10 (Extras: Selective, Targeted Area [Cone]; PFs: Accurate 2) {42/42} 'sonic scream' AP: Damage 10 (Extras: Penetrating, Vampiric; PFs: Accurate 2, Extended Reach 2, Improved Crit 2, Incurable, Precise, Thrown, Variable Descriptor 2 [any holy]) {42/42} 'holy sword' AP: Emotion Control 10 (Extras: Area [burst], Range [Perception], Selective Attack; PFs: Mind Blank, Subtle) {42/42} AP: Healing 10 (Extras: Area [burst], Selective Attack; PFs: Persistent, Stabilize) {42/42} Flight 2 (25 MPH) (Drawback: Restrainable) [3 pp] Immunity 7 (aging, disease, poison, sleep, starvation and thirst, suffocation) [7 pp] Protection 5 [5 pp] Regeneration 1 (Resurrection 1/week; PFs: Persistent, Regrowth) [3 pp] abilities 28+combat 24+saves 14+skills 9/36+feats 9+powers 64=150 pp --- Design Notes: Another twist on the angel archetype, this one focusing on raw power. If someone like Heyzel (Freedom Angel) is Heaven's diplomat and ambassador, this is the frontline of Heaven's military. If Freedom Angel is the guy you send down to spread Heaven's word to Earth, this lady and her kin are the ones you send down if a rogue archangel decides the way to bring the Almighty back to His empty throne in Heaven is to purge the Earth of sinners as in days of yore. If someone were planning a thread like that. Anyway! I figure this lady and her sisters clear the air with sonic screams, shattering the air and anything in front of them (particularly anything unholy) with the sheer power of their holy might: if forced into melee combat, they bust out the holy sword and begin striking sinners down with holy might, their formidable abilities letting them heal their own injuries from the power of cleansing fire as they wield it on their opponents. That, plus Healing, helps keep all the angels and their allies on their feet in a fight. There are lots of different ways to interpret angels. This build is closer to the mechanics of Zauriel than Wonder Woman, if you're looking for that sort of thing. (I actually had a hard time building Heyzel since he had to be so good at so much, which left him significantly lacking in divine power as opposed to divine skills and attributes.) She lacks the wisdom and phenomenal social acuity of people like Freedom Angel, but she has the sheer power of the divine backing her. This is your angel for pulling off really big and really flashy miracles. Need someone to drop brimstone down on a wide area with a Selective Damage Burst? She's your lady. Need someone to part the waters with a massive Water Control effect? She's your lady again. Need someone to get rid of all the first-born in Egypt...yeaaah, steer clear from that stuff, Sherlock. (Fun fact: flesh to salt is a 4/pp Transform effect; a viable power stunt if you make sure to give it the Sustained Duration so you're not actually murdering someone.) I figure she flies around, screams, hits with her big sword; what's not to like? Think about what might make a warrior angel a warrior, and how all that power is going to influence her relationships with others and with mortals. This would work fine as the representative of any pantheon, not just the Abrahamic version thereof, or any other blaster with a strong force of personality and many immunities to go with great power. You could always have this just be a mutant rather than an angel; perhaps a Golden Age character with angelish powers who just happened to be similar to traditional depictions of powerful angels. It would be interesting to take a Warren Worthington type and have him actually be deeply religious and drawing on his name as more than just a wry joke: something like Nightcrawler as Angel? It's worth thinking about, anyway!

Coming together, the two Young Freedoms of two different generations came together to turn what might have been a world-threatening disaster into just a good afternoon's work. All in all, not even the bad guys had been seriously hurt: even Gremlin had the promise of a cure as Amaryllis and Fusion stepped through a flower carrying him to try and siphon the radiation from his cells. A teleport beam from the League base on the Moon took care of the remains of the cosmic bomb, beaming the remaining fragments apart at high dispersal towards the Sun. As the team waited for their pickup, there in the reactor complex now under repairs, they had some time to talk. When Psilent had a few moments with his parents, he thought at them, his words dry and growly even in his mind as he communicated with Midnight and Sage. "Listen. Know you're not them. This is silly. But. Never had a better mother, or a better father, even if they were only friends to each other. Never had a chance to thank them. Never will," he admitted, kicking the ground beneath their feet as they all stood on the big central platform of the complex together. "But thank you. For today." Vril Knight was roughly the same with her father, sending a message via the psychic link they'd evidently once shared. "I don't know if you and Mom will have the same thing in your world that you did in mine." She rubbed her finger over her ring thoughtfully. "But be good to her. She loves you, even if she doesn't show it like any human would." For her part, Lucky Strike's explanation of her relationship with her parents wasn't terribly satisfactory to Mark, though he believed her just the same. At least she was being polite enough to whisper it as they all hooked up again. Evidently he'd been married to Erin, married young, too, and walked out on her when Clara had been just a year old. It was someone else's pain, so far away, and he had no way of knowing 'his' own story...but it was hard to think of a way that other Mark Lucas, a man with a father in his life through adulthood, had been a good man or a good husband at all. "Well...that's good to know. I'll make sure I'm not like that." But Clara wasn't done. The marriage to Erin had been one thing, but evidently the Mark here had repeated that pattern: short-lived relationships that had ended in disaster and broken families, again and again. God...what a depressing universe this was. "It looks like one thing I helped make in this universe turned out okay, at least," he said, shaking Clara's hand. "I'm glad to have known you...and to have heard all that." He shot a look at Erin. "Hey...you want some help fixing your outfit back up?" he asked her.

For his part, Heyzel was rather less exuberant in his excitement, but he was nonetheless happy. He found himself clapping giant metal bees on the back as all the giant insects celebrated, a happy moment that nearly got him knocked out of the sky. There was something to be said for physical fellowship, and something to be said for keeping it to emotional ties with gigantic creatures some five to ten times his size and mass. As the echoes of Gabriel's world-reaching shout spread through the air and reverberated to what was surely a quiet Heaven in this dimension, Heyzel whipped the bees up for one last song: the first that came to mind and the most appropriate to welcome a child into the world. (Well, one that wasn't holy, anyway.) "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR BAAAYYYBEEEE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOOUUUU!" From the air, he could see where more giant bees were arriving, as well as a small party from the settlement near Fleur's house. It seemed the word was out on this joyous occasion to all!

Bee-Keeper III PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 20 pp STR 10/1 (+0/-5) DEX 16 (+3) CON 14 (+2) INT 14 (+2) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 12 (+1) Combat: 12 pp ATK: +3 (+15 w/Shrinking) DEF: +3 (+15 w/Shrinking) Init: +7 Grapple: +3/+0 Saves: 19 pp TOU +5 (+2 Con, +3 Protection) FORT +8 (+2 Con, +6) REF +10 (+3 Dex, +7) WILL +8 (+2 Wis, +6) Skills: 72 r=18 pp Bluff 9 (+10) Disable Device 13 (+15) Handle Animal 9 (+10) Knowledge: Life Sciences 8 (+10) Notice 8 (+10) Ride 2 (+5) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth 12 (+15/+35) Survival 3 (+5) Feats: 10 pp Animal Empathy Evasion 2 Hide in Plain Sight Improved Initiative Luck 2 Power Attack Second Chance (Reflex saves vs being Stepped On) Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 71 pp Alternate Form 11 (Bee-Keeper) [55 pp] Flight 2 (25 MPH) (PF: Subtle) [5] Protection 3 [3] Shrinking 20 (Extra: Continuous) (Drawback: Full Power) (PFs: Normal TOU, Normal Movement) [41] Super-Senses 6 [Accurate Acute Tracking Scent, Tremorsense) [6] Stinger Array [15+1=16 pp] BE: Stun 5 (Extra: Ranged) AP: Telekinesis 5 (Extra: Damaging) (Heavy Load: 400 lbs) costs abilities 20 + combat 12 + saves 19 + skills 18/72 + feats 10 + powers 71 = 150 pts ----- Design Notes: So eventually Barry Bowles got out of prison and moved far out of state, eventually hooking up with a lonely lady bee-keeper he'd met through a prison correspondence program. He settled down there somewhere in rural Wyoming and started a family, his beehives always healthy and prosperous but never, thanks to his powerful medication, sentient. He made sure to tell his daughter all about his exploits back in Freedom City, making sure she knew all about the mighty heroes and sneaky villains out there. It was inevitable, given all the exotic chemicals the second Bee-Keeper had been around, that his daughter would develop superpowers: and what a remarkable thing that those powers let her turn herself into a teeny girl with the size, wings, and senses of a bee! (That led to some times in her childhood that had her parents worried, let me tell you!) Luckily she had her mom and dad there, and the young Betty Bowles headed off to Freedom City when she was of age to make something of herself. Wanting to avoid her dad's years in prison, though, not to mention having been raised with good values by her mom, she decided that she was going to take the Bee-Keeper name and make it a heroic one. OK, so here's the third Bee-Keeper as a heroine; she makes a pretty good Wasp expy, I think. She flies around at about an inch tall, blasting people with bio-electric beams that can either knock them out or hurt them; she's got the TK built in there so she can carry things around somewhat close to the body weight of an adult. She's still not a great grappler, though, since she still takes the grapple penalties of Shrinking 20. (Note that she can't get any larger or smaller than that, since she's got Full Power and lacks Atomic Size, that way you don't have to worry about the variable scores of Shrinking, and she can get down to an inch but no more.) She's got Animal Empathy and a decent Handle Animal and Ride, so you could theoretically have her ride into action on the back of a bug like Ant-Man, or maybe a bird. She's more of a sneak than an inventor; she doesn't build the super-science device, but she's probably the person you send to crawl inside it and blast it right in its vulnerable spots. She's a great tracker and spectacular sneak for your team, taking advantage of the massive Stealth bonus from Shrinking and Hide in Plain Sight (which I would have her use while tiny especially) to sneak into almost anywhere. Debate with your GM about how much Shrinking gives you concealment vs. tactile senses too. It doesn't on the surface, but it's logical you'd get _some_ benefit to sneaking around vs. Tremorsense when you weigh about as much as an empty paper coffee cup. (Which is close to her heavy load without using the lifting function of her Stinger powers. Like most tiny characters, she's really vulnerable when not shrunken, so what you should do with her is shrink her down as soon as combat starts. She could easily be a bee-keeper in her civilian ID too, which is a great job that's good for the environment and gives you lots of honey! (What? It is!)

Lucky Strike closed her mouth in an instant, dealing with the savagely glorious sight of her mother in her prime as rapidly as she dealt with anything else in a combat situation. "On it," she said, joining Vril Knight in ripping chunks out of the wall to bend into massive restraints to hold down the formerly rampaging powerhouse who was now laying down with drool pooling out of his huge mouth. "Vril Knight, get him teleported out of here stat." And with that, she scooped her father up and leapt off the side of the catwalk, joining Wander in the quick plunge down to the reactor level. Once there, still carrying a very surprised Mark, she joined her mother in racing for the reactor. "Listen, Mom, Mark, there's something I have to tell you," she told the two teens urgently. "Look, you guys...you guys are from an alternate dimension, not this one. Don't think you have to hook up to make me, or whatever. My mom and I had a good life and all, but...you don't have to go down that way." She bit her lip and added, "It wasn't...it wasn't that great for either of you." "Okay," Edge promised his daughter that would never be, feeling a strange pang as he did so. He wasn't uncreating these people; she was actually asking him to do it, but he still felt a brief moment not loss so much as possibilities closing down. "I promise, Wander and I won't hook up. No offense, Wander," he added, keeping the smile off his face in the urgency of the moment. "It's not too likely anyway in our history. Things must have been very different."

Ooh, the downside of just whipping sheets from the ATT out. He cannot make that DC. He appears to be unconscious. Welp. We're out of rounds. Sorus: That'll be adequate to stick the rods back in and keep the reactor from killing everyone, though there is still some issues with leakage.

"Thanks for understanding, Miss A," said Sharl, as always using the word Gina preferred for herself when they were out of her basement. "I wouldn't have been able to get this far without you." He was aware that she was a little unhappy with what he'd done, he knew, but there wasn't anything he could do about that. Gina was his best friend, the person he relied on the most, but he couldn't live in her basement all the time anymore than he could go back to living in his parents' home. The genie's out of the bottle, he decided as he got back to work helping out his mentor. And I can't go back to the way things used to be.

He fine Have the HP back, since you'd probably have done something different if you had his stats His stats; with Flight as some insane Leaping instead Go ahead and post IC, and Wander will be up.

"I can keep up with my friends online, and maybe we can work out a way to zip home if I really need to see my family." He spoke with the confidence of youth, but Miss A could tell he was still a little troubled by his decision. "And...I'll still be close to you, and able to make new friends at school. If I am going to be our ambassador to the outside, I have to know more about it than what I can get here." He looked at Miss A, aware she was focusing overtly on her work but lacking the confidence to try and break her attention. It was really tough to argue with Miss A when she didn't want to talk. "Have you ever thought about teaching at Claremont?" he suggested suddenly.

"Do you think it's a good idea?" he asked her, sounding a little wistful. "I mean, I don't _like_ leaving my family. I wish I could stay with them. But I think it's necessary," he added, folding his holographic arms around himself and leaning against the wall as he hovered, solid so he could lean without actually falling through. He was obviously on edge about the decision still, though he looked relieved having gotten it out and not just been bottling up the dilemma inside him."I just don't feel like I can turn my back on this world, anymore than I could turn my back on my own."

Disappearing in his own cloud of all-too-familiar midnight mist, it wasn't clear exactly where Psilent had gone until he reappeared at the door of the reactor room after his fast-flying mother and sneaky father. "Not going anywhere else," he said flatly, and the black-clad costumed adventurer didn't seem inclined to brook argument as the doors slid open to admit the three heroes. Inside, to their credit, the reactor's staff hadn't run despite the incipient disaster. Indeed, as the heroes had freed them from their confinement at the hands of the Wolfpack, the majority of them had headed straight for the disaster. But as they said quickly, there wasn't much we can do about it. "Without those rods, the reactor _will_ go critical in half an hour," said the ashen-faced lead scientist. "And when it does, it'll flash-fry most of the North Atlantic. Maybe everyone on shore will survive, but it'll destroy the ecology of the region for a generation. And just after we'd repaired it, too!" Maybe the costumes of dead heroes would have normally aroused attention down here, but under the circumstances Midnight and Sage were free from questions. Under Psilent's sharp questioning, the scientist added, "Yeah, that's the big gadget those terrorists brought with them. Something about it being a bomb...anyway, getting in there will give you access to the reactor and their bomb." - As the rampaging powerhouse charged them, Edge made sure to get out of his immediate path before he said, "All right, Wander, Cobalt Templar...Lucky Strike and Vril Knight," he added, making sure to include the two heroes he didn't know, though evidently one was Corbin's daughter and the other his own. By Erin! As mind-blowing a thought as that was, luckily Mark was very good about tuning out unpleasant thoughts he didn't want to have in mind. "We can do this! This is just some poor guy overloaded with radiation: let's put him down fast and hard so our friends can deal with the real issue. He's just a speedbump on the road to saving the multiverse!"

Folks not in initiative, go ahead and post your arrival down in the reactor room/interaction with the scientists so you can get a more detailed description of what's going on around the leak and with the cosmic bomb. Edge Seizes Initiative; Gremlin goes on 10. Of Young Freedom 2035, Psilent is with Midnight and Sage (where else would he be), Lucky Strike and Vril Knight are going down to help with the big monster, and Amaryllis and Fusion 2.0 are helping with evac. They'll be there if necessary, but ideally they're just there in a supporting role. So combat-wise we're at: Edge: Seized Initiative Cobalt Templar: 24 Wander: 20 Gremlin: 10 Edge is going to Inspire

"It's very cold where I'm from," said Quo-Dis, "and there is not much there, so we very rarely go outside. I am from elsewhere," she explained. Quo-Dis verified that Darwin had been through talking to Mr. Summers, evidently taking security seriously, then led the way to a hidden elevator in a side corridor of the gymnasium. Once there, a swipe of her student ID got them both inside a gleaming silver elevator that opened right from an interior wall of the building. She bounced happily on the balls of her feet as they went down a story, then stepped out into a hi-tech facility that looked straight out of a movie or a comic book. "If you are interested in competition," she added, "I would be happy to show you how our training center works. The Doom Room is usually not booked in the summer when there are so few students." Once inside the big underground room, with its sliding metal doors and lined walls like something from Star Trek, she flew up in the air with a little smile. "Now, what would you like?"

Up in the air, Freedom Angel was glad to be making himself useful, doing his best to help Gabriel harmonize the bees and make sure everything they were singing was suitable for the consumption of a new mother and her family. Where had these bees learned these terrible ditties with all the swears? Luckily, Gabriel was very persuasive and knew a great many songs, and between the two of them the uneven song battle began evening out as the two great swarms began moving towards harmony (if a competitive harmony) rather than outright competition between the two of them. With faith and hard work, they'd be able to give the Lumins family something to appreciate when they were done with their most difficult task!

"It's not easy to talk about with them," admitted Sharl. "They're scared about Tronik breaking down, and it's not easy for them to keep the secret. But they know what we did made things better, and that helped a lot. They've been really supportive of my work at home. My mom puts my costume in the scrubber every night, and they always cover for me." He ran his fingers lightly over the wi-fi symbol on his chest. "If I go back for a little while, and I stay in contact with them, I think it'll be all right. They know I'm never going to be a normal Tronik kid again," he admitted. "And if I'm away with the plankton fleet, they won't have to keep covering for me."

"I'd really like that," answered Sharl. "I've been to Claremont, I've met some of the students, and...it's very different than how I've been educated, but I'd like to try it. There are so few people there, but they're all so different from each other, it's really...really something I want to be part of." He added, without thinking, "If I did that, I'd still be on your team, right? I mean, I could visit the Lab and visit you at home?" He smiled a little nervously. "I mean, I can just send myself over by email; so I can still be your sidekick and a student too?" It sounded like he was trying to reassure himself more than anything else. "We make a pretty good team. And you're my best friend here."