Avenger Assembled

Mother Aquaria raised her massive head and looked over at Jessie, then at the still-sleeping version of her older self, then back at her. With her bulk she had to move most of her upper torso to make it happen, quite an impressive sight. "This is another century if I eat well. In another half-century, I will be too big to be comfortable on land, and will have to live Below. But you will be gone by then." She sighed, making an even more impressive noise than Aquaria usually did. "But by then you will be gone somewhere that Deep Ones cannot go." She laid her head down on her paws (there was no other word for hands bigger than catcher's mitts) and said "Must it be so? Surfacers like you do not need to die. I know there are ways."

Aquaria embraced Jessie tightly, and in that moment Jessie felt the Atlantean melt into a slightly wet, slightly tacky, slightly bent form that could only have been a Deep One's. "Thank you for being my friend," she said, voice dropping into a familiar register as the scene around them seemed to blur and shift. "Whatever shape the stars take, we will never be alone." Behind them Bluebird was commenting approvingly that Aquaria's neural patterns had returned to 66% of normal, even as the scene shifted one last time to a familiar beach. This was a place near the Castle, perhaps the closest beach where the river and the bay met and the water was just brackish enough for Aquaria's tastes, and the beach was crowded with noisy children at play, a crowd mixed enough in species that it had to be sometime in the future, the towering spectacle of the city behind her a vaguely visible blur. It was a little cool and moist, with clouds in the sky; one of those late spring days where children successfully begged their parents to be taken outside to the beach even when it wasn't quite summer yet. It was late in the day, with the sun just visible in the sky as it headed for the west. Jessie didn't need to look for Aquaria here. Under an impressively large umbrella, a very large creature squatted in the sand so close that the waves kept washing up over her lower limbs. Of Mother Aquaria, who looked like she'd be about eight feet tall if she stood upright, the children seemed to be paying hardly any attention at all. At her side was an old woman, white-haired and slender with age, seemingly asleep on a large air mattress that kept her out of the water, her eyes hidden by big, heavy sunglasses. Jessie had seen herself dead before in Aquaria's nightmares. Now she was looking at herself, very old.

APPROVED

Aquaria looked away, a guilty look on her face at Jessie's reaction, then looked down at her own hands. "No," she said softly. "No, this isn't what I want. I wanted to show you a place where you would not be afraid, a place where the stars were never right." She splayed out a five-fingered hand on the glass of one of the museum exhibits, staring past at it the model recreation of an undersea Deep One village, where Jessie could see herself reflected next to Aquaria in the glass. "A world where they have killed us, and where we have killed ourselves, because we will not live if we live as we are. And only I am left, because I am more like the Surfacers than those who Lie Below." She dropped her hand and turned back to Jessie. "Wouldn't it be better for you?" she asked, grief thick in her voice. "A world where I was...where I was more like you?"

@Dr Archevillethat will tell you the accent stuff, and also help you date when he's from. The fact that he referred to Dickens and Poe suggests that he's from before 1895, when HG Wells published The Time Machine.

Quick refresher on Sanctuary's history: The unknown, seemingly Grue-connected apocalypse that destroyed the local civilization seems to have happened in the early 20th century. Also, @Fox, since it's where Tarrant works, he knows that Freedom Normal School and Technical Institute is what Freedom City University was called until the late 1920s. Anybody who makes a DC 20 History check or a DC 20 Pop Culture check recognizes Wainwright's accent as being vaguely Mid-Atlantic, the sort you'd hear in old-time recordings and very old movies; it's like listening to somebody from a wax cylinder talk with perfect fidelity.

"I...thank you." He drank the water gratefully, wrapping a honey-and-pollen-yellowed hand around the bottle, then said "Thank you, this is - this is lovely." He closed his eyes and seemed to take several deep breaths, even as he was slowly peeled off the side of Super-Bee's leg. "I have indeed been thoughtless, young man, though not for the reasons you may think." Awkwardly, he leaned against the bee's leg for support before offering a shaky hand. "I am Professor Marcus Wainwright, scientist, late of Freedom Normal School and Technical Institute, and now..." He looked around and said mournfully. "Lost in time." He straightened just a little and said, "Yes, my new friends, I know this news may strike you as mad: but I have done through science what Poe and Dickens could do only in in dreams and fables. I have traveled in time!" It was a bold declamation, but as he looked around again, he seemed to deflate. "But I was a fool. I thought to travel no more than a century and a half into the future, but for all this; for cities to rise and fall and be rebuilt, for bees to evolve into such great sizes, and even into charming young women," he added with a nod to Bee, "for the beasts of the field to take on human aspect," he added with a look at Horroshow, "and for machines to.." He blinked, staring at Ryder and his bugs, and asked, "I say, under what principle do those work? Magnetism? Gyroscopes?" "HOW DID YOU COME TO BREECH THE HIVE?" asked Super-Bee, thundering but not in any particular temper. This was obviously the question most important to the giant bee, and it briefly distracted Wainwright from the displays of new technology around him. "THE EGGS WERE SAFE BUT HONEY WAS SPILLED!" "Oh, ah, well, the machine deposited me at the same location on Earth that I began, and so...Bee-anca, was it?" he asked, his voice going up slightly as he addressed the titan. "your people must have come along and built your hives in the uncounted ages since my laboratory fell to ruin, just as my own ancestors did when Rome fell." He laughed nervously, almost a titter, then said, "But, I suppose none of that would make any sense to you."

"The social graces are typically a distraction from more interesting things such as the proper application of science," said Eira reassuringly. She hmmed. "Your armor appears to be primarily protective and with some enhancements of your senses. Yes, I can easily alter this for you." She raised her hand and snapped her fingers, and music began to play - loudly. "I have no - objection to battle!" said Eira over the music as she reached into a drawer under the table where she had the armor spread out. "I once saw a full-on battle between Frost and Fire Giants at the borders of the Nine Worlds! It was a magnificent sight! And as for participating, I am myself fully capable of superheroic combat!"

It was indeed Beeanca, aka Super-Bee, the first giant bee graduate of Claremont Academy (though she was well before the time of any of the current Claremont students.) "BEEHOLD! THE INTERLOPER!" declared the giant bee, presenting him to Fleur de Joie, Gaian Knight, and even the visiting young heroes. (As was often the case, the giant bee had seemingly missed Bee's arrival on the scene entirely). The interloper turned out to be a very strange figure, a man in a white khaki suit and pith helmet, wearing a brightly-colored set of iron goggles over his eyes that bore several lenses like a jeweler's eyepiece. It was hard to tell exactly what he was wearing; he was covered in honey and pollen. "What madness is this!" declared the man from underneath an impressive orange mustache, his accent tantalizingly familiar but not quite right for any of the groups currently living on Sanctuary, or Freedom City for that matter. "Great Scott, I must have miscalculated - and now giant bees rule a blighted world!" He looked wildly about at the others and asked, "In the name of God, do they keep you as we once did? Is this an age of...MAN-HONEY!?" He was breathing rapidly, and seemed on the verge of fainting.

Inside the castle, the museum was seemingly a museum of Deep Ones. Their art, their artifacts, even a few lifelike representations, adorned the walls and ceiling. The effect was a bit like visiting a folk art or cultural museum devoted to African or Native American culture or art. The air was cooler here, and moister, but not enough that Jessie was uncomfortable. On closer inspection there appeared to be no Deep Ones here at all, and all of the language on the walls was in the past tense. This was a monument to a people who were gone. She wasn't alone in here, there were tourists of all kinds, the mood inside a wistful memory of what had been lost. When she approached a snack bar with the bizarrely cheerful label of Hydra's Sushi, a seeming tourist stepped up and blocked her way, and for a moment, Jessie didn't recognize the woman before her. With blue-green hair, a muscular, statuesque build displayed by an outfit that combined orichalcum armor with seaweed-colored skirt, she was clearly Atlantean, but what - "Aquaria," said Bluebird, and Jessie remembered Aquaria's tale of the many Aquarias that had arrived that day of the 'big multiversal mashup' earlier the previous year, and the rather startled Atlantean magus who had learned that she was a Deep One in seemingly every other corner of the multiverse. "Hello, Jessie," said Aquaria in the most human voice Jessie had heard from her friend, a sad but hopeful look on her face. "Are you well? Did the monster hurt you?" She reached out a five-fingered hand to touch Jessie on the arm.

Okay, let's make some rolls. Luckily Online Research (Computers for Gather Info):, 30 if she has time to take 20, 15 if not Investigate (via Jack of all Trades): 23 Knowledge (arcane lore, because there's some European metal, that's just how it is: 11 Knowledge (popular culture, via Eidetic Memory): If she has time to take 20 with Quickness 6, it's 26, if not it's a 9. (didn't roll too well!) Knowledge (technology): 30 if she can take 20 on the check, if not I'll spend an HP and get 30 anyhow Notice: Using Quickness 6 to take 20 for a result of 25. Sense Motive: 28

Bluebird looked around, frowning for a moment before she snapped her fingers. "The metal of the undersea kingdom! Yes, that is orichalcum from Atlantis," she said, indicating the architectural gold around them. She frowned. "The climate would hardly be pleasant for Atlanteans either, however." Together they walked cautiously down the city streets, straining their senses for any sign of Aquaria. What they saw looked decidedly odd. It was indeed a very pleasant city, the people smiling and friendly, everyone looking well-dressed and content. The buildings were very tall, perfect three-dimensional rectangles that rose up towards the sky without a break, the windows all identical perfect squares. And it wasn't just the buildings that were strange. On closer inspection, Jessie realized she couldn't see or hear any of the animals that lived among human beings in a large urban center. No dogs, no cats, no rats, no birds; just people. And peering into several glass-fronted windows, all the meals people were eating, carrying around with them, snacking on in parks, were rich, succulent-looking fruits and vegetables. Even the decorative grass growing along the sidewalk and around the shade trees was free of any insect life. The city was quiet, too, the people seeming to talk to each other in soft voices or whispers, many people on their phones; as if the whole place was holding its breath. Finally, after some twists and turns down unfamiliar streets, she and Bluebird reached the Castle. It was free of its towering heights here too, instead built at ground level like Freedom Hall. It was that same shining gold orichalcum, bearing the words MUSEUM over the front door. The only sign of what lay within was engraved on the door; the same Golden Sign that had guided them inside Aquaria's brain in the first place.

The summer internship on Sanctuary was a pretty common thing for Claremont students. Two weeks with pay, exploring an alien world, working with your hands and your mind and your heart, what wasn't to like? They were a week in, and by all accounts things were going great! The male students were staying in the home of a family called the Thorssons, a big bustling farm family who had come a few years ago from the Terminus and now ran a dairy farm on the outskirts of a small settlement called Homestead. When the boys weren't meeting Freedom League members and shadowing them by day, learning how to be the adult heroes they would one day be themselves, there was plenty of work to do. Kenji and Ulrich, the patriarchs of the big adopted clan, had recently given into much pressure from their oldest daughter Efia to modernize their farm, and a keen eye with computers was needed to help get the new milking machines up and running, just as a cool head and soothing voice was needed to persuade the cows that this was all right. There was also the filing system to get their business files in order, the brand-new wifi network in the house now that the dads had finally agreed to make those connections into the broader community, and There were also the windmills to tend, the chickens to feed, the family's vegetable garden to work in, the barn itself to muck, and a passel of children ranging from sixteen to 5 who were a veritable rainbow of birthplaces, origins, and even species. It helped a lot that the kids obviously doted on their guests and begged for stories about their heroic adventures after dinner, which was usually vegetable and potato-stuffed pies that were richer than almost anything they could have gotten back on Prime, washed down with ice-old fresh milk or when the dads were feeling indulgent and everybody had behaved themselves, beer that was probably legal in Sanctuary. There were lots of ways of being a hero, and watching two farm-fed siblings, one of them a stocky ten year old with jetblack hair and her brother, a slim redhead with an infectious grin, act out versions of yourself fighting bad guys was a good reward for all the work. So was the free room and board, and the deposit that would go into the boys bank accounts once they were finished, for that matter. And then the giant bee buzzed overhead, loud as a low-flying plane, and made a landing not far from the outskirts of the farm. Ulrich raised his head, took off his hat, and commented, "That's unusual. The bees don't usually come out this far." "Ayup," added Kenji, who'd been working nearby when the visitor passed by, dabbing at his face with a towel, "and they normally don't do so much yellin' about it either."

Aquaria jumped at the prodding, the scene around them actually sputtering for a moment. "Jessie! Jessie, you are alive-yes! I will take you somewhere better! This is a dark place, and I will show you the Day!" Then there was a moment of discontinuity all around them, and. - Jessie was somewhere else. She was sitting on a city street, buildings rising up high overhead. There was no smell of death here, no ocean, no chaos. Everything was peaceful, rectangular towers rising high, gleaming with a miraculous gold. The people on the streets looked strong and healthy, some of them in golden armor that matched the architecture, and others dressed like civilians. The air was warm and dry on her skin, as if this city stood at the edge of some great desert, but not unpleasantly so by any means. Bluebird was nearby, smiling. "It is working! Aquaria's brain functions are beginning to return to normal. You are saving her, Jessie." Jessie appeared to be sitting in front of an outdoor fruit and vegetable seller, boxes swollen with apples, bananas, and various green things.

Bluebird guided Jessie, very carefully, to a place that was indeed familiar. It was the Castle, half-flooded and smashed, sitting in what had once been the street as if a large child had picked it from its skyscraper home and dropped it from that height. There were creatures scuttling about here and there that it was unwise to look at, but Bluebird was a shining guide, showing Jessie the way up through broken places in the castle walls, through flooded corridors that showed recently cleared carnage, places it was better not to look too closely at or think about too long at all - until she heard it. The sound of a deep, bass sobbing, the gulping sobs of utter Deep One despair. It was easy to follow the sounds to one of the rooms Eve used for commanding the castle, easy to go through the door Bluebird opened - There had been a fight here. There were the first corpses she had seen, corpses of Deep Ones smashed and crushed, but in the center of the room lay a very familiar dead body on the table. Her own, not as a child, but as a grown woman who had died in defense of her world, her broken, bloodied shield still strapped to support a broken forearm. Crouched at her head was Aquaria, her body scratched and bruised, her bloody trident buried in the ground at her feet. Of Jessie's own corpse, it was hard to tell what had killed her, save a very great force applied repeatedly over all of her body. "My fault, my fault, my fault..." Aquaria was repeating over and over again, in between nearly infrasonic bellows and barks of grief. When she heard people enter the room, she raised her head and said something that seemed to be addressed to herself as much as the newly-arrived duo. "This is what will happen when the stars are right. All I love will be lost for of all that I am! Oh...you're so small...I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Her voice was quiet now, actually one of the quietest she could remember hearing. "All is lost."

Angelic had intended to order the automatons to engage the pirates, but the pirates struck first, burying her in a tidal wave of bound and jacketed flesh. So the robots swooped past her, obeying their last instructions, and went for the chain that bound the Crocodile. They didn't seem to be doing much damage as they stuck to the links of the chain like so many magnets, but more and more of them were accreting there, grabbing on with chrome metallic hands and teeth. Eira had had grand plans to order them to tear apart the chain like so many locusts, but now she was a little busy. Shouting her defiance, she threw aside a group of the clinging pirates and grabbed one particularly large one by the throat. Calculating instantly that they could not see her, she instead called in a voice that rang not just from her throat but the half-dozen of her creations that had remained near her. "Puny things of flesh and bone! Flesh bleeds! Bone breaks! Let me show you!" To her honest surprise, it worked and several of the dangling pirates went spiraling away from Eira and her robots. A few who were too slow got a punch, either from Angelic or her robots, and hung unconscious in their bindings. When Eira caught sight of Pan, she whooped with laughter. "PAN! BEHOLD!" She gestured at the machines. "THIS IS MY DESIGN!"

"That will be easily done," said Eira, with the air of a girl who had just been asked if she could walk and chew gum at the same time. She smiled, relieved that she hadn't wound up with yet another enemy on-campus. "What do you do with it now?" she inquired.

Early Summer 2021 Strange noises often came from the vast honeycomb hives of the giant bees, towering as they did as probably the tallest artificial structures on this planet these days. Songs and dances like distant rumbling thunder, noises of birth and death and a million other things, one sometimes learned to tune them out. At least until a giant bee comes buzzing in, loud as a helicopter and long as a truck, zooming in overhead and landing in a large green space in the midst of human dwellings, roughly equidistant from the homes of the guardians of this planet. It was Super-Bee, wearing her domino mask large enough to cover the front of a Mack Truck. "HEROEZ!" she buzzed. "I HAVE CAUGHT AN INTERLOPER!" Sure enough, she seemed to be holding a struggling human pinned against the thick, sticky hairs on the side of her leg. "HE CAME FROM ZOME PLAZE WE COULD NOT ZEE!"

Okay! Move: Fast Feint with Skill Mastery to keep him flat-footed, so that's DC 25, Bluff or Sense Motive Standard: She is going to keep using her guns on him, since they are non-lethal rounds. Since he is hopefully flat-footed, she will Power Attack for +5 https://orokos.com/roll/894336 = 20 Let me know if that hits him (I'll surge and do it again if it doesn't); if it does, that's a DC 29 Tou save again.

Eira grinned, putting her arm around Pan's waist and sinuously pressing against him as they joined their friends. "There is no need for planning at a metal concert. What happens happens, and it is glorious, yes? Chaos made of flesh and metal. But you are right," she added with a smirk at Natalia. "I can smell fear." She tapped one of her ears, where a silver pentagram dangled, and leaned back with a thoughtful look on her face. "Thank you all for coming to this," she added, perhaps a trifle more subdued than usual. "I have waited so long for an actual metal show in Freedom. Every damn time the last two years it has been just one jävla sausagefest after another! You look good, by the way," she added to the others. "You look like yourselves. And that is what metal is all about."

There was a faint feeling of discontinuity, and then she was elsewhere. It was night, and it was raining; a thick, warm downpour that smelled faintly brackish, reminding her of tropical storms - when had she ever been in a tropical storm? She and Bluebird were standing together on a a rocky shoal at the edge of a shallow sea, low hills rising behind her towards strange jagged mountains. There was a crowd between her and the hills, distant and singing, with small fires burning and bodies writhing in what seemed to be an exotic dance. The water was lapping at her feet, warm and cold as She looked further up and saw a storm-black sky, lit suddenly by a flash of lightning and clap of thunder. In the single flash of light, she saw what had seemed to be the hills. They were not hills at all. This was Freedom City, its streets flooded, its buildings smashed and piled in heaps. She had just had a glimpse in the darkness of the people in the crowd, some of them looking like Deep Ones, some of them not, prostrating themselves before something that sat on a throne made from those shattered buildings, a vast trident in its hand. A vast being like a gigantic, mutated Deep One, between humanoid and octopoid, with wings spread behind it. She knew who, what This was; Aquaria had shown her images. Dagon, The King, the terrible wrath of Deep Ones denied their glory that would come when the stars were right. As the darkness closed against over the distant worshippers and their god, she seemed to see Dagon reach down and scoop a few of the crowd up with its hand, the crowd's ululating rising in a frenzied joy as the creature raised its hand to its mouth- "We need to find Aquaria here," said Bluebird, her own eyes wide at the terrible scene. "We are close to the Castle," Bluebird said, "I can sense it over there," she added, pointing away from the frenzied bacchanalia near what might have once been Freedom Hall.

Eira considered her words, then extended a hand to Elena. Her other hand was busy, and as Eira shifted the angle of her body Elena could see how. A silvery, twisting spike had emerged from under her sleeve and was directly interfacing with the armor's exposed circuitry, its tip spread wide like a snake's jaws. This time, her handshake was hard, not quite enough to hurt but enough to show the strength that lay beneath it. "Acceptable." she grumped. Gradually the blue and gold colors faded from the armor, which began to return to its normal appearance. "Eira Katastroff Natt och Dag, but here I am known as Angelic." She closed her hand and went back to work. "What do you wish your armor to do?"

Yes, this looks good. I'll post IC

Eira blinked and stared up at the taller girl, her blue eyes narrowing. When she spoke, her voice was a low, throaty whisper. "Stupid is suggesting that I am not real." Her hands were still buried in the disassembled pieces of Elena's armor, which suddenly began lighting up in an unfamiliar blue and gold pattern. "I will accept that your homeworld may not have been advanced enough to support machine intelligences, so that you may not have encountered one before. But if you want my help with your devices, you would be wise to treat me as your equal, yes?"

Upstairs, Bluebird was waiting for her by the elevator, her projection solid, clear, real. She looked at Jessie and didn't speak, instead walking with her to the control room where the two headbands were waiting for her. They looked shining and new, obviously made by one of the 3-D printers in the castle, curling metal like the barrettes she remembered? or was that Erin? a lifetime ago. She followed her in the elevator too, surely an artifice for an artificial projection with no real body save the computer systems of the Castle itself. Back in their apartment, Bluebird showed Jessie how to put on Aquaria's headband, the metal stretching slightly as it wrapped around the sides of Aquaria's head just behind her earholes. (Aquaria didn't call them that, but that is certainly the function they served on the side of her head.) "I will meet you inside the projection," said Bluebird. "You are - you are being very brave." And then she vanished, leaving Jessie alone with the headband. - At first, Jessie thought nothing had changed. She was still in the apartment, still next to Aquaria's unconscious form, until she saw she had indeed been joined by Bluebird and by a strange projection - the odd, trifold, vaguely floral shape that she knew Aquaria called The Golden Sign. It seemed to hover in front of her, its ends glowing with a particular soft radiance. "This is good," said Bluebird softly, "it means she has accepted the connection. There is..." She concentrated on the sign and said, "I see the Day, the Evening, and the Night. These are the names she has given the places, they mean something. Where would you go?"