Avenger Assembled

Suddenly, a string of German expletives erupted from just behind Dragonfly's left ear as a wash of foul liquor-scented breath washed over her face. "You crazy little woman! That was my boyfriend!" Suddenly, the sneak thief who'd been bedeviling Fenris turned on Dragonfly and began savagely beating her upside the head with the butt of her 9mm. "I'm going to beat you just like I beat your boyfriend with the doggie face! Do you hear me? You're going to give me him back or I am going to beat you hard and then beat your mother too!"

Move Action Feint Dragonfly. DC 20 Sense Motive needed Standard Action Shoot Dragonfly (non-lethally) 25 Blast 4+5+2(Sneak Attack)+2 Autofire=9+4=13 DC 28 Tou save, Fox

Freedom Eagle II PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 22 pp STR 24 [14] (+7/+2) DEX 24 [14] (+7/+2) CON 24 [14] (+7/+2) INT 14 (+2) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 12 (+1) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+13 Melee) DEF: +10 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +5 Grapple: +26 max Saves: 6 pp TOU +10 (+7 Con, +3 Protection) FORT +7 (+7 Con) REF +7 (+5 Dex, +2) WILL +6 (+2 Wis, +4) Skills: 52 r=13 pp Acrobatics 8 (+15)* Craft (Mechanical) 8 (+10) Disable Device 8 (+10) Knowledge (Technology) 8 (+10) Language 1 (German) (Base: English) Notice 8 (+10)* Pilot 3 (+10)* Sense Motive 8 (+10)* Feats: 25 pp Acrobatic Bluff All-Out Attack Attack Focus: Melee (7) Challenge (Fast Acrobatic Bluff) Defensive Attack Equipment (2) Evasion (2) Leadership Inventor Move-By Action Power Attack Quick Change Skill Mastery (Acrobatics, Pilot, Notice, Sense Motive) Takedown Attack (2) Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 60 pp Device 7 (Flight Harness) (Hard to Lose) (PFs: Restricted, Subtle) [30 pp] -Flight 6 (500 MPH) [Dynamic] [12+1+2=15 pp] DAP: Super-Strength 6 (Heavy Load: 24 tons) -Impervious TOU 9 [9] -Protection 3 [3] -Shield 4 [4] -Super-Senses 4 (Extended Vision 3 (x1000), Radio) [4] Enhanced CON 10 [10 pp] Enhanced DEX 10 [10 pp] Enhanced STR 10 [10 pp] costs abilities 22 + combat 24 + saves 6 + skills 13/52 + feats 25 + powers 60= 150 pts --------------------------------- Design Notes: Here's my build for Freedom Eagle, the patriotic Hawkman/Rocketeer expy who was the leader of the Liberty League in World War II. His main power is the winged flight harness he invented that lets him fly around and punch things. With Flight 6, he can outpace any aircraft in the air in World War II (though he'll have to struggle against the latest Axis plot device jet), and he can use his flight to get leverage and pull tremendous weights in the air. He can shrug off the machine guns of most Axis aircraft thanks to his high Impervious, and with his Super-Senses he's a great scout and aerial fighter. His Equipment is enough to buy Liberty Hall, even though it's technically owned by Bowman. (I won't be building Bowman or Arrow) I've reimagined him a bit as having peak physical traits; this can be a result of wearing the harness, or if this is Freedom Eagle II it can be an effect of his father or grandfather having absorbed so much daka radiation that it permanently altered their genes. I figure that in a World War II setting, he buzzed around and punched open Axis fighters, sending their planes down to the ground. Freedom Eagle I got a lot of bad press for being behind the Liberty League's disbanding in the 1950s (would it have killed him to stand up to Congress?) but on the other hand at least he wasn't an all-out traitor the way the Patriot was. Patriot! :evil: Freedom Eagle's son is Michael O'Conner, the long-time Mayor of Freedom City. This is a bit of a stretch; the Atlantic City that is Freedom City's closest model has gone through something like five mayors since 1993. More to the point, I don't think the writers of Freedom City quite get how much time has passed in: even with the armor, it's pretty hard to see a man as old as he has to be as an active superhero. In other words, the guy inside this suit is almost certainly _not_ Freedom City's mayor. It might be _his_ kid, though, or a family member. FE stands up in the Time of Vengeance adventure, which is certainly good of him given his age. He made mistakes, a lot of them, but he was always a hero. He's not a super-genius, there weren't a lot of those on the Liberty League, but he's a good mechanic and inventor. His inventions aren't likely to save the day, but they are likely to be handy to have in a pinch. Even a few PP can save the day if you do enough planning ahead of time. He's got enough Disable Device to stand a decent chance of dismantling the latest Axis super-weapon, perhaps with lots of Inspire and other kinds of help from his friends on the League. I think this build works just fine for either the Golden Age version or a Modern Age version who has risen as his successor. Another possible change, as usual, would be to make a legacy who has no idea who his predecessors were...

When the work was done, Midnight tested the stealth generator, which actually turned out to be more of a camouflage device. While the rippling hologram that encased the Night Cruiser might not have fooled anyone on Earth-Prime with access to real super-technology, on Erde in the 1950s the machinery disguising the Night Cruiser as just another Wehrmacht truck was probably foolproof. The kids all piled into the the back to become illusory Wehrmacht soldiers, clinging to the rear of the Cruiser and looking like they were sitting inside the back of an open-topped truck for the ride through Arbeitstadt. No, Mark reminded himself as he got on board, hanging on to a car that had had its passenger seats removed years earlier, not Arbeitstadt. Maybe the Nazis would run this place for years, but they would never rule the people. By 2011, this would be Freedom City again. Too late for those alive now, though. Travis pulled Midnight into the front seat with him, the disguise making them look like bored guards, and soon they were off. The truck drove up through a twisty underground ramp, its tight confines making the heroes in back cling to the side of the Night Cruiser, and after a few moments of precipitous driving in the dark they were off into the heart of what would some day be Freedom City again. Freedom City was a charnelhouse. The fighting here, Mark remembered, had been vicious when the Germans came: house-to-house struggles had seen almost all of the city destroyed. The bombed-out city still had not been repaired even years after the German conquest, either; thin, bedraggled civilians crept furtively through darkened ruins as they went, most living behind the barbed wire erected by the Nazis and all under the watchful eye of sneering Gestapo agents. Freedom City might rise from the ashes some day, but for now these were dark days indeed. There were no hitches as they went; Travis' fake ID and perfect German got them through all the checkpoints as they passed through the city and headed for Von Braun Island, for all that Trevor caught his grandfather's hand twitching towards his .45s occasionally when they saw some particularly loutish German or starving refugee. "Out in force. Must still be looking for you and your friends." A long silence in the cab, and then "Will not be expecting two Midnights." Out in the back, Edge looked at the others and murmured, mostly for the benefit of those who hadn't been to Erde. "It gets better. It takes time, a long time, but eventually the American Resistance does recover and starts to push back the Nazi war machine. The war...the war is still going on in 2011, but the Resistance is winning. They've even started to rebuild Freedom City. It just..." He looked around as they headed through bombed-out suburbs. "They never had a Centurion here, or a Liberty League till it was too late. The government never trusted the mystery men, even tried locking some of them up...when the Ubersoldaten came, they never had a chance. "

Cowgirl PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 36 pp STR 18 (+4) DEX 16 (+3) CON 16 (+3) INT 12 (+1) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 18 (+4) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+8 ranged, +10 Lasso) DEF: +12 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +7 Grapple: +18 w/TK Saves: 12 pp TOU +8 (+3 Con, +5 Protection) FORT +7 (+3 Con, +4) REF +7 (+3 Dex, +4) WILL +7 (+3 Wis,+4) Skills: 12 pp=48 r Bluff 10 (+14) Diplomacy 6 (+10) Languages 1 (Spanish) (Base: English) Notice 7 (+10) Ride 7 (+10) Search 5 (+5) Sense Motive 7 (+10) Survival 3 (+6) Feats: 16 pp Attack Focus: Ranged 2, Challenge (Improved Feint) Dodge Focus 6 Evasion, Fearless, Improved Initiative, Move-By Action, Power Attack, Precise Shot 2, Second Chance (Ride checks) Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 45 pp Flight 3 (50 MPH) [6 pp] Lasso Array [33+1=34 pp] Move Object 10 (Extra: Damaging) (Heavy Load: 12 tons) (PFs: Accurate, Precise, Subtle) AP: Snare 10 (Extra: Transparent) (PFs: Accurate, Precise, Reversible) Protection 5 [5 pp] costs abilities 36 + combat 24 + saves 12 + skills 12/48 + feats 17 + powers 45 = 150 pts ---------------- Design Notes: Yee-haw! Here's my build for Cowgirl, the native hero of Texas and something of a Golden Age Wonder Woman homage. (I'm not currently doing that 50 States, 50 Oddballs project, but if I ever do there's no reason not to get it off to a good start. Got to get through those European nations first, anyway...) She flies around on a Texas twister, deploys a magic lasso to subdue her enemies in combat, and she's not hard to look at either. She's got a higher STR that she needs book-wise (since it's not something she uses for any of her powers), but someone who's a professional horseback rider really ought to have some pretty good-sized guns, and I don't mean pistols. (No guns on this cowgirl; she's all about the magic lasso) She's also an excellent horseback rider, and probably was a successful stunt rider before she got her powers. I figure her Snare involves wrapping a length of magic rope around her targets, while her Damaging Move Object is a similar effect save that she slams them into walls, whips them in the face, or just flies around tugging them along behind her in an emergency. Mechanically she's just another blaster, but oh, those descriptors! She's something of a Captain Ethnic for Texas, but there's nothing wrong with that. The Snare has the Transparent extra because after all it's just a rope, and doesn't block too much of her target's body. (That means they can be targeted by attacks while getting no cover from what's holding them down) She's fearless, too, just as a really good stunt rider ought to be: despite her great Charisma, I didn't give her Attractive. She's got a strong force of personality that's equally good at motivating all kinds of people to get up and give a holler. There's nothing wrong with being a Captain Ethnic, by the way: giving your hero a strong regional or personal identity can make her easier to roleplay, as well as give you a stronger voice for the character's inner thoughts. Consider all the possible Complications you can get for a fish out of water; the country girl in the big city, not to mention cultural clashes with heroes who may not share your fondness for down-home living. (No, that doesn't mean you have to be an ignorant hillbilly either) I thought about making her just a Snare specialist with that lasso, but you really should give characters a way of doing direct damage if at all possible. If you're going to get her a horse, go as far as investing significantly in Minion or Sidekick making it a superhorse, or maybe just make "summoning a flying Arabian" the descriptor for her Flight rather than riding the tornado. It's not really worth the points to just buy the (pretty crummy) corebook Horse as a minion or Sidekick. What's this good Texan doing up in Freedom City? Well, maybe she's here to work alongside the finest heroes in the world! (Or maybe there was some issue with whatever superteam you want to put down in Texas that persuaded her to make a relocation up to the generous embrace of the Garden State) There's nothing to say Freedom City can't have a thriving stunt riding circuit somewhere off the boonies, either, or maybe just a really good circus. The Old West is popular all over America, even in those places that had basically nothing to do with the frontier. Just don't overemphasize the accent thing or you'll turn into a running gag about eating beans. Keep Texas in your heart, not in everyone's face.

Together, the heroes headed down into the depths of Blackstone, the constant whining of alarms and flashing of red lights along the walls just loud enough to set their teeth on edge as they began the trek down the steps. The first couple of levels, where prison guards and staff usually lived, were deserted and locked up, the evacuations from this level having been orderly enough. When they'd gone enough steps, enough that Freedom Angel was reasonably confident that Fleur's pride was giving way to her sense of self-preservation, he murmured, "I am strong enough to carry you even without my angelic abilities, Fleur de Joie. Let me help." It was about that time they reached the first levels of the jail, where the medium-security prisoners were visible in their cells, some resting and looking bored, others pounding the walls and yelling at the heroes as they headed below, others just trying to figure out what was going on. Evidently the prisoners this far up hadn't seen the Bee-Keeper. "All will be well!" the angel informed them with great authority. "Calm yourselves, and your prison will be safe. We are here to help protect you all against the threat of a madman who has seized control of this place." Just as he'd expected, Freedom Angel's words had the salutory effect of calming some prisoners, and making others settle into hot cell-by-cell debates over who it was that had seized control of the place. "With any luck," he told the others, "that will give us as much time as we need to get below without warning the Bee-Keeper."

Dr. Tomorrow PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 56 pp STR 22 (+6) DEX 20 (+5) CON 20 (+5) INT 24 (+7) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+10 melee/+14 Unarmed) DEF: +12 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +5 Grapple: +16 Saves: 7 pp TOU +8 (+5 Con, +3 Protection) FORT +7 (+5 Con, +2) REF +7 (+5 Dex, +2) WILL +6 (+3 Wis, +3) Skills: 84 r=21 pp Acrobatics 10 (+15) Craft: Electronic 3 (+10) Craft: Mechanical 8 (+15) Diplomacy 5 (+5) Drive 1 (+6) Knowledge: Current Events 8 (+15) Knowledge: History 3 (+10) Knowledge: Technology 8 (+15) Gather Info 10 (+13) Languages 2 (German, Japanese) (Base: English) Notice 7 (+10) Pilot 5 (+10) Sense Motive 12 (+15) Survival 1 (+4) Swim 1 (+6) Feats: 20 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Melee 4 Attack Specialization: Unarmed 2 Dodge Focus 6 Evasion Master Plan Move-By Action Power Attack Takedown Attack Well-Informed Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 22 pp Device 2 (Helmet) (Hard to Lose) [8 pp] -Communication 4 [radio] (1 mile) (PFs: Selective, Subtle) [6] -Immunity 3 (environmental cold, low pressure, suffocation [altitude]) [3] -Super-Senses 1 (Extended Vision 1 [x10]) [1] Device 2 (Jetpack) (Hard to Lose) (PF: Restricted) [9 pp] -Flight 5 (250 MPH) [10] Feature 1 (Temporal Inertia) [1 pp] Protection 3 [3 pp] costs abilities 56 + combat 24 + saves 7 + skills 21/84 + feats 20 + powers 22 = 150 pts ----------------------------- Design Notes: Here's my build for Dr. Tomorrow, the founder and organizer of the Liberty League, the Justice Society of America Expy in the Freedom City setting. Born Tomas Morgen in the future of Erde, Morgen was an Aryan superman turned Resistance leader who stole a time machine to change the course of World War II. He couldn't save his own world, but he was able to save ours, taking the name Dr. Tomorrow and organizing the Liberty League to defend America from the forces of expansionist fascism. He returned to Erde and found his own history unchanged, but was still able to strike a major blow and turn the tide for the American Resistance. When he stole a time machine again, he wound up being recruited as a time patrolman and is now the overworked guardian of Freedom City's timestream. Just because altering Freedom City's history just creates a new timestream doesn't mean you should just run around doing it willy-nilly! This means you, Quark! Anyway, here's Dr. Tomorrow as a PL 10 PC. I dropped his raygun, so he's more of a two-fisted punch-you-in-the-face guy, and left his time machine off the sheet. If he's a PC timecop, his time-travel powers should be left as a plot device, maybe just enough to dump people back in whatever prison can hold time travelers. He still has his Temporal Inertia, since that's a product of being from an alternate history, and was something he had in the 1940 as well as today. He flies around on his jetpack, occasionally whipping out inventions, and knows a great deal about whatever era he's in having studied it from the historical records in his database. I figured he was the Master Plan guy of the Liberty League, and gave him the feat accordingly. (I picture Freedom Eagle as the Leadership guy, and Centurion/Bowman/Arrow as the Inspire-users on the team) He's not terribly good with people, but he's just persuasive enough and just knowledgeable enough that I think he could plausibly have sold President Roosevelt on who he was and why he was there. Incidentally, in my mind Dr. Tomorrow had a double-layered secret ID in the 1940s: most people knew him as a genius, some people knew he had a secret. In my mind, most people who knew his secret id thought he was a time-traveler from a future where the Allies won. This is because I just can't see a Golden Age comicbook character being from a Nazi-dominated future, that's way too pessimistic given the general tone of the comics. That way, when they were reviving Golden Age characters in the Freedom City universe, you can imagine a story of a comic book writer going back to this bland time-traveler gadgeteer guy, dusting him off and twisting him a little, and making this incredibly heroic man who saved our world at the cost of never quite being able to save his own. Yeah that's meta and you know you love it. He'd be a fun character to play, either in the past or the present, and he's got a perfectly viable legacy (and probably some old equipment) just laying around needing to be dusted off and put back into action. This might make a good Erde-on-Earth hero, or maybe a big fan of the 1940s. Heck, they may not even know the real origin of their 'mentor's' story.

Earth I-Robot-1 On January 25, 1995, the launch of a Norwegian scientific rocket triggered the last great war scare between Russia and the United States. The rocket, called the Black Brant, took the same trajectory as would a US Trident missile launch towards the Russian heartland would have, and the Russian government had somehow mislaid the warning the Norwegians later swore they had given. Though the cheget, the Russian version of the nuclear football, was brought to Boris Yeltsin, the Russian President concluded there was no basis for suspecting an American attack. But that didn’t matter, as suddenly the cheget came to life and a booming mechanical voice sounded from its tinny speakers: “Dasvadanya, comrades!” And then the Russian nuclear defense system came to life under the command of its new master: Talos, lord of the Foundry, and the sky was filled with missiles. Seeing the Russian launch, the Americans launched as well, followed by the British, French, Chinese, and all the other nuclear powers. Four years after the end of the Cold War, a year after the Terminus Invasion, the world was plunged into the nightmare of nuclear Armageddon. Heavily concentrated in Europe and North America, most of the world’s superheroes died. Most of the world’s population died, as Talos’ carefully-shielded bunkers released plagues and warbots to break what resistance was left. A surprise came when the Grue staged an invasion, seeking to loot the Earth of its resources now that the heroes were gone (the Unity cares not if drones die of fallout or the vomiting plague, but Talos won that war too, not incidentally sacrificing most of the superpowered organics who had thrown in with him. By 1997, Talos was lord and master of the Earth! He appointed his most loyal robotic followers as his vassals to rule over the Earth where he could not, and began the construction of the first of many gigantic golden statues in his likeness overlooking his magnificent new palace. --- Things aren’t as bad as you’d think in Talos City, the renamed metropolis that with nearly half a million people is the largest city in North America. Most of the Freedom League died saving their home back in 1995, meaning most of the city itself survived intact save the incinerated naval base at Lonely Point. It has pleased Lord Talos to make his capital in the city where his great enemy Daedalus was last seen, as final proof of the superiority of machine over even superman. But there are sound strategic reasons as well: the zones of fallout that surround Talos City make it almost impossible for organic life larger than a rat to survive, while his seagoing sub-bots make sure that the oceans are equally secure. As for the human population of Talos City, the great majority are grateful enough (or rather, terrified enough) of the robotic despot that they are loyal to him before they are necessarily loyal to their own species. What’s that, you say, the four hundred thousand living in Talos City are human beings? Why would the master of the Foundry spare the lives of organics? Several reasons: unlike his subordinates like Blackfire (who has made Britain a hunting ground for organics popular with robots looking for recreation) or Keres (who has presided over the merciless execution of all human beings in the Middle East and who seriously argues for the destruction of _all_ organic life), Talos has nothing to prove. He is the Master Builder of the new age, who can accuse him of being too soft on the human question? He can, and does, kill humans at his whim, and if he killed them all he would be denied that pleasure. Some humans have proven their loyalty and worth to their new master, earning either upload or nanite assimilation depending on what suits his interests best. And there are jobs in the new world that are too demeaning to be relegated to his children: better to give the worst rad-cleanup to disposable humans in patched and torn suits rather than risk permanently contaminating a machine, or for humans to labor in agonizing, lethal working conditions than a robot to soil his hands with the kind of manual construction work that humans once put them to work doing. Beyond that, though, Talos is not a fool. Human beings have great potential, and if he can keep a few alive as his pawns, he can learn to master that potential and inculcate it into his machine-spawn before the final extinction of humanity. - What hope is there for the human beings who labor behind the barbed wire of the camps in Talos City, or in the palaces of Talos and his lackeys? He has been careful; keeping enough humans alive to avoid retaliation by the Lor, sparing Farside City in return for their role as watchdogs of the solar system against any alien incursion. He has no interest in galactic or interuniversal domination (well, not anymore: all the other Taloses are bastards who kept trying to take over his operation) and his power is so great that even help from offworld would be fighting a tremendous uphill battle. His main weakness is division in his ranks: the new world is very much Talos' empire, not the Machine Age which he talked such a good game about in the old days, and many of his underlings are beginning to grow restive under the prospect of his eternal rule. Perhaps an accommodation can be reached with their old enemies in order to make the division of the Earth a little more fair. Such an alliance would, of course, be uneasy at best. Humans continue to resist his rule, but after decades of domination and genocide fewer do than you’d expect. The great centers of resistance are in the highlands of Bolivia and jungles of Africa, where whole groups of communities grow and thrive without ever so much as seeing a drone fly by overhead. But those places are isolated and weak, with vanishingly few superhumans. Perhaps the greatest center of resistance may yet prove to be Talos City: unlike their starving, irradiated cousins in the hills, the humans who sleep in beds, who eat food every day, and who have access to books can dream of better days. They can dream of heroes...

Edge agreed, and waited for Supercape to disappear. All right, Mark, biggest jaunt ever. You'd better do your best here.When Supercape was gone off to that other planet so far away, Edge studied the map carefully and took a deep breath. Time to hit deep space... He pushed himself, reaching out with his mind towards the dot on the map, and suddenly everything seemed to go topsy-turvy. On Supercape's end of things, it looked as though the local atmosphere and earth was rearranging itself into Edge as he popped up alongside him on the frozen Arctic world: as if Mark was somehow reaching out with his mind across the vastness of space and imposing himself on the world where he was heading!

"Is that...?" he recognized the voice, if nothing else. He gave 'Cyberknife' a shocked look, dividing his attention between Gina's shocking 'costume' and what had happened to his fellow program. That was frankly disturbing even to look at, but he certainly couldn't quarrel with results. It wasn't as if he'd been able to do anything, anyway. "I'm fine." Wordlessly, Citizen went in for the knockout punch. It took a couple of good, hard hits, Rogue spitting and hissing at him like an outraged cat the whole while, but eventually he had her knocked out. He looked down at his hands, rubbing the spot on his knuckle where she'd actually bit him. "She's from Tronik," he murmured at that bizarre figure he was almost sure was Gina. "I don't know her, but we recognized each other. She got out first, and she found...these people."

Okay, that was my only concern. Approved

Eventually, the sharp-eyed heroes found signs of where the gorilla had come from: prints left behind by a normal-sized gorilla led from the earth churned up by his struggles towards a still-open manhole cover. Underneath, the sewers of Freedom City beckoned: the recent heavy rains had washed things mostly clean, but without some better way to track a gorilla's movements, finding where he'd come from underneath the surface was going to be much more difficult. The sound of approaching sirens meant that the police were on their way: Jade Dragon and Wail had both done a great service for the community that day, but the inevitable consequences of that meant at least a little talk with the cops. Luckily the police were respectful and effusively grateful, there wasn't much they could have done to stop a 40-foot gorilla anyway. And since Wail had gotten rid of him, there was nothing they really needed to do except investigate. Over Jade Dragon's shoulder, Wail spotted Dr. Metropolis rising out of the pavement to begin repairing the damage the giant ape had wrought before his abrupt banishment into the Atlantic Ocean. Just another day in Freedom...

Summers raised an eyebrow; though it was hard to tell what had prompted the gesture. "Mr. Marston. Despite your efforts to argue otherwise, you are not a child. Your life-saving record proves that much. I will not insult your intelligence by lecturing you on the value of an education, proper hygiene, or anything else you may expect to hear about in high school. Let me instead ask you in return: are you worth the thousands of hours of physical, emotional, and intellectual labor that will end in your graduation from this institution?" He gave Darwin that look again. "I believe you are, and I encourage you to believe that about yourself." The room fell dead silent, Summers not in any hurry to give Darwin cues for the conversation.

At the news the superpowered teenagers who'd so mercilessly destroyed an entire armored column with air support weren't going to be staying, Travis paused for a moment and looked up at the shrine to the fallen mystery men along one wall. A long, silent pause stretched in the empty bunker, before Midnight looked back at the heroes. "Do the damage you can. Our evacuation to the interior will have begun when they came for me. They will need time to finish..." A bare pause, and then "Have heard Ubermensch may be coming personally to collect the bomb. Will have to move fast." He pulled his mask back down, and the scarred, past-his-prime veteran was lost before the dark-faced mystery man. "Midnight. Familiar with Grue technology?" When Trevor didn't disagree, Travis went on, "Appropriated a stealth system from flying saucer. Will take the Cruiser with passengers. Need assistance in deployment." On closer inspection, the Grue technology was probably how this heavily-armed car had been able to pass unnoticed under the Nazi thumb for so long. While Trevor and his grandfather's shadow worked to prepare the Night Cruiser for what might be its last deployment, Edge walked over and stared at that monument to so many fallen heroes. For once he had nothing to say, so instead he tentatively offered to help with the modifications to the Cruiser. He didn't know a damn thing about technology, but he was able to intuitively have just the right tools on hand, even before the Midnights could look his way.

Sovem, Just something to stress. "I'm 18 but act like a 14 year old" is something that could go...badly. How do you see that as being played?

Okay, he is stunned and knocked back 189 miles.

"Feh, enough of this!" spat Heka as Diehard swung and missed at Wisp. "This plan has failed, and I, for one, do not wish to spend yet another evening washing my robes clean of our peerless leader's vomit!" He began making gestures in the air, muttering ancient arcane words of mystic power. "I shall meet you all again," he promised the teens as glowing sigils of pyramid power surrounded the Fearsome Five and they began to fade away. "But next time, it will be under our terms..." A few moments later, and they all were gone, even the unconscious Angel. With the bad guys gone, a cheer went up from the now-rescued hostages. "Hooray! We're saved!"

She is bound and helpless, thank god

Edge was normally a fearless young man, counting on luck and pluck to get him everywhere, but he'd learned in recent years to be a little more thoughtful in these situations. "Sure, I can do that. Just give me a minute." He hmmed and waggled his fingers like a bad stage magician, only his perfect earnestness keeping it from being funny. As he gestured, the air around him warped and woofed, growing solid and substantial even as Supercape looked on, until at last Edge was standing there inside an old-timey spacesuit, complete with bubble helmet, cut to match the colors of his costume. "Okay, this should protect me. Do you have the exact coordinates, maybe a picture?"

Wail is up

Suddenly, just what Jade Dragon had feared would happen happened: the great gorilla gave a terrible roar and tore his way entirely out of the earthen bonds in which she had been entrapping him. "I WILL CRUSH YOU SECOND, LITTLE BIG MAN!" the giant ape promised Wail while pointing a mammoth finger his way, "BUT FIRST I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE ON THE TINY SPECK THAT DARED IMPRISON THE AWESOME POWER OF GORILLON! ROAAAAR!" And with that, huge drops of saliva trailing from his gaping jaws, massive fangs bared, the gorilla that walked like a mountain leapt for the nimble archer, fists like boulders nearly tearing her limb from limb as she just dodged his powerful blows.

Erde's Midnight was silent, his face implacable as he rested in the shadows behind him, seeming to merge with them for a moment before he made a decision. He rose to his feet, neatly sliding his twin .45s into the holsters at his waist. He reached up and peeled away his mask, revealing the scarred, battered face of Travis Hunter beneath. He was in his prime in the 1950s; sixty years younger than the nonagerian Trevor knew, but somehow in his eyes the weather-beaten man before them looked even older. "Control has been a luxury I haven't always had. Midnight." He studied the others, giving Mark in particular a suspicious look, before focusing back on the young man who bore his legacy. "Few weeks ago. Something fell from the sky. One of my men saw it; saw a Wehrmacht patrol take it. It's on Von Braun Island. Where they launch their V-3s to spy on us, and burn whatever pockets of resistance remain." He shook his head, and seemed to force himself to speak in a fashion easier for the others to understand. "Thought it might be the Unity back for Round 2 with the Ubersoldaten till I heard from Jimmy's boy. I can get you onto the island. If Midnight and his friends tell me the world needs saving...we'll save the world. Whatever it takes. How long can you stay?"

Heyzel took both armor and taser, dismissing his sword and natural armor both to fasten them on. There was nothing to do about his wings, which wouldn't support him in the air underground, so he folded them behind him gracefully. Luckily, he knew from his previous visits that the power nullification inside would not actually impede the internal workings of his angelic body. While he had no objection to mortality as such, aging to death as soon as he stepped into the building would surely make things more complicated for everyone. "The Bee-Keeper is a master planner," said the angel, "for certain values of those words. He can be unpredictable when in his madness." "If he has evidence of his innocence, enough to convince a judge," Wallace said, "he goes back to Providence. We have enough issues with overcrowding that we're not going to keep a crazy battlesuit wearer here if the worst he's ever done is inject people with a venom that turns them into bees. Are you sure you're over that?" she asked Heyzel, just a little suspiciously. "Completely," said the angel. "I have been cleansed of all earthly contaminants in the healing waters of the divine streams of Heaven." He smiled faintly, then added, "Though I fear I will never look at honey quite the same way again.

"You want casual insults, Mr. Puppy Chow? Have I got some casual insults for you!" She fell back, laying down a steady stream of bullets that spanged off Fenris' armor, vibrating the man inside without actually hurting him. "Your hospital is a den of drug addicts and prostitutes! I liked your armor better when it was on my dog last night, you stuffed shirt fat-nosed twerp! I'm going to take all you've got and shove it where the sun does not shine, then launder it to get the stink out of and sell it on the street! Ahahaha!" She jumped around as she fired, even as patients and staff ran in terror from the crazy gun lady.

Move Action: Sneak Thief Taunts Fenris. DC 25 Bluff/Sense Motive to beat. Standard Action: She Power Attacks him with her pistols, this time for non-lethal. 28.. Blast 4+5+2=11=DC 26 Tou save from Fenris.