Avenger Assembled

That makes 9 for Freedom Angel.

Hours later, after yet another chat with his family, Citizen hovered over the island-city of Tronik, listening to the sounds of the city echoing up from below. He'd caught himself, or rather the many confused images of him, on the 'Net that night; fantastic stories of the flying man who'd caught the bus and cured the mutant (Leroj and his sylphs had had a busy night) were making the rounds of all the networks despite the Council's attempt to hush the whole matter up. Tronik had its own superhero now, even if they didn't yet have a word in their language for it. Gina was right, with what she told Leroj. Those aren't mindless programs down there, those are people who live in a machine. He smiled, and dived downward, still testing the way his powers worked at home. Time to show them all we can be.

It wasn't easy making casual table chatter with three angels at the table, but say what you will for angels, they were at least very charismatic. Heyzel talked about the work he'd been doing in the Middle East before his call back to the Heavens, something which he admitted hadn't been going that well. "People want to live in peace, even politicians and military leaders. But governments, nations, causes, they are stern taskmasters that care not for the well-being of humanity. I did all I could, but I think the work will take men, not angels."

With Dragonfly gone and Leroj giving them some privacy to play with his new friends, Sharl stepped close and gave Miss Americana a quick hug. He wouldn't have done that if Gina had been here in the flesh, he knew how she felt about that, but this was different for her...even if it was all-too-real for him. "I'll stay in touch," he promised her. "Even if it's just texts. This isn't the end of a story," he said a little shakily. "It's the start of a new one. I'll see you soon, Miss Americana," he promised her. "Either in here, or out there."

He demonstrated that he did so by taking out the Tronik-styled 'cellphone' Gina had programmed for him, one that had a direct line to Gina's computer systems. "I won't leave home without it," he promised her. "I'll keep it close at hand." said Sharl, who was too much the teenage boy to give in to the tears he wanted to shed. Instead he hugged Miss A, giving her a searching look. "I'll call you if anything ever comes up," he promised. "Or if, you know...I just need to talk. It's not going to be easy being the only superhero here...but at least I had a really good teacher." He smiled bravely. "Thank you for being my friend, Miss Americana. Thank you for making me who I am today." For his part, Leroj was startled, then amused by the little sylph. "Well, hello there!" he said, automatically petting the little thing as if it was a cat. "You're quite friendly, aren't you?" He hmmed, and studied the code himself, experimenting with a brief cloning that turned into two identical little sylphs, both sitting on his shoulders and making a noise that sounded distinctly like purring. "Yes, I think I can..." One of them butted his cheek, and he resumed scratching it. "Yes, I think I can come up with a working relationship with these. Thank you," he added to Dragonfly, then to the others. "All of you. After lifetimes alone, now I know I'm not anymore...and neither are our people."

Freedom Angel was on one knee as they came back in, picking up the feathers he'd shed in his nervousness. "This is nothing like the voudon raids," he said, shaking his head. "The pagan pantheons have long-threatened Heaven's walls, and of course the forces of the Adversary have been attempting to climb the mountain for millennia. This is something much worse than that," he added, a look of momentary disgust on his angelic face. "If this had been going on when I left, I'd never have gotten permission to leave in the first place." "Something has them stirred up," said Jeanne, her voice that of an experienced soldier. "Something on this plane, on the Prime Material, has the forces of the Unspeakable One more agitated than even the oldest angels have seen. We've been concerned their master might be planning to slip his bonds and attack our walls directly. But so far, with the grace of God, it's been only the weaker ones: the Yellow one, the priest of the Star-Spawn, and the rest. It's been hard. Some of those we care for have been taken below. But the trust has been kept. No blessed soul has so much as known fear from the assaults of the enemy." She looked to Fleur and said with a maternal smile, "Yes, it's been refreshing. My son has been diplomat first and warrior next for quite some time." She ruffled Heyzel's curly black hair affectionately. "Blake Salazar was lucky to escape the taint of corruption when he did," said Freedom Angel to Nick, blushing a little at his mother's attention. "If all that had remained on his soul, he might be facing a grim eternity now." To Fleur, he said, "I might still be there now, if not for this, and for what we've decided. Even with our walls under threat, Heaven can't pretend that we have nothing to do with Earth. I'm still needed here, and now that I have Mother and Father's reassurance, I will be staying."

Tempted as Sharl was to rejoin his family, he stuck by the others as they finished repairing the city, all of them invisible and insubstantial to the gathering crowd of shocked people below. He was vaguely conscious that everyone down there was talking about him, or at least that "flying citizen!" who had caught the falling bus, but he was mostly focused on the work and the reality of repairing the city. When they were done, his family would be safe, his city would be safe, and he even (he mused as he studied the older gentleman who was showing him segments of particular Tronik code) would have someone around who knew the truth about the city. But, of course, when they were done, for all that he'd be back in the fifty millions of Tronik, and back with his family to boot, in many ways he'd be very much alone. Eventually, as the darkness of Tronik's night settled overhead and as Miss A and Dragonfly began to feel some of the fatigue of their physical bodies leaking through, the coding was finally done: though more work would have to be done to get the habitat itself coded in, the extra memory would be there: no more outbreaks of bad programming if they kept at their repairs, and with the prospect of reasonable expansion as the years went by. The job was done.

"The skies are red," agreed Harrier, "for there is no sun for ancient Nihilor save the black flame of the Coil itself. Distantly in the skies are the hundred worlds, the last relics of a million universes pulled apart into darkness and cast adrift in the cold and the dark. Those worlds pay homage to Omega in blood and treasure, worshipping him as their lord and master for his pleasure. Their strongest and bravest become Omegadrones, their weakest and most cowardly rewarded for their craven cruelty with Omega's favor." His voice changed as he spoke, like a man reciting an epic poem. "Beyond them is the Warp, the eternal red mist that devours the mind of even drones who drift too far from the black flame of Nihilor." He rounded on Fulcrum. "Nihilor itself is a world wrapped in the stretched skins of still-living gods. Beneath the great and terrible palaces of the Annihilists, the proles crawl and fight, the luckiest among them slaves and the unluckiest..." He looked down at his hands, covered in those lines, before he said, calming faintly, "The Terminus is death. Those of us who lived there lived as maggots in the rotting corpses of gigabillions."

Harrier: Super-Senses 3 (Terminus Awareness [mental], Detect Terminus 2 [visual]) [3 pp] Since Visual senses are Ranged by default, Ranged Visual Detect Terminus should just be 1PP. Doktor'd!

With his glasses and coat on, Sharl looked as anonymous as any other citizen on the street, but he didn't object to what was going on. "Yeah, I guess we'd better do that," he said, still a little breathless after his spectacular catch. Behind them Leroj was repairing the damage to the bus as the shocked people inside made a hasty evacuation onto the pedestrian walkway where Sharl had deposited them. "I can't believe I caught that whole thing," he said, looking back at the bus in shock. "It's so big!" He caught sight of Leroj, a question on his face, and the Tronik sysadmin introduced himself. When he learned that this was the man who'd called the Curator to save the city, Sharl hesitated just a moment, then shook his hand in a very Freedom City way. "Good to know I'm not alone here." And with that damage repaired, they were up in the air again!

"Yes," said Heyzel, shooting Nick a curious look, as if the discussion that his father was the embodiment of death itself meant nothing. "Did I never-no, I suppose I didn't. Yes, my father is the Malak al-Maut, He Who Has Four Faces and Four Thousand Wings, the all-conquering Angel of Death." He shrugged, looking at his father. "I never really thought it as special. It was his calling in the choir, and how I met my mother. I suppose I should introduce her as well, if I am not to look an ungrateful son! Fleur de Joie, Nick Cimitere, this is my mother Jeanne." The newly-healed angel nodded, holding her husband's hand, and said, "It is a pleasure. I would take your food," she added to Fleur, "as long as I do not leave your home, the power that keep my husband and I here will allow us your hospitality. Your pardon for the couch," she said as she followed Fleur into the kitchen, "I have not bled so in many centuries. The color will fade in a few hours, but the power of the relics will remain." "DOES IT SURPRISE YOU THAT I WOULD HAVE A WIFE AND SON, NICK?" asked the angel of death, his black wings folded behind him like a cape. "TO BE ALONE AMONG THE ANGELS IS A GATEWAY TO THE FALL." He eyed Nick and said, "YOU SHOULD TAKE A SPOUSE, NECROMANCER. TO LIVE ONLY IN DEATH IS UNHEALTHY FOR A MORTAL."

"THEIR MASTER HAS LAID SIEGE TO THE GATEWAYS OF HEAVEN," boomed the angel of death with a terrible finality. "THE WAR HAS BEEN DIFFICULT." As Jeanne D'Arc's wounds healed, she joined her husband and son in a prayer of thanks before she sat up, taking Fleur's hand. "Thank you, Fleur de Joie," she said, her accent now definitely sounding French. "I am grateful for your help." She laid a hand on Fleur's stomach for just a moment, then rose to confer with her husband in a language that wasn't. That left Heyzel to look to Fleur and Nick. "I was called away from my work in the Middle East to deal with that. It's been..." He rubbed his eyes. "Very difficult," he admitted, losing another feather behind him. "As much as defending Creation matters, losing the connection to the material world has been so hard. It's all brightness and purity there, but...this is where people actually live." He shrugged, looking a little helpless. "How have things been?"

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! The chimes were everywhere, violently interrupting the Tulink family reunion and Sharl's fantastic tales of another dimension. The face of the city's auto-militia came on the wallscreens as the exterior walls blanked to transparent, showing the citizens the disaster coming their way. AIRBUS COLLISION IMMINENT. PLEASE EVACUATE- "Oh no!" called Sharl over the sound of the alarms, "they'll never get the building empty in time!" His parents and sister, all looking at each other, knew that was much was true. "Sharl, your friends," said Aba, "can you call them? If they can change so much, can they catch it?" There was no point in running; they were waiting for the emergency elevator to form up on their floor so they could get away. "I...no," said Sharl decisively, "I'll never reach them in time. They're too far away. This is a job for me." And with that, the teenager took a running start and flying leap and flew right out the window. He was fast in the air, very fast, much more so than he'd been in Freedom City. He thought of Miss Americana, Gina, the other heroes of the city, as he turned and buried his shoulders in the onrushing plane. So heavy, so heavy, so heavy... He pushed as hard as he could, feeling the tremendous mass at his back slow and slow, even as the huge wall of the sector before him got closer and closer. Stronger here, so much stronger, got to catch it, got to BELIEVE in myself! Do what Miss A would do! And with that thought and one last outpouring of tremendous energy, the bus slowed to a stop behind him! He caught it before it could start to fall, his muscles screaming with the exertion, and began to lower it to the walkways far below, heedless of the city of cameras all watching their savior with electronic eyes...

Round 1 1 minute to impact! I'll say the hoverbus weighs about 50 tons, requiring a total of STR 55 to hold it up. Using this sheet for Sharl, he could do that with extra-effort. But it's also traveling fast; let's say at Flight 5. Which means it's time for some countering. Move Action: At Flight 5, Sharl flies up to the thing and puts his back into it. Standard Action: Countering! 23 for Sharl vs. 21. OK, it's slowed to Flight 4. Round 2 Countering Check: 17 vs. 11 Sharl wins again, and it's slowed to Flight 3 Round 3 24 vs. 23 Sharl wins again, barely! Flight 2 Round 4 Disaster! It's going to be too close... Round 5 Whew, Sharl wins again with 15 to 8 Flight 1 Round 6 19 to 20, son of a guuun Round 7 Son of a... OK, Sharl spends his last HP and rerolls that check. He beats 12 automatically and catches the bus with seconds to spare! He switches his Array to Super-Strength 4, uses extra effort (becoming Fatigued) and lowers the bus slowly to the Earth.

Her eyes snapped open as she looked at Fleur, face white with suppressed pain. "Your child will meet a boy when she is but a girl," she hissed in a strange, heavy accent. "They will be in love, but not know it until they are much older. Do not trust him until he know he loves her!" She flinched at that, and fell silent, but was soothed by Stesha and her son' reassuring presence. "When we're not at war, my mother follows mothers and their daughters," said Heyzel, giving her a worried look. "She must have been...Never mind. Listen to Stesha," he told his mother with an angel' authority and a son's love, "You need to rest. You've fought the fight for Good, just as you always do." He nodded at Nick's arrival and gave him space as well, folding his wings tightly behind him. "The passage from Heaven cleansed the acid from her wound, but the damage had been done already."

The angel of death opened the door for Nick, black vulture wings spreading behind him, eyes flashing with the empty gaze of Eternity. At least until he saw Nick. "HELLO, NICK." Had he been quite so tall and buff the last time they'd met? "I DIDN'T THINK TO SEE YOU AGAIN SO SOON." Past the wings of the Great End, Nick could see Fleur and Freedom Angel bending over a badly-burned female angel on Fleur's couch, Heyzel slowly and gently undoing his mother's armor one clasp at a time. "She held off the Giallo Imperatore alone when he broke through our lines, I couldn't believe it," Heyzel was muttering to Stesha as the shockingly deep injuries were revealed. "Father and I had to cut her free of his tentacles. When nothing we could do helped, you were the first person I thought of. Ssh, it'll be all right..." As her armor came off, revealing the full extent of her deep wound, she hissed something that was probably untranslatable. "Fleur de Joie is the finest healer on Earth, and she's bringing life herself now. She'll fix this."

The three computer experts spent quite some time talking about the problems of Tronik, taking the time out to straighten up the inverted super-freighter as they worked. With Leroj's help, what might have been the work of hours was only going to take a few minutes: they'd have Tronik straightened out and have plenty of time to join Sharl's family for supper before leaving him in his home. The old man was incredibly grateful to have someone with which to share his burdens, and full of the ideas he'd been powerless to act on for the decades of Tronik's confinement. Just as they were making their plans to integrate the expanded memory into Tronik, which would then be followed up by the creation of the 'island' there, suddenly Leroj's head jerked up. "Oh no! I've been so focused on the allocation that I missed-" And then the others felt it too, just a step behind the man with a permanent connection to the program: something was going wrong. He pulled up an image in the 'air' to show them the ongoing disaster: a large hoverbus, big as a jet back on Freedom City, was heading towards the massive silver bulk of a sector, and heading there fast. "There's a microfault in the programming of the engines, but it's spreading fast. If it strikes thewall, it'll spread directly into Sector 30 and the hundreds of thousand of people there. Oh no, oh no..." Suddenly, on the screen, the situation changed: a black dot, rapidly resolving into a humanoid figure, flew straight out of the sector wall and made a beeline for the out-of-control hoverbus!

Caradoc spent hours in Sanctuary, and was amazed at just how happy he felt. Flying around without fear of people below, joined in the air by baby bees as far as the edge of the clearing, it was all so wonderful inside his shiny suit of armor made by Miss Americana. At first his nerve failed him when he flew over the little village of survivors, but at the sight of a flying man in a knight's armor, all of the people below came out to stare and cheer! It was more than he could resist. There was only so much he could do to help, but between taking a few children too young to be working for rides and cutting down one very large tree, his visit there went well also. And then another flight with eagerly laughing beelings, until finally the sun was setting and they were headed for bed. He took that as his cue to fly back to Stesha's house.

She knew Freedom Angel well enough; Heyzel looking unusually stressed. From the feathers on the floor of her apartment, he'd shed a few in his worry. The other people there were new: the muscular, barrel-chested man in black in the corner, giving worried looks to the badly-injured woman on Stesha's couch. No, not a man and not a woman: the man's wings were as black as Heyzel's were white, looking more like great vulture wings than dove's, while both wore the sort of Romanesque armor that she associated with her friend the angel. "It's my mother," said Heyzel, taking her hand. "She was...she was wounded in a battle elsewhere," he explained as he led the healer to her side. "And none of our arts could cure her." The short, compact brunette was obviously in pain, and no wonder: it looked as though something made of acid had reached out and burned into her ribcage, right through metal armor. "Oh, you're a mother...Father?" The barrel-chested angel took a step back, carefully avoiding the near-presence of Fleur, and said snappishly, in a voice like the rumbling of thunder, "I DO KNOW MY WORK, BOY. IF YOUR FRIEND CAN HELP, LET HER HELP."

5/16/2011 Midtown His mother didn't complain, of course she didn't. There was no hiding the extent of her wound, though; the long, deep gouge of burning acid that had cut across her armor and into angelic flesh beneath, inflicting a wound terrible enough that surely any mortal would have died of shock at least. As it was, she simply bit her lip and stared wordlessly at father and son, the harsh reality of the material plane both dulling the agony of her wound and making its treatment all the more urgent. "CALL YOUR FRIEND," said Heyzel's father in that deep, booming voice he used in the material world. "BEFORE WE HAVE TO GO EVEN FURTHER BELOW TO FIND SUCCOR." For his part, the angel of Freedom was worried. He hadn't expected to find the place nearly deserted! Fleur de Joie was on patrol, or at least garden patrol, when her phone rang. Things had been quiet for the League in the last few months, quite a blessing with her baby growing closer and closer to fruition, and calls on her special League line hadn't come in that often. What was really peculiar, though was the caller ID that told her the call was coming from her own apartment. "Hello, Fleur? It's Heyzel." The Angel of Freedom had been out of town for much of the last few months, but she'd caught occasional glimpses of him on the international news. "I'm sorry to call you," he said, urgency in his rich, warm voice, "but I have a wounded soul who needs your help. Please come back to your apartment as soon as you can."

"It is a good place for growing," agreed Murdock. "Human, insect, or otherwise." He felt more confident on this world than he had on his own, or rather, his adopted planet, and his voice came with more authority. "I am sorry I could not help you more with your dilemma," he added, "but I am glad I could tell you what did not happen. This place has seen enough that it deserves to be free of the taint of the Terminus." Though he supposed the question made him a hypocrite, he asked, "How long may I stay?"

Shaen, it's a well-written, exciting thread introducing a dynamic new character! The surprise would be if people weren't reading it. Anyhow, my apologies as well for misunderstanding your intent. Go about your business!

Now that the timing all works out, I am interested in running Freedom Angel here.

"I guess that's true," said Citizen, a little discomfitted yet at the thought of being subject to artificial lifeform laws at all. "Do you guys have any synthetic students at the school? Like robots, or something? I know there aren't a lot of sentient programs out there, and most of them...most of them aren't very nice. I work with Protectron at the Lab," he said, "I dunno if you guys know him, he's a gold robot from space or something. We don't really know! But he's nice. He bakes a lot of cookies and makes sandwiches for the people who work there."

Leroj did his best to help, but it wasn't easy. The computer architecture with which he was familiar was very different than what Miss Americana and Dragonfly had worked with: as they'd seen, computers on Tronik were substantially different than their earthly varieties. But he wasn't just a teenager like Sharl, he was, or had been, one of the city's leading scientists, and of course he was talking to two women who were vast geniuses in their own right. His ideas for improving Tronik's systems were largely internal: he proposed that the new memory capacity be used to generate a 'habitat' to be discovered in the ocean by the plankton fleet; perhaps a crashed 'alien' starship or an undiscovered island. A largely empty, if habitable environment, would be the subject of much study, and then gradually colonized as population pressures in the city grew. In particular, an island that lacked the mass of complex 'technology' on Tronik itself would be much easier to build. "It will be a mystery to solve...but from what you've said, my people are more interested in those mysteries than I've believed." He was open to suggestions, though, and looked almost pathetically grateful for new ideas. He'd been without an ally or confidant here for a long, long time.