Avenger Assembled
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Elric's eyes popped wide and he gave a surprised shriek at the sight of Sparkler. "Oh my god! Who are you?!" Then, after an instant's thought, he was off the bed, practically grabbing for her. No, it doesn't matter, you have to get me out of here, she stops to check the door every couple of minutes, it doesn't-" Then things happened quickly. Merlin's distress signal from outside, reporting danger and that something bad was happening, arrived almost the same instant that something hit Raina hard, shoving her inside the room with superhuman speed. Turning around, she could see something in the doorframe that looked like Anna Cline in her prime. The blonde hair, the smile, the bright blue eyes; except this version of Anna appeared to be missing the left side of her face, exposing a hard, grey-tinted metallic skull and shining, perfect teeth. She was wearing a black cocktail dress that looked like it belonged to the mid-1960s, and a single gold tiara was perched on top of her head. "Well well well," said the mechanical version of Anna, cocking her head with an audible whirr as she studied Sparkler. "What have we here?"
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In the bedroom, she found Elric Marshall, looking shabby but not in the way she might have expected. He was unshaven with several days growth of beard, wearing a tattered T-shirt and jeans and looking exhausted. Sitting on his bed, legs drawn up to his chest, eyes downcast, he looked more like a frightened child than an elite hacker or sexual deviant, for that matter. He had a vivid purple bruise along one side of his face in the shape of a hand, and was looking down at what looked like a disassembled land-line telephone on the bedspread in front of him. "Useless," he was muttering, "utterly useless." This room was the room of the Clock Queen fanboy she'd been promised, the pictures looking polished and bright, albeit certainly faded with time - except for the ones that were hanging on the walls, their protective glass frames broken by a sharp impact.
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Raina managed to open the apartment door, finding herself inside what looked like the cleanest, neatest bachelor pad she'd ever entered. The space down here was about equal to a live-in hotel suite in a more built-up area of the city. The front room was sparsely furnished; a big-screen television with a high-end gaming system, a battered old couch, a folding table just big enough to eat whatever the guy cooked in the microwave and stovetop by the refrigerator in the built-in kitchenette. The walls were bare, though faded marks showed where pictures might have recently been affixed, and the lights dark. When she entered the apartment, Raina herself was silent, requiring a slow, tentative entry as she just avoided what sounded like it would have been a creak from the door. The door locked from the outside. Meanwhile, Merlin reported that the systems out in the garage were actually not running on the house wifi network at all, but a high-end low-level supertech system that must have come from Archetech or HAX a few computer generations ago. He had definitely been able to pin down geography, however; the messages setting up the auction had come from the IP address of the computer systems in the garage, but on closer inspection, the earlier messages from Elric had come from the computer network inside the house...
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Excellent, excellent...
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Okay, let's see Computers for Merlin and Disable Device for Raina.
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"Singularities are often gateways to other dimensions," said Steve softly. "I can give you the...energy signatures, to ensure that the chosen portal does not lead to the Terminus. It would be unwise to attract attention beneath the Doom Coil." He shifted in his seat, the chair creaking slightly, and said, "The long-distance transportation effect must be accurate enough to deliver the Forge directly to the event horizon. If it should drift into deep space, it might land on a world large enough for material conversion and full awakening." He blinked and behind his eyes saw the vast staring maw of a Doomworld, tearing its way through the populated star systems nearby. He put his chin to his hand and said, "How deep beneath the planet's surface can you send the effect?"
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"Hell no!" said Ashley, showing more emotion at the thought of calling in Callie Summers than almost anything else they'd encountered that day. Just what I goddamn need, Raven showing up at my day job and judging me! Maybe she'd send Alec too, and Charlie the sidekick, and the whole world would get to see her holding a gun on someone who might actually be working for the federal government. "But you watch him, and you tell me if he blinks." "Okay. My protectee is out of the way. So let's talk like adults." Her face curled in a smile behind the mask. "This is one of the most protected cities in the world, and Judith Claudia Cahill is protected by the best protective service in the world. If you thought a cyborg assassin was stalking my protectee, your responsibility was to tell the Secret Service, local law enforcement, or the Freedom League." The League certainly knew about Judy now, in a conversation that had been...complicated. "None of those things happened. Which tells me that either you, your boss, or your boss's boss is off the reservation right now. " She took a breath and lowered, but did not put away her weapon. "Judy's backup team is calling AEGIS by now. They're going to be here soon. Am I going to be able to tell them you cooperated?"
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"If you are interested in exploring future arachnid-themed technology," said Eira animatedly, "I have been making some designs along those lines in service of my own future incarnation." She gestured in the air, summoning the room's holograms to create what indeed looked for all the world like a humanoid-sized spider, a chrome-tinted creature of eight limbs and eyes. "This is just a test bed for the humanoid frame," she added reassuringly, "I am not going to turn myself permanently into some sort of...giant inhuman spider, ha-ha..." She trailed off, brushing her hair behind a pierced ear, before adding, "Anyway! Your motorcycle sounds a fine idea and the common centipede will carry its young, so you have a theme for your sidecar already! We could take your drawings here and expand them in size and dimension..."
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Eira folded her hands behind her back, looking uncommonly like Miss Americana, and smiled. When she spoke, it was without the rancor of before, but feeling curled behind it all the same. "We are not all human, yes? Magenta knows. But your point is taken." She considered, studying the subject of her conversation as much as she was studying Ryder, then said, "Have you ever considered an arachnid design for your bugs? I have always found spiders to be a fascinating order. They are so often seen as frightening creatures, caring only for the hunt. But some care for their young, others for their mates, and they build things unlike any other creatures of their kind on this planet. They are not as...monstrous as people think they are."
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ooc All Bad Bad Nevertheless (OOC)
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Kingston
That works, it attacks the building instead, and you find the unconscious Sea Devil at the end of your turn! You're up now, what next? -
Taking shelter inside the building, which seemed to be an abandoned office park, seemed to be the right course of action, but even that wasn't perfect. Singularity could hear the creature outside, then felt the building shake as something large and heavy struck it. It knew she was in there, but seemed to be having trouble finding her. Aquaria herself was hard to find too, having evidently landed on a rather large pile of debris and gone sliding off bonelessly into the darkness. "You can't hide forever," it taunted her as she raced through corridors of what might have once been a call center but now held only broken, crumbling equipment overgrown with plants from wind-blown dirt and rapidly fleeing small animals. "Shadow of a thing that has been; broken reflection of a great hero." Something lashed across the corridor through an exterior wall, forcing Jessie to retreat and turn another way, a shadowy thing that didn't seem to have any particular shape. "Do you think the real Erin would run and hide like this?" Luckily the cheerfully-glowing lights of Aquaria's power armor were a sure guide, and within a few seconds Jessie had found her sprawled-out, still-armored, still breathing, but decidedly not-communicating friend.
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When they were all inside, the former Omegadrone settled himself into a chair near Miss Americana, one of the reinforced ones that only creaked slightly under his weight. He was a big man and heavy, slow in his movements outside of combat. He didn't fidget. But he did roll his neck, making an audible, distinctly mechanical sound, before he spoke in a soft, rumbling voice. "Thank you for summoning us," he said to Voltage. "What do you propose?"
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Sea Devil's hand twitched around her trident as anger washed over her, chasing away the dissonant song of too many voices around the great beast. She didn't know how it knew who and what she was, and all she had lived through, but for a moment she wasn't thinking of Jessie, or Project Freedom, or the mission. She wanted to shut that lying mouth! Without a sound save an inarticulate snarl, she leaped at the beast and landed on its head, driving her trident deep into one eye before leaping away against a grab from some shadowy tentacle. She leaped away, her suit catching against the nearest wall, and bellowed "Shut up!" in a voice loud enough to be heard across the otherwise-silent streets of this part of Kingston. The creature was indeed badly wounded, black ichor pouring around the sides of an eye that was not actually pierced but bleeding an unholy, shadowy stuff that pooled along the ground, and it roared in frustration before suddenly breaking into a long, low, feminine laugh. "Such fury, beast, such rage! Perhaps you remember your nature after all!" It had reshaped itself now into an image that struck a chord of fear in Aquaria's heart: the form of a statuesque young woman with flowing blonde hair that seemed to float behind her, (albeit one still bleeding from its left eye socket) her body melting itself into the shape of the watery combat forms of the Atlantean royal family. "But you know what happens to Deep Ones on the surface! They are beaten, caged, and mocked for Atlantean amusement!" Then the creature slapped at Aquaria - and even inside her armor, somehow she was on her knees before Nereid, screaming and biting with impotent fury as the Atlantean princess beat her into unconsciousness as Surfacers cheered in celebration, and then, armor and all, she smashed downward through the roof on which she'd taken shelter, disappearing somewhere into an abandoned building, into blackness. Still bleeding, the creature turned to face Singularity.
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ooc All Bad Bad Nevertheless (OOC)
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Kingston
Ominous! Okay: Sea Devil: 21 Momento Mori: 18 Singularity: 15 I'll say MM's taunts have rattled Aquaria to the point where she's not going to try anything clever. She'll leap onto it and stab it with her trident, then hop away so she's not in extended melee with it. That'll take her move action Standard Action: 32 Oh hey, a crit! Tou vs 32: 19 Staggered and dazed! Hey, Sea Devil actually managed to hurt it. Except on Momento Mori's turn, she gets knocked out by it. Have an HP, Singularity, and you're up as soon as I post IC for Sea Devil and Momento Mori. -
ooc All Bad Bad Nevertheless (OOC)
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Kingston
Seems like initiative time, because Aquaria is definitely not going to take that lying down! Sea Devil: 21 Momento Mori: 18 -
The thing that came boiling out of the ground with a rumble of shifting earth and masonry did briefly resemble a Deep One warbarge; then it looked like a demonic mole, then a variety of other things. It was big, perhaps the size of a medium-sized car, and seemed to shift from shape to shape. It wasn't fluid like Daphne or other shapeshifters Singularity had seen, rather it seemed to genuinely be many things at once. It was talking aloud, seemingly to itself: "no more past, no more past, the forge cuts all ties -" Sea Devil stepped back, shaking her head and back and forth. "It does not sound right..." she croaked uncertainly. Being the one in power armor, it was easy enough for her to send the signal to the rest of Project Freedom that something very bad was happening, and it was happening right here, and for a moment as the chaotic song around the thing swept over her senses, it was all she could do.
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Eira had assumed Ryder had been talking about his sister, but had figured it was workplace harassment he'd been referring to - but decided there was no need to dwell on that. "I thought as much." She smiled, honestly. "A touch of the knight is a natural trait in a superhero. Forget about it," she said, waving her hand. "I have certainly made enough of an ass of myself today already." She began cracking her knuckles thoughtfully, watching Danica's machine print. "I thought for sure she would want that förbannad thing."
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"Is that so?" asked Eira softly. "Well." She steepled her hands in front of her for a moment, fingertips pointing at Ryder. "If you do not want me to joke about your relationships, you can be assured it will not happen again. I do not want to hurt you, Ryder. But you are, by all evidence currently available to me, a boy. It is easy for you to forget about gender, because yours is the default, yes? Even in your language, even in Freedom City, English makes it the superhero, and not the superheroine." She smiled thinly and spoke with firm authority. "Because I am a girl, I can never forget. She let out a sigh that must have been reflexive rather than natural, and looked away.
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"They are not real feelings, yes?" asked Eira acidly. "Just the sort of things that a toy girl might be programmed to feel." She looked away for a moment, scowling, and turned to the machines that were busily printing what was admittedly their mutual work on Danica's behalf. She walked away, then turned back, a hand on her hip and the other outstretched. "You are such a boy, explaining to a girl how to talk about another girl. Did that not raise any questions in your mind?"
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The OOC
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Aquaria hopped up onto the roof, carefully balancing as the adhesive pads on the soles of her armor clung to a still-standing pillar. It was best to do this in the air, she'd found, so that the damage done didn't dig too deeply into the Earth. Once she was in position, she raised her trident and bellowed an eldritch cry to the stars above. She had had quite a bit of conversation with the Surface mystics and shamans once she'd found her trident during the invasion by the forces of Destruction some years earlier, but no one could actually prove that she was 'damaging the fabric of space' or 'committing unholy blasphemies' (or lots of other long, tedious Surfacer phrases that usually meant they had no idea what they were talking about and were just flapping their flabby lips at each other), so she'd been able to keep it. A handy thing for occasions like this! As she hopped away from the building, something seemed to happen inside it that could best be described as "being crushed by an invisible kraken" - from Singularity's perspective, muscular, suckered arms erupted from the building's crumbling windows and doors, wrapping themselves around the crumbling structure, and pulled inward. There was a crunch and a crumble, a distinct sound of a noisy wet shlurp as if a large mouth somewhere was swallowing the building down, and then abruptly the fallen building was gone, minus a few shreds of masonry on the outside and a few scraps that had missed the internal cleansing. Aquaria struck the ground with her trident approvingly, landing next to Jessie with a little hop. They were far ahead of the other Project Freedom alums at work, and all seemed - Aquaria suddenly fell silent, crouching low over the ground at their feet. "Did you hear that?" Even on the Surface, Aquaria could hear very well indeed.
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A doomforge squats obscenely amid the rubble of a fallen crystal castle, its once-proud defenders dead or transformed into technological terrors by the will and power of Omega. The world's fallen champion stands, his weapon bearing the hearts of his lost loves, alongside an approving Shadivan Steelgrave. There is movement in the rubble, and Steelgrave gestures to his personal guard; a hulking brute among the cybernetic abominations at his command. Without a word, the guard steps forward and picks up the still-living creature from beneath the debris that had sheltered it, a smaller defender of this last stand. It looks back at its master for a command. "Do as Omega wills," says Steelgrave, his voice deceptively soft behind his Exterminator armor. The drone looks between the forge and its prisoner, and then strikes what it carries against the ground again and again until nothing is left but organic remains. It is conscious of its master's "hm" as it returns to his side watching, waiting. Above, the red skies of the Terminus beckon as fleets of Omegadrones fly overhead. In Miss Americana's office in the Lab, Steve's eyes snapped open at Voltage's words, his dark, lined face the implacable mask that meant deep things were stirring inside his mind. Slowly, he unclenched his fingers from the arms of the chair where he had been sitting. "I need to go with you," he said, rising to his feet, knowing his wife would know all too well where his mind had been. "I cannot sit here while It is discussed." He put his hand against the wall for a moment and added, "But I will follow."
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In retrospect, it might have been better if the cameras, or at least their human operators, had stayed - but Aquaria and Jessie had no way of knowing that this morning. When the speech was finished. Sea Devil gave a deep bow to the crowd, trying her best to seem harmless and friendly, and as Miz Wainwright had asked let the Surfacers do the talking about Surface business. Miz Wainwright had been the first Surfacer who had taken an interest in the Deep One screaming in grief and regret in a Surface jail, the first human who had asked her her name by writing it out, the one who had helped her learn to speak the tongue of the Surface-Men. It wasn't necessarily true that Aquaria would do anything the aged Surface-Woman asked, but it was certainly true she would do almost anything for the woman who had saved her life and put her together with her best friend. And then she and Singularity were off, leaving behind the applauding crowd and heading deeper into the ruins of Kingston, with only the orbiting whine of drones overhead connecting them to the rest of Freedom City. Their work was going to be recorded and then rebroadcast to show the good works of the people of Project Freedom, which was a fine enough thing if you didn't mind the creeping ambiance of the looming Doomforge, which reminded Aquaria too much of a parody of Lemurian architecture, its squat shape all strange rectangles and too-straight lines. In the middle of an abandoned, half-overgrown street, Aquaria was careful to keep her helmet fully on as she paused to take in the area. "Over there?" she suggested, pointing to a nearby building some two or three stories tall that seemed to have been cut in half through the middle then allowed to settle on itself. "If you knock down the sides, I can destroy the pieces," she offered. She shifted her feet uneasily and added, "There is space under the ground here. We should be careful."
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ic Return to Neverworld: Never/Forever
Avenger Assembled replied to RocketLord's topic in The Realms Beyond
"Break the chains," said Eira thoughtfully, "and it will no longer be a slave. The automata will act as a distraction..." The automatons were, to the survivors of Victori, like something out of a scientific romance. Eira had cursed the materials that had limited her design, but she knew the next generation would be even better. They were taller and more liquid-looking than Frankenstein's machines, bodies pitched forward like the figureheads of some new sports car, metallic shells made of chrome showing hardly any signs of the workings within. It had been quite an achievement to charge each internal battery with the limited resources of Victori, but she had found her ways, building a vast diesel engine below the castle that gave it power enough for many surprises. Soon there would be atomics, and then more besides that - but first they had to win the battle. Eira had dressed herself for this occasion, piling her hair high on her head and dying it a brilliant shade of sterling silver, a coloration she had matched around her eyes and mouth. With a gesture, she threw off her bulky outer town and the labcoat underneath, revealing a tightly clinging silver bodystocking that matched the coloration of her army. She stepped up to the big radio microphone in front of her and raised her voice in a shout, broadcasting simultaneously by radio to reach the hidden receiver in each unit. "MASKINER! FÖRSVARA DIN DROTTNING!" They spread their wings, internal combustion engines roaring to life, and took off on vertical takeoffs that made a huge smile crack Eira's face. Raising her fist to the sky, she spread her own silvery wings and took off, disp -
ic Te Whakaekenga mai i te Tonga (IC)
Avenger Assembled replied to Kaede Kimura's topic in Elsewhere
Sea Devil pointed to the nearby band with her trident and boomed "Behold!" She and Singularity had traveled together for many years, so she was able to stage a perfect landing in front of the group with Jessie at her side. Facing down the giants, Aquaria struck her trident on the ground and let the front part of her helmet snap open, the better to show her true Lemurian face before these giants. "I am the Sea Devil!" she declared in a booming bass voice like the croaking of a gigantic frog. She repeated herself in her native tongue, the better to let them know exactly who it was they were facing. "I come with mighty companions, Singularity greatest among them!" She bared her teeth as she spoke, a show of strength to let these hungry giants know that they were no round-toothed mammals to be taken by surprise! Well, most of her companions were round-toothed mammals, but they all seemed like pretty stern stuff. She struck the ground with her trident and declared, "Where is your chief?"