Avenger Assembled

"Okay, thank you," said Mark, giving his friend a grateful look. "That'll be good, I've been meaning to get to the lawn, but the rake and mowers and stuff are in the garage..." He ran his hand through his short sandy hair, looking for a way to keep himself calm. To Erin, he said the same, adding, "No, no, my mom's been working out of her studio at Castle, so all her artwork is there, and my dad's papers, we...we sent those to the League after he left the first time. Everything here can stay. I guess it's good we didn't get that dog after all." Mark looked around the house, taking several deep breaths. "It'll...it'll be okay. Things will work out."

"I've run into a few lycanthropes myself. So-called kitsune, people with an inherited condition that gave them visual illusions, an animalistic appearance, pyrokinesis..." Fusion shook her head. "Their ancestors had set up shop in dimensional pockets over half of Japan, telling themselves and everyone else they were magical to explain things that they didn't understand. Until we showed up, half of them didn't even know there was an outside world. The other half were still trapped in the same old-fashioned feudal paradigm that their ancestors had established. We set most of them right." As she dealt, she went on, "I've helped out with Atlantis recently. It was a difficult visit, but a lovely city. Have you ladies ever been?"

Upstairs in his room, Mark went through the motions of emergency planning that he'd been taught since he was a small child. He had his emergency suitcase under his bed, the one with a few changes of clothes in it and ID, as well as genetic ID markers and spiritual fetish objects in the event of a Grue invasion or a magical artifact. He lived his life at school without worrying about these things, but this was a real emergency, not one he could just pretend was another school issue like universes collapsing together or evil interdimensional duplicates or...no, this was his family going away. He cracked open the bag, saw the clothes from years earlier that might not even fit, the canned food that was probably a little old, and sighed, quietly. Of course it was. He hadn't bothered repacking this in years. Why would he? He was a superhero. What could happen? With his rather dusty bag under one arm, realizing that this emergency measure wasn't actually going to help anything, Mark turned and started back downstairs. Erin found that there were no perishables in the refrigerator, what had happened had taken place slowly enough for all the perishable food to be taken with or dumped out: there was even a fresh bottle of milk on top of the trash. As for Trevor, he found that several things were actually missing from his previous visit to the room. He couldn't sort out all of it; some things he remembered as Young Freedom trophies that Mark's dad had insisted on displaying alongside his own, and some older stuff that had belonged to Rick's father. Including (and the familiar face was why he recognized it) a personal picture of the late-stage Liberty League of the 1950s, just before the less-determined heroes had left his grandfather to fight his war alone.

The heroes could see something was wrong almost as soon as they were in the air: the highways leading into Freedom City were all clogged with traffic, some of it just with honking horns and police barricades, but further in the blockage was silent and still. The skies over Freedom City were quiet, with no heroes or airplanes in the sky, an ominous site given the nature of the city before them. Even birds were absent, and as they watched a flock of geese flew by beneath only to suddenly make a rapid, though not uncontrolled, descent into the leaves just beyond a line around the city. As soon as they were over that line, Dragonfly and Protectron both heard something. Not from their radios, not from their communicators, but rather a voice inside their heads. "-must-the-. You-obey-Mind. -Mind-all. -are-Mind. -with-Voice-the-." It was not the inviolable command it was evidently intended to be, rather, it was more like an annoying radio station they couldn't quite turn off. As they flew further towards the city, it sounded again, no louder, but all the more insistent.

Mark muttered gratefully, wiping his eyes and face with the tissue Erin had grabbed for him. At her words, he bit his lip. "But what if they..." His eyes widened, and he reached out to squeeze Trevor's hand on his shoulder. "No. No, that's stupid. If they come back, they can find me. If my dad is as powerful as he acts, he can just come find me wherever I am. I'd, uh, I'd better go back. I need to get my emergency suitcase..." He turned and all but bolted up the stairs, and for a second in the eerie house, the teens were reminded of another visit to the Lucas house, when Rick Lucas' unfolding power had combined with the looming threat of the Terminus to make another terrible moment for the family.

"It was all right. I'm looking forward to spring break. Even if I don't go home like the other kids do, at least it's a change. Things change so slowly back where I'm from, I expect everything to be on the move here." She was grateful for the food, and showed it, but studied Corbin carefully before saying, "Corbin, I appreciate all the work you did to bring all this here. And I'm definitely looking forward to the food. But you never have to worry about trying to impress me with material things." She smiled at him. "You're what I care about, and you're what I'm happy to see."

"...they both tried to get me to go," said Mark, sounding stricken. "They said this wasn't a place for our family anymore." He looked away, guilt thick in his voice. "I said this was crazy, that I wasn't going to just leave without knowing more. My dad said he didn't expect anything less of me, that I was acting how he'd raised me. My mom said she'd see me again soon, and they both, they both just left." He scrubbed his eyes, fighting back even more tears. "Going to some world I've never even heard of, so I couldn't even tell you how to find them. And I don't know how long they'll be gone, my mom talked like she was coming back, I think, but my dad...I don't know." He sobbed quietly. "I mean, we had a Grue scare a few years ago so the house is all paid for and everything, and the cars, but...but I don't know what I'm supposed to do now."

"Well, um, it was like this. My dad came back, and...and he took my mom." Mark shifted under Trevor's regard, feeling a stab of irrational guilt at incriminating his father, and an equally irrational guilt at worrying his friends. "Normally, um, I'd just have not said anything, since she wanted to go for a while and everything, but the thing was, he said why they had to go for a while." He fought the urge to wring his hands, and instead settled for pacing, "He said that the Terminus is going to come. And soon. And that our family wouldn't survive if we stayed here."

All was quiet and still for while, and it looked for a moment like no one was home in the Lucas house. After a noticeably long pause, Mark opened the door. Their usually ebuillent friend looked blotchy and tired, and it didn't look like he'd been taking very good care of himself the last couple of days. There was no sign of movement elsewhere in the house, indeed, many of the lights weren't even on. "Hey, you guys," said Mark, a little shakily. "Come on in." He took a few steps back from the door, gesturing for them to enter. "How are you? Are things good?" He crossed over and sat down on the couch in the living room, looking up at them.

"No, you don't really need to come in-costume or anything." Mark hadn't slept much the last couple of days; he wasn't quite sleep-deprived as such, but he was certainly a little punchy. He wobbled a little as he sat, and hugged the pillow on his lap a little tighter. "It's just a problem I have, kind of a personal problem...hey, is Trevor there with you? You should bring him too. We can all have a little party here. Or something."

Erin and Trevor were having lunch together the Monday after moving their relationship to the next level when Erin's cell phone (which she was luckily carrying) rang. It was Mark on the other end, Mark who neither Trevor nor Erin had seen that morning. "Oh hi Erin," said Mark, his voice sounding oddly warbly, and a little thick. "Um, how are things going? Is everything okay over there?" On his end of things, Mark was sitting in his room, staring at the wall and one of the many, many, many pictures of Young Freedom there. "Things aren't very good here. Could you guys come over?"

"Okay, where is it?" As soon as Fleur de Joie told Edge to which hotel she'd tracked Rook, he nodded. "Okay, I'm going to send us all there. You might want to take cover if you want to be sneaky." And with that, in a flash of black light, they all vanished, only to reappear right in Rook's hotel room. "All right, buddy!" said Edge, pointing dramatically at the erstwhile hero. Say what you will for Mark, he wasn't one to take the complicated route when an easier one presented itself. "I know this is a little unorthodox, but the life of a superhero is full of surprises. We want to be your friend. We want to help you, and we want to help your city. What's going on?"

The flight was easy enough, the semi-conscious woman, baby, and medtech giving no trouble to Miss Americana and Sharl besides weight as they made their way back to the lakeside. Still cradling the baby, rocking him back and forth in what turned out to be an instinctive gesture across humanoid species, Sharl bent down over the baby's battered mother. "Hey there," he said, "we've got your baby, and he's-" "My baby!" her eyes snapped open and fixed on the electronic teenager, and Sharl almost jumped out of his skin. "Is he okay?" The woman, whose name Miss A had noted was Celia while going through her suitcase, looked around wildly. "Where's my baby?" "Uh, right here," said Sharl, bending down while the medtech tended quickly to Celia before she could hurt herself. "He's okay. Superheros have come to rescue you!" "Oh, thank God...I knew someone would come..." She was settling back down, having evidently satisfied herself, though still obviously hurt and semi-delirious. "I couldn't leave him. I just couldn't leave him..."

Quo-Dis actually laughed at that, taking a seat by the blanket that not incidentally let her be close to Corbin: not just close, but actually touching. She hadn't brought up sex since the first awkward conversation, but she hadn't done anything to conceal that it was still on her mind. "Turkey," she said. "I find the ethical conditions of turkey raising much more palatable than how hogs are farmed. If your society has to be agriculturally based, and I suppose it does, turkey raising is generally much more friendly to the planet. Plus, it's delicious!" She put her arm around him affectionately. "Do you have the drink I asked for?"

She came to him from the sky, like any angel should, a faint sheen of sweat on her skin as she came in for a landing before him. She was still in her costume, the one that showed...well, that she was more confident with her body than many of her fellow classmates. "Hello, Corbin Hughes," she said with a smile, crossing to him and pecking his cheek. "Sorry I'm late. Mister Archer decided to run our whole team through drills again after Rex Hound dropped the ball. It was a long afternoon."

The Fearsome Five A loose coterie of supervillains who have teamed up together for mutual protection despite their disparate goals >Heka: Heka (no real name known) was a sorcerer in ancient Egypt, a student of certain arcane arts now lost to time. When he sacrificed a child for his own immortality, the high priest Tan-Aktor imprisoned him in his own tomb, neither alive nor dead, for an eternal punishment. (He and Tan-Aktor had quarreled over who would benefit from said sacrifice, you see...) When Egyptologists freed Heka a few years ago, he blasted them to pieces in gratitude and tried to take over the country. When the Spirit of Egypt defied him, Heka fled, and now the undead wizard practices his arcane arts in somewhat more humble surroundings. He looks the classic evil Egyptian wizard, mummy robes (worn for effect) underneath his arcane trappings. He communes every few weeks with his 'teacher', Malador the Undying, and together they spin their terrible plots. He is the interim leader of the Fearsome Five these days. Blackfire: Blackfire (formerly John Smith) is the result of an experiment by Talos: can a human being be transformed reliably into a robot? So far Talos is cautiously optimistic: Smith, a vicious thug and murderer who'd worked for one of Keres' alternate identities, has turned out to be a model android, obeying Talos' commands and acting as the perfect infiltrator into the supervillian community. But Smith has begun to rebel secretly, memories of the agonizing nanite infusion that transformed him creeping back when he least expects it. Unfortunately, John Smith is the last man you want to be in a bulletproof, immortal robot body, even if he's not working for Talos. He'll stage robberies and your standard super-crimes frequently, just so Talos can test the responses of his body and the authorities, or he'll do it on his own time just because he enjoys their screaming. >Khania: Spoiled princess Khania arrived in Freedom City some months ago and turned out to fit into the Fearsome Five like hand-in-glove. A jaded thrillseeker, she'll gladly start a fight with anyone just to see what would happen, or assume that all men (and most women) are interested in her sexually whether they admit it or not. She acts like she has noblesse oblige when she's in the mood, but frankly she wouldn't have been kicked out of her father's court if she had anything like even his limited sense of honor. While a lot of people think she's her father's agent on Earth, he actually can't stand her at all. Actually, unknown to anyone, she's one of the rare aliens who are lucky enough to be a paid informant for the Grue Unity! >Diehard: Diehard used to be Wong Ahn-Li, a particularly enthusiastic Red Guardsman who volunteered for a government experiment during the Cultural Revolution that gave him superpowers. They'd hoped to make him invincible, and indeed, Diehard (to use the English translation) can indeed recover from any injury...except he feels the full effects of that hurt first. Decades of pain took their toll on Diehard's sanity, particularly after a few serious brain injuries left him with an unstable personality. When the political climate shifted back in China, Diehard fled the country, and is now muscle for various supervillains when he's not amusing himself as a "dojo-buster" in martial arts circles. He enjoys picking fights with young bloods who can't hurt him and then beating the crap out of them while lecturing them about the People's Revolution. Thanks to certain devices installed in his brain back in the late 70s, everything he sees and hears is broadcast directly back to Dr. Sin's laboratory. >Guy Fawkes II: Guy Fawkes II, born Sean McIntyre in Belfast, used to be one of the most vicious terrorists in Ireland. A professional with no particular political motivations, he worked for Protestant and Catholic alike, going from 'counter-insurgency specialist' one week to 'freedom fighter' the next. The truth is, Sean just enjoyed hurting people, and he was lucky enough to live in a part of the world that let him do that. When peace came to Ireland, he tried to provoke a further confrontation and was caught at it: busting out of prison before he could be whacked by his many enemies, he made his way to America to break into supervillany. Still in great shape for a man pushing 50, he fancies himself an anarchist, but that's mostly just a cover for blowing people up or stabbing them with his knives. He's equally likely to work for pay (insurance jobs, muscle and the like) as he is to just be out blowing crap up. He's on OVERTHROW's payroll, naturally.

The argument cast a pall over the table for Joan, even after Fusion sat back down. Ugh. So much for being the adult voice of reason. When she thought about it, though, she decided she'd done the right thing. Look at these kids. Those two girls have Bea Arthur's hair, the one's got real black eyes, Grimalkin's some sort of pixie, those two are lesbians and the one's got a speech impediment...they need to know that there are people out there who don't judge them for how they look and what they are. And that's not okay for them to judge each other. Joan was emotional enough to mourn the sight of women fighting with each other, for all that she was practical enough to know that it happened all the time. When it was time to deal again, that's what she did.

"Okay," said Sharl, "I'll do that right-" His voice stopped, but the line didn't go dead. Instead Miss A heard the crashing and calling out intensify, a particularly loud noise, and then a sudden, eerie silence on the other end. Long minutes went by while she visualized Sharl reappearing in the house, locking down the security systems that she'd been meaning to upgrade, heading back to the phone, and then heading out. Just in time, Sharl's mobile emitter lit up, and he stepped away from the wall, forming with a pop of magnetism that briefly made static on the phone lines. He was unhurt, of course, but the teenager looked shaken. "Holy cow," said Sharl, running his hands through his hair. "That, that whole neighborhood," he said, tagging his commlink on, "they were all infected. One of them tried to stick some kind of alien starfish thing in my mouth, but that, well, that didn't work. I crushed the thing, and then all the people in the neighborhood swarmed me." He shuddered. "That was just awful." Toggling off the mike, he said to Miss A, "By the way, uh, I think our friend is OK. She's...she's actually fine. She looked unconscious, not like everyone else." "I think she's coming around," murmured the medical tech across the room, looking up from the unconscious woman he'd been working on. "I've got her hydrated," he said, indicating the field IV he'd set up, "but she can't be moved far, unless it's to a hospital." - The inside of the satellite was largely free of evidence, the sort of thing that would have frustrated a human. Protectron did find evidence of what might have brought Skyhook down, however; the unmanned probe had taken what looked like a direct micro-meteor hit through the body, leaving puncture marks through and through. Not only would such an accident have likely brought the Legion and Grue samples directly into contact, the destruction of the shield around the craft by the hit would have flooded the whole interior compartment with cosmic rays. - The alien starfish didn't like its confinement one bit, pressing against the side of the container with a wet sucking noise, seeming to gaze right into Dragonfly's soul.

Edge: and vignette Somewhere that's Green Certain Flaws Love Is All You Need Worlds Enough Rainmaker Fusion: Walked Alone Place Your Bets Circus Harrier: and vignette Calling All Angels Citizen: The Conquering Mind (and GMing) I Have Had It Unearthly Girl Animal Fair GMing Grapevine Please put my extra rewards towards Edge.

"I'll be right back," promised Sharl. Sending himself through phone lines was scary, maybe scarier than he'd admitted even to Gina or Miss A, but he couldn't just leave his best friend when she was in a crisis. Giving him the ability to email himself had been something of an accident, really. Gina had been compiling his program down for shipment back to Tronik when he somewhat unexpectedly had walked right out of the computer and into her lab again. They'd learned how to refine the process together, letting it work over somewhat longer distances, and now...and now...He took a deep breath. Kneeling down by the telephone, he took his mobile emitter, plugged it into the jack, and concentrated. And a moment later, he was- There was no sense of passage on Sharl's end. As he vanished in a pop of energy on Miss Americana's end, his magnetic bubble bursting, he snapped to life in Gina's house. She'd set up a projector for him there, and so he appeared there. Even as much of an emergency as it was, he couldn't resist the urge to glance out the window. The city outside was ominously still, with sirens in the air but no one rushing to do anything about them. "Gina!?" He jumped down the stairs, practically clipping through the banister, and landed in the basement. Once there he flipped the power switch immediately, trusting Miss Americana's words, but a second later went to look for Gina. She was easy to find; she was sitting in her chair in her computer circle in the middle of the basement, can of Mountain Dew in hand as she stared off at nothing. Computers were shutting down all around him, and it looked like Gina had shut down too. "Gina!? Gina, say something!" He shook her lightly, but got no response. "Oh, Gina..." He closed his eyes and put his head against hers, magnetic hologram against human skin. A tear ran down his cheek and fell onto hers, vanishing in a puff of light as it left his immediate vicinity. "Oh, Gina. We'll get you out of this. I promise." He decided to make her comfortable, and tucked her in under a blanket. He headed back upstairs, picking up one of her phones outside, slipping it into his pocket so he could call Miss A with a report before coming back. When he went upstairs, he nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a knock on the door. "Uh-oh..." BOOM BOOM BOOM! Sharl peered through Gina's peephole and found himself staring at a half-familiar face. What, Gina's delivery guy? "Hello?" Outside, the guy was pounding on the door harder. "Come out, Evans! Come out!" It was a human voice, and yet, somehow, it wasn't! The man pounded again, his face blank of all expression, and Sharl suddenly stepped right out the door, opening and closing it quickly, to greet him. He couldn't let Gina be caught by this guy! Outside, the sirens were louder and the air strangely cold. The Peapod guy looked at Sharl with a blank face, only his eyes moving. "My sister's gone! I'm the only one here. If you want me, come get me!" Sharl remembered to turn solid at the last second, and gasped as the Peapod guy grabbed him by the shirt and slammed him against the door. Can't let him know I'm a hologram; he's got to believe I'm real! "You are not Evans. But you will be Conquered." Reaching into his bag, the deliveryman produced a red, wriggling starfish shape and slammed it against Sharl's face. It wriggled, found purchase, shoved tentacles in his mouth, and frankly that was just too gross for Sharl to deal with. "Oh my God, that's awful!" Gagging, Sharl went insubstantial again, the thing falling through his body and down onto the ground. He thought fast. Got to distract them! He STOMPED on the wriggling starfish thing, earning a hiss from the zombie-man just as he'd hoped. "You want me so bad! You'd better catch me! Woo-hoo!" He dived right through the Peapod guy and ran like Hell, getting as far as the truck outside before he realized he was right at the limit of Gina's home projectors. "Oh God, Oh God..." He slammed one door shut, then realized he couldn't reach the other; his hand disappearing even as he went for it. "Oh, craaap..." He grabbed the phone out of his pocket and reached out, hooking it against the doorknob and pulling it shut right in the Peapod guy's face. He gulped, managing to hit the lock just as the van began rocking. There were people outside now, coming out of the houses, coming right for the locked van, and he was trapped in the passenger seat...On the other hand, at least they're not interested in Gina anymore! He thought desperately, then pulled out Gina's cell. "Time to make some calls..." "Miss Americana?" Outside, Miss A could hear voices chanting as one. "CONQUER THE SPAWNSLAYER! CONQUER THE SPAWNSLAYER, and the sound of cracking metal and glass. "I...uh, I locked the basement down! But then I got stuck outside, and the people are very angry!" He filled her in as fast as he could.

As we move to the glossing it all over portion of the evening, we move to die rolls! Roll an unmodified d20, higher is best. If you don't want your character to lose their (metaphorical) shirt, just skip the dierolling and break even. 12 Or just roll a 12, and break even anyway. Joan comes out two M&Ms ahead!

Fusion was silent for a few moments as she studied her cards, listening to the interplay among the teenagers around her. She really wanted to get up and throttle Silhouette when she pontificated on about how horrible everyone was and how lucky she was to be so underpowered. It was a palpable image, tentacles around the girl's throat and her head bouncing off the ceiling like a coconut, and one that was satisfying enough to actually restrain the impulse. She wasn't going to start a fight in front of kids. Of course, Silhouette was a woman, _not_ a child. Instead she stood up, towering over the other women at the table, sinous tentacles writhing around her body, making liquid, organic noises as she glared at the other woman. "If you have nothing worthwhile to say, keep it to yourself." And with that, she said, still standing, "All in? If so, I think it's time we show our hand." She turned over her cards, revealing two kings, a queen, a 10 and a six.

"If you wish for further conversation, I can provide it." Murdock didn't sound like he had feelings either way, just as he hadn't seemed to about most of their conversation. "I find that most people prefer not to hear what I say. They find it technologically or morally upsetting." He ate not with mechanical precision, but with the ferocity of someone who'd grown up poor and hungry, like some of the more abused children Carson had seen. "I work as a busboy at Champions. I find the work requires little conversation. I am not expected to have opinions there."

Doctor Tyrone went to work with the knife, cutting open the commander's neck in a piece of emergency surgery that was quite the feat of rough-and-ready medicine. Luckily, the _thing_ in the commander's neck was actually _above_ the major nerve clusters, and the red-rimmed starfish that crawled out of the back of her neck did so without doing damage beyond what a rapid application of a bandage could heal. The starfish-thing was the size of Mara's hand, covered in a fine coating of blood and some alien body-fluids, its six-limbed body rippling inside as if it was filled with water. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the thing sprang from the commander's face and hurled itself at Mara, only to suddenly be clinging to her face! But before Mara could relieve Star Trek, she realized that thing couldn't get her: though it was firmly affixed to her forcefield, it couldn't actually penetrate the energy barrier, for all that it writhed over her field of vision to try and get in. - "Okay, um," said Sharl, thinking desperately as he rocked the baby back and forth, an unfamiliar task for the electronic teenager that he was obviously trying to do his best on. "So the satellite is infected with that virus, and it crashes here, and people get exposed to it...if they did evacuate them all to that naval base, maybe that's where we should go?" he hazarded. "Along with to the Goodman Building and stuff, so we can get the cure. If that's where the infection started. Wait, that doesn't make any sense, if it's infected the whole city, they'd just be the first patients...unless something else happened, I guess. No, you're right, the Goodman Building makes sense." He thought for a moment, then asked, "Miss A, my friend was telling me they have really sophisticated computers...oh no! We've got to go to, um, our friend's house! If something's happened in Freedom City's, she's in danger!" -

Nervously, Sharl sat down on the bed, cradling the baby in his arms and giving the medtech a look. Sharl had spent a lot of time reading about superheroes lately, and Legion did stir up some memories. Oh man, a mind controlling plague? That's awful! Everyone getting sucked into some big hivemind... He'd seen Miss Americana meditate in a crisis before, and knew she was using her cyberkinetic powers, so much like Gina's, to get some idea of what was going on. The medtech, a man he didn't know, was definitely not in hazmat gear, but despite all that he didn't seem to be affected by any plague. Instead he focused on his job, which in this case was bandaging the battered woman in the cabin. "If you can contact Miss Americana, tell her that this woman has a severe contusion and she's in shock, but I think she'll be all right. If we'd gotten here any later, she and her baby would both be in trouble. But maybe we all are anyway." - "Uh, Dragonfly? What's _that_?" As Dragonfly and Doctor Tyrone worked to tie up and secure Commander Harrison, Tyrone pointed out something very peculiar about the commander's anatomy: underneath the back of her uniform, sticking up and just visible under her neck, was something red and throbbing, the size and shape of a moderate-sized starfish. At first it looked like merely a strange growth that had somehow been obscured till now, but it soon became obvious that this was no mere overlooked birthmark. Whatever it was, it was _moving_ under the commander's skin, making a beeline for her head even as Tyrone tried to secure the helmet. - Miss Americana would have to concentrate more closely to perform a close examination of the city proper, but tapping into police computers here and there showed her what looked like a terrifying spectacle: a city of slumped bodies and stopped cars, of wailing sirens with no one to answer them. Even the birds in the trees outside the city's largest police station were still on their branches. But luckily, before Miss Americana could panic, she caught sight of a police officer who'd slumped down directly in front of his station's security monitor; she could see the man breathing! A highway traffic camera was slightly more ominous, showing an interstate clogged with cracked-up cars, but few of the really bad crashes she might have expected otherwise, as if whatever had put everyone down had given them a second or two of warning.