Avenger Assembled

OK, Wander Paragons is up.

15, ouch

"Oh man oh man..." Citizen shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling the phone Gina had given him. She said this would work underground, he thought, and tap right into the network... But there was a crisis now, he couldn't just run off and call her. I'll call her as soon as we're done here. I don't want to scare her; she'd have to call Miss A and who knows where she is?"I'll...I'll draw their fire!" Fearlessly, the teenager yanked open the subway door and yelled, "Hey, you lizardmen! You, uh, want a piece of me? Well, come get some!" He'd seen that kind of talk in action movies, and assumed it made sense to these people.

19 vs 33 All right, Sage is out!

Looks good, Giz. I'll say it takes 10, so it's injured. Do you want to surge and hack at it again, or are you done?

Wander's blow slammed Overshadow to the floor with a sound like a sonic boom, the armored mastermind bouncing a few times to show he was knocked completely cold, helpless and out of the fight. His shadowy counterpart cursed at this, but then faced the heroes with a leer on his half-visible face. "Feh! Now the worlds shall be mine! Mine, and the One-Who-Waits-In-Darkness!" He focused on the Midnight from his own Earth. "Ah, the detective wishes to know my master, eh? Here, let me show you him!" And with that, a jet of pure flaming shadow came rippling from his fingers, cold and dark and devouring as the night itself. Trevor was taken off-guard, inches from an agonizing death, before suddenly he felt strong hands close on the back of his costume. "Move!" The Edge from his own world pulled him backwards, the beam of deadly darkness passing in front of the dark detective with just inches to spare. The blast of shadowy darkness spattered liquidly against a sheaf of already black and empty earths, helplessly wasted. "You gonna take that from him!?" Edge declared, releasing Midnight.

The Tiger teleports across the room. He surges, fatiguing himself, and blasts Midnight-Paragons with his Disintegrate, catching him flat-footed. 32 Hum. That seems bad. Mark-Paragons spends his last two HP: one to double Midnight's dodge bonus (back up to 13, for a total of 23 Defense) and to force a reroll from the Tiger. And he's OK!

21 He's unconscious.

27 But that's hardly fair. Mark-Prime spends an HP (from his fading stock) to force a reroll. 20 He's bruisedx3 and stunned again. Wander-EZO1 is up.

Magic, man. I guess these guys aren't as advanced as I thought. Oh well, they're still cool. Sharl felt a little bad judging the pair of heroes, who were after all totally awesome, so instead he settled for joining the general move towards the elevators. "So what are the other Interceptors like?" Sharl asked the Espadas pair sociably. "Are they as cool as you guys are?" He sounded like any other impressed teenager meeting a cool superhero. Miss A seemed to like these two, which meant he did as well.

Well...I suppose Silhouette speaks Spanish? "Hello!" said Fusion, rising to her feet again to greet Jill. She decided to stay there this time, tired of bouncing up and down even with the help of her tentacles. "You must be the famous Jill O'Cure. I've seen you and your partner on the news and you're really something." Shame about how she...hey, is that a new costume? All right! She smiled, catching the fairly obvious hints between the two young women. The sensible outfit, the pretty blonde girlfriend...what the hell, it made her day. "Good to see you two kids together. How long have you been dating?" Despite her bulk and hissing voice, the big woman sounded pleased.

"Listen, you little circus geeks," spat Fusion. "I've had it up to here with your stupid little parlor tricks and your obnoxious chanting about your hive mind! I'm going to knock some sense into you if I have to crack your heads together like coconuts!" She jumped up, onto the high wires above, and lashed out with wetly whipping tentacles of black, grabbing the rope dancer who'd bedeviled her by the ankles and simply hurling the woman at that obnoxious trapeze artist, sending them both cascading to the floor with bone-cracking thumps. "Hey! Cannonade! Knock that one out of the park!"

Fusion is going to grab the rope dancer. 19 She's going to grapple: 46 She's going to throw the rope dancer at the trapeze artist: (spending an HP for the reroll) 29 Hokay, that's a DC 25 Tou save for both the Rope Dancer and the Trapeze Artist. She is attempting to inflict Knockback on the latter.

Joan Collier was many things, but she was the last person to attribute spectral activity to what seemed like a panicky van driver. She didn't remember anyone being in the van, but evidently someone was, or else how would it be driving? Swinging her way through the lightpoles overhanging the street, never minding the sidewalk below, Fusion hmmed. Something strange is happening here. I wonder if the driver's a latent psychic, or if some of that mental energy rubbed off on the van. Still, there was only one logical thing to do here: Fusion took a flying leap and hurled herself right through the van's front windshield, lashing her tentacles around her head to protect herself at the last second.

Fusion hissed a few suggestions at Wisp, the tentacled woman's voice sibilant and alien as she recommended, "Macross Island if you can get there. The divine Hachiman is a friend of mine and he knows mystics all up and down the Pacific Rim. Closer to home, Ditko Street is the place to go for magic. I heard from a friend of a friend that the most powerful sorcerer on Earth lives there. Cool, huh?" Her smile was visible through her mask as she said, "There's some really special things out there that you'll be able to live since you're in this business. Go out and find your life. Let the boring kids spend all their time in the basement...well, except for tonight," she added with a serpentine chuckle. To Dragonfly, she added, "I like to know the people I share my city with. It's what any immigrant should do," She let the low chuckle suggest she'd moved there from who knew where, rather than Seattle by way of the Pacific Rim.

Hits Serpent-Man 2: Same Toughness DC as before.

Sharl felt a momentary hesitation at hitting people, even obvious bad guys. Though he'd had the same unarmed combat training that anyone who came from money had in Tronik, he'd never thought himself likely to use it, much less on alien snake-people in another reality entirely. But between their hissing demeanor and vicious attacks, it wasn't hard to tell who the bad guys were here. We'll just get this done, and I'll go home! Sharl advanced on the last Serpent-Man, fist raised, and walked right through the collapsed bodies of his cohort. Startled by the teenager's seeming insubstantiality, the Serpent-Man hissed, "What are you?" "I'm just a good citizen!" exclaimed Sharl, driving his fist into the snake-man's belly.

Joan winced inwardly at the teenager's words, wondering if she'd hear that kind of talk from Lois when she got older. But, she reminded herself, she wasn't Wisp's mother, it wasn't her place to tell her how to live. Still, she couldn't help but whisper at the white-haired girl, "You know, there are real places full of magic too. You should visit Ditko Street here in the City sometime, and you can see some amazing things much better than anything in a game." She's just a high school kid. It's not her fault she hasn't learned how to live her life. "Ah, the science hero!" Despite limbs long enough to reach across the room, Fusion actually got up to shake the girl's hand. She didn't hug in costume. People could misinterpret it. Besides, her tentacles were for getting around and for hurting bad guys. "Viktor Archeville has said some good things about your work. It's a pleasure to meet you." Ameratsu on a cracker, she's what, eighteen, nineteen? Did I wander into high school kid night or what?

"You know," said Mark conversationally, "if you guys wanted, I could take us to France now." He shot a little fingergun at Trevor, signaling that he'd learned from his trip to Seattle with Trevor that just up and warping reality around everyone without a warning made people uncomfortable. He didn't want to do that, especially with Hope paying so much attention to him. He'd been a little worried when she'd paid so much attention to Trevor, but she'd backed off when the other teen looked uneasy. "To Paris, or Rouen, or something? I could probably hit your house if you show me a map or something, Eve. That way we could finish our brunch right there!"

Mark hung out with Trevor for the walking trip to the reception, making a good team of two bachelor Claremont boys. Well, not really bachelors. I suppose Erin'd get mad if Trevor did the guy-at-a-wedding thing. Mark winked at the younger of the bridesmaids, a pretty woman who looked to be college age, and she smiled back, though it was tough to tell if she was smiling 'at' him or 'with' him. She looks like she's in college. Well...I guess it doesn't hurt to try! He knew for a fact Zaranna wouldn't care; after that thing with Marcus, she wasn't a hypocrite.

The Edges Inspire their respective teams, giving them a +5 bonus on their rolls next round. (I forgot to have them Seize Initiative this round so they could do that. If no one objects, I'll speed things up next round and say they went first and so everyone gets their bonus). OK. The Cobalt Templars are up.

"All right, Young Freedom," "...and Young Paragons..." "This is for our city, and our world! And all these worlds!" "The Tiger and his goons may think they can take our world, our people from us," "But they've never fought a team like this one!" "The greatest young heroes of TWO worlds!" "Cobalt Templar, with the power of infinite will in the palm of his hand!" "The amazing Wander, as beautiful as she is deadly!" "Midnight, the grim avenger of justice!" "Yeah, and Midnight!" "And Sage, fast and furious, destroying your mind with her sheer level of awesomeness!" "Let's show these goons that TIME HAS JUST RUN OUT FOR EVIL!"

Lacking the overwhelming hunger of the teens, Fusion was content to sit back and watch as yet another new arrival settled in. Another five, six years, and Lois'll be that big. Jeez, where does the time go? She'd been about as old as Grimalkin or Silhouette on her daughter's birth, and now she felt even older still. Hmm, the white-haired kid has an accent. Russian, maybe? Joan had done most of her traveling and living abroad in East Asia, but she had met people from all over the world. Wonder if her family's from one of the old super-soldier programs. "So Grimalkin," she sibilanted, "Are we going to see the other lady Interceptor tonight?"

"Oh, jeez!" For just a second, Fusion dropped the ethereal whisper she'd been speaking in, a little shocked by the sheer amount of cargo the teenager in the doorway was carrying. "Here, let me help!" she hissed a moment later, rising to her feet and reaching out with lashing black tentacles, scooping up the excess layers of groceries and freeing the girl's hands. To her surprise, though, the new arrival didn't look particularly unbalanced by the load she'd been carrying. Super-strength? Hmm, and athletic too. Joan was relieved to not be the only jock there, even if the girl was still quite a bit smaller than she. "Welcome to the party," she said, once the girl was divested of her burden.

"Feel free," said Fusion as she slid into a seat herself, heavy tentacles moving with an eerie, mobile grace. "It's an old recipe of mine." She repressed a wince when Grimalkin faded from view, only able to track the girl's movements by the way the air currents rippled around her and the way the floor moved under her feet. She remembered being as young as the shapeshifting pixie looked. "People are very accommodating in a city like Freedom," she said, "but they can't reach out if you don't communicate your issues first." She hmmed at that, and went on, "And believe me, I know something about having unique issues."