Avenger Assembled

Looks fine to me. APPROVED

Avenger arrived late, just in time to see the weeping girl and hear the speeches of the heroes towards the grieving Snow Queen and the smugly smirking demon. He didn't recognize the first, but he certainly knew the second. Not for the first time, he wished his wife was there: fighting a being widely suspected to be the most powerful demon in Freedom City, perhaps the entire mortal plane, wasn't something he wanted to do. Ever! But if what he'd heard was right, maybe they didn't have to. "Lupita..." Avenger fearlessly walked up beneath the girl, pulling away his mask to reveal the man underneath. "I don't know you. I don't know your parents. But I know what it's like to be a father, and to lose family of my own. Hurting other people is fun, it's easy, it's satisfying, but at the end of the day, all you've done is build a pile of ash that's no place for you to live in. Living is hard. Building is hard. But if you hurt these people, and destroy this place, you won't have a kingdom, you won't have followers. You'll just be you, except you really will be all alone. Is that what you want?"

The temple was already crumbling under Gaian Knight's bombardment, and Wander's attack was the final straw that broke the camel's back. Under the weight of falling rocks, not only did the temple's igneous walls give way, but the whole rockface beneath crumbled away and deep into the underwater pit nearby. The temple collapsed into the rift below with a roar muffled by the sheer quantity of water all around them, a cloud of thick, black, oily filth rising into the water as the dark temple plunged into the cleansing heart of the earth itself. That, of course, didn't eliminate the threat of the undersea monsters, but with the heart of their temple destroyed and their controller fled or dead, the vampire sea monsters had the heart go out of them. Literally, sometimes, as superheroes and Atlanteans closed in on them in fantastic displays of undersea combat. Fusion was everywhere in the fight, at home and in her element as she grabbed and decapitated sea-monsters left and right, tearing through legions of vampire squid and rays, until finally the cloud of monsters parted and she saw a whale bearing down on her...a red-eyed sperm whale whose mouth glittered with gigantic fangs! "Let's go!" she exclaimed, raising her fists and arms as she charged the great beast!

I'll get something up in the next couple of days.

Radiant: Good news! Your movement powers are redundant, you can scrap all of them but Flight.

Full Power is still not a suitable drawback for a Permanent Power. Also, Permanent is a +0 duration on powers like Alternate Form. You don't get extra points for it.

Northstar, as I mentioned, lots of good thoughts here. This is a character I fully intend to approve, I just want to suggest some more things: Fatigue effects are not likely to come up. In your shoes, I'd get Immunity 5 (disease, poison, sleep, suffocation) and get more utility out of it. Don't forget to put in his height/weight with Growth (up where you have his regular size), and you should specify his lifting Strength and leaping distances under those powers.

It is true, Arcturus is not (or so I've been led to believe), a Claremont student. Assuming I've the time, I'd be happy to help, Rav; did you have any specific plots in mind, or just a "Welcome to campus" story?

Rav, given that Omega-centered stories are already 'in use' by a significant number of characters, and given that Jackgar is already working on an adventure with the plot you describe above, I think you should cut the Terminus angle out of your story. Start small with your new team. Work in the Grue, or other aliens, or something like that.

Sharl's edits: Change the base power of his Tronik array to: [1 pp] Enhanced STR 12 [12 pp] and Affects Corporeal 6 [6 pp] on STR {18 pp} 'magnetic strength' Buy the Feat [1 pp] Attack Specialization 1 (Unarmed) 4 ranks in Computers, raising his total to 14 (+14) [1 pp] Doktor'd

Sharl walked in a slow circle, watching his own interaction with the world as much as he did the strange room around him. He'd thought at first he was sinking into the carpet, but in actuality he was not quite touching it, his relative 'floor' perhaps an inch below where the carpet actually was. As he watched, though, he seemed to float just a little higher as he went. "Putting my hand through the stairs was weird enough," he agreed. "I expected it to feel like something, but it was as if nothing was there at all." Reaching out, he touched the wall, smart enough not to risk sticking his hand through any computer parts around. "So what exactly am I made of right now?" he asked. "Just a conventional hologram?"

"Gina? Is that-Hi!" He raised his hand in an automatic greeting, sizing up the face his friend wore. He was familiar with the idea that people's online avatars might look very different than their real face, but he was still surprised to see this side of her. Maybe she liked being a 'mom' online; she'd certainly taken good care of him. "Wow! So this is what you really look like? That's neat." He smiled at her, the holographic displays that made up his body giving his skin a faintly phosphorescent cast to Gina's practiced eye. "I feel...I feel pretty good," he said, thinking about it. "I feel solid and real." He checked, tapping himself on the side of the head, and nothing felt strange about the gesture. "A little cold," he admitted.

"Hello?" said Sharl cautiously. "Gina, are you here?" He had a few eyes for the computer parts all around, but lacking her guidance they were just segments to an alien computer network. He did appreciate a system that meant she didn't have to get up to work, it made sense given what he'd seen of her age. It was too bad she didn't have access to anti-gravs. He took a few steps and peered up the steps, casting his gaze for his friend and rescuer. "I made it through okay." He put his hand on the step automatically to lift himself up a few inches, and gave a little yelp as his fingers sunk into the wood as if it wasn't there. Peering down at himself, he seemed to be glowing ever so slightly, with a faint pattern that might have just been in his imagination. "Holy cow! I'm a hologram!" He didn't sound as displeased by that fact as most normal people would be; he was thrilled. "That's awesome!"

"Because...because if I can't have Christmas, no one else can!" She seemed to shrink in on herself, losing the already-shaky image of the haughty Snow Queen and becoming a sad-faced young girl with a tear-streaked face, her diaphanous white gown hanging loose now that she looked closer to 14 than 24, and skinny and gawky to boot. "Why did my mom and dad have to die? Why?" Suddenly, behind her, a dapper fellow in a pitch-black suit appeared, a sardonic look on his face as he surveyed the crowd. Walking on air as if it was the ground, he said, "Because, my dear Lupita, life isn't fair. Not for you, anyway, so why should it be for anyone else? If these heroes are so powerful, why couldn't _they_ save your parents?" The wicked tempter's words seemed to be having an effect, but the girl's mind was definitely not made up.

Fusion stepped out into darkness with the others, feeling the comforting grip of the ocean's depths all around her. For all the assembled heroes, it was immensely dark and fantastically cold in the ocean's depths, a world as alien as any far-off exotic world. They could hear screams and curses echoing through the water, feel the vibration of the Atlantean ships through the icy, crushing depths all around them, but the battle itself was an ominous mystery. Closing her eyes and extending her tentacles, Fusion could feel the battle raging all around her, a scene that became more obvious to the other heroes when one of the Atlantean gunships fired a flare over the battlefield. It was a grim scene indeed. Atlantean warriors were locked in battle with hordes of little vampire manta rays, their armor and gleaming mystic weapons their sole protection against the beasts' terrible snapping jaws. The king himself was in battle against what was, of all things, a another giant vampire squid, struggling mightly against his tentacles. The battle was ferocious, but by the light of the flickering flare, as vampires were sliced asunder into oily ash, they seemed to be holding their own. "Quickly!" the king shouted to the others. "We'll hold them off! You must destroy the temple!" He pointed down below, to the crack in the sea floor where an eerie red glow marked the only natural light in the area. "Go quickly!" "I've got this one! Hang on everybody!" The fastest swimmer in the group, or at least the most adept at navigating the underwater depths, Fusion shouted a warning to the others before she lashed out with her tentacles, grabbing her fellow heroes by the ankles before she opened her mouth and fired a jet of bubbling water from beneath her arms, blasting them all right through the line of rays and straight for the rift! The water warmed as they approached, a sharp contrast to the freezing bottom, and down inside the crack they could make out a rough-hewn structure as big as a Claremont dorm carved from the living volcanic rock itself!

Sharl wasn't quite bouncing off the walls while Gina was gone, but he was close. The knowledge that he was close to liberation was intoxicating, for all that it would just be in a little room somewhere in Gina's basement. _And I probably won't be able to touch anything, unless I try really, really hard, and that's if she's using magnetic holograms._ He sighed, the moment deflating just a little. _Well...it'll still be all right. I'll be out of these rooms, nice as they are, and able to see part of the world! Even if her basement is just her substitute lab, I bet it's still pretty cool._ Maybe Gina was his mom's age, but she was obviously a scientific genius. _And maybe I'll be able to hang out with her, and she can teach me more about computers. That's pretty important..._ She was a lot smarter than he was, that was obvious, and he wasn't vain enough to pretend otherwise.

Nice concept, gorgeous pic! But some issues. Full Power is not a suitable drawback for a Permanent power. (It's effectively double-dipping; it's already as powerful as you can make it since you can't turn it off or ameliorate it). More to the point, I think you're underestimating how damaging a Permanent Damage Aura 4 is to your day. Here's my suggestion: Make the Aura Sustained. It costs the same as Permanent, and you can keep the Full Power drawback. So how do you let Volcano get hot under the collar about his toasty problem? Take Hot Foot! as a complication! Specify that Volcano has serious issues controlling his flaming aura, and that it's liable to snap on when he least expects it. That way, you can have him get around Freedom City (and do things like eat food), but at the same time have him always be concerned about how much damage he could do if he lost concentration. You can get a similar benefit by buying it with the Default duration (a +0 extra), so that the default state is that his Aura is on but that he can turn it off with a free action every round. (Again, you could keep the drawback that way). That way, if he loses concentration/goes to sleep/gets really distracted, boom, guaranteed fireball! Another idea: Absorption is not a great power for what it does. My advice is to take the 6 pp you have there and buy Device 1 (hot pants) (hard to lose). That'll cost you 4 pp, and give you 5 pp to spend to buy off the Permanent flaw on your Aura. (Which will cost 4...the other pp can go to Attractive. Look, everyone likes hot pants)

I like this character a lot, Northstar. Please edit his powers so the formatting's fixed (i.e.; so it resembles that of other characters on the board, particularly the sample ones) Specify his native language.

"But I like running," Sharl objected half-teasingly. With the urgency only the young could say, the boy added, "I don't mean to bother you, but it's just I've always wanted to see the world...and here there's actually a world to see! Where I'm from, there's just the city, the mountains, and the plankton fleet where you can actually go...but here you've got so much! A whole world, full of people and animals and heroes. It's amazing! People must not know what to do with themselves half the time with all the wonderful things here."

"Oh, okay." Sharl understood, or thought he did. When she put it that way, it sounded no different than taking detailed medical records so he could be fixed if he broke down. He couldn't fault her for that, and it wasn't as if she hadn't seen into his insides anyway. "I can't wait to see your lab," he said excitedly. "Everything you've done in here is so awesome, I bet it's just as awesome out there. I mean, I know science works differently between your world and mine, but I'm sure you're great at it." He smiled at the thought. "Can you see any other superheroes from your house?" he asked her.

"I wouldn't want that either," agreed Sharl readily, looking a little intimidated by the idea. "Some of the people I spoke to, who I had 'glitched', I guess, they said things were never quite the same afterwards." He looked down at his hands, still marveling at the sheer unreality of talking about himself as if he was a program. Reflectively, he listened to her words before saying, "Wait, you backed me up?" He frowned, looking at Gina. "Does that mean you made a copy of me?" He might have had serious ethical concerns about that if the situation had seemed any realer, but it was still an odd feeling.

"Ooh, pizza! I've seen commercials for this," he said proudly. "Freedom City Pizza and Hero Sandwiches, where the first one's free!" he quoted the jingle like someone who'd been spending a lot of time watching television recently. Sharl liked the pizza, as Gina had found some teenage boy things proving to be universal, and was even polite enough to offer her a piece as he wolfed it down. Despite his big appetite, Sharl had to admit he wasn't exactly starving: Gina was feeding him better than some days at home! Feeling guilty at that thought, he dabbed his mouth and said, "So, uh, any progress on the work out there?" he asked, cocking a finger at nowhere in particular. "I'm sure you're very busy with all that computer work you were telling me about," he added a little awkwardly, realizing that he didn't want to sound like he was pressuring her.

Sensing pursuit, the great grey beast turned and bounced unexpectedly straight for Wander. It landed hard, digging its claws deep into the Earth and giving a terrible roar, before pulling back its fist for a devastating blow straight to Wander's midsection! She brought up the bat and absorbed the punch with the solid impervium core, feeling the impact go shooting up her arm and down into her body: that was quite a punch that thing had! Towering at twice her height and roaring defiance like an unholy merger of rhino and dino, the Beast of Kilimanjaro was not going to go down without a fight!

"Enter!" came Sharl's voice through the wooden interior door she'd put up for him. He was up by the time she'd opened the door, looking like an Earth teenager in the T-shirt and blue denim she'd pulled up for him with a few code tweaks from the Gap's online store. In cyberspace, now that his program was connected to an operating system again, he could get dirty, and Gina was sharp-eyed enough to notice dirty-looking teenage boys. "Hello, Gina," he said, "I forgot about knobs for a second there." She'd figured out well before his explanation that doors in Tronik were usually voice-activated, and slid open at that. He smiled at her, putting his hand up in a salute. "How are you doing? How...am I doing?" he added, shrugging a little at the question.

The flying yetis immediately began sinking down towards the snow, lulled to rest by Miss Americana's beautiful voice. They didn't actually sleep, but they did lay there with passive looks on their faces, watching the show. Desparia looked briefly tempted by the beautiful heroine's advice herself, but she rallied, firmly shaking her head. "No! No, I'm not going to go to sleep! You can't make me!" She looked a poor image of the icy-cold sorceress she was trying to project, snowflake tears in her eyes as she screamed at the heroes. "I'll freeze you all, and then I'll freeze all of Christmas!" - Across the yard in the workshop, Jack of all Blades' swordsmanship made the Nutcracker's eyes widen. "Why....no one so skilled with a blade could ever be in the service of the Rat King! Perhaps I was wrong about you...and wrong about a lot of things!" he said, his wooden cheeks developing bright red circles as he looked at Mrs. Claus. "I think I owe you an apology, madam! And you as well, good sirs!" he added to Jack and the Crusader, the elfin champion giving him a suspicious look at his rapid transformation. "Feh! Toys!" Down the hall, in a cascade of Tinkertoys, Avenger gave a triumphant shout as he liberated the prisoners! There was a melee in the hall for a moment as the prisoners spilled out; a reindeer with a nose of shimmering red, a red cloak falling down behind him, a formidable-looking woman in armor made of ice, and then finally...The Man. He was tall for an elf, bulking as big as Avenger or Jack of all Blades, his long white beard cascading down his chest as he took in the scene in an instant, his eyes twinkling. He quickly embraced his wife, then turned to the assembled heroes. "Come, my friends! We must stop a certain lady from making a mistake she'll come to regret more than any of us!" He eyed the Freedom heroes as well before adding, "I owe you both a special debt of gratitude. We shall talk later. I am surprised to see you here, Mr. Faretti." "...You know me?" "Oh yes. We have quite a file on you." Avenger winced at that, but said nothing as he followed the Christmas champions out to join the battle outside!