Avenger Assembled

"I am unsurprised," said Murdock, and only faint disappointment was in his tone. "So much of me was taken away that..." He looked down at his lined hand, seeming to see right through it to the metal within. "It would be easier to replace the flesh." he added humorlessly. "But if you can change how I look, that would be wonderful." He squeezed his empty hand tight. "There are no worlds, no era, no dimensions where there would not be a hand raised against me beneath that shell. To be able to pass would be...I would be very grateful."

Reflex for the Area effect: 16 and 20 Robot 1 will take full damage; Robot 2 will take half damage. Reflex for the Drain Tou (since they're constructs): They both pass! Gah! Damage: Let's go with them both being injured. OK, Giz, go ahead and post, I'll get an IC post up for the robots tomorrow.

Murdock turned his head again, swiveling his whole body at first before turning at the neck, then looked back at Miss A. "I wish to further assist you in your research. None of the surviving Omegadrones who have been assimilated into your culture were as...altered as I was, and none retained the memories I did of my connection to the Voice. I would like to add my technological knowledge to your own." He got up then, and did open the fridge, pulling out a bottle of water. "Beyond that, I would...I would like to know if you can change what I am inside."

"I am untroubled by the cold," said Murdock, misunderstanding her intent a bit. "But if you would prefer to make the trip faster, we should do." Murdock was heavy in Miss A's arms, but easily within her lifting capacity: he also went limp in a way that suggested he'd been carried by air before. It is very pleasant to see the city this way." he said out loud, not going into further detail about how nice it was to see a city below without needing to hide himself, or without that city being in flames.

"I have recovered from the injuries I sustained. They were all to my flesh, not the metal within." When the breeze started, Murdock ran his hands over his bald scalp, fingers brushing against the faint lines that marked where his flesh could split open on his command. He was allowing Victory to handle his own problems, and thus for the moment said nothing. "Your conclusions are correct. It is for a similar matter that I would like to speak with you." He had a rare moment of hesitation before he said, "Perhaps it is better if we wait until we are in your laboratory. I would not wish ot ask you a difficult question before it could be answered."

Murdock was exposed to the elements without his armor, but he would never have complained about the cold. Besides, even completely unprotected, Freedom City in early December was nothing. "Things are busy with the holidays. The others appreciate that I can work when they need a rest break. No one there has uncovered my identity." He looked straight ahead as he spoke, his voice not rising or falling, but seemed to make an effort to turn and address Miss A. "I assisted in a battle against a wielder of Terminus technology. It was deeply unsettling."

"I am well." Harrier cocked his head back and forth as he talked, looking at the still-suspicious guards and the machinery just ahead of him. "There are backscatter and rapid electromagnetic scanners in the corridor. I did not wish to alarm anyone." Scanners like that would certainly read the power pike at his hip, much less the Terminus technology with which his body was riddled to the bone and beyond. Murdock was in a Freedom City Comets sweater and sweatpants, one of the several outfits he'd gotten from the Freedom League's charity for the Thanksgiving holiday. He hadn't had a family to dress up for, but he hadn't been about to say no.

Gina was working in her Archetech lab, in between eating Cool Ranch Doritos in her basement, when the phone rang. With Gina's superhumanly acute intelligence, it was an easy matter to recognize the voice of the guard on her laboratory phone: Greg Landris, wife, no kids, junior desk guard at the Archetech office. "Ms. Americana? There's a man here who wants to see you, but he's refusing to go through security. He says his name is Murdock and it's about the recent business you discussed?" Miss Americana was famous enough that she had her share of cranks, but of course Murdock was a familiar name for the beautiful genius. Harrier did not have an appointment, but given his deep problems with human interaction, it wasn't really a surprise he hadn't made one.

With the worst of the avalanche blocked by Phalanx's aerial maneuvering and the rest caught by Edge and Psyche's hastily erected dual wall, everyone's hearing gradually returned as the teens assessed the damage. The top of Kilimanjaro was smoking in a way that was particularly alarming for a volcano, and what could be made out of it through slowly fading smoke looked warped and bent: whatever had hit had blasted up new craters and walls, as if it had come straight down rather than at any appreciable angle. The White Lion, looking upward, looked very concerned indeed, news that grew even worse when a frantic radio message reached them from the palace: there had been a subsidence when the meteor hit, and people were in danger. "I must go below to assist with the evacuation," said the king quickly, looking from face to face amongst the teenagers. "I would trust no one else on Earth with this duty, but you young heroes must go above and make sure that the...the cage of the Great Beast of Kilimanjaro has not been broken." The "I KNEW IT!" was for a half-second perfectly clear in Mark's posture before he said quickly, "What kind of beast is it? What should we expect?" He'd heard his father's stories, of course, but to hear the secret of the mountain confirmed was...well, not really a triumph! But Young Freedom had dealt with plenty of big monsters before, and he wasn't about let worries about one of them get him down. As long as no one was hurt, things would be okay! "A powerful beast from before the birth of man," explained the king quickly. "A creature so powerful, some say its arrival heralded the end of the dinosaurs. If it has gotten free, you must surround it with daka crystals, as many as the fastest of you can gather, and that will paralyze it. You must hold it in one place until then, though, by whatever means you can. It has...leapt from the mountain to Dakana City before. But the last cage we built should be secure enough, if it can be rebuilt!"

APPROVED

The problem is, SC, this character is barely functional: his powers hardly work and he's nowhere near his defensive caps even with the edits you're currently working on. I know you like playing joke characters and all, but this is not the sort of sheet we like to see players have. We want newbies looking at the character bank to see characters worth copying. (Which is harsh, because he's got a novel design and a fun character theme, but damn) If you want to play a Glass Cannon, give him a +5 Defense/-5 Toughness tradeoff, a tradeoff in favor of Damage, and All-Out Attack all the time.

This is a novel concept, but one that might be problematic here. You have a lot of fluff that isn't reflected on the sheet, and it's a concern that players might try and talk their way around that.

This sheet will obviously not be looked at again (to clarify, it has 0 approvals) until you edit it properly.

His anatomy seems decidedly peculiar.

What role do you see this character as playing, SC?

His Initiative modifier is wrong.

APPROVED

Bad things have happened: a meteor just hit the top of Mount Kilamanjaro, pouring an avalanche and sonic boom down on everyone. DC 22 Fort save to avoid a rank 12 Auditory Dazzle: Mark passes as mentioned in the IC. The avalanche and blast was largely caught by Psyche and Edge's Create Object, so those of us in the party have only that as a threat.

For the Claremont students without a superhuman constitution, the walk up the mountain was deceptively difficult: the long, easy slope stretching up and away was after all a slope, and within a half-hour up the mountainside they were beginning to feel aches and pains in their calves and back: even the students with particularly durable bodies couldn't fully relax, not with the long, long drop down the mountain stretching off on the other side of the path. But with no one manifesting a particular fear of heights, and with the experienced Dakanan climbers and the luck of Mark Lucas alongside, any worries about accidents soon faded before the spectacular views below them. Distant scrub and lesser mountains seemed to stretch off forever, with giraffes, elephants, and other big animals visible down below to Phalanx and others with extended vision, or else those who borrowed the binoculars of the Dakanans to look down the mountainside. Normal man or not, the White Lion didn't seem to feel the fatigue of the mountain, but then he had been doing this his whole life! For his own part, Mark found it hard not to reflect on his family ties here. His father had made this trip as a young man alongside the current king's father, learning a secret that he'd sworn himself to keep until finally...he wasn't there not to tell it. Mark had always believed in, always loved history, especially the story of his own family, but increasingly he was feeling the weight of his father's legacy wherever he went. But that's part of why I'm here, isn't it? he reflected when they took a rest break, peering up at the sky in a rare moment of thought. To break with my dad's legacy, so I can start meeting people who can give me a career outside a costume. So I can get away from the past. Mark looked up at the sky and blinked, covering his eyes against the glare from the mid-day sun. "Hey, what's that?" There was a light in the sky. Edge had many virtues, but a knowledge of science wasn't one of them: only later would he stop and look up how fast meteors travel. The average meteor falls at roughly 44 miles a second. There was no time to think, only..."Psyche! Shields up!" Mark threw up his hands, with no time to refine his powers, and as the meteor tore through the sky and smashed into the summit of the mountain, a screaming, blinding wall of pure fire, a sphere of blue and yellow, the colors of the Centurion, sprang up around the party, a cage of energy that caught and bent under the weight of the titanic explosion! Seconds later, as the glow faded, the shower of rocks against one side of the shield began to pile up, even as more began tumbling down the sides of the mountain around them.

As a reaction, Edge spends an HP to force the Russian to reroll his power check, requiring him to take the lesser of two rolls. Luck Control, the player's friend! (His main array is currently set to Fortune Control, so all his allies within fifty feet effectively have mastery on all checks: i.e., they cannot roll below 10)

Portalist PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 18 pp STR 10 (+0) DEX 14 (+2) CON 16 (+3) INT 10 (+0) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 12 (+1) Combat: 28 pp ATK: +6 (+10 Portals) DEF: +14 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +6 Grapple: +6 Saves: 10 pp TOU +6 (+3 Con, +3 Protection) FORT +6 (+3 Con, +3) REF +6 (+2 Dex, +4) WILL +6 (+3 Wis, +3) Skills: 21 pp=84 r Bluff 8 (+9) Climb 4 (+4) Diplomacy 8 (+9) Intimidate 8 (+9) Knowledge: Civics 4 (+4) Knowledge: Pop Culture 8 (+8) Languages 8 (pick 8) Notice 8 (+11) Sense Motive 8 (+11) Stealth 8 (+10) Survival 8 (+11) Swim 4 (+4) Feats: 15 pp Contacts, Connected, Dodge Focus 6, Elusive Target, Evasion Improved Initiative, Luck, Move-By Action, Uncanny Dodge (auditory), Well-Informed Powers: 57 pp Portal Array [47+7=54 pp] -Blast 10 (Extras: Autofire, Penetrating) (PFs: Accurate 2, Indirect 3, Variable Descriptor 2 [any physical]) ‘portal bombardment’ AP: Blast 10 (Extras: Area [shapeable], Selective) (PFs: Indirect 3, Progression 2 (25 foot cubes), Variable Descriptor 2 [Physical]) ‘portal storm’ AP: Disintegration 10 (Flaw: Full-Round Action) (PFs: Accurate 2, Reversible) ‘it goes away’ AP: ESP 10 (Earth to Moon) (all senses) (PFs: Rapid 6 (1mk), Subtle) ‘peeking through portals’ AP: Move Object 10 (Extras: Damaging, Range [Perception]) (PFs: Accurate 2, Indirect 3, Variable Descriptor 2 [Physical]) ‘mass transit’ AP: Teleport 8 (200 ft/2000 miles) (Extras: Accurate, Portal [+2]) (PFs: Change Velocity, Progression 5 (250x250), Turnabout) ‘portal’ AP: Teleport 20 (anywhere in the Universe) (PFs: Change Velocity, Easy, Progression 4 (2500 lbs), Turnabout) ‘long-distance teleport’ Protection 3 [3 pp] costs abilities 18 + combat 28 + saves 10 + skills 21/84 + feats 16 + powers 57 =150 pts --- ‘ Design Notes: OK, I already made a teleporter, but durf’s great Portal construction got me thinking. So here’s a character who’s a teleporter of a different sort, someone who can open up portals to anywhere in the Universe! But since he can’t breathe in space, he restricts himself usually to opening up portals on Earth, something he’s very, very good at. He can do all sorts of crazy tricks with portals too; opening up portals underground and hitting opponents with jets of lava or steam, blasting them with high pressure water from the Marianas Trench, or anything else he can grab. He can do that against just one target with a torrent of portals, or hit a whole area with a massive array of destruction. I figure his Disintegrate represents opening a portal up right in the middle of something and shredding it to bits, or maybe dropping it somewhere that it won’t be coming back. (Unless he reverses it!) The Move Object is a way of doing an ‘attack’ Teleport, taking an object and shifting it around as best he can in combat. As for the ESP, well, it’s just what it sounds like, looking through legions of tiny near-invisible portals to see what’s going on all around him, and doing it darn fast to boot. The Accurate on his Move Object represents hitting with 'thrown' objects, not the power itself, of course. The picture is of Vortex, a book character (for M&M 3E) who has not been statted out yet. I hasten to add that this is not an attempt to infringe on that character! I figure this is a character who’s been literally everywhere at one time or another, speaking a legion of languages and possessing friends and allies all over the universe. And why not? Who doesn’t enjoy traveling across an incredibly vast distance of space and time, journeying anywhere they like?

The robots go on 24 and 21 Midnight is up.

Fusion set her teeth and strode up to where the robot was bound and still weakly struggling against Fleur's plant bonds: she didn't hesitate, shoving her tentacles through the tiny gaps in the plant matrix to grab the robot within. There was a short metallic shriek from inside as she squeezed, hard, and the sound of crunching metal as she crushed the robot to fragments, all the while fervent imaginings flicking through her head. "Perverted little bastard," she muttered out loud. She knew how, and why, Otaku built his robots, and just how invested he was in accurate reconstruction. How long had he been making Fusion-bots? How long had he...her costume briefly flourescented red as her skin's chameleon cells shifted in anger. And they were surrounded by cameras, she reminded herself, cameras that he could no doubt use to film every filthy moment of it and broadcast it for the dubious pleasure of the filthy degenerates who admired him! "All right, what we need to do is-" Suddenly the big monitor in the corner snapped to life, the noise rousing some of the sleeping morning crew and camera people as newscasters and crew were roused from what had become a normal night's sleep. "So, Fusion, your sinuous tentacles have penetrated into my lair! Ahahahaha!" Otaku laughed, putting his hands together before him, the blank wall behind him giving fewer clues to his location. "You think you have stopped me? Pshaw!" From the room's two exits appeared two black-clad robots, the two Fusion-bots evidently having the same rapid movement abilities as the real thing. "While you and your new friends play with my girls, I will build a wireless broadcaster out of the control booth so that everyone in Freedom City will learn what a saucy minx you are! Ahahahaha!" Fusion responded with a string of violent obscenities, ignoring the oncoming robots as she snatched up a camera and threw it right through the screen in a shower of glass!

The robot got a 23 (lost the link, drat it) and is grappled. Fusion's turn...

20 The robot is injured and stunned: Not good news! Fleur is up.