Avenger Assembled
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"Hmmph." Hex slid down himself, not bothering to conceal himself as he slid into the broken office floor. Stupid cattle, he thought contemptously as he gazed at Singularity's battered victims. Maybe if the sissies who ran this place bothered to put the fear of supers in these zips, they'd have been smart enough to get out of Singularity's way. Never make a good freeman out of someone who should be a slave. He walked into the room, not bothering to conceal himself. It wasn't _just_ arrogance that let him be so obvious, though certainly his own faith in his superiority was absolute. But if Singularity was hiding from him, the Blank would be able to catch her. "Singularity!" he called. "You're beginning to make me angry! You don't want me to tell your friend Pathos, do you? She'll be angry too!"
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While Erin and Trevor had their moment, Mark got his mother settled in one of the control chairs, sitting alongside Midnight I. With his mom calmed down, Mark was able to relax a little, and focus on the presence of one of the world's greatest heroes. Frankly, that made it a little difficult to talk, or even think, but he was willing to work through it as some of his recent practice sessions triggered something in his brain. I can see them, right? So I should be able to... "Mr...uh, Mr. Midnight?" he asked the elderly Travis, "can you get all these pointing to zombies? Sir?" he asked, pointing to the screens. Watching his grandson's interplay with interest, the old man nodded, his age forcing him to actually turn and watch the work before turning back. While the emotional moment went on, Mark stared at the zombies on screen: a good-sized mob of decaying corpses shambling their way past the locked-down First National Bank on Main Street. He began muttering under his breath "You don't belong here you don't belong here you don't belong here go away go away go AWAY!" At his words, suddenly the lead zombie exploded in a shower of black bubbles, startling the whole horde into immobility for a moment. A second later, he blew up another one. "Boo-yah...I mean, uh..." He shot a look over at Erin and Trevor, pulling himself out of zombie-killing mode for a moment, and said simply, "Hey. You guys are my best friends, and the best heroes I know. It's not my place to tell you what you should do, but I know you'll do the right thing. You're heroes. That's what we do." He looked back at the zombie screen and blew one up chasing a little kid. "I hate zombies!"
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"Saying what?" Murdock looked at Lance, confusion furrowing his lined brow for a moment, before he focused again on the soothing lights and images. "I am capable of slowing the activation of my armor if you would prefer a longer exposure," the drone added for Miss A's benefit. "I am unfamiliar with your detection equipment's specifications." Miss A could just make out the incredible complexity of the larger units embedded at the base of Murdock's spine, with the suggestion of a treasure box of super-tech buried inside him...even if it was of course Terminus tech. "The only thing I cannot demonstrate safely in this spot is my self-propulsion system."
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Eventually, with the machine half-built, they were able to get a view into their home dimension: a view of their counterparts and the mischief they were working. They wound up looking at Erin's double first, thanks to the unusual knot of emotions surrounding her. As Talos explained, the other Erin was an anchor in the space-time continuum, just like Erin herself. The first thing they saw was the wide-eyed face, the second the bloody hands and all-too-familiar purple pajamas, and finally the broken, moaning bodies propped up all around the girl in what looked like an office park. Some of the bodies weren't moving at all.
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29 to hit Rerolled Grapple for a total of 15+33=48
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Fusion did what she usually did in underwater battles: she swore violently and lashed out with her tentacles, doing her best to ensnare the beast before her in her powerful, nigh-unbreakable grip. She hadn't been hurt by the creature's surprise attack, but it could still have done some damage. _You're not fighting some air-breathing shrimp now!_ she spat through the water. _I'm the mighty Fusion! Back off right now, or I'll crush you like a surfacer in Atlantis!_
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25, unhurt!
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Murdock walked up to the observation table, his weight heavy on the floor just as Lance's had been, and looked at Miss A to speak three words. "In or out?" When she told him, he retracted his armor, storing his pike at his waist, and climbed onto the table. His heartrate went up, and he made a conscious choice to rest his hands on his chest. She will not attempt to restrain me. This is not the Happy Hospice. It soon became obvious that Murdock's internal anatomy was decidedly odd. His bones had been replaced with fractral constructions of impossible depth, Miss A's scanners showing her ever-increasing levels of complexity as far down as she could resolve. A particularly massive construction lay along his spine, while another occupied most of his head, but his entire body was permeated with the Terminus technology. His skin and human organs were more of a shell over an unfolding metal frame than a regular body. It was very little like earthly cyborgs.
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"Mom, mom, you don't have to dust down here," Trevor and Erin heard Mark say, the twinge in his voice showing how often he'd had this conversation recently. "You can just look around, and see how nice the Midnight Cave is! Look, there's the giant silver dollar the first Midnight stole before the Aryan Ape could use it to summon a million silver apes, each more Nazi than the last!" Mark watched his mother, worried, as she relaxed and nodded, listening as her son gave her a tour gleaned from the knowledge of the Midnight Cave he'd gleaned from reading many, many Golden Age comic books. It had all been surprisingly accurate, too, back before about 1950 when Midnight had done his first renovations. _It was a different time_, Travis had explained once to Trevor about the now-repaired security breach. On the streets of Freedom City, the dead had risen and were voting Republican! Or at least getting into mischief, which some might say was the same. The security cameras revealed a city in chaos, but not quite in jeopardy, heroes and policemen and civilians rallying to fight the slow-moving, shambling hordes. But gradually, though, a closer look across the city revealed other monsters: there was a giant undead hurling cars, there one extended a long tongue, and there one particular horde ran fast as lightning! It took several minutes to pick out all the threats across the city on the old monitors, and they were not pleasant minutes either.
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Suddenly, a vigorous knocking on the door produced a new arrival! Big, brown-haired, and cheerful, wearing his Claremont letter jacket, Mark took Corbin's hand and pumped it. "Hey there, Corbin! How you doing? I'm Mark Lucas, I'm your designated senior tour guide. Did I catch you at a bad time?" he asked, stepping right into the room. "I'm sorry I missed you at the headmaster's office, but I just got off a training cycle with the team." He left it open what sport he played, or didn't. "Welcome to the school."
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Hex spends ANOTHER HP and stunts a teleport that puts us all on the skyscraper roof.
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"Look, people, telling each other off is all very satisfying," said Hex, adding mentally And you can be sure I'll blame ALL of you in my report, "But that doesn't actually get us Singularity back, does it?" He took out his teleporter and fiddled with it. "Forget strategy; it's beyond...most of you, anyway. I'm going to put us on the roof and we're going to go inside, grab Singularity, and jet back to our own dimension. I have my own ideas about how to do THAT," he added, pressing a few more buttons before they all disappeared in a flash of Imperial power!
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"Mom?" There was no sign of movement outside the Lucas house, but there was no sign of movement _inside_ either. Mark made a beeline for the back door, his friends in tow, and found his mother standing in the kitchen in gardening clothes, a wide-eyed look on her face. He knew the feeling! "Mom, are you okay? What happened?" "I'm all right," Martha reassured Mark, patting him with her garden-glove covered hand, the faint stains on it covered with a light coating of pale dust. "I'm glad you came, though. Is it true what the news says, that it's the dead come for the living?" "It's true, Mom, but we'll fight them," said Mark without hesitation. "We've just got to get you some place safer than this. We want to take you to Trevor's grandfather's house, the first Midnight? It's very safe there, very well-protected." "You're right," agreed Martha with a nod. "The weapons here aren't enough if more than one or two show up. And I've already done this week's scripting, so I don't have any other work to do." With that usual air of consciously maintaining domesticity that they were used to from Mark's mom, Martha methodically removed her gloves and left them hanging from the sink. "I'm ready now."
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For his part, Mark was looking more and more alarmed, visions of his family home being overrun by zombies growing more and more in his mind. "She could get to the defenses in the Trophy Room, but not all of those work, and even the Omni-Gun, the gun that shoots everything and makes it explode!, only has a few dozen shots in it! Oh God!" He blinked. "Erin, quick, grab us on your back and take us to my house! And then we'll grab my mom and jump to the Hunter house! That way, everyone will stay safe!"
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Seriously torn, trying to process what he was learning about his friend, Mark said, "My house isn't the safest place, and my mom's alone." If Trevor thought Erin should be off the frontlines, well...they were friends, right? They should know that sort of thing about each other. "And Trevor's grandpa," Mark hazarded. "Up in the mansion. Maybe if you help get our families together, and keep them safe? Somebody's got to protect them, whether it's here, or at the Hunter place, or wherever." He blinked. "There's not a cemetery on our block, I don't think...but there is that river..."
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Mark tugged at his collar, feeling uncomfortable for a moment. "Well, uh, I was up really high," he added again, looking from Trevor to Erin, "but it looked like a lot of the cemeteries were waking up. So a few thousand, I guess, with all the old burials around here..." He coughed, and added, "A lot of them are just shambling around, but some of them are hostile. I saw a couple of other heroes blasting a mob that was chasing a crowd of people...I dunno. It wasn't like every grave in the city opening up, and they're not all trying to, you know, do what they do in zombie movies."
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"Great, thanks to you!" said Mark. "Thanks, Erin and Trevor! I knew you guys wouldn't let me down: that's why I steered that thing over here." He looked at the two of them, his face curious, then spread his hands. "It was a zombie dragon, if you guys couldn't tell, it burst out of the museum and looked really hostile, so I jumped on its back to get it away and blow it up." He studied the other two before adding, "Look, I'm not sure how to tell you guys this, but I think the dead are rising from their graves with hostile intent. I saw a lot of activity around the cemetaries while we were in the air, and my off-campus alarm kept buzzing for a call-out. It looked pretty rugged, honestly. I...I thought you'd want to know, if you hadn't heard already."
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Suddenly, up in the sky, there came a great and terrible shriek! Looking upwards, Wander and Midnight saw a huge white shape falling from the sky with tremendous alacrity, some sort of terrible monster bird-thing on its last legs! Just as they saw it, the great object exploded into a gigantic cloud of dust that smelled oddly familiar to Erin as it cascaded down over all of them. But above them now was revealed the monster's tormentor, a very familiar figure in Claremont colors! Over their commlinks came Mark's voice. "Hey guys! Would someone catch me!?! You'll never believe what just happened!!!"
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Thrash is up. If you don't go in 24 hours, DS, we'll move on.
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"I am sorry for your accident, Lance," Murdock spoke suddenly, having been dead silent and nearly still for minutes. "Great misfortune can happen in this beautiful world." Inside his head, Harrier plotted battle strategies for an uncomfortable second before he forced himself to think in new directions. "Would you have preferred to have the damage done to you repaired, rather than to be upgraded?" he asked. "I know many in this world are...uncomfortable with cyberization." His pike traced a slow circle in the air, the glowing tip well away from any of Miss A's sensitive equipment.
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I can hit DC 20 with Skill Mastery. If I need to see is a higher DC than that, I'll include a roll. 20 20 it is!
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Eventually the two teens finished their conversations with the adults: After a reassuring talk about faith and duty, Summers gently invited Hughes to meet with him at any time before escorting him to the door, while Seven quickly and neatly put what she described as "a little string on the toe of your powers" with a little spell. That left the two of them footloose and fancy-free...well, if you didn't count the need to find their rooms and meet with new people! You had to make friends fast at a new high school.
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Edge Seizes Initiative and Inspires for +5! Boo-yah!
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Edge's sense of the theatrical debated with his good sense; as ever it was a short debate. With a gesture from the masked young hero, fireworks and Roman candles erupted all around the head of the Nazi robot, a patriotic display to rival any on the Western Front, the sound of patriotic music playing to accompany the all-American explosions. "C'mon, team!" called Mark in the best Golden Age style. "Give them the high, hard one! Hit a home run...for AMERICA! That's using your head, Cannonade!" For a second, a glorious second, Mark was more at home here than he'd ever been in his life.
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Murdock stood without pacing as he watched Miss A tend to Lance, his body and face still and composed. He hadn't responded to her offer, but the sharp-eyed Miss A could easily see the Omegadrone's strong hope and desire, not so carefully suppressed by that blank look in his eye. He was a very polite man, and didn't say a word as she worked. Life without fear. A life I could live without fear of exposure, with no greater curse than any other cyborg. It would be... He couldn't even put it into words.