Avenger Assembled

"All right," said Fusion easily, having recovered her equilibrium. "I'll report back to you by this time tomorrow, right here, if I haven't done so before." It was a good week; Charlie and Lois would be able to get by on their own for a couple of days, since they knew where she was going. "If there's nothing else?" If there wasn't, she gave a courtly little bow to the sorcerous investigator, tentacles waving, then dived into the water with a smooth, easy economy of motion, disappearing from view quickly.

"When the device is completed," Talos reassured the students, "you will see all that you need." It was decidedly strange working down there in the roboty dark, though faster when Mark joined in to help make machines that none of them could put a name to. Mark shivered a little as they worked, It was strange to think of the nightmare world overhead, compared to this quiet place of scuttling robots and rusty gears. For her part, Daisy has slipped away from the group a little, sitting by herself with a shell-shocked look on her face.

Hex cursed explosively, lashing out into the whiteness unsuccessfully. "Goddammit, Blank, she's getting away! Turn that crap off!" He stormed out of the field himself, cape snapping behind him in the breeze, as he looked for where she'd landed. "There, that skyscraper!" he exclaimed, pointing to the hole in the glass windows several stories up, all the way across the bay. "She must have landed inside. Thrashmaster Z and Yellowmacarena, take to the air and make sure she doesn't jump out again. Carry us. When we get there, the Blank and I are going inside. Remember, the higher the body count, the harder she'll be, so we do this smooth."

OK, that's a Detect Weakness. It's a radio sense, and an active effect, so characters with an active Radio sense should be able to pick it up. (Though you'd need something like Acute or Analytical to ping it as 'being scanned', otherwise it's just a burst of radio sent your way) Give me a DC 26 check of, hmm, Computers, if you want to resist the effect (which IMO would require being able to tell what it is.)

"Everything I do is suspicious." It wasn't a complaint. It was a statement of fact. Having eyed the other cyborg, his eyes dark, as he showed his power, Murdock returned his attention to Miss A. "The pike is powered by its physical connection to the material universe. This allows it to channel destructive power. But it can be damaged, or broken, which would allow Terminus technology to fall into the hands of the innocent. This cannot be allowed. "

"I lack the ability to travel between dimensions." agreed the former drone. He continued eating, knife and fork rising and falling methodically and carefully, the way he did almost everything. "I was transported to this plane by the Furions; those who war against Omega in the Terminus. They were allies of your Centurion, and the other heroes of the Freedom League, of old. They felt it better I live away from them." When he was finished eating, he set the plate down. "My own experience with dimensional travel was limited to the time before my freedom," he said shortly. "Thank you for the pie."

"Please don't be alarmed." When he'd asked the question gently, Murdock pulled a black metal cylinder from his belt. With a snap of his wrist, suddenly, the cylinder erupted outward and wider in his hand, bursting forward into the clear, unmistakeable shape of an Omegadrone's pike! The tip hummed with sinister energies, a whine like a dentist's drill, while the blade gleamed with wickedly polished metal. Worst of all, though, was the metal that had burst from his hand and arm, sliding right out through the slits in his skin, covering his arm with the unmistakeable armor of an Omegadrone. Watching Victory warily, almost tiredly, for his reaction, Murdock said, "I do not have the tools to repair the pike. If you wish to study it, I will need to keep it, as it is bonded to the circuitry embedded in my arms and requires them to function."

"Singularity!" Hex spat, meeting her eyes fearlessly. "You know what'll happen when we give you back to Pathos, don't you? Stop right now, and I'll make sure you don't suffer any before then!" When that didn't seem to work, Hex seemed to shrug, even as black hands reached up from the tarmac to seize Singularity by the ankles. "It's your choice how you want to see your sister again!" he taunted.

Hex uses his Move Object on Singularity. 28 And with Power Attack, nice. You need to get over DC 40 to escape the grapple, Electra. Don't forget to add your Rage-induced STR to that.

Couple of mistakes: Singularity is actually doing DC 41 with Rage and Autofire. The TOU of the cage is actually 13, not 23. 28 (I rolled since it couldn't be worse!) OK, Singularity breaks out of the cage (because it failed by more than 15) and falls to the ground. When she's done surging, Hex will be up. (Shoulda readied, not held! Ah well)

Hex holds his action till Singularity goes. Singularity, go.

"Yes. I appreciate the offer, Miss Americana." His reaction to Miss Americana was, Murdock decided, a fine testimony to his own humanity. Murdock fixed his gaze on Lance, his mind on the obvious problem here. "While I know how to repair my artificial systems, I lack the technical ability to do so myself. Victory, my artificial nature is not like yours. It may distress you. I apologize for any offense that I will cause you."

Hex Seizes Initiative.

OK, that's a Tou 23 cage, so Singularity is strong enough to break out if she isn't subdued! The Create Object is Moveable; I'll say Singularity won't be able to push back until it's on the ground, since she has no purchase to resist in the air. The Blank and the Prince in Yellow are up.

"I'm surrounded by morons!" spat Hex, his cape floating dramatically behind him in the breeze. He watched Singularity leap into the air, soaring majestically towards the horizon, and pointed. Suddenly iron bars swooped into being all around the fleeing fugitive, a square cage like one that zoo animals were kept in on Anti-Earth. "No more running," Hex spat contemptuously as the cage began to fall back towards them. "She'll be able to break out if she works at it. Yellowknife, get ready with a spell: Blankie, this is no time to get soft and cuddly. When she gets down here, I want the two of you hitting her as hard as you can."

The Box! The Box! The Box! DC 23 Reflex save, Electra. Hex spends an Evil HP to make her reroll if she passes.

In another sign that this was _not_ their Talos, the bronze giant sat back on his rusted haunches and let Trevor and Erin build the machine together under his guidance. Evidently he was not so proud that he couldn't let human beings do his work for him. To Kid Cthulu, he said, "I know relatively little of your counterpart," he admitted. "My friend Taurus, the great bull of Heaven, was the magic specialist among us in the old days. He spoke of a great and terrible power corrupting an already-depraved young man, making of him a monster. The Syndicate has him for their own use, but they risk much with his every attack."

Murdock fixed big, dark eyes on Lance, the lines that criss-crossed his skin visible even on the whites of his eyes and onto the irises. "Yes." There was a long pause, as of gears turning in his brain. "Hello, Lance." He extended a hand, his brown skin gleaming in the artificial light of the lab. His handshake was rock-solid, his grip backed up with a superhuman power to match Victory's, but not squeezing hard enough to actually hurt. "You must be the other."

"Mr. Hughes, there are those who'd argue that you were born with power. Those philosophers would say that from the moment of your birth, you were fated to find that ring and wield its power. This is not a belief I share." He harrumphed. "If I believed in fate, Mr. Hughes, I would hardly be an educator. Your life has been in your hands from the moment of your birth, and never moreso than this very moment. What do you want your powers to do?" - "Allow me to demonstrate." Serena wiggled her fingers and said a few words Etain didn't recognize. Suddenly they were standing over what was clearly recognizable as Freedom City, save that it was burning. The little fairy could hear the screams from below as the trapped population burned, with no heroes beneath visible to save them. "That's a fairly simple illusion spell," said Serena with a shrug. "I'm more advanced than you are, but not by that much as these things as measured." The screams from below grew louder. "If I'd wanted to, I could inflict that on a city block, except _they'd_ be in the middle of the burning, suffering and terrified, never able to tell reality from fantasy until a hero came along to stop me. Illusions are very real, Etain. A lie is not weaker than the truth if you can make people believe it."

"It was impossible for me to remain in the Terminus. A drone who has escaped is hunted forever." Murdock spoke without looking up, his hands moving with a slow, mechanical precision as he took a piece of pie and began to cut it into tiny bites with a fork. It wasn't that he was like a machine, the others saw after a moment, it was more that the motions were the slow, deliberate gestures of someone who'd been practicing them for hours. Perhaps in a mirror. "This is very good pie," he said after taking a bite. "I like chocolate."

I am not in the Helpful Hospice. I am not in the Helpful Hospice. "No." The former drone slowly paced the room, his footsteps resounding as he examined the laboratory with an expression that was hard to read. "I apologize if I have arrived too early. I took the crosstown bus." He smiled back, and Miss A could tell he meant it, but the expression still looked decidedly odd on his face, as if muscle and the bone beneath weren't really meant for that kind of look. "Your facilities are new."

10/5/2010 Murdock had watched a show on the television about the alienation of public life in the big city, about how you could live there for years and never know your neighbor's name, how you could travel across town and never speak to the hundreds of thousands you passed. The people on the show had been very sad about this. Though it made him feel strange to think so, in unnameable and unthinkable ways, the former Omegadrone did not feel sad about the anonymity of the city. No one had spoken to him ont he long bus ride out to Hanover, not even when he'd boarded the bus in Lincoln and his heavy step had made it bow. He liked that. "Thank you." He tipped the driver as he left, the words the first he'd spoken that day, indeed, in several days, and walked out towards the parking lot of the office building where he'd been summoned by his new contact, Miss Americana.

Mr. Summers proved to be a reassuringly paternal presence; not a kind figure, perhaps, but not an unfriendly one either. The old man shook Corbin's hand and invited him to take a seat; offering him coffee before he welcomed him to the school. "I'm sure you've had time to review our orientation material. You'll have plenty of chances to hear more about our academic and personal expectations as your year progresses. If I did not expect you to meet them, you would not be a student here. Do you have any questions for me?" - Across the hall, the smiling, dark-haired Serena Vervain was there to talk with Etain about magic. "As I'm sure you're aware, use of magical abilities can be problematic in mundane settings. That's why we make sure to do a short little binding of every student, just so if there is some disaster with your abilities, that your teachers will be able to help you control your powers before something disastrous happens. Are you ready?"

Talos directed Wander to work, his corroded metal muscles making painful-sounding grinds as he helped move a great bronze gear into place inside a huge skeleton of machinery. "Your double is a victim of the Syndicate," replied Talos bluntly. "Pulled from a dead world, driven to madness by the ministrations of their psychics, used as a weapon of terror and revenge by the Syndicate. It would...it would only distress you to hear further, child." said the great robot, not sounding at all like his Earth-Prime double now. "You cannot blame yourself for the crimes of another."

"You know, I can probably make more of that freezonium for you," said Edge, taking out his pipe and blowing soap bubbles with it. "Unless of course it has properties unique to my own dimension! My God! A sort of aetheric...well, I don't actually know. I'll take the South Side!" he called. Mark quickly flagged down a cab and jumped inside. "Cabbsy! Take me to the highest place in South London and I'll pay you five full quid!"