Avenger Assembled

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!"

"If you cannot return to aid me in this place, then..." Talos sounded like his Earth-Prime self for a moment, before his gaze fell on Daisy's wide-eyed look of fear. "I...I, no! I will not be like the monsters I fight! I shall aid you for goodness' sake, because you are innocents who need rescuing, not for gain or desire to see my enemies fall! If one or two of you have the technical prowess to assist me, we can have a portal built within the night!" Talos struck himself on the chest with a resounding gong. "Yes! For right and valor, we shall do it!" "We'll help!" agreed Mark, knowing he didn't need to ask his friends about that. "But how will it work?" he asked. "I mean, are you just going to send us straight there from here, or are we going to switch with ourselves?" he asked, echoing Trevor's earlier question with a glance Midnight's way. Hopefully Talos just talked like this because he was a ham in any universe, not because he was actually rusting in the brain somewhere. "You will be pulled between worlds, replacing your doubles as they replace you, passing each other in the aether. The Syndicate thinks they have blocked dimensional travel, but they are unaware of my ability to pass by their defenses! Quickly, is one of you mighty? I have a very large gear that must be placed!"

"I'm Fusion," said Joan amiably to Nick, shaking his hand with a perfectly normal, though very strong, human hand. "The studio felt you needed someone along who can handle themselves in a variety of possible situations, and I have a few friends in the field of journalism who steered me your way." Nick saw her wink through the huge white eyeblobs on her costume. "In plain English, they hired me as muscle. I can lift that van over there over my head and fight in the dark, so I'm your go-to girl for this sort of thing." "It's Ms, actually," said Fusion to Doctor Fried, moving along quickly now that they'd made introductions. "Frankly, I think you're right to be a little skeptical of this situation. Not that I doubt any of you," she added cordially, "but I think we're too eager to attribute to magic what can ultimately be explained by science. I've seen my share of freaky stuff," she added, waving her tentacles with a little laugh for emphasis. "but I believe that what we call magic is ultimately what we haven't yet explained through science." Fusion met Gossamer's gaze unflinchingly. "Oh, it's you. Yes, I'm familiar with your work, Doctor. Hello." There was a cold, short handshake, and then she was back to talking to the others.

The truck is destroyed by the impact, but doesn't inflict enough damage to get through Singularity's Impervious.

Suddenly, just as Singularity turned her head as she ran across the road, she saw two bright lights bearing down on her! The eighteen-wheeler plowed into Singularity with a schrooonk of its horn and a huge crash of metal and glass, the huge truck collapsing in on itself as surely as it had hit a concrete wall. The noise was tremendous, enough to catch the attention of the villains swiftly pursuing the fast-moving Singularity through the night. They had her trail!

APPROVED

Aaron Walsh, Antagonist NPC Abilities: 40 pp STR: 16 (+3) DEX: 16 (+3) CON: 16 (+3) INT: 18 (+4) WIS: 14 (+2) CHA: 20 (+5) Combat: 30 pp ATK: +7 (+10 Ranged) DEF: +12 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +7 Grapple: +10 Saves: 18 pp TOU +5 (+3 Con, +2 Shirt) FORT +8 (+3 Con, +5) REF +6 (+3 Dex, +3) WILL +12 (+2, +10) Skills: 26 pp=112 r Bluff 12 (+17) Diplomacy 12 (+17) Gather Information 13 (+18) Intimidate 12 (+17) Knowledge: Business 10 (+14) Knowledge: Civics 10 (+14) Languages 4 (Greek, Polish, Russian, Spanish) (Base: English) Perform [Political Bluster] 13 (+18) Notice 13 (+15) Sense Motive 13 (+15) Feats: 31 pp All-Out Attack, Assessment, Attack Focus: Ranged 3, Benefit 4 (Security Clearance, Status, Wealth 2) Connected, Contacts, Dodge Focus 4, Equipment 4 Evasion 2, Fascinate [bluster], Fearless, Improved Initiative, Move-By Action, Power Attack, Second Chance (Interaction Skil Resistance) Skill Mastery (Diplomacy, Gather Information, Notice, Sense Motive) Takedown Attack, Uncanny Dodge (auditory), Well-Informed Powers: 5 pp Immunity 5 (Interaction Skills) (Flaw: Half-Effect) [3 pp] Immunity 2 (Mind Control) [2 pp] Equipment: Heavy Pistol (Blast 4) [8 pp] House (as Sanctum Sanctorum) [9 pp] Undercover Shirt (Protection 2 (PF: Subtle) [3 pp] 40+30+18+26+31+5=150 pp - “Heroes in Uniform” is one of the more memorable images of the Terminus Invasion: foot patrolman Aaron Walsh grappling with the Omegadrone that had just broken through the police barricade outside the Our Lady of Charity Elementary School, putting human courage and ingenuity against the unstoppable killing machine of Omega’s armies. What makes the image all the more memorable is that Walsh survived his battle with the Omegadrone. Despite a near-miss blast by the ‘drone’s power pike that left him permanently scarred, the young officer managed to wrest the weapon away from the armored fiend and decapitate it with a backswing. The photographer Li Quan won the Pulitizer for the picture, while Aaron Walsh became a hero to the FCPD. Walsh had always been a little odd; a stubborn autodidact who worked his way through night law school while walking a beat, a man of rock-solid integrity who’d spent the last years of the Moore administration in increasingly low-status, high-danger posts like the traffic patrol because of his disgust at the department’s corruption. But the damage sustained during the Terminus Invasion and his own injuries solidified his stubborn integrity, coupling it with a deep, abiding skepticism of the heroes everyone else admired. Why had they run away under Moore, leaving thousands of civilians and dozens of his brother officers to die before their so-convenient triumphant return? But opinions like that weren’t credible in Freedom City in 1993, so the hero cop kept his head down, instead collecting money and using it to pay for his law school career, then his hiring by the state prosecutor's office. Assistant State’s Attorney Aaron Walsh was a memorable figure in the courtroom, the hair on the left side of his head permanently white, the ear on that side scarred and damaged, his flinty courage and sense of justice propelling him to victory after victory. Ultimately, Aaron’s fame was enough to propel him into the halls of the US Congress, elected in 1998 as a Republican. Walsh was not a great Congressman; not good at playing politics, not good at dealing with lobbyists, he survived thanks to the support he enjoyed from the Southside where he’d grown up, as well as the universal support of Freedom City’s (and New Jersey’s) policeman’s unions. No one has been a better friend to law and order than Aaron Walsh, and if occasionally he compares police and firefighters favorably to “those with superpowers”, well, no one is going to get that upset about praising policemen and firefighters, especially after 9/11. He’s getting older now, into his mid-40s, and unlike many of his fellow Congressmen has shown no interest in seeking higher office. He might have spent his entire career as a Congressional gadfly and stubborn defender of “the little man, the forgotten champions of justice, the silent majority of hard-working men and women who only want to sleep safely in their beds at night”, attacking corruption and what he sees as ‘coddling’ until the recent emergence of the Terminus Babies. At the news that the heroes of Freedom City were allowing children with Terminus powers to fly around unguarded and untrained, the Congressman from the Southside went ballistic, all his old paranoia and superstition erupting in full bore, his feelings growing even sharper after the rumors that an actual _Omegadrone_ was acting as a superhero! The Terminus was coming back, and Freedom City’s heroes were spending their time enjoying their parades and applause while once again the hard-working men and women of the city are at risk! Someone had to do something. _He_ had to do something. Aaron Walsh is the worst kind of government-backed opponent for superheroes: an honest man, a fearless patriot, and a savvy politician who just happens to be stubborn, misguided, and wrong. He can’t be bribed (though offers to do so will make the papers through his friends at the Freedom City Herald) or intimidated (same same). He lives in a bungalow in the Southside that has one of the most expensive security apparatuses on a civilian structure in the city, but is otherwise completely honest. It’s tough to brand a man so popular as a hero-hater, especially since he famously weeps every year at the Centurion’s memorial service. If publicly taunted or called out, his rhetoric will get sharper: what are the Terminus brats hiding that their lackeys have to try and make him look bad? If actually attacked, he’ll resist to the best of his ability, and do everything in his considerable power to bring his attackers to justice. Legislation requiring genetic testing at birth for Terminus powers will be introduced in Congress some weeks later. If he's attacked again, it will get worse, oh yes. He doesn't want to 'tear superheroes down to his level' the way his old nemesis Franklin Moore did; he's not jealous of them in some easily-exploitable way. He thinks they need to be watched, for the good of all of us. There’s essentially no dirt on the man (indeed, given his famous reputation for stubborn integrity and powerful media ties in Freedom City, even faking some will be nearly impossible), and he has few weaknesses to exploit. He has no ambitions, no big dreams, except protecting his family and keeping the people of Freedom City safe. Nearly every cop on the beat loves the guy who got them their over-sized pensions, and who personally funds most of the local charities for the families of slain and wounded officers. He runs a mile every morning and lifts weights every night, and is still a crack shot with the Police Special .38 he's carried since the late 1980s. He's in fantastic shape, and could easily live another fifty years if he doesn't get capped or blasted first. He’ll be highly uncomfortable with the idea of private meetings with Terminus brats: after all, if they’ve brainwashed so many superheroes, how could one civilian be any better-protected? He’ll generally disregard anything they have to say on general principle. Aaron does, however, have one weakness that savvy, investigative heroes can find: He has one son with his wife Chloe (the sister of Herald publisher Lana Loeb, and the source of the Walsh family money), David, who’s sixteen as of this writing. Dave is a spoiled, though amiable young man who plays football at his local prep school, calls people brah when he’s been drinking, and has no ambitions greater than to maybe follow his father into the law and politics. Dave has carefully not told his father about the telekinetic abilities he began manifesting last year, particularly since the visible manifestation of such matches that of the Golden Guardian, the menacing henchman and stooge of Shadivan Steelgrave who nearly tore the Loeb family estate down in 1993. If Aaron finds out that his son is a Terminus brat, he will embrace the boy, burst into tears, and abandon his anti-Terminus crusade the next day. He’s a stubborn man, a difficult man, and a dangerous opponent, but he loves his family more than anything. Even his own pride. Yes, he still wears those 80s glasses in the picture. They were a gift from his wife, who thinks he looks adorable in them. The immunity to Mind Control comes from a CIA contact who supplied him with certain drugs as a way of making sure THEY didn't tap into his mind, and the Interaction skill half-immunity he earned: he's just that good.

Just as the Blank saw Singularity vanish through the window in a shower of glass, he heard a discreet laugh behind him. "Well well well, and yet you're still better at that than Tentacles back there," said Hex, cocking his thumb behind him. "Let's move!" he said, firing his grapple gun out the window as he ran. "We've got to catch her before she gives the game away to half this city!"

9

Also, 152 pp, waaah?