Avenger Assembled

"That's one reason why I've tried to be on teams," said Joan with a little laugh. "Or live in a place like Freedom, so I can trust emergencies are being taken care of if I can't get away. As for the rest, well, I just have to be careful. It helps that I can turn invisible, and keep my costume on under my clothes and put it on without thinking about it." She demonstrated, letting black, shiny cloth flow out from under her clothes, then back underneath in between bites of salmon. "Morphic costumes are a godsend. Best money I ever spent in our line of work. And," she added, meeting her husband's gaze for a second in what was obviously a private joke, "it helps that my job puts me in harm's way. Or at least gives me an excuse to be there. I actually got my powers through a workplace accident."

Joan hmmed, considering how much to weigh the girl's words. "It's very handy," she agreed. "And a sacred trust," she added. "Scarab pitched a fit when she talked to me after the article, as you can imagine, but one thing she couldn't say was that I'd threatened her identity. I think you're forgetting, though, that superheroes are technically the same people, whether they're in masks or not. I didn't hurt the reputation of Scarab's ID, but I did cause problems for her in costume. Because her judgement was impaired, and that was where she needed to worry."

"Actually, a lot of us have personal teleporters," said Mark, cheerfully whipping his own out and tossing it from hand to hand. "They're pretty nifty, I've got to say! I got this from my friend Alex; she's a genius! It must be really handy to do it without needing a mechanical aid, though," he added. "They, uh, usually don't make us pay for lunch," he added with a wink. "We're already all on either scholarship or whatever our parents can afford to pay, right? We could go to that little cafe off-campus if you don't want to eat in the cafeteria. It's pretty nice."

"Hello!" A cheerful voice boomed from behind Dimitri! Turning around, he was confronted with shiny white teeth, bright blue eyes, and a tall, thin young man with a jovial look on his face. "You must be Dimitri. I'm Mark Lucas, I'm your tour guide today. I know you're just commuting, but it's still good to know where everything is." he said cheerfully. "I'm semi-commuting myself, though I don't have the advantages you do." He laughed. "I can still give you some ideas there, i guess. Or we can just hang out and see the place." Mark's cheerfulness wasn't quite overbearing, but he evidently had a very strong, very happy personality. "Hey there," he added to Tasha, giving her a friendly wink. "I don't think I've seen you around here before."

"It's not easy," Joan conceded. "Especially when you've got four extra arms that don't go away," she added, one idly poking up from under the table as they talked. "But I have a morphic costume that helps me cover my face and conceal my identity, and I dress up like Scarlett O'Hara most of the time when I'm not in costume." She sighed a little and added, "I envy you kids a little, it must be nice to be able to blow all that off. But I've made a lot of enemies over the last few years, and I can't let Charlie and Lois get in trouble because of that. For that matter, I don't know how many heroes would spend a lot of time talking to me if they knew my job. I'm a columnist," she added, "for the Ledger."

"The fifth grade," said Lois, surprising Erin given how young she was. "I was born real early, so I've usually been a year ahead. And the lessons I took in Japan let me test out of American fourth grade." She smiled nervously, her round cheeks blushing slightly under her faintly bronzed skin. "It's tough being small, but at least I'm way ahead of all the dorky kids my own age." "Honey, they can't help they weren't as lucky as you were," said Joan gently, not wanting Erin to think Lois was any more spoiled than she already was. "Lois and Charlie came out with me when I was working with the Defenders in Japan, so Lois spent three years in Japanese-style preschool and elementary." "And I got to be a house-husband," said Charlie with a chuckle. "Those were the days, huh?" It was hard to tell if there was a tension there between husband and wife, but Joan did change the subject in a hurry, reaching for a plate with an irritated flick of her long, suckered tentacle. "How do you find balancing hero work and being in school?" Joan asked Erin.

"Yeah, she's pretty cool," said Lois, who wasn't quite old enough yet to be jaded about her mom's accomplishments. "We haven't had other superheroes over for dinner since we moved into this house! It's cool!" At the table, Joan kept her promise and made the flowers a centerpiece as they all sat down around the salmon casserole that Joan herself had learned to cook in her native Portland. They passed the dishes around so everyone could get some of Joan's heaping portions, and everyone dug in without much fanfare. "I noticed how strong and fast you are, Erin," Joan commented as she ate, "Do you work out a lot at school?" She gave her daughter a suggestive look, earning her just the faintest trace of an eyeroll. Maybe she's getting older faster than I thought, Joan thought wryly. "I'm just saying, doing sports and physical activities can be very important."

"Thank you," said Joan, taking the flowers and smelling their daisy fragrance. "I'll put these on the table for the centerpiece. Come inside, and I'll introduce you to the family." Her family didn't usually eat many sitdown meals, but tonight was a company night. The Collier house was a small one, smaller certainly than the Albright manor or the Lucas suburban dwelling, but the little rowhouse was cozy with flowery wallpaper and high-quality yardsale brand furniture, though most of that was modified to accommodate what Erin quickly realized were her host's appendages. Joan sighed with relief as she let her arms wiggle free, the limbs poking out from under her dress. "I hate, hate, hate the summer weather out here," she admitted. "Keeping myself under wraps is not easy. Ah, here they come now." A smiling, bespectacled man and a round-faced girl of about nine came over to say hello. Charlie was a balding, bespectacled man of about thirty, his slight paunch and soft hands showing he worked indoors much more than his wife. "Hello, it's so nice to meet you," he said, a little formally. "Welcome to our home." Lois, Joan's daughter, still hadn't shed her babyfat, and peered up at Erin through thick glasses before saying, "It was really cool what you did to that shark guy! Thanks for saving my mom!"

"Oh, wow! You got new powers!" Mark smiled, trying to comfort Trevor at a moment when he was obviously stressed out. "That's really cool. I mean, I know looking funny is weird," added the gorgeous, incredibly handsome heir to the famous Lucas genes, "but I'm sure you'll be able to get that figured out. I mean, it only just happened, right? We're teenagers, it's sort of like super-powered puberty." He clapped Trevor on the shoulder and added, "You should go see Nurse Joy, man. She can look you over and see if what happened will stick, or if you need to go see one of the regular super-scientists like Viktor Archeville to see what's really going on. I mean, that's why we have nurses and doctors who know about this stuff!"

"First of all," replied the Baron of Bees with great firmness in his voice. "I always use the American system, because I am a patriot, sir. You may use whatever European system you wish, cooked up in your fancy European arthouse science labs with your berets and thin black cigarettes, looking down on us working-class American inventors who never got an even break and only want to make the world a better place by making all the people there over into bee-people. If my estimates are correct, I have roughly seven quintillions of bees ready to release upon the city, some cunningly concealed in underground bunkers prepared for me by certain unnamed individuals who took a profound interest in promoting my activities." He began to pace, speaking in grandiloquent terms as he abandoned the fake Fleur de Joie. "As for the radiation therapy supposedly developed by those damnable swindlers at ASTRO Labs, let me reassure you my good man that it was THEM who stole MY formula, and never with a word of thank you or a dollar of royalties! Oh, I sent them so many inventions, the better to promote a better world for the good of all humanity, but no, apparently they don't hire people with supposed untreated mental problems! As if Malign Hypercognitive Disorder is anything but a CAGE! A cage the WEAK build for the strong of mind! Oh, and I suppose THEY never had the courage to engage in outlaw science because they were too busy sucking at the teats of cow-universities like so many fatted calves! Ah! Mammals!" He pointed an armored finger at Archeville as he replied, "As for the stingers, that, sirrah, is a modification I bred in them out of love and compassion for the tiny little bees, who so bravely defend their homes only to die in the courage of it! Could I stand by and let this one mar in nature's perfect golden machine slay so many of my friends? No sir! No sir! I did it myself via certain acts of selective breeding, hours of painstaking work bent over a hot apiary, looking for just the right bees..." He put his hands on his hips. "And yes, this armor's design came from Eric Michaels. I make no bones about that. Science should be free for all, not kept in the confines of one man's mind! He is a violent man, a thug who hurts where he could persuade, and I no more hesitated to steal from him than I do the criminals who pass by my front door! He is in jail, and rightly so! An outlaw scientist is not a thug, and genius does not give you the power to be a Hitler in personality!" He gave Archeville a very suspicious look at that. Suddenly snapping to perfect, bizarre sobriety, he added, "And I thank you for the offer of employment, but I trust you understand that I can't hold you to that. I am a fair man, Herr Doktor, and I cannot expect you to abide a business agreement made under duress. That would be unethical, and I'm sure neither of us would like to see our professional relationship start off on a note like that. As for my plans for the future, you know them already. I will turn the world into a blissful utopia of bee-men and bee-women, with my lovely Fleur de Joie at my side. Who could ask for more than that?" He turned and studied the false Stesha, then added uncertainly, "though her tender lips were much less fruity than I was expecting..."

Friday was luckily a cool day, quiet enough that Joan could sit out on her front porch in her usual voluminous skirts, making notes for an upcoming story about the city's declining budget for promoting minority superheroes. She kept a close eye out for Erin, and raised an eyebrow when she watched the girl step out of the nice near-mint blue pickup truck that she'd carefully parked in their neighborhood. They didn't get a lot of traffic on Carver Street, one reason why she'd made sure to pick the neighborhood. "Hello, Erin!" she waved without getting up. "Over here! Did you have any trouble finding the place?" she asked as Erin reached the creaky steps. She slowly pulled herself to her feet, careful to keep the bottom of her skirt inline with the floor at all times. She certainly looked much better than Erin remembered.

"Oh no, honey, you're my guest!" said Joan quickly. "I wouldn't expect you to have to bring anything! Do you have any allergies or dietary concerns I should be aware of?" she asked gently. "Right now I have salmon casserole and sweet potato pie on the menu, but if that's not right for you, just let me know. I want you to feel welcome." She'd talked a little bit with the girl's headmaster before contacting her, part of a vetting process, naturally, and had gotten the hint that maybe no one was inviting Erin over to a lot of dinners. "My daughter is looking forward to meeting you. She, ah, drew a picture of the fight that she saw on television."

"Oh, hello! I'm glad you got my message." She laughed, sitting back in her custom-built easy chair as she and Charlie watched football together. It was a quiet evening at the Collier place, the night only punctuated by her daughter's stereo in the other room and the occasional slither as Joan reached into the kitchen for a slice of ham. "I had to pull a few strings to get your contact information. Thursday night my daughter has a school meeting, but Friday night would be perfect. Do you prefer Erin or Wander?" she inquired. "I know some heroes don't like using their real names, especially you young people. Either way, I'll expect you at our place in the West End around seven if you can make it."

A few days after Erin took part in the rescue of Fusion, the Portland heroine, from disaster, she received a hand-written letter sent to her care of the Claremont Academy. Inside, she found:

Freedom Angel refrained from saying anything unkind about those people. Why, some of his best friends were guardians of the afterlife planes for the various sub-religions. "You have to be careful visiting Duat," he finally said laconically. "The guardians of that place tend to look unfavorably on those raised in the culture of the children of Abraham. Even at one or two removes," he added with a nod to Nick and Dead Head. "The loa are difficult beings to deal with. I've tried speaking to the one that serves on the Freedom League with me, but Siren prefers to keep her own council. I fear words may have been exchanged."

That hits, and leaves him injured again. What does it mean? And now Geckoman is up, after DS posts IC.

"I've been lucky enough to team up with Mr. Danger in the past," Mark agreed cheerfully. "This one time we got together, I met him when he was tied..." He blinked, looked abashed, and put his hand over his mouth. "Oh, I guess I shouldn't tell that story! Sorry, sir, ma'am," he added. "I do most of my work with Young Freedom, the teen hero team I'm on at school. We do pretty good work together. But I've done some solo teamups with Ace, and this one time we hooked up to fight gun-runners! Man, I hate those kinds of people." He grinned. "Sorry, I guess my mouth is running away with the moon here. I just can't believe you guys are both here! I used to have both your action figures. Well, the 1978 Bad Guy of you, Ms. Browning, and...well, all the ones my dad let me play with of yours, Mr. Danger."

"We can't," said Avenger, shooting a look at Phantom. "We have to go in, rescue those poor stupid kids, and then lock the door behind us. Dead Head, you haven't seen the places where things have gone really, really wrong. If we get involved, we risk spreading their contamination elsewhere. And if we run around killing vampires ourselves...well, how are we any better?" he asked honestly. "I...I could have been that guy. And Taylor could have been that woman," he said, nodding at the door. "I've...worked with metahuman vampires," he added laconically. "If their powers were biological, they generally survived the change. It's the reanimation of a corpse as a mockery of a man, with all that implies. Sorry, honey," he added to Phantom, "just falling back on what I was taught."

Not even going to bother to roll that one. Prone and injured! Phalanx, that's a DC 28 Toughness save. Geckoman, the result of your Notice check tells you that something is screwy here. Rift is up.

A huge piece of metal went flying off the giant robot, sending sparks flying everywhere and nearly blinding the teens. "Curse my shoddy construction!" shouted Zeta. "Talos, you fool! You should have appreciated me when you had the chance!" Roaring defiance, the floundering, half-broken automata shouted "At least I have one power that can't be beat! The sheer electric energy of lightning! Nothing can stop the pure white light of electrical fury!" And with that, the giant robot fired a blast of energy from its golden hands, a beam of pure white actinic fury that cut through the air like a hot ionic discharge through butter! It struck Phalanx square in the chest, blasting a massive burn mark over his heart.

"I'm OK, heh-heh," said Edge, who sure enough looked hardly wobbly at all after the savage beating he'd taken at Wander's hands. "I've had worse, really. This one time when I was six, I fell off the roof and landed in the bushes. Boy, did my mom look surprised! As for getting out of here, I dunno. Is there any way out?" he asked, looking around them. "We could get out through that dent, I guess," he said, pointing to the divot he'd left in the wall. "If Wander and Hellion hit it hard enough. But that would just take us back where we came from. How do we go forward?"

Durf is up. (And Psyche will be back, and fine, whenever alder posts. )

Sure enough, the giant robot went down in a tremendous crash of metal! "Argh! You have struck me down!" The sheer force of its impact was enough to temporarily stun even the mighty Psyche. Laying on his back, the giant metal Centuritron kicked his arms and legs. "Curse my inferior design! Why couldn't Talos have gotten a real scientist to manufacture me!" Though the robot was down, and having a lot of trouble getting up, it still blocked the hallway entirely, leaving nothing but a few shadows visible behind it. "When I get up, I'll crush you all! Your puny organic intellects are nothing before the sheer, awesome power of the machine! All glory to the machine!"

Not going to bother to roll that one. He's down, sports fans!

When the portal opened, the Bee-Keeper actually shoved the fake Stesha behind him! Despite his many injuries, and his weakened condition, he was evidently ready to fight to the end. "I'll never surrender!" He said, pulling his helmet back on with finality as he pointed sharply at the other heroes. "You may think you've won, but my hive is indefatigable!" He shook his fists. "Soon, Freedom City, then the world! I'll never quit!" He looked around, focusing on the group that had newly arrived, then caught sight of the real Stesha. "Fleur de Joie?...no! Never! You can't fool me with your clumsy disguises! Would a false Fleur de Joie have kissed me with such love, such passion, such devotion? The grandest kiss a woman could give a man!?! You are just jealous of our love! Especially you, alien!" he said, pointing dramatically to Dark Star. "Well, I have a surprise for you! If I'm knocked out or forced more than twenty miles from this spot, my bee-bombs will detonate, releasing quintillions of bees to darken the sky of your fool city! Bwahahaha!"