Avenger Assembled

OK, we'll use the sandwich strategy here. Our groups are Front: (vs. Dr. Stratos) Geckoman Rift Phalanx Psyche Back: (vs. Medea) Edge Hellion Wander Midnight I'll be getting up an IC post shortly.

APPROVED

"This is my place," the angel assured the necromancer. "You have my backing." Freedom Angel didn't like dealing with Dead Head, but he also knew the zombie had a good soul: indeed, had a soul at all. That unsettled him, but rather than try and make the undead uncomfortable, he flew to a nearby mausoleum, studying the weeping cherub there with a pensive expression. "Too many children are in Heaven already."

The darkness effect only lasts a round; it'll be gone by the time you guys have a chance to react. It does not obscure Communication Links or sound, so you do have time to communicate that way. I need a Reflex save from everybody to pick what tunnel segment you're going to wind up in. Don't worry, you won't be split up forever, just for a scene or so. (Or sooner!) Mark takes the auto-nine from his Probability Control and gets 16. He can't help you guys, though, since he can't accurately perceive any of you.

The team found the work easier than they'd expected, the section doors prying open like stuck sliding glass doors rather than the inches-thick impervium. "Maybe the mechanism's just old," Edge suggested, tugging at his cape a little nervously as they headed into the gloom of the tunnels inside the Sanctum. They were alone now, the Centuritrons having needed to stay behind in the main room, and it was hard not to feel a little intimidated. But no, he reminded himself, it wasn't as bad as it looked. They were heroes united, gathered together to defeat the evil villains who'd seized control of the Centurion's Sanctum. What could possibly go wrong? It was a measure of how distracted Mark was that he committed such an obvious violation of all good sense. As the last set of doors opened, suddenly a deeper darkness flashed through the room, for a moment blotting out even the enhanced senses of various of the empowered teens, and the distinct sound of doors rumbling shut came to everyone's ears. And from down the hall, somewhere in the gloom, came the chuckling laughs of Dr. Sebastian Stratos and the wicked Medea!

Two small things: Would you mind renaming her Shapeshifting Array? It's pretty confusing to look at that and have to do the math that it's not the power Shapeshift. There's a tiny math error in her age. Outside of that, it all looks good!

Fusion rose completely off her feet from her landing. Though she had several inches of height and pounds of muscle on the swordsman, she didn't think anything of it. That had been fairly common during her time in Japan. Come to think of it, it was pretty common in her day-to-day life. "" she conceded, ""

Make sure you explain (on the sheet) what the Feature is for. In the meantime Approved

Woo-hoo, you don't break caps being Attractive! One idea, though: maybe make the Attractive a power feat of Slick's Morph? So the character can choose whether or not to be Attractive. I don't think I buy the Morph as Innate. There's no reason I can see that a Nullify Chemical (or whatever your descriptor is) wouldn't alter Slick's anatomy back to its original state. You might want to do something about the terrible exotic saves. Have you thought about connecting this character to SHADOW?

"He's the second Beacon!" Mark exclaimed. "Isn't that great? It's like we've got all the old heroes coming together at Claremont again." He hmmed. "All right, here's a crazy idea. What if we all got together and made a new Liberty League? Beacon II, M-" He blinked. "Oh, uh, sorry, Trevor. Beacon, Mark Lucas, and some other hero with a connection to the heroes of World War II!" He gave Trevor a big, perfectly sincere wink.

"Corruption in City Hall, eh? Tell me more..." Joan looked out the window of the office she'd been snooping in and saw a samurai warrior appear in a flash of light. "Actually, you know what? Why don't we get together tonight at the usual spot?" she suggested, her black costume pouring out over her body as she watched the young woman down below engage the warrior in combat. "I've got a meeting I need to attend." Springing out of her office window, Fusion popped into visibility as she swung down from the flank of the building, tentacles whipping in the air around her as she easily caught her landing. She faced the samurai and tried in fluent, though accented Japanese: "

When everyone was done, almost as an afterthought, the spokesman for the Celestial Choir took the stage. As this wasn't a time for flashy theatrics, he chose to avoid any. Flaming sword put away for now, and wings folded at his back, the angel faced the crowd. Despite the critics in the audience, Freedom Angel cast a piercing gaze on the crowd. "You will pardon, I hope, if I do not match the standards I did a few years ago. This sounds much better with the power of the infinite divine behind it." And by God, pretentious though it sounded, everyone could tell he meant it. "This is a song about freedom." Without accompaniment, completely acapella, the angel began to sing: Tears glistened in his eyes as he sang, the sheer honesty of a moment that was beyond him, beyond the frailty of mortal ego and human flesh, a moment that was only for the sheer power of the words and the meaning they held for the people in the crowd. Heyzel's words rocked with power, but his thoughts were locked deep inside. How many times had he sung this alongside the perfect legions of Heaven, friends and family united together in love and faith to build the perfect world for the purest souls of Creation? How far had he fallen, to find himself here amongst these mortals so frail in flesh and soul? But no, he reminded himself. Humanity wasn't frail; humanity was human. These were brave souls who battled the forces of the Adversary, the forces of despair and loss, with courage and love for one another. If there was corruption and vice in them, so what? It was his job to help them be better, not condemn them for the sins in their hearts. What was Heaven but a world where everyone, whatever their deeds, earned their just reward? People mistook him often for a superhero, an impression he didn't argue with since it made it so much easier to relate to people like this. The truth was, really, that he admired them. All of them. To risk himself against impossible odds was one thing. He knew the justice of the universe and his own soul's destination better than anyone on this plane did. But for these people, with their fragile bodies and fragile lives, to risk themselves time and again against the foulest beasts of Uncreation, even those that sprang from the human heart....that was something. That was more. He looked neither right nor left as he sang, letting the words reach out to everyone in the crowd in their own way. This wasn't about him or about how he wanted to make people feel: he gave them beauty, gave them truth, and how they handled what they got from him was a choice for their own souls to make. He was an angel singing, and the reaction of the crowd was in their hands. He could have made them love it; so easily imposing the power of the divine on their human souls. But what greater sin could there be than that, the corruption of Heaven's justice? Could he make the sacrifice that mortal men had made for this place? Risking his own safety for the good of the souls in Heaven was one thing, but wasn't Creation ultimately fragile and doomed to fall? Shaking his head, he remembered the forces of entropy and sin that had so nearly pulled this place down so very often. Humanity had saved itself, time and again, proving that his teachers had been wrong. There was ultimate justice even on this plane; man's Creation, man's finite world, had a purpose! It was a purpose of salvation! As his closing, the angel of Freedom drew his flaming sword and cut a hole open in the universe itself, pure white light spilling out as a vision of unearthly Paradise blossomed before everyone's gaze. "Come, Ace, Talya," he said, gesturing grandly, "your reward for your deeds this day awaits! The rest of you, I shall see you again when justice must be done and free souls saved!"

APPROVED

For the most part, this is a solid build. Seems like a fun character! Feats like Improved Disarm and Improved Block generally break caps. You'd only be able to use them bare-handed; not worth spending PP on. Similarly, Seize Initiative is generally not worth it. I'd suggest using those points to buy Luck: you can always power-stunt them if necessary! I'm sure you know (as you've mentioned in chat) that you really do want to be careful about playing the Asian guy with broken English. Is not so good.

"It's quite a place," the other Erin agreed. "I couldn't bring along a communicator, but if you do run into Steelgrave, you can contact me through one of the dimensional guardians of this plane. We've got some ourselves, even if they're not the same people." Pressing a few buttons on her waist, she opened that shining door and said out loud, "It was good to meet you. It's not every dimension I get to cross two Erins off the list to worry about. And..." With a familiar awkwardness, the other Erin rushed on to say, "And...you're one of the lucky ones too, Erin. I've seen me in much worse shape."

"That's right," said Mark cheerfully. "First person with powers in the family. Or who knew about it, anyway." He didn't look at Erin when he said that. Sure, Mike might _know_ that wasn't exactly true, but he hadn't been there when it all happened. "They think it came from years of my granddad and dad getting into all those crazy adventures in the 40s and 60s. So I get to be a superhero just like them, but with costumes! Do you like this one? I made it myself."

The other Erin gave her a long look, obviously fully aware of what a difficult subject this was for her duplicate. "After...Dad died, of the flu, Uncle Aaron had Mom, Megan and I flown out to Freedom City. It was like flying into Hell, so many people were sick, half the city was on fire, our pilot died right there on the plane...but we made it. We all got our vaccines together, right over in the Goodman Building," she said with a little half-nod in that direction. "Things haven't been easy for us, for anyone, but we've come through all right. As bad as things were, we were lucky."

"It's...it's made things very different," Erin said carefully. "Even more different than it would have been with just the plague." Erin noticed that her double didn't ask what had happened in a world with a different vaccine. Maybe she'd missed the hint...or maybe she already knew. "Keep an eye out. Like you said, forewarned is forearmed, and if Steelgrave hits someone who's expecting him, he won't get very far." Short of a full-scale Terminus invasion, anyway, but neither girl wanted to dwell on that possibility. "You're always welcome on Earth E+EV if you ever pass our way. We can always use another hand."

"Steelgrave got one hell of a surprise when he hit us. I don't think he was expecting a world where high school kids can beat an Omegadrone to death barehanded," she said with some familiar relish. "But we're mostly concerned with protecting ourselves," the other Erin admitted. "Two billion people who can punch through solid steel and jump across the Wading River are a handful to deal with as it is. I doubt you'll find anyone with the wherewithal to mount an expedition to the Terminus, not without a lot of prep, anyway. If you do go after him, you'll have a lot of Erin Whites behind you, even if we aren't there."

Erin nodded. "That's what Uncle Aaron and Dr. Atom figured," she said, "but it's not Physician Friendly who's targeting us. It's Shadivan Steelgrave, Omega's armored lackey. He's attacked about a dozen Erins up and down this dimensional axis, and not all of them made it," she said gravely. "The good news is, he's only hitting the Erin Whites who live in Freedom City, and only the ones with powers, so the other Erin here is probably safe." She paused a moment, looking at her double, and said, "Not everyone lived," she murmured, "not even close. But enough people got the vaccine that we got to keep our world, even if we're rebuilding it all ourselves. The Atom Family came through the best of any of the old hero teams, so they were the nucleus, as it were, that we rebuilt around."

"You...yeah, let's not get into that." Erin took a moment to settle herself before replying, "I'm in an Atom Family uniform because I'm part of the Atomic Knights. Before the plague, this is what the old Atom Family wore. We're part of the leading volunteer militia where I'm from. I'm trying to get in touch with my doubles because I think that we're being targeted by agents of the Terminus."

The other Erin raised a sensor from her belt, a piece of super-science Erin vaguely recognized from her time in Dr. Atom's lab. "Damn, you are a traveler!" She ran her hand through her hair in a gesture Erin recognized from looking in a bathroom mirror. "Listen, we've only got about ten minutes before the local dimension cops zero in on where I am, so we need to work fast. Is the local Erin still in Seattle?"

Erin was on patrol when she heard the noise, a shimmering tingle in the air just to her left that made her nerves go on end. She took a few steps back, ready to spring, wondering what was about to jump out at her. This was supposed to be a nice, quiet August patrol to stretch her muscles, here in the relatively good neighborhood abutting Lincoln and Bayview! The noise became a shape, then a glow, a rectangle shaped like a door. And a figure walked out, a very familiar one. Erin White looked at her double, her blue and white uniform oddly familiar and yet oddly alien. It was a morphic molecule costume like Wander's, but the symbol on the chest was a big letter A and an atomic map of uranium: the symbol of the Atom family. "Hello, Erin," said her doppleganger, a look of familiar determination in her eyes. "I know this must be very surprising for you, so I'll try and take it fast. Are you familiar with parallel universes?"

"We've got a pretty good soccer intramural thing going," said Mark equitably. "One of the exchange students here is actually a pro athlete in his native dimension, so he's talking about going pro here once he graduates. Of course, there's no gladiator league in this dimension, so he'll have to do soccer or something if he wants to go pro." He kept walking around the room, cheerfully narrating as everyone headed outside. "Hey, can you fly too? Because that's pretty cool. I can't fly," he admitted, "but I know people who can."

Jack reached up and ruffled the baby's hair, gently scooping the serious-faced boy out of his mother's arms. "Hey there." Conscious of the theater of the moment, a father with his baby son on his knee, Jack said, "That's fair, Lynn. The question I'm left with is, how different do you think predators and human beings are? Do you think I love Taylor or my son any less because of what I am? Or that Taylor's somehow in the wrong to love me?" He gave Lynn a straightforward look. "Because if you do hold opinions like that, now's the time to share them."