Avenger Assembled

Aquaria squatted down next to Jessie, folding her long legs beneath her body and folding her forelimbs in front of her, giving her a silence that wouldn't frighten her. "You did a good job," she croaked softly. "You destroyed the bad thing. Thank you for coming to help me." - "At last..." the zombie captain was whispering, "victory..." He didn't seem to have much time to talk, his flesh softening at Wraith's touch, an effect hidden by Luke's illusion. "A hundred years under her spell, and only a few of us were left. Thank you. But tell me - how fares Germany? Is there peace after all this time?"

Judy watched Danica go, tensing briefly before she nodded, seeming to understand what was happening. "It's okay if you don't want to talk to anyone," she told Callie gently. "Ah think you might have fun if you did, though." She smiled. "This is where you're living now, and these people can be good friends to you. Would it helped if Ah made some introductions?" - Eira hugged Pan and said "You were great. Next time, I shall provide you a guitar, and you can truly rock." She made introductions for Pan to anyone she had met that he hadn't, though usually it was the opposite that was true. She slipped her arms around him, and encouraged him to dance.

Or so one might think, if one had not looked into the face of Death and accepted it as your own, if one was not herself a living product of the greatest science of all. Eira had seen these machines in their first visit to this city and she knew they weren't sentient, so she thought nothing of deactivating it for her work. When the creature got close she drove her bladed through its midsection with a slow, deliberate grip until she found its internal power source and squeezing. Lightning crackled around her hands and up her arm, and she lowered the automaton to the ground with her free hand. Smoothly she knelt down in front of the creature and began working her hands through the gears, pulling and rearranging at its works. She didn't speak as she worked, merely worked, lighting crackling up her arms and her body, sparkling blue light crackling through her hair and across her eyes. As she worked fine tools emerged from her fingers, thin, grappling wires that rearranged and tugged at the gears. Time went by, and she worked, and she smiled.

Sea Devil Lullay Lullay This may seem like an odd choice, since Aquaria certainly doesn't ascribe to the Surfacer religion that spawned it. (A god slain by his enemies who returns when the stars are right makes sense, but when He rose, he simply left instead of drinking the blood and eating the flesh of his enemies? This story makes no sense.) I think what attracted me to this song for Aquaria is the tone of mourning and survival, as the singer tells the story of a persecution that her people and her god just barely survived, like a song sung to a pack of sharp-toothed little killing machines ready to be told about the coming war with Atlantis. It may not be true in a historical sense that Deep Ones are the victims of Atlantean persecution but they certainly believe it. A few lines from this, suitably edited, have shown up in Aquaria's threads. "Dagon the King, In His Raging..." It's Not Easy Being Green Aquaria wasn't always a frog. If you look back at her earlier threads, she's clearly a human-Deep One hybrid that inclines more to the former than the latter. (What can I say, I wasn't paying very good attention.) Electra and I are going to do a thread about Aquaria and Jessie's early days one of these days. (I also played up her amphibious nature I think a bit more than I wanted to, so when I got the chance I made sure to make her fully aquatic by sheet but amphibious by choice and culture.) I found that I liked the idea of her Deep One heritage, and so stuck with it even after noticing my initial couple of mistakes. Big-limbed and loud of voice, she has a lot of character in and out of threads. She's acutely aware at all times that she is not like Surfacers at all, though; it's always so dry and cold, and nobody ever moves right, or sings right, or smells right. She is indeed a traveler here in the Hell Above Fish Heads Aquaria eats meat! So much about Deep One culture, society, religion, and their relationship with the other sentients of the world of Freedom can be explained by the simple fact that they are obligate carnivores who all have Comprehend (sea life). They can hear the words of their prey (and no, they generally do not want to be eaten!) but they know they need to eat their prey in order to survive. This is why Aquaria has trouble trying to persuade her kin to get along well with Surfacers. Of course food asks not to be eaten. That's what it usually says! Aquaria does like meat, though, and she's always hungry. Written in the Stars Aquaria's gods are terrible in their wrath and her faith foretells a grim apocalypse. Well a grim one for us Surfacemen, anyway! But maybe that makes sense. Though there are a few Deep One cities in the depths of the abyssal plain (and perhaps some in large lakes near YOU), for the most part they're poor and desperate, living in tribes that follow the shrinking pods of migrating whales, raiding Atlantean or Surface settlements, and living lives that are "nasty, brutish, and short." Perhaps it's no wonder they look to gods that promise them a great transformation. Even if they have terrible hungers... Will The Circle Be Unbroken It's a song about faith and a song about a hoped-for reunion with all those you've lost. Aquaria has lost a great many places and people, so many that sometimes she has lost count. A part of her desperately wants to "swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever" but she knows that wouldn't work because she's not like her fellow Deep Ones anymore, not deep down inside her, just as she'll never be like the Surfacers either. But maybe when the stars are right, the great reunion will come and all those she loves will be reunited. We Know The Way I have at times said Aquaria's aesthetic is this song but over a background of horrific eldritch rituals. And it is, because I think that's the tension at the heart of the character. Aquaria is a cheerful "genki girl", to use the term the kids on TVTropes do, a self-sacrificing hero full of compassion one who wants to save her people and bring them into the future but she's also a cannibal predator who prays to strange gods and hopes for an apocalypse. She wants a world where her people and the Surface people can live together in peace but she doesn't know how that's ever going to be possible. What Do You Do With An Innsmouth Sailor Aquaria has an uneasy relationship with the works of HP Lovecraft. His obsessions disgust her and now that she knows he was a bigot who hated other Surfacers...well that doesn't even make sense to her! That the most famous recent work about her people portrays them as sexual predators doesn't help matters at all, thanks for nothing Alan Moore. It hits especially hard because it's been so long since a male touched her with intent that she's almost forgotten what it feels like. Catchy song, though! You've Got A Friend In Me Empathy can be problematic if you're a monster. To be what she is and to care about other beings as much as you care about your own kind...well, it hasn't made life easier. Speaking of empathy, Aquaria has learned how to make strong bonds with strange creatures; including the strangest creature of all... My Beloved Monster This song is about her and Jessie White, her best friend in the whole wide world. Aquaria met Jessie when she had nothing, a pack animal on her own, 'solitary' an insult among her kind. Jessie was broken in some ways and not like other Surfacers at all, but she didn't fear Aquaria the way others did and that was an excellent start. Aquaria loves Jessie the way she loves all her friends but even more, their bond one that's only grown for her over the years. She worries about Jessie a lot and wishes she could help fix her to be like other Surfacers, but she knows that's impossible. So she brings her fried fish on the nights she can't sleep and sometimes sits with her on the days she sits out on the roof, looking up at the stars together. Wonders Never Cease There's got to be some joy in it, right? When Aquaria looks back on her life she thinks about loneliness and loss, but also about the feelings of singing songs among her friends in the Castle, of making breakfast for Jessie and watching her enjoy it (it took some tries), about the feeling of the naked stars on her skin in the depths of space, about meeting mighty champions from the stars above and realms beyond this ons, about realizing her blood-kin had survived when so many others had died, about this one time when she ate the heart of a shark and rolled around in its insides for an hour, about the time she saw Jessie spend the whole day smiling. When Aquaria looks back on her life, the hell of it is - she wouldn't change it.

Lady Horus Minstrel Boy Anna's father used to sing this one to her when she was a very small girl, curled up on the too-short bed that was all an Irish working-man who drank and gave away too much to the boys at the foundry could afford for his son and daughter, and when she closed her eyes she could imagine the Ireland that her grandfather left behind for a better life in America. The world of her mother and father was a brawling, working-class place centered around the tavern and the Church, overcrowded blocks in Bedlam and Freedom City in the Great Depression where everyone smoked cheap cigarettes and drank cheap whiskey. She was born eighty-seven years ago this year and she's the last one left who remembers that apartment, that tenement, that block, that world. Calendar Girl And when she closes her eyes this is the song she hears and it's seventy years ago and she's invincible. She's faster than any cop and most of the supers and she can do what she want, when she wants, with who she wants. For the first time in her life, she's free; poised forever in an infinite now that comes before the regrets that'll come later. Anna doesn't really talk about this much but when you listen inside her head, she doesn't call herself Anna, or Lady Horus, or even Clock Queen. She's been Calendar Girl to herself since she was seventeen and she guesses at this point she'll die that way. (AA's note: Yes I know, Calendar Girl was written in 1961, too late for Anna Cline's years as a teenage hoodlum in the last days of the Golden Age but that's Green Ronin's fault, not mine) Louie Louie And then everything was different. She'd gone back in time and forward in time, tried playing the hero for a little while. And what did it get her? Dead parents, that last terrible fight with Tomorrow, and then she'd popped out into the early 1960s with a costume change and a new boyfriend. Bryant was so handsome and so kind even when he was doing crimes, and even stuck with her a little while after she told him she was pregnant. (He loved the pregnancy calendar they got from the doctor, even.) And then he was gone, leaving a note that it wasn't Father's Day so it just didn't make any sense, and then she had a baby and she was on her own, and when she thinks about those days at the end of 1963 she remembers thoughts she doesn't like to think about now. But then one day she turned on the radio and found a silly song that the baby liked, and they danced together in that cheap hotel room with the paper-thin walls with the hookers on the other side of the door, and the next day she tucked her kiddo under her arm and she found August Roman and asked him for a job. Off To The Races This one's an anachronism of course but it's not too bad as a soundtrack for Clock Queen's glory days. The days when she sat around the table with the rest of the Crime League and dreamed big, when she held her own among murderers and psychopaths and went off to fight the Centurion and got away a lot of the time. If you really ask Anna she remembers this as a period when she fought God, a bunch of times, and she won! She was one of the most famous women in the world and she loved it. Things weren't always good. She had to do some things she didn't necessarily want to to put a roof over her head and feed and educate her son, but she did what she did with her eyes open and with no illusions about herself and what she was. Not everyone can say that. My Way She remembers this one from the night in 1980 when they locked her up in Blackstone for the first night of twenty-five goddamned years in goddamned prison, yelling it through the bars, daring those bulls to come in and beat it out of her and damn if they didn't do just that. She really didn't fight so good with her powers nullified by the first generation of technology, designed by that goddamned bastard Alexander Atom, but she fought them anyway and she didn't care they threw her in the hole over it. She'd done it, one last great trick to save her family, and it had worked. She'd told the judge she'd beaten her son, made him do all those crimes with her, and that none of it was his fault even if he'd technically turned 18 while he was in the juvie lockup across town. She was in jail so that her son could be free. Maybe she was a worthwhile mother after all. The song also brings back a lot of good memories of making it with Frank Sinatra back in Vegas back when it mattered, which even Medea never did, so take that ya crazy Greek broad. Running If you sit Anna down and pump her full of truth serum, she'll admit something to you. She did make Dickie a criminal. She never forced him to do anything but he was a boy who grew up surrounded by criminals, with a ma who thought it was funny to teach a little boy to steal and smoke, and so maybe it's no wonder he wanted to steal and fight just like his ma did. Back in the day that one thing that Clock Queen take off the gloves and break your goddamned leg if you were a cape was if you said anything about her son and the way she was raising him. But maybe those smug, judgemental bastards in their mansions were right. Goddamn them. Bitch Anna burst into tears the first time she held her grandson, the kind of messy, ugly crying she'd never admit to these days. (It ruins your complexion, and she has to work hard to keep that together.) It was 1997 and she'd been out for two years and when she heard her son and daughter-in-law had finally made that baby they'd been trying for forever, she had to see him. Willie was perfect, the spitting image of his father, and when she held him (after much promises of good behavior) she was back in that hotel room holding Dickie again, a young woman with a whole life ahead of her, and suddenly all of it had been worth it so that this little boy could grow up. When she was done crying she excused herself, and stepped out of the room, and this girl with a guitar was singing this on the street corner and she never forgot it. She sang that song on the run home, proud of the choice she'd made and the person she'd chosen to be. She never went back to the Crime League after that. Not to stay, anyway. Playing With The Big Boys Now Not a lot of uptempo songs about the might of Horus and the Egyptian gods, but this is a fun one. I picture Anna and Esperanza in the official music video for the show. She knows Esperanza isn't like her son, that for a long time there was a hole in the girl's heart that nothing was ever going to heal. But maybe they were the right thing for each other. Esperanza wasn't a heroine but then neither was Anna, just two light-fingered girls all too aware that their time was limited and they had to reach out with both hands if they were going to make something of themselves. Hurt This was playing on the radio the night Anna and her girlfriend went to bed together for the first time, or rather, it was playing on the bar jukebox the minute she made the decision to get up and walk over to the young cutie and offer to buy her a drink, and things escalated from there, and that's all she has to say about that. Things are good. They ain't gonna grow old together but then Anna's already done that part on her own. The Parting Glass They played this at Brian Nisbet's funeral, the last friend of hers who ever died a natural death, just three years ago now but it already feels like a lifetime and like yesterday. This is the song she wants them to play when they put her in the ground.

"I will have you know it was not in a corner, and we were having a very normal conversation about raising teenage girls when it came up." Richard decided that Paige didn't need to hear the details before he said, "Because if the Conspiracy Kids, or whatever you want to call them, can figure out something like that just from looking in on the outside, that's evidence they're not so crazy." His notebook was written in the big, loopy, multilayered script that meant he'd been at it for a while. He'd also been turning it sideways to write when he ran out of paper, a 19th century writing trick he'd picked up that was a great way to keep out snoopers but didn't make it any easier to follow his train of thought. "And it's a big, ugly thing that the hero community kept from people so they wouldn't freak out. Especially since the whole thing was started because of some Claremont kid. If they're willing to cover their asses about that, what else are they covering up?"

"They made some - some good points!" said Richard defensively. "They pointed out that for all we know, there are still secret robots running around Freedom City, maybe the whole planet, right now. The Curator could take people out from under the noses of everybody from the world's greatest detectives and scientists, not to mention Claremont for the love a'Pete, and nobody's really gone looking for any drones since then." He considered a moment, then said, "And you know, those two aren't all crazy. They told me there was an infernal invasion of Freedom City back in '09 that everyone just forgot about afterwards. I talked to Erik at the PTA meeting last week and you know what, he said the damn thing really happened! Had to make me promise it wouldn't come up on the show, though."

"Geez, that poor kid," agreed Richard with a nod, briefly losing his train of thought. "That was about the worst thing I've ever heard happening at that school, and that includes that kid with the car." He shook his head, then added, "No, I mean..." He stepped to the window, then across the room to adjust a book on the shelf, before he said, "It just...it just stinks. They get penetrated that deep by robots from space, and they don't even set up, I don't know, blood screenings? Deep tissue scans?" He spread his hands and added, "And yeah, I know, that sounds weird coming from a guy who thinks all cops are bastards, but come on, they could have burned the city down if they wanted to. Maybe they still do," he added. "Even the real smarties don't know for sure exactly what the Curator wanted, and none of them have even tried to ask."

What Eira wanted to do was start crushing these primitive constructs with her bare hands, feel the oil drip between her fingers, but that wouldn't actually get her anywhere. So instead she said to the speaker: "I understand that as an outsider, you have no reason to trust me." She suddenly wished very much for Pan, or Micah, or for that matter Kimber or Miss Americana, any number of her mentors who could have solved this problem with a few well-chosen words. "I will offer a demonstration. Not of my puissance," she added, raising her ungloved hand, "but of my genius. If you allow me the use of one of your automatons, I will transform its capabilities five-fold with only what I carry on my person."

Anyone else, even many of the people at the party, would have gotten very little from Riley in response to these questions. But he'd always felt a little freer even just with Fred in the room, so after running his hand over his shaved head and looking away for a moment, Riley went on and said, "More of a woman. Few years older than me, but not so it's creepy..." He waved his hand from side to side, and looked relieved when Raina changed the subject. "Lot less. But I moved. Biggest problem down there is werewolf street gangs and zombie gators. Mostly worried about methheads and cartels. Recommend it," he added, raising his bottle.

Not a bad idea!

Lady Horus The Prophecy Fulfilled February 2021 In retrospect, Anna supposed she should have told the heroes of Freedom at some point about the forthcoming temporal disturbance but frankly she had more important things to worry about. First came carefully lining up the outfit she needed; a rose-patterned dress with a frilled collar that had been out of date when she was a girl, neatly polished patent leather shoes, and a gold-framed version of the bifocals she still hadn't admitted to needing to anyone else yet. It was a damn dowdy thing, she decided studying herself in the mirror, but when you had powers over time you had to respect it or it would abandon you when you needed it the most. And part of that meant that she had to do the things she already knew she was going to do. There was no changing those. Even when you wanted to. She stopped by a couple of stores in Bedlam before she found the cat calendar and made a point of crossing out the dates with an old-fashioned black fountain pen she'd found in an antique store, a gift she'd been planning to give to Richard before she remembered what she was going to use it for. She talked with Esperanza about what to do if something went wrong and she never did come back, she talked with Nightingale about the same, and she waited. She waited and waited, and when the day came she was up early pomading her hair and eating her breakfast bar when she felt the trembling through the timestream that meant an imminent disturbance. - She was standing and ready when the wave took her, hurling her back in time and across the country, depositing her in a Freedom City hotel lobby almost seventy years earlier, when members of Troublemakers, Inc. were about to have one of their last confrontation with the Liberty League, including her first real battle with the man who had been her arch-nemesis, her friend, her bitter enemy, and maybe Richard's father in a reality where things had worked out better for everyone. She turned away from the mirror she was facing and found herself facing down a tall, blonde, perfectly built dreamboat of a man in a sciency jumpsuit, himself facing down a pretty, leggy blonde who'd decided to rob a jewelry expo in a bikini - not a great strategy unless you can run back to your hideout every couple of seconds to drop the loot. A time machine crackled in the corner, a sizzling-white-fire blue machine that looked vaguely like a telephone booth, producing the temporal ripples that had brought Anna to this particular spot at this particular moment. "And you see, if you continue down this course-" Dr. Tomorrow was saying grandly "-this will be your fate!" "Hi, honey," she said, smiling and spreading her hands, enjoying the look of surprise on hero and villain's face alike. This, she had learned later, had not been in Tomorrow's plan at all. "I'm you from the 21st century! Look!" She held up the calendar and smiled, the date showing February 12, 2021. "I'm what you'll grow into! I'm eighty-seven years old!" And then Anna Cline, Calendar Girl, nineteen years old, screamed in terror at the sight of the hideously aged version of herself, with the visible wrinkles on her face and the hair that was obviously bottle-blonde, never her natural platinum at all, dressed like a grandmother instead of a millionaire jewel thief, an old lady with probably a bunch of fat grandkids in the suburbs instead of a rich husband even-. "Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph, take it away!" she covered her eyes with perfectly manicured fingers. "I'll be good, I swear!" But she never was.

PL: 8 (150) Abilities: 14 + 0 + 4 + 10 + 6 + 0 = 34 pp STR: 32/24 (+11/+7) DEX: 10 (+0) CON: 22/18 (+6/+4) INT: 20 (+5) WIS: 16 (+3) CHA: 10 (+0) Combat: 12 + 12 = 24 pp Init: +0 ATK: +6 (+7 melee) (+4 w/Growth, +5 melee) DEF: +7 (+3 flat-footed) (+5 w/Growth [+2 flat-footed)) Grapple: +14/+28 Knockback: -4 Saves: 2 + 5 + 5 = 12 pp TOU: +11/+9/+4 FORT: +8/+6 (+4 Con, +2, +2 Enhanced Con) REF: +5 (+0 Dex, +5) WILL: +8 (+3 Will, +5) Skills: 56 r=14 pp Diplomacy 10 (+10) Intimidate 11 (+11/+25) Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 5 (+10) Notice 8 (+11) Perform (singing) 1 (+1) Sense Motive 8 (+11) Survival 10 (+13) Feats: 14 pp All-Out Attack Attack Focus: Melee Challenge (Fast Startle) Dodge Focus Equipment 2 Improved Initiative Interpose Luck Power Attack Ritualist Second Chance (TOU save vs Ballistic) Startle Takedown Attack Ultimate Save (TOU) Uncanny Dodge (olfactory) Equipment 2 Armored Jumpsuit (+3 Toughness) [3EP] Masterwork Cellphone [1EP] Sword (Damage 3, PFs: Improved Crit, Mighty, Subtle) [6EP] Powers: 49 + 2 + 1 = 52 pp Alternate Form 8 (40, Bee, Extra: Duration [Continuous], PF: Innate) [49PP] Flight 3 (50MPH/500FPM) [6PP] Growth 8 (Extra: Duration: Permanent (+0 )(Huge size) [24PP] (-2 ATK/DEF, +8 Grapple, -8 Stealth, +4 Intimidate, 16 ft tall, 4K-32K lbs, 15 ft space, 10 ft reach, x2 carrying capacity) Protection 5 [5PP] Super-Senses 2 (Acute Scent, Ultravision) [2PP] Super-Strength 2 (Heavy Load: ~25 tons, PF: Shockwave [fire]) [5PP] Comprehend 2 (animals, Flaw: Limited [Insects]) [2PP] Feature 1 (Is A Bee) [1PP] costs abilities 34 + combat 24 + saves 12 + skills 14/56 + feats 14 + powers 52 = 150 pts

"Oh yeah," said Richard with a nod, "we've got to sit on that until we get a reason otherwise." He'd gone his whole life without a secret identity as such, but that (and being a father) had just made him understand the need for privacy all the more. "I've just been thinking...doesn't it seem weird to you that nobody ever took a close look at this before we did? Half the heroes in Freedom City either got kidnapped and replaced by crazy robots or they know somebody who did, and everyone just sort of shrugs it off afterwards! Miss A said she doesn't even know any robots who got grief over it, which is nice, but....weird. I think there's something going on they're not telling us."

"Just a few stray comments. Nothing from Crimson Tiger, I think she was as baffled by what was going on as anyone else. I thought it was weird that Miss Americana said she never examined her boyfriend after she got him back from the Curator, but I guess...she must have done something since then. The guy's a cyborg from Hell, he can't exactly go out to Jiffy Lube when he needs a check-up." He got up and started moving around the room, zipping around in the short bursts that meant something was driving him besides super-speed. "I just started thinking. You and I know a lot of heroes, but they don't always give us a straight answer, even in private. You ever wonder what they're not telling us, or anybody else, about this?"

Richard looked up at Paige and took a moment to smile at the perfectly familiar sight of his lovely wife before he responded, "Hey babe. Yeah, I've just been going back and forth on some of this." He looked at her then said, "Hey, when you were talking to that Welsh girl with the sword and Jill O'Cure..." He wasn't going to ask if she'd read their minds without permission; he might as well have asked if she'd grabbed their ass when they weren't looking. But sometimes Paige got impressions even when she wasn't actively looking. "...did you get any vibes off them?" he finished, tapping the side of his head.

Bestia Abilities: 8 + 4 + 8 + 0 + 4 = 24 STR 34/14 (+10/+2) DEX 14 (+2) CON 34/14 (+10/+2) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 4 + 4 = 8PP Init: +2 ATK: +2 (+4 Melee) DEF: +4 (+2 Dodge +2 Base +1 flat-footed) Grapple: +8/+25 Knockback: -12/-1 Saves: 0 + 3 + 3 = 6PP TOU +10/+2 (+8 Enhanced Con, +2 Con, +7 Impervious) FORT +10/+2 (+8 Enhanced Con, +2 Con) REF +5 (+2 Dex, +3) WILL +5 (+2 Wis, +3) Skills: 32R=8PP Language 1 (English, Base: Polish) Handle Animal 8 (+8) Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) 7 (+7) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Feats: 9PP Animal Empathy Attack Focus (Melee) 2 Dodge Focus 2 Luck 1 Move By Action Interpose Power Attack Powers: 4 + 16 + 6 + 16 + 7 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 7 + 6 = 65PP Comprehend 2 (animals) [4PP] Enhanced CON 16 (to CON 34/+12) [16PP] Enhanced Skills 24 (Intimidate 8, Stealth 8, Survival 8 ) [6PP] Enhanced STR 16 (to STR 34/+12) [16PP] Impervious TOU 7 [7PP] Leaping 1 (x2; running long jump 20 feet, standing long jump 10 feet, vertical jump 5 feet) [1PP] Regeneration 0 (PF: Regrowth) [1PP]Speed 1 (10 MPH / 100 feet per Move Action) [1PP] Super-Senses 7 (danger sense [olfactory], scent [acute for olfactory; enhancement: tracking 3 {full-speed}], ultra-hearing, uncanny dodge [olfactory] ) [7PP] Super-Strength 3 (Effective STR 45, Heavy Load 8 tons) [6PP] costs abilities 24 + combat 8 + saves 6 + skills 8/32 + feats 9 + powers 65 = 120 pts

Eira made a noise in the back of her throat as she considered Ryder's words. Torn between watching a full-on holographic recreation of the fight and watching Pan sing, Eira was obviously deeply divided, for a moment or two at a rare loss for words. Finally she said "I hope the recording is of sufficient sensory fidelity," with great firmness, before turning back to watch the show. "He is remarkable." For her part, Judy decided to head over and spot a friend. "Hi Callie!" she said, approaching Madame Raven from the front so as not to startle her. "Happy Valentine's Day!" she added cheerfully. "Are you having a good time?" She knew Callie had picked isolation for a reason, but in her experience all people needed was a little encouragement to really join the party.

The head kept hissing evilly until it hit the nearest bulkhead, which it struck with a boom before falling abruptly and silently to the metal deck. Aquaria considered this situation for just a moment, then considered the look in Jessie's eye, before she croaked with quiet, serious urgency to Luke "Stand still. Do not move quickly." She made no sudden moves herself, though her helmet stayed on as she added to Wraith, "If you want that thing to live, make it so that Jessie cannot see it." Aquaria and Jessie spoke little about the times when the past reached up bottomless to swallow the latter, but Indira had seen Jessie by herself on lonely nights high in the castle, and Aquaria keeping a vigil nearby. It helped that she could hear further than Jessie could.

Tou vs 30 https://orokos.com/roll/877390 that's a second staggered so she's either unconscious or dead, hopefully she's an evil undead but who knows! =D

Tou vs DC 23 https://orokos.com/roll/877381 =21 Another injured! Okay she's at injuredx3 and staggered still. @Electra it's Singularity time!

Ashley and Judy exchanged a look, Ashley feeling a warm flush of pride as she caught the mouthed "signal?" from Daystar through her helmet's radio even as she wrestled with the implications of whatever it was being broadcast by Teenage Cyborg here. Judy really was smarter than she acted, a thought she herself quickly stifled as she said, "Sure thing, kid. Watch this." And with that, she took Matt's arm and firmly guided the teens inside a nearby Panera Bread. "Hero business!" she called to the staff, who of course were already taking pictures because Judy Cahill had been standing outside the door just a little while earlier, and then all but muscled the teen inside a private room in the back of the restaurant. She kept her eyes on the doors and windows, half-expecting an ambush, and was pleased again when Judy spoke, her voice echoing as she studied Matt. "Matt, who are you talking to?" she asked him, with the sad voice of a friend who'd caught another friend in some private vice.

"Hm." The Patriot seemed to consider Miss Americana's words. "Did my team make it through? I don't know any of them very well except Luke Bonham, but they're good men and women. They deserve better than to come under fire from a terrorist who couldn't let bygones be bygones." He frowned and added, "Most of my short-term memory is gone. What actually happened to my body?" They - got in my face. The images Eira sent Miss Americana were of a stressful but not actually violent encounter between herself and the AEGIS agents in the waiting room. I entered the room to ask if they needed coffee. Gonzales the dark-skinned woman, looked at me and said "She's one of them." It was a memory of some shame; Eira did not like to be made unless she had broadcast her own identity. She actually grabbed my arm and here was a vivid recollection of backwards striking spots against a joint but Agent Sadler told her I was just a kid and to let it go, and her commander said 'don't we have enough problems without you fighting the damn intern?' That too was a shameful memory for Eira, full of pride. But even then, they looked at me like - ah, it was stupid! Eira was, for once, more upset than she was letting on.

"There's this cowboy-themed bar in Vibora," said Riley, looking for a moment like he was going to start a story, before he shrugged. "Lot of guys in chaps there. Not my thing but not hard to look at." He swirled his root beer and said, "Met a girl there."

That is a miss, but you can have an HP for her targeting him and reroll if you like!