Avenger Assembled

"You'll do fine," Jack assured Taylor, a smile on his face. Sensing where she wanted to go, he started slowly dancing them towards Stesha and Dark Star. "Just a little while more of this, and the only magical thing you'll have to worry about is you and me. And the bed and breakfast." He had his own ideas about that, but this was neither the time nor place for that. "Who's the older gentleman with Ace?"

23

"I care nothing for my own dignity," said Heyzel seriously. "Only for the welfare of your soul, my friend." The pure white fire streaming from his blade cast shadows on the wall behind him, casting his pure tan skin in an unearthly light. "Do you find sanctity in this life?" He asked the question without judgement; with the tone of deep compassion he might use for anyone else suffering from a permanent affliction. He turned and looked at Moira, repressing a faint smile as he looked her in the eye. An earthly body had its pleasures...and its perils. "I'll be with you in just a moment," he said with a small effort. "I'm assisting this man's soul."

The paths to the Gates are clear. it looks like the Serpent-People carried away any of their number they didn't lose during Wander's initial attack. The gates themselves look just like pictures of dimensional gates you've seen in school textbooks and old movies.

It's you!

Heyzel gave a soft sigh, bending down to pick up the fallen limb in a sway of wings, and gently returning it to the being before him. "I'm pleased to see so many people in the church today." Focusing first on Dead Head, he said, "I will do all I can to cure you of your condition." A great flaming sword appeared in his hand, smoothly and delicately. With that same expression of sympathetic understanding on his face, he said, "Perhaps performing the deed in a holy place will help remove your curse."

Startling, taking 10, Power Attacking, the usual.

A fast pursuit, briefly up the walls faster than his colleagues could see, soon had Jack in front of the cultists who had been fleeing him a few moments earlier. "Beginning to grow enraged," Avenger informed the cultists with maddening calm as he strode boldly towards them, raising his fists. "No longer interested in your surrender." And with that he fell among them again, punching and kicking, the sound of bones breaking echoing in the hallway.

"I have an idea!" exclaimed Edge. "Why don't you let me be kidnapped?" When the men turned to look at him, the cheerful teenager explained, "If Mr. Dark Star can't see through those walls, they must have armored them against him specially, right? But you really can't armor against my powers because of how they work. So if I go in and get captured, I can find a way to get the doors open so Mr. Dark Star can get in." He turned to Arrowhawk. "You can come with me," he said, just a little begrudgingly. "You seem really skilled, so maybe you'll know how to pick locks and stuff."

Everyone, take an HP.

"No, ah, the King..." Adena, the royal bodyguard, coughed before adding, "The King broke his leg in the plane crash. Though I tried to insist that I tie him to my back and carry him across, he preferred to remain in the village of the Nade people through the gateway." "Looks like a big gate of light," added one of the UNISON agents. "I saw something like it a couple of years ago when that evil parallel universe tried invading Geneva. There are a couple of them; one up in the sky, one down at ground level. We followed the White Lion's plane so close that we went right through the same gate. Fried every computer in both planes, too." The Serpent People had not been subtle as they fled, both Hellion and Geckoman could follow the trails they'd left into the underbrush, while James could sense the dimensional rift hidden by the trees and branches before them. Ominously, though, James could sense a second dimensional signature; a different traveler, traveling a different road to the same destination on the Cosmic Coil. Someone else had been here, not through the Gate of Light itself, though they'd gone to the same place in the end.

Hunts-With-Poisoned-Claw joined his clutchmates on the hunt for the mammal from the sky mostly just to fit in; he'd much rather have been pursuing the gorgeous females in estrus back at the nest near the rockpile. But Stabs-Cunningly-From-Behind is frightened by the strange actions of the metal men in the volcano, and so he's sent his scouts out to try and bring back these latest arrivals to the Land-Where-People-Live. Hunts fears the metal men as well; hunters from the nest who've gone near the volcano have disappeared with screams as their only tombstone. He hopes the Gate of Light, recently active after being so long quiet, will stay open long enough for his people to return safely.

That hits, and he is yours. Do what you will!

Jack put his arms around Taylor, hoping his embrace would cover his ignorance. He had no idea how a dhampir could be made without arcane rituals or blood ties that he and Taylor certainly didn't have, and he knew so little of his bride's work that he had no idea what she did that could have made her fertile to his body's terrible advances. Grim, vaguely obscene imagery of an undead sperm sucking the life out of Taylor's egg flitted through his mind, and he shuddered at the thought of a monstrous fetus clawing its way out of her womb, hungry only for blood and dying a miserable freak in the world outside. "I wish I could tell you more, doctor. Name a test, and I'll do it."

And yes, we are out of rounds. TOUGHER MINIONS NEXT TIME.

Anyone planning to teleport/insub into the building needs to make a DC 25 power check.

Wander tore through the startled Serpent People like a reaper through winter wheat, sending those very few who escaped her assault shrieking and fleeing as she tossed them around like ninepins. The started UNISON agents looked up at Wander with a look of profound relief on their faces, one with lieutenant's stripes standing up to snap a salute. "Good to see you, miss," he said, his eyebrows furrowing briefly as he looked over the teenage heroes. "And all of you. It's been a long 72 hours." The Star of Africa was already in the air, looking at the UNISON agents with concern. "You are the rescue party who was lost? Did you find the White Lion?" "Edet!" One of the agents, a muscular woman with ebony-dark skin, called a greeting to him in Dakanan before translating for the others. "I knew you'd find us, boy." Edet landed and made very rapid introductions between the team and the chief of the king's personal bodyguard. "The king is back in the village...elsewhere," she said with a flat look on her face. "He ordered I guard these men as we made our way back through the gateway. Praise the Lion he did, for the Serpent People followed us through."

UNISON agents Wander Edet Phalanx Geckoman Psyche Hellion Lizardmen innocently Wander, you're up.

"I don't think there's any risk of getting found out here," said Jack with a little murmur. "It seems like the only people who don't know are the ones too unobservant to see what's right in front of their faces. It'll be fine," he reassured her warmly. With a moment's effort, he wasn't even thinking about smacking James around anymore. "Seems like you're getting a lot of attention. As it should be."

Untouched whiskey in hand, Jack appeared about half a foot behind James, Jack just overtopping the tall teenager by a few inches. Don't be stupid, he told himself. James wouldn't make a move on Taylor right here in your wedding, and Taylor certainly wouldn't go for it. But it was hard to stop the drumbeats in the back of his head, the predator who saw another monster moving in what was his. Mine. "Hey you two," he said with a sharp smile. "Mind if I cut in with my bride on my wedding day?"

We're in rounds. The UNISON agents go first; the lizardmen go last. Edet goes on 24

Dark Star's attentions were immediately drawn to the gravitational anomaly building in the room where he'd left the two ladies; a powerful wormhole bomb that if left unchecked would soon blast a hole in the very fabric of the space-time continumn, unleashing who knew what horrors on an unsuspecting public? It was about to take Taylor and Fleur off-guard. He could see the ladies fighting one robot ninja, now just bound up by Fleur, but in one corner of the room there lurked a pony-tailed robot in a Captain Wonder shirt who was the source of the growing gravitational anomaly. Have an HP for having your Search efforts redirected. ;)

The jungle was a strange and beautiful place for everyone, the trees towering above the heads of all but the fliers, the noise of animals in the undergrowth and even the smell of verdant plant-life powerful in everyone's nostrils. Here a brightly-colored poisonous frog hopped away from the heroes before landing in a nearby small pond, there an African Grey called down peckishly at them from its roost in a tall tree, there a pterosaur circled in the blue sky, half-visible through a break in the canopy. Wait, what? No sooner had the teen heroes taken in that glimpse of a long-lost world did they overhear the sounds of gunfire from the clearing just before them. Rushing forward, they could see a small party of half a dozen UNISON agents, their blue uniforms torn and stained from days spent on foot in the jungle, firing bursts from their rifles to chase off a bizarre attacking force of perhaps a score of humanoid lizardmen! Despite their enemy's smaller number, the lizardmen were pressing their advantage, wielding thrown spears and rocks to bring down the UNISON agents.

Gimmie a search check, Cy.

Most of the civilians had escaped by now, but some hadn't. The sight of their heroine in action had left a couple of the college kids to stick around and take pictures of the fight! Fleur de Joie's tangling vines wrapped themselves tight around the oncoming robot, binding him securely in cords of plants and vines as he struggled to escape. "Kaneda!" it shouted in an eerie mechanical voice. "You will NEVER ESCAPE! BOO-HA-HA-HA!" And with that, its eyes began to glow in a really quite alarming way.