Avenger Assembled

"Gosh, maybe you'll have to search me," he teased back, gasping with a smile whenever she hit a sensitive spot. He wasn't so gallant as to not poke her back, grinning at her. "You gonna do that, Alex? See if I'm smuggling any rare books under my shirt? You think you can take me, tough girl?"

"I was going to look into a cute little volume of poetry," said Mark with a low whisper, leaning close to her ear. "The font is lovely and the binding is sturdy, and the story she tells me is very interesting..." He pecked on the cheek. "You don't think it's unhealthy to anthropomorphize books, do you? Maybe I should see a psyche-ologist." He grinned.

Jack danced them that way with skill, not needing to mention to Taylor where he'd picked up how to sneak through a crowd with no one noticing where you were going or why you were going there. "Anything specific?" he murmured to her, casting his eyes around the busy crowd of beautiful people. "Who should I be looking for?"

"There was," Mark agreed. "Some super-thugs showed up to bust a guy out of prison. Cowards couldn't take the heroes who came to stop them, so they set off some bombs to cover their getaway." He shook his head. "But that was a good while ago, and they've fixed up the damage from that." He slipped an arm comfortingly around Alex's shoulders. "The library is safe and secure for civilized folks like us," he added with a grin.

"Here you are counseling me, when you've already been through so much today." He smiled weakly, reaching down to take her hand with his. He knew that pulse, knew that rhythm, quite well by now. "Stay with me today. Your body might heal up, but it'll be good to be in a safe place through the night. And this is one of the safest places in the city."

Just to make things easier on everybody, we'll move on from there. Ace is up. Ace (and Knievel) can get out onto the street from their current location if they want.

For his part, Mark had an academic volume devoted to Freedom City history in his hands, ready to return it to the library. He'd happily admit that he wasn't a great student, but he did know the history of his hometown off the top of his head very well. "Beautiful day, isn't it?" He smiled in a friendly way at Erin and Mike, but lit up with a big smile at the sight of Alex. "Especially with present company." He was in a good mood, as usual, happy to be out with his friends and his girlfriend on this comfortable fall day. He was thinking more and more about taking that big step and moving onto campus even after his parents came back, but he hadn't quite broached that step even to himself yet. He wasn't much for a lot of internal debate.

Jack blinked, surprised by her plea. "I can't leave them behind," he explained to her, emotion creeping into his voice. He wanted her to believe. Someone else had to believe. He put his hands on hers, looking intently into her eyes. "There needs to be a salvation for my people, Taylor. They can make the same choices I made. To put aside killing and death, to choose the path of decency and humanity. I never...I never had one of those magic spells cast on me, or anything, to make me want to do the right thing. I just realized it was something I wanted to do." He put his hand on her heart. "If I can make that choice, they can make it too. They just need someone to show them the right way."

Jack's lip curled, just a little. "The youngling who murdered the queen. The reformer who's building a better world for everyone. The child to be swept away when it's time for them to assume power. When I killed Melinda, I took her position, even though there are far, far fewer vampires willing to follow someone like me. That was my new job, Taylor. That's what I do when I'm not Avenger."

I think it's definitely the case that we want a Silver to Bronze Age style game. Putting aside the parts of Silver Age stories that haven't aged well, in Silver Age stories the bad guys always lose! The Bronze Age is an era when real-world concerns actually made an appearance in the genre, and that's certainly something we want here. Though I personally am actually fairly tolerant of the Iron Age, opening the door to it around here will let in a flood of Bloodfysts and Pouchguns faster than you can say "Liefeld's BAACK!" And no one wants that. Being a historian, I feel the need to do research. It's interesting that at the end of that infamous Justice League story Doc and Shaen called back to, Gorilla Grodd winds up violently Mental-Blasted and trapped in the Phantom Zone for five months RL time, and then disappears again for another RL year. You know, that's actually not bad; and that's in comics specifically designed to ape[1] the Silver Age with a Modern Age feel. If a captured bad guy spent five RL months in prison (maybe with a prison thread, or a Suicide Squad thread), then reappeared for a thread thanks to a breakout by his cronies, that'd be fine by me. I'm content with the code of conduct we have for villains. I don't think we should inject content from the Marvel Superhero RPG into Mutants and Masterminds. I do think we need a better way to handle PC villains. If we are going to have them, and we are going to allow non-choreographed PVP, I think we should give the villain players a chance to do something with their characters even while they're facing incarceration. (Whether that's a prison thread, a 'Salvation Run' thread, a Suicide Squad thread, or even by an "Almost Got 'Em" thread where they all flashback to their greatest hits.) If you don't like facing incarceration, don't play a villain. (And hey, I like the timeline. It appeals to the historian in me. Better to be too rigorous than not enough.) [1] That's right, I went there! :D

"Maybe it isn't," Jack reluctantly agreed. "But I need it now, more than ever. I'm happy for the friends I've made, but they knew me, and trusted me, before they saw my true face. You can't tell me that someone like Lady Liberty, or the Raven, would..." He shook his head. "I've seen it happen, Taylor. I know it'll happen. As for my own people..." He rubbed his eyes. "They know what side their bread is buttered on. As long as they don't have to dwell on the specifics of my working with superheroes, we'll get along all right."

The words struck Jack to the core, his own doubts about his humanity emerging at her words. "I wanted to be something more than what I was," Jack finally said, looking down at the glossy comic books spread beneath them. "I was faced with an eternity of being nothing. A slave, or a thug, or a schemer, nothing I did would ever really amount to anything. All just shadow plays against a deeper darkness, clinging to a lost humanity." He put his hand on Taylor's. "I had to do something more. I had to be something more than what I'd been all my life. Even before I died."

"Scarab knows," Jack finally confessed. "When I thought she was trustworthy, I told her. I couldn't deal with going entirely alone, and I had a feeling she'd find out sooner or later. She took it differently than I'd expected." His hands flexed. "Most people did. As for what changed, my people found out. About me, not about Avenger." His hands flexed again, ever so slightly. "Our queen was named Melinda. Not particularly old or powerful, but she was smart enough to keep us alive in a city of superheroes. When she found out what I'd been doing, she killed me. Or thought she did, anyway. And then after that, I killed her." He remembered screaming in his ears and blood, the horrible sense of communion he'd felt as Melinda had burnt to ash before his eyes. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. "You want to know why I didn't tell more people?" he asked her suddenly. He was on his feet, heading to a closet where he came out with layer upon layer of what turned out to be comic books, the true, licensed adventures of real superheroes published by Castle. Jack was evidently quite a collector of a certain variety of publication, and it was easy to see the theme in all of them: "Centurion #405; the Man of Adamant Takes on Dracula!" "Lady Liberty #38; the Light Against the Darkness!" "Ace Danger, Vampire Hunter!" "How Many Times Will Arrow Die?" Inside each adventure were pictures of superheroes slaying vampires, triumphant smiles on their faces as they tore their way through the monstrous hordes of the feral, screaming undead. Jack didn't realize his hands were shaking until he actually saw them, spread out over the depictions of massacre. "Imagine living your entire life looking up at the sky and watching the heroes, knowing they were ready to save the day, ready to save you." He touched the pages. "And then one day, you become the thing the heroes fear. The thing they can track down and kill before the whole world, and be loved and celebrated for it as monster slayers. That's why I've kept it to myself, except for the people who I thought would find out anyway and I couldn't avoid. When superheroes meet my people, we die."

"Guile," he told her simply. His hand was a little cool in hers, but she could feel the muscles moving underneath as she touched him. "And good luck. Put on a scary mask, talk in a funny voice, and most heroes will think you're just another creepy vigilante with a mean streak and want nothing to do with you. I stayed out of the way of the major villains so I wouldn't run into anyone with telepathy or super-senses, and concentrated on cleaning up street crime. Till I met Scarab, and we sort of stumbled into the Knights." A thin smile tugged at his features, just for a moment. "On the other side of things, my people in this city have learned to be careful. Until recently...we knew how to stay out of each other's business."

It's exceedingly aggravating to deal with villain PCs who waltz consequence-free out of cardboard prisons. The problem is, most of the ways of dealing with that problem have their own share of problems. Taking the Trial thread as an example, the inconvenience and annoyance there has been focused in the wrong direction. Captain Knievel has spent a short, consequence-free time in minimum security (we didn't even get a thread out of his time in the slammer) while _quote_'s been the one stuck without a chance to roleplay his character in any meaningful way. This seems like a solution that satisfies no one. We should be making life tougher for the bad guy, not making life tougher for the bad guy's player. (In retrospect, I think we should have gone ahead with the Suicide Squad plotline directly. Make them UNISON Solos, if necessary, charged with eliminating foreign terrorist metahumans.) As someone who argued in favor of the "no killing" rule, I have to speak up for it again here. Freedom City is a universe grounded in the assumptions of comic books, but it rises above the limitations of the genre in several meaningful ways. (It's not misogynist or racist the way many 'mainstream' comic books can be, nor does it have a revolving door on the afterlife or freeze in time.) What's most important for what I'm saying is that there are no Jokers. There are no invincible psychopaths who run around like petty demigods of death who are then imprisoned over and over again in easily escapable prisons by heroes who they make look like childish fools every time they fight. The "no killing" rule is our bright line that keeps out the Joker-wannabees, that keeps our game from being an excuse for villain players to act out the most depraved fantasies from their ids while those playing heroes are left as powerless milksops unable to stop them. I don't want to see threads where villains are running around massacring police officers and deflowering cheerleaders, with no consequences for them whatsoever even if they are caught. We have the Non-Canon boards if you want to indulge in an orgy of destruction. Put aside genre conventions; we're playing an RPG here, not writing a comic book. If the heroes (one set of PCs) don't get to kill you or make you suffer any lasting consequences, you (another set of PCs) don't get to kill them or make them suffer any lasting consequences.

"In January," said Jack carefully. "I thought the beginning of the year was an appropriate time." He studied her, his face all cool, pale perfection but for the emotion in his eyes. "I was at the Eclipse when Foreshadow drove out the nest there over Christmas. Watching a man fight vampires with nothing but his own courage and talent..." He shook his head. "It was an inspiration. I went out and bought a hockey mask and motorcycle gloves, thought up a suitably generic name, and went out on the street." He took off his gloves slowly, peeling back the heavy faux-leather to show his unmarked hands underneath. "I was better at it than I expected."

"I won't do anything with you that you don't want," Jack agreed. "Or to you, or near you." He'd have promised not to bite her, but he rather hoped that was one promise he wouldn't have to make! After all, she certainly hadn't minded! And perhaps it was foolish to plan so far ahead, but if she was going to take things this well... "I am capable of normal human interaction. Normal human emotions."

"I've been told I am a direct descendant of Vlad Tepes," Jack explained to Taylor. "An ancient and powerful bloodline, stretching back to the beginning of our kind," he added sarcastically. "But one that breeds rarely, with many consequences when they do." He looked Taylor in the eye and contemplated how difficult it would be to grab her hands before she blasted him. "Yes," he finally said, choosing honesty above all else. "I have." And Scarab. And Stesha. I would have tried it with Moira but I'm not going to take any chances with the god-blooded. OK, maybe he wasn't picking total honesty.

"I imagine you do," said Jack simply, looking down at her as the elevator rose up the few floors to his new apartment. He couldn't quite broach the subject, either of the two subjects between them, and so fell silent like a coward as they rose up to the fourth floor where his apartment lay. Jack's apartment was a few steps from the door, and an old-fashioned brass key got the two of them inside. The apartment was a big old-fashioned place, the furniture belonging somewhere around the middle of the last century, the brass-fitted windows with the faint haze of bulletproof glass. "C'mon, let's get you sitting down." He didn't want her near the kitchen. There was a lock on the refrigerator inside that nearly spotless room, the only part of his new place that didn't have that bachelor patina. "So." Sitting down next to her, her presence inescapable, Jack let the look in her eyes carry him forward. "Five years. Give or take. I've developed faster than most, so don't worry that every...every vampire in the city can fight as well as I do."

"If he comes back again, I'll do something to him that he won't recover from," said Jack flatly. "I know how to do that. He'll never be a threat to you or anyone else again." Jack turned out to dwell in a really nice neighborhood in Midtown, the apartments secured and well-guarded. "I have an elevator these days," he told her as they headed into the darkened parking garage, "we'll get up there privately." She still hadn't mentioned it yet. Maybe she was right not to.

"I had to teach him fear," Jack finally said. "People like that will only be put off if they truly believe that you're more frightening than the wrath of their god. And I think I gave him that." He flexed his fingers on the wheel, the hard rubber beneath creaking. "If nothing else, I know who he is now and where he came from, and that'll mean he can't come back the same way."

28 Jack is being as honest as he ever is. Even so. ;)

"That's a loaded question," said Jack, the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips for just a moment before finally fading away as he peered in the glass behind them. "You're more special to me than anyone's been in a very long time. What I feel for you is much more...more real, than I've felt for anyone else." He turned and looked at her. "That much is true, Taylor. I want you to believe that."

"I have ways in nobody knows about," Jack said immediately. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then reached up to adjust the mirror. With Taylor paying special attention to him now, she was able to see the way his hand didn't reflect in the glass. "I wanted to kill him," he finally said, "I thought about it, and if anything had happened to you..." He shook his head, then laughed bitterly. "But you don't need to hear about that now. You've already been through enough."

The teenagers found a few human guards in the main control tower, but the terrified Nazi and American collaboraters there were quick to surrender at the sight of the invincible young godlings who'd torn apart their most powerful machines without so much as a scratch. Figuring out exactly what it was they wanted was a bit more challenging, but with a little prompting one of the surviving guards pointed them to the secret bunker inside the island where the lost modulator they needed could supposedly be found. "Please, haff mercy! We did not know where they were doing with it!" said one of the guards, his accent very heavily accented.