Avenger Assembled

Mark was pleased at this turn of events, especially since he now had his arm around Alex's shoulders in a companionable sort of way. Not much for introspection, he nodded along with her as she shared her thoughts on the heroes of the past. "It's hard to believe any of these people were ever like us," he admitted. He played tour guide as they walked through the various halls of the museum, using his phone to take a few pictures of the various exhibits he liked the best, even persuading a passing tourist to take their picture beneath the statue of the very first Lady Liberty. Mark had never projected the air of being a particularly knowledgeable student, but here among his childhood heroes he was perfectly at home, and eager to share his happiness with Alex. In the various movie theaters, his arm found its way around the back of her shoulders in the classic style of a boy on a date with a girl he liked.

"Oh, jeez, Wesley..." Jack coughed a little behind the mask, a nervous habit rather than a physical reaction. He'd have gone over to pat the man on the back, but he had a feeling doing that when his hands were so dirty would only exacerbate Wesley's condition. This wasn't that bad, was it? He looked over the "scene of the crime." OK, maybe it is bad. It's hard to tell what'll offend people sometimes! For a moment he entertained thoughts about how much easier it was to work with vampires sometimes, but then he realized how guilty those thoughts made him feel. He wasn't a monster! Evidence to the contrary not withstanding. Keep it together, Jack. Remember that this wasn't a person. You didn't actually kill a person today "Wesley, are you all right?" Avenger asked him seriously. "If this is too much, I can finish this myself."

...I'm fairly certain that a power like you describe will be way too Iron Age for this site. We really try and avoid that level of Grim Darkness for PCs.

You get to the fire/security door that the fleeing security personnel have locked behind you across the corridor. The Strength check to break it down is DC 20; not too difficult for a strapping guy like Captain Knievel, but that and moving will use up your action for the turn.

Numbers hold up. APPROVED

Those two things do not mean the same thing as each other, as well you know. So you're not planning on doing that goofy multiple-stage stuff with Battle-Form? That's certainly a relief. I don't really buy him having above human max constitution as his base (Russian or not), but you could just give him Enhanced Constitution in his regular form if you can come up with a good reason for it. Why not just buy his powers as Alternate Form with the Fades flaw?

Avenger is going to head over there and get down to business.

Mark came wandering back with a paper plate of nachos and a big drink, giving a cheerful wave to the others as he reclined in the sun near the pool. "Don't mind me!" he called. "I'm just going to catch some rays and enjoy the view." He smiled at everyone there, but especially Alex as he dug into his food. What the heck, he couldn't spend all day in the water.

"Thank you," said Mark with a simple smile, looking very grateful for her interest. "He's this way." Jimmy Lucas was memorialized in a bronze statue near the rear of the exhibit devoted to the heroes of the Golden Age of superheroing, placed alongside such memorable figures as Star-Wave and the Scarlet Spectre. Even cast in bronze, Jimmy was instantly recognizable as a Lucas family member, his smile very much akin to Mark's. The black and white picture nearby was a bit more informative, showing a smiling young man with cheeks thickly dusted with freckles and what must have been a brightly-colored bowtie. Jimmy Lucas had died in 1988. Mark stared up at his grandfather for a moment or two. "Hi Grandpa," he finally said, "this is Alex. She's a special girl."

With a serious look on her face, Agent H approached Breakdown and put her finger on his lips. "Ssh. Just because you don't see them doesn't mean they're not there." Despite Hope's usual extreme volatility, she didn't look angry with him, just very serious and concerned for her fellow student's life. A moment later, she actually smiled thinly. "I never leave live ammunition behind. I just put in the big-boy ammo now that we're in a real fight." - Expanding her senses out revealed an island overrun with gigantic monstrosities of various sorts, each an impossible anomaly of size and power. Here a nest of tiny Gigantosaurs tore apart what looked like an enormous ape that had been fed them for their supper; there twenty-foot tall chimpanzees watched with anticipation as a massive obsidian-skinned T-Rex brought down a brontosaur. The Japanese base turned out to be on the other side of the island, a bizarre combination of a military fortification and science lab under the flag of the Rising Sun. There were surprisingly few guards around the barbed-wire perimeter, but quite a few heavy weapons. It wasn't hard to guess why a military base on Kaiju Island would need light artillery pieces and heavy machine guns! Inside a massive laboratory that Alex briefly mistook for a hangar, she found the largest test subject of all; the famous Gigantosaur laid out longer than several football fields, both chained down and restrained by a psychic collar around its head as scientists pored over it. It was all a bit like watching a Godzilla movie, if not for the deadly knowledge that what they were facing was all too real. Nearby the hangar, she made out a small runway with an unfamiliar plane resting on it, and near that a heavily guarded scientific facility with what might have been a small teleporter.

"We wanted Hope," said Lilith honestly. "When the Nazis took over, they murdered almost every American metahuman, and forced the rest to work as their slaves." She sighed. "Before she went to your universe for training, Agent H was one of only a handful of people with powers in the Resistance. Our big guns are the Freedom Brigade, and right now they're tied up in New England dealing with Overman's butchers. 'Scuse me, I need to light up or I'm going to explode." She took time out to light up a cigarette, smoking with the easy grace of someone with the values of a different world. "A couple of, um, months ago," piped up Ted, "the Nazis launched a counterattack against Freedom City. We've stalled them in the old Wharton State Forest, but they have us outnumbered again." "When Dr. Tomorrow came to help us," said Lilith, "he gave us a weapon against the Nazi cybertanks that we can use to bring down most of the Reich's biggest guns. But the Krauts are smart, see, and they upgraded. They've taken the brains out of their machinery and switched to robots. I don't know how they did it, captured Sternjuden technology most likely..." "I'm sorry, what did you say?" asked Edge, giving the woman a baffled look at the unfamiliar German word. "It's German," said Lilith with a hard-edged smile. "The aliens showed up just as the first war was ending back in the late 40s. Some of the mystery men back then thought they'd come to help us, but they just wanted to take advantage of other people's suffering. They call themselves the Unity, I think." "Anyway," said Ted, "the, uh, the Germans are testing their robot soldiers out on Freedom City. This has always been a center of resistance. That's why they tried to burn it down after the war. If they win here, they'll move up to full industrial production. They'll bury America beneath a tide of steel and swastikas. That's why we wanted Agent H, because she has anti-technology powers. We need someone to get into the robot plant out at Lonely Point and break it up. Smash their army, show them that robots don't work as well as they think, and they'll go back to the cyber-tanks." "And that's how we get your friends, and get you home." Lilith finished. "It took most of a raiding party to get the last dimensional modulator out of Nazi hands. Good men and women died doing it. But if you have powers the way Agent H did, you can get in there without any of our people dying. Break the factory, get the technology, and we can pick up your friends and send you home."

"My grandpa," said Mark immediately. "I was so little that my dad had to boost me up to see over the cordon, but I could always pick pictures of my grandpa out of the biggest crowds. And of course, now he's got a statue up in the Hall of Heroes of the 40s. I would see him, and my dad would tell me what a great man he'd been, how he'd been the Centurion's friend and had all those adventures even though he never had superpowers. Never had any training, either; he was just a student and a writer." He gave Alex's hand a little squeeze. "I never met Grandpa Lucas. He died almost five years before I was born. But those stories really shaped my life."

I'll start posting initiative for Jack, Melinda, Dave, and Luca when Invisible Castle is up.

Mark rubbed the foot of the "Atlas Triumphant" statue as they walked into the building, following an old tradition of Freedom's supers. "Well, I'm supposed to be the tour guide, I should be letting you pick." He grinned at her, his lifetime membership enough to get them both in past the gate. "Why don't we go into one of the theaters?" he suggested, his arm around hers as they headed into the big atrium, the walls covered with many heroic artifacts. "We can catch the 4-D showing of The Real Liberty League Experience, then go see the Revolutionary War heroes exhibit, then maybe eat at Champions...it'll be great."

The interior of the jungle proved to be a densely populated place, the noise from the many, many animals all around them more than enough to disguise their voices and the very faint sound of Breakdown's iPod. "I've never actually been here," Agent H confessed as they took shelter beneath a massive tree of very ancient vintage, tiny reptilian eyes watching them from the trees above. "I never got out of America. Um, can any of you guys turn invisible or do that ESP thing? That might be really helpful. Otherwise we'll have to watch for their planes overhead, or track them down some other way. Maybe follow one of the monsters?"

As Scarab's mental eyes passed by, she distinctly noted one of Melinda's cronies, an older-looking vampire leaning on a long staff, raise his head with a distinct look of concern on his predatory face. Limping slightly on his walking stick, the long-haired figure made his way to Melinda, leaning close to whisper urgently in her ear. Jack saw that too, misinterpreted it as a sign that he himself had been detected, and decided that now was the time to strike. He appeared suddenly on an empty table before Melinda, standing between her, her intimate circle, and the crowd of vampires behind him. It was all high theater to show he didn't fear them, it was all so very petty. "MELINDA AINSLEY!" Jack was in full imperious regalia today, his eyes red and his fangs just a little extended, the perfect picture of a wroth vampire yet in control of himself. He pointed at her as she stood up, her eyes burning, the guards at her side moving protectively. "Your incompetent leadership has led the vampires of this city into disaster time and time again! I challenge you for the leadership of the Freedom City coven!" Melinda's glare was as murderous as the fangs she grew, her eyes burning red as she rose to her feet, took a few steps...and then, visibly, mastered herself as the shocked crowd held perfectly still with the calmness of the dead, only a few weeping humans showing any outward emotion at the sight of this sudden, terrifying display. "Oh, for pity's sake." She waved her hand and laughed. "Somebody kill him for me."

How we doin', Sandman?

There were fewer psychic defense around the sanctum sanctorum of the lord and master of the Earth, possibly because Arachnos has grown careless in the years since his conquest of the planet. Scarab's mental powers took the team's eyes deep into the heart of the tower, passing through imposingly reinforced double doors into a wide, lush atrium that spoke of peace and prosperity. A great bronze globe stood in the middle of the large room, water cascading down its sides in a perpetual fountain, all held in the sturdy grip of two giant marble hands. Uniformed masked guards stood at each interior door as they circled through the atrium, passing by maps of the Earth and the flags of various nations, fewer than might have been expected here in Arachnos' stronghold. The trophies were past the great bank of bronze elevators, grim signs of a world's domination. There was someone in the Freedom Eagle costume petrified in a statue of stone with a look of forever fear on its face; there was the bullet-ridden environmental suit of the ice villain Madame Zero. Among the more prominently displayed artifacts was among the most gruesome; the severed, preserved head of what might have been a handsome, blue-eyed man. Scarab, and a few others historically minded, recognized the face of Wilhelm Kantor, though the name and face meant very different things to different people. Inscribed neatly beneath the head on a bronze plaque were the words "The Last One." The magic and energy in the air in the building was palpable to anyone capable of sensing or guessing such things, the sheer power of the place nearly awe-inspiring. Above they passed through what appeared to be the sleeping quarters of another contingent of guards, these attendants not the uniformed personnel of below but summoned monsters like gargoyles and lesser imps, each one bound to their master's service by mystic, insubstantial chains Phantom could point out to the others. The levels above that turned out to be mundane offices, level after level of petty bureaucrats working to control the new world their master had built. Things were quiet now, though; it was well after working hours even here. The first level past the offices was all training rooms and security equipment, looking more like the interior of the old Freedom Hall than anything else. A closer look by those who knew the turf revealed that the mid-levels were indeed Freedom Hall itself; mystically elevated and melded into the heart of Arachnos' tower. There were no heroes here, but Dark Star and Dr. Archeville recognized Odysseus, speaking urgently to a man at once Ray Gardener and at once the god of thunder himself. Above the heads of the former heroes were cells, where the most familiar face was unquestionably a tightly bound, despairing woman with gigantic muscles easily recognizable as Andrea Atom to those who remembered her face. In the level above the cells slept children, some two dozen each with a room of their own, ranging in ages from toddlers to late teens as they slept in luxurious surroundings that wanted for nothing and each had locks on their doors both mystical and mechanical. Here was where the children of the gods slept, binding them in service to their master. It was only the level above that which was blocked against psionic or mystic scrying; it was only there that the mental search could go no further. This was evidently the source of power for the tower, in more ways than one.

The door opened immediately for Erin, showing her a dark cinderblock-built corridor with a guard at the end of it. At the sight of an unfamiliar face, the guard yelled, "Hey! We've got company!" going for the Garand at his back. Fearlessly, the dark-haired woman pushed past Erin, calling out, "Jim! It's okay! They're friendlies from Freedom Earth!" She stepped back into the room as the guard settled down, and introduced herself to the teens for the first time. "My name is Lilith. The four of you are in the Science bunker of the Army of the Free United States of America. The Resistance." She looked from one to the other. "You're a couple of miles and a whole dimension from where you started out. We're underground where Freedom Hall used to stand, and where it still stands on your world. This city is, and always shall be now, Freedom City."

Note: Agent H's use of Jap is not endorsed by the management; she's from a different world, instilled with the values of a different era.

"Oh God. Oh God, Kaiju Island..." Hope licked her lips, scrubbing her hand on the side of her face. "We're right in the middle of Jap territory. They've been here sixty years." She ejected the energy magazine from her pistol, shooting a look at the others before removing a new one from her boot. "Listen to me, and listen good. The Nazis take supers from their occupied territories and put them in the Ubersoldaten. You fight for the Reich and you and your family die screaming if you fall out of line, but at least you get nice toys and you get to live." She holstered a round. "The Japs, er Japanese, kill any super that isn't from the Rising Sun. They let the girls live longer...unfortunately. We need to get off this beach, fast. We can confab in the jungle." Without looking back at the others, she started making her way towards the trees. "If none of you can fly or send us eight thousand miles to resistance territory, we need to find the garrison on the island. They'll have big planes, maybe a teleporter if we're really lucky. When I was in the Resistance, we heard about all the Jap scientists who went to Kaiju Island. They do something here that lets them control the monsters."

Mecha and Manga is a book about manga and anime. Freedom City is a setting about comic books and superheroes. While I'm sure some feats will slip through the cracks, and as said above we don't have any blanket bans on the book and its contents right now, I encourage you to build your character using as little of MeMa as possible. :)

That's true. Hey Heritage, you interested in saving the day with feats of derring-do? :)

Edge shook himself, dusting the cobwebs out of his brain as he said a silent prayer of thanks that he'd remembered to wear his vest that day. He shot a quick look at Wander, glad to see she was watchful, glanced at Phalanx to make sure he was reaching out to Psyche, and then joined Geckoman in jumping off the platform to speak to the technician. "Who are you people?" he asked firmly. "Where are we?" "Take it easy," Ted was saying, but his dark-haired colleague was evidently in charge. She was, at least, considerably less alarmed by this. Both Ted and his colleague were in faded fatigues that looked like they'd seen a lot of use, some of them even patched together from multiple outfits. On the wall was an American flag, where the sharp-eyed could make out there were only forty-eight stars. "Are you students from Claremont Academy?" she asked the four kids. "Do you know Hope Rogers?" On closer inspection, both she and Ted were armed, though Ted hadn't gone for the .45 strapped to his waist and she hadn't reached back for the M-1 Garand over her shoulder. Their weapons looked as used as they did, and on closer inspection all the science equipment around them looked battered and used too, almost as if it had all been scavenged together from multiple sources. "She's a friend of ours." Edge stared at the woman, trying to sort out what she was saying. "She was with us when this happened...and so were a lot of other people!" "There was another signal cross-hatched with ours!" said Ted, looking appalled. "It must have taken them, fractured the beam, um...they would have appeared together at the antipode! At the teleporter nearest the opposite side of the Earth from here! Oh, Lord..."

Breakdown opened his ears to music and was surprised to find the sky nearly empty. They were clearly nowhere near a major city, assuming they were in a place where radio traffic was anything like what he was familiar with. He did eventually find a signal in a language he recognized as Japanese, especially once a little help from the magic of the dance translated the words for him. Playing it back for everyone else gave Eddie and the others who could speak Japanese a disturbing message in a gruff male voice, speaking at a shout at every word A strange song began to play then, one only vaguely familiar to the Americans there, a harsh, military band behind it. Eddie recognized the name of Kaiju Island right enough, the island in the South Pacific that was home to Gigantosaur and the other "kaiju" that were such a big feature of Japanese (and thus anime) popular culture. The last he'd heard, this island was a UN enviromental protectorate, but...things were very different here. Wherever they were. Meanwhile, Psyche heard a voice in her heard as she extended her senses. It was Phalanx: "Are you ok? Mark, Erin, Chris and I are in some wierd little room with a couple people I think they are responsible for this." Her words were enough to calm down Hope, who like of the others had been distracted by a distant, massive roar from the jungle where a massive shape could be seen moving far off up the side of a nearby volcano, an indistinct form obscured by the heavy tree cover moving slowly and deliberately.