Avenger Assembled

Fortitude save, you say? ;)

"Sometimes having an answer is the right solution to a question, Eddie, even if you're not sure what your answer is going to be." The rest of the questions were surprisingly low-key given all the action that had come before in the test, just the man and boy sitting around talking about ethics and superheroes. When they were done, Archer shook Eddie's hand with a firm grip. "Well, I think we're done here. Congratulations, Eddie. I look forward to working with you in the future." He smiled.

"This summer has been unusually active," Summers admitted as he led the way inside the campus, walking past the plaque that read "Scientia Potentia Est," the Latin motto of the Claremont Academy for the Gifted. It was a bright, sunny day, the grounds full of students happily playing and enjoying themselves. Estelle caught sight of several superpowers in use, ranging from a happy, flying boy zooming overhead to an East Indian boy who reached up some thirty feet (by extending his arm) to catch a badly-thrown football. It was an idyllic scene, if you were into that sort of thing. He asked Estelle some surprisingly detailed questions about her work as they went, showing a keen interest in her scientific investigations. "So with all that done," he asked her as they reached the Jasmine Summers Administration Building, "what led you to shift your interests to secondary teaching?"

Don't picture them teaming up. Don't picture them teaming up... He felt kind of bad reducing everything Moira was talking about to sex. He knew her well and respected her accomplishments. But it was hard not to think about sex when she was flirting with him. On the other hand, it's good to know I still care. It was reassuring to know that a beautiful woman could still move him, even if he wasn't moving to places that Moira might appreciate. He did his best to relax, at her suggestion, pushing the "frat-boy" images out of his mind as best he could. "Your own team, huh? Who with?"

"Everyone's gotta eat and go to the bathroom. Even superheroes on patrol." Edge said to Eddie with a shrug. "And swinging around on a grappling line burns more calories than flying or jumping around." He dabbed at his mouth with a napkin, enjoying the delicious taste of his ethnic treat. It was loaded with calories, to be sure, but luckily he didn't need to worry about stuff like that. "That warehouse down the block, with the black roof? They don't lock their upper stories, so later we can swing in there and...Gah!" When the mysterious voice came from nowhere, Edge jumped as if he'd been hit by lightning, almost dropping his half-eaten sandwich before belatedly righting himself. "Hey, who said that?" He set his sandwich down carefully on its wrapper, looking around and seeing nothing at all.

"We can destroy them, can we?" Now Jack's eyes were diamond-hard, his newly-healed body tense as a whipcord as he glared at Elena. He was still hurting, and still tired, but he couldn't let this pass. "Because we can't have people clinging to life century after century, can we, Heru-Ra? I'll bet that there's more blood on your hands after four thousand years than there is on the hands of some poor damn fledgling being taught how to live by a monster." He folded his hands into fists, balling them at his sides. "Some vampires are innately evil. I'll give you that. And others are old enough, and bloody enough, that they've forgotten what it's like to be human. But it's not always like that. There is a better way." He stared at both of them. "If you really thought all vampires were evil, Elena, you'd have wiped my mind and put a silver bullet in me the minute you found out what I was."

Malice? How fares our pint-sized Armored Megalomaniac?

"You see," said Edge confidently as he bit into the poutine burger he'd bought at the French-Canadian deli just down the block, "this stuff may look weird, but it's pretty good." As a life-long Freedom City native, he'd taken the new arrival Breakdown out for a little evening stroll in a bad neighborhood several stories up. Between Edge's deft hand with his grappling gun and Breakdown's many modes of getting about, they'd been traveling in style for the last couple of hours. But they were still teenage boys, which had meant getting some takeout. Shopping in costume was always an adventure, but the more people who got to know the two boys as the heroes they were, the easier their lives would be in the field. He was eating casually on a warehouse rooftop, looking generally unworried about a fall.

Ace hears a crash outside, as if a large object had just been picked up and dropped to the ground by a superpowered individual! And from inside the building, something odd seems to be going in the deployment of the bailiffs inside the courthouse. There seem to be some...missing.

Give us a Notice check, durf.

Divine and Grim, let's say you guys have been here the whole time.

"I don't like to pry or anything, man," said Mark, holding up his hands politely, "but there, uh, was kind of a thing about making sure it was Father Guimont who met you at the door today. Are you guys really hardcore Catholic or something? Because I'm totally on board with that if that's your thing, but it's good to know now before I start throwing fish at you on Friday or something."

"If a superhero kills Melinda, there'll be a vacumn of power in the city. Elders like Lugat will move in, competing for control, wasting the lives of humans and young vampires alike. That happened before after the Terminus Invasion during Melinda's rise to power, though she covered it up beneath the chaos of the invasion itself. If they catch the attention of the city's superheroic population, there'll be another purge as there was in the 1970s during Dracula's visit. I believe you were active back then, Scarab." He looked down at his hands again, as if imagining them covered in blood. "And there will be more death, and more killing. And then the cycle will start again, and nothing will have changed." He looked up at the others again, down to shorts and a torn T-shirt, oblivious to their internal dialogue. "But if I kill Melinda, right there in front of her court where everyone can see, then there won't be any fighting, because the city will have a king. Daywalking vampires don't generally rule cities, but I have at least one powerful friend I can put up in my place. Grimalkin knows him too, actually." He popped his neck, an odd-looking sight indeed for people who'd just seen it broken. "And things will go on as they were, but with someone else in charge."

"You know," said Mark thoughtfully, "if you're looking for someone to hang around with tonight, I think I can recommend a couple of interesting people to you." Mark grinned at James, slapping him on the back. "You want to meet someone even cooler than Erin and me? My buddy Samot; he's not even from Earth. He's from Farside City, up on the Moon. I passed him coming back from his outing this morning, I'm sure he'd like to hang out with you." Chatting cheerfully about the aliens at school, Mark and James walked out together. Once they were out of the gym, Mark had a rarity: an idea. "Hey James, uh, can I ask you something kind of personal?"

This time, Jack did nearly run the car off the road. "Agh!" He pulled the car back on the road at the last second, trying to shake off the impact of Divine's presence. "Moira, I...I'm not a very good partner for Stesha. Or anyone else. I have a lot going on in my personal life, and I just don't think I like her that way. You work in a bar; you know how it goes sometimes." There, let her think of that what she might.

Scarab's inspiring words washed over the assembled heroes, even the cynical Avenger moved by Elena's heartfelt words. Rachel and Ray looked at each other and seemed to nod, the former heroes from the other dimension inspired themselves by the heroic sentiments shared by the immortal Scarab and in the shadow of the Centurion himself. And then the sky lit up. As the shocked Knights and the people in the park looked on in shock, a great half-circle of pure white light erupted open in the sky near the Sentry Statue and the unmistakable figures of Dark Star and Dr. Archeville came plunging out of it at blinding speed!

Continued in "Vaster than Empires, and More Deep"

They were in trouble almost from the moment they reached the skies over "Freedom" City, only Dark Star's tremendous speed protecting them from the sudden eruption of things in the air. Looking back, Dark Star and Archeville could see creatures rippling in and out of the clouds, the summoned aerial guardians of the magical potentate that dominated this world and this city with an iron fist. But before the aerial squid-beasts could close on them, Dark Star's superhuman senses found the great rift between universes left behind by the battle between Gladiator and August Roman. Concentrating his energies, Dark Star dived into the rift invisible to human eyes, plunging suddenly through a zone of pure, utter white and past two surprised figures that bore a passing resemblance to the Centurion of Earth-Prime, one of whom was clearly recognizable as this Earth's Gladiator, before they passed through to somewhere else altogether. Continued here.

Jack seemed to come to a decision at Scarab's words, his eyes hardening as he pulled his hand back. "You're right, Scarab. Melinda is a monster." Reaching down, he began pulling off the tattered remains of his costume, the black leather having been torn to fragments by his hundred-story fall. "This isn't something I'm going do behind a mask. If you have a change of clothes my size in here, I would appreciate it. I don't think I can go back to my apartment anymore. Tomorrow night, I will go to Melinda's lair and challenge her authority over the city's vampires. And after that, one of us will be dead."

"Definitely," said Edge readily. "I'm definitely going to be a superhero when I grow up. After all, it's the family business." He smiled, unconsciously imitating Erin with a five-pound weight rather than a fifty-pounder. "I mean, I've got all these powers; I've got to use them for helping people. I don't know what else I'd do except be a gambler or something." He set the weight down. "I wouldn't go to a casino if I was old enough, anyway. It wouldn't be fair."

Jack's mind flew to places best left unconsidered at Moira's story. Fortunately, the car stayed on the road. "Well, that's...that's good. It's good to have friends." He kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. "Stesha's very good with flowers. When we were fighting bad guys on our date, she made flowers grow and used them to stun some guys trying to rob the Super Museum. It was pretty cool."

Jack opted to drive them back in Moira's car, the better to keep Moira from having to come back the next day and perpetuate this night any further. "I'll have you back in a jiffy," Jack promised, starting the car once everyone was buckled into place. "No problem." And with any luck, you'll both be too drunk to remember this night ever happened. "So how long have you known Stesha, Moira?"

"You guys go have fun," said Jack, carefully disengaging himself from the pair of them. "Do you need a ride back to your place?" he eventually asked, thinking of the relative merits of an intoxicated Divine and Stesha stumbling down the street together, singing and smashing up the place as they went. "Or either of your places?" Were they going to the same place together? It was...hard to tell.

"I'm sorry about our date," Jack admitted, looking at the drunken Stesha as he joined her and Moira on the ground. "I had a nice time with you, but it was a mistake. I shouldn't have asked you out. I was just...lonely, and I thought I could be a good boyfriend to you. But I can't, because I'm not a very good person. I'm sorry, Stesha."

"Well yeah, I guess if you're a Prophet you know about growing up around heroes." Mark laughed. "All kinds of people used to come over for my dad's barbecues." He worked the weight back and forth, not wanting to seem like he was bragging about his family. "We have a pretty good time around here." He shot James a look. "So, you think you're gonna go into the business? Be a superhero?"