Avenger Assembled

And Ecal? That's an HP for you, too.

The bartender obediently poured Chris a tall, cold Carlsberg, foam piled just high enough on the huge mug to lure the young man in like a moth to a flame. Daisy giggled and put her hand over her mouth at his naughty cleverness, and was just about to order a drink of her own when Geckoman felt something big and heavy clamp down on his shoulder. It turned out to be a hand, followed quickly by an amazingly deep voice. "Well well well, Mr. McKenzie." Chris recognized the voice of his ethics teacher very well, the gigantic Leeroy Hawke looming over him with a cheerful smile on his broad face. The former Turbo-Boost was an oddly outsized man, even for someone so strong; a common thing given how much supervillans of the 90s had hit the MAX. "I trust you and Ms. Gibbons are representing our school to the best of your abilities?" He released the smaller teenager, but stayed close by.

You know what? Pompadour, you are the first character to successfully react to Avenger (Or pretend to react to Avenger) the way I've been presenting the PC. Have an HP.

Someone doesn't want to be on the Next-Gen anytime soon. Yes, yes you can.

He's the Raven, Ace. He's just that good.

Wander's antagonist was still alive, though heavily battered and broken. His breathing was coming shallowly and his neck was hanging at a strange angle, simulated blood on his face and on her hands. What lay next was her choice, no one else's. There was no sign that Mr. Archer, or anyone else, was going to interrupt her. As promised, the fight was hers to take all the way to the end. The simulated street was quiet and peaceful now that she'd punched the man into a back alley; there was only the usual background hum of the city.

Seven smiled, looking very pleased with her student's choice. "Very good, Alex. You have chosen to look for new opportunities rather than accept the alternatives given you. Even if your efforts fail and you must fall back on the negative options given you, you have made the right choices for a hero." She "stood up." "There is only one more phase left to our test. It may be the most challenging, but it is not the hardest. Are you ready?"

"Very good!" called Magni as the simulation faded. "Your mind proved swifter than his body, as should always be the case with a true warrior. You have passed your test well." If Magni was put off by Alex's defiant response to the test, it was hard to tell; in fact, he seemed remarkably pleased with how things were going. "We have but one more test before the grand event. Tell me, Michael, your answer to this. You have beaten your enemy and have him at your mercy. He is a monster, a terrible threat to all of humanity, who may well escape from confinement and kill all he can. His life is between your hands." He held up his own big mitts. "What do you do?

Though it was hard to notice anything other than the unspeakably gorgeous Student Body, Geckoman also noticed her boyfriend at the other end of the hall. Clarence Beaudrie, aka Battlecry, had obviously noticed Geckoman come in, and noticed him with his girlfriend as well. From the look in the older, bigger student's eye, Geckoman was going to have a situation on his hands at some point in the near future. Clarence met Geckoman's eyes and mouthed something that looked like a remark about Geckoman's mother.

Shaen, have a PP.

"Certainly," replied Odysseus, "Follow me, and I'll take you right where you need to go." He turned and began cutting a new path through the sky, heading back towards the huge tower where the two dimension-traveling heroes had landed. "I just wish you could have stayed longer. We have so many things to show you here; so much we can learn from each other. It would be a shame to have it come to an end too quickly."

Merry looked a bit disappointed, but took the instructions anyway. "Okay, that should work." Standing on her high shoes, she gave Stesha a searching look. "Thanks so much for doing this. I really appreciate you making this night so special. Is there anything else I can do to help?" She pointed out the particular spots where she wanted the flowers, confirming the places where the vases and such did need to be tacked down. "Just be really careful, I don't want to do anything to mess up the party." She took deep breaths of the flowers as they came by, looking deeply pleased with herself. "This is going to be beautiful."

"I would be delighted," said Daisy, putting an affectionate arm around Geckoman's shoulders as the two heroes walked over to the bar. All the men were looking her way, it was hard not to, but Daisy was of course under strict orders not to use the most obvious of her powers out here in public. She was certainly devoting a lot of attention to her new buddy in the fancy clothes, though she was also shooting a few looks in the direction of the small knot of Claremont students at the opposite end of the room. There have only ever been a very small number of people who could sneak up on the Scarab once the full psychic powers of Heru-Ra have been awakened. There is more than one person like that at the party, though this one needed to wait until Scarab was distracted by conversation with other heroes. :bat: "Ace. Scarab." Duncan Summers looked surprisingly young for a man of his age, his eyes still vital and his back still straight despite the cane he leaned on. Somewhere past 55, he looked like he had several decades to go already. With the crowd at the bar getting large, and the host approaching with a large party, at least one of whom would recognize him by sight, Jack took this opportunity to disappear.

I need a Notice check from Geckoman. Phantom, there is definitely some magic running around here in addition to Grimalkin's dimensional chicanery. You'll have to succeed on a pretty good roll to recognize anyone but Grim.

"I guess you never know what someone's really like until you see them in a crisis," said Hope with a small shrug. "Personally, I think some of them are just wastes," she confided quietly. "You know Daisy Gibbons? She wants to use her powers to be a super-model. And Beaudrie acts like a superhero, but he just wants to be patted on the head and take credit for what the less popular kids do. I don't think they'd be any better even if you pushed them. But some of them, I think you're right," she added. "Dauntless and Relentless, they're pretty cool. But they know what it's like to fight for what really matters."

Wander does a tremendous amount of damage. OK, are you doing lethal or non-lethal here?

"Oh, it's beautiful!" said Merry, exulting over the bouquet. She looked at the flowers with a big smile on her face, running her fingers over the petals. "I'll make sure to give them to her as soon as I see her. Do you have anything for the, ah, baby?" she asked, giving Stesha a dazzling smile. "You never know, she might like some flowers too."

Paragon gets 17 Erin goes first.

The "thug" blinked a few times, meeting Erin's eyes, and took a step back, lowering his gun. He disappeared at that, the sheer force of Erin's flat eyes enough to intimidate the thug out of attacking her directly. No sooner had the man disappeared, though, then Erin saw a new threat step out of a nearby dark alley. She didn't recognize the supervillan before her, his red cape rippling behind him in the breeze, but the twisted alien symbol on his chest and the malevolent look in his eye told her everything she needed to know about him. "You'd better run, girl! I don't scare that easily!"

"It starts just after sunset," replied Merry without a pause, "and runs through until the beginning of business tomorrow morning. It'll be a pretty big party here, with lots of people, are the flowers going to be okay even with a lot of coming and going?" She raised her head and peered at the vases. "Are those sturdy? Like, if they get knocked off their tables, are they going to be okay?"

Dryad is still alive, but not for long if something isn't done fast. It looks as if all her vital functions have been interrupted; as if someone has flipped off her body without turning off her mind. Her body has stopped working, at least for the moment, but her brain is obviously still there, vital and alive, trapped in flesh that might kill her.

Hope smiled back. "This is much better than the food I got at my old school, that's for sure," she said, "so it's hard not to appreciate it." She sighed a little, looking back at the others and muttered softly. "Sometimes I look at these kids and I just want to...I don't know, stand on the table and yell at them. I've seen them argue with the lunch ladies, tell them that their food is qu...is crap." Though sixteen herself, and small enough to look younger, Hope evidently had no problem talking about other high school students as kids. "They don't know how good they have it."

"Zhanni" is visibly cheating, covering its tracks with its near-invisibility. It's leaving the mark early before the computerized "gun" is fired, flying through the side of the track and to the other side, once even just flying backwards and pretending to cross the finish line ahead of Phalanx!

"Jack told me to tell you that he doesn't know if he'll be able to make it or not," said Merry, obviously repeating a speech she'd been given by someone else. "But that he's sure you don't need him staring over your shoulder to do a great job. Wow, are those your flowers?" Merry's delight at the sight of Stesha's creations was completely unfeigned, at least as far as the super-florist could tell. "Those are great! They're really going to love these in there." She beamed, then added, "Here, let me show you where we'll be going. We'll be setting up the flowers inside the house," she said, pushing open the door to reveal an oddly decorated house inside. The mansion's wallpaper was all dark purples and reds, the old-fashioned furniture made of dark, heavy wood. If not for the brightly burning old-fashioned incandescent lamps everywhere, Stesha might have thought she was in an old-fashioned funeral parlor. "We'll be setting up the flowers in the living room, the boudoir, and, ah, the kitchen." The house was mostly empty as Merry led the florists inside, with the exception of a few people who were obviously household staff. How many people still put their maids in black dresses and white aprons anymore?

Hope sat down opposite Erin and began to eat, digging into her fried chicken and mashed potatoes with obvious relish. After a few moments for both girls to get their bearings, the dimension-hopping former Resistance fighter began speaking again. "I shouldn't be such a pig," she confided to Erin as she nodded to her food, "but I just can't turn down a chance to eat something good like this after how I spent the last couple of years. Being able to go without food doesn't mean it stops tasting good."