Avenger Assembled

Yes, I thought I'd get an early start on getting the character approved before July. That way when Gold comes, I can get started right away. (I have to say, I've been very impressed and pleased at how quickly you've gotten to me. )

Aight! Just hated to see you not getting answered. :D

"Yes," said Odysseus gravely, "if Omega comes again to your world, are you prepared to resist him after the death of your greatest champion? Gentlemen, comrades, with the loss of the Centurion, can you truly hope to resist the greatest threat to all life along the Cosmic Coil? Tell me truly." Odysseus sounded deeply skeptical of the very idea, not a little pessimistic about the survival of Earth-Prime in yet another war with the Terminus.

Okay, hoping to take this thread up to Grim contacting her superhero buddies for advice. Anything else you'd like to do here?

Wesley, think we're waiting on you here.

Sure thing, Mark! I've removed that power feat. How am I looking now?

If you guys do come, you should definitely make sure you get a chaperone. No under-age drinking! :D

"Don't go all limp-wristed Anne Rice on me," said Claudia with a smirk."You've done plenty fine by me." She took a few moments to compliment the waitress when she came by, flattering her hair and her sensible shoes. It was all easy stuff, but it seemed to work fine on the young Latina. "I know," agreed Jack without heat. "I just think...I could do better. We all could do better." Claudia didn't agree, which was maybe one reason why she was so much more successful in getting herself invited home to Carmen's place that night. Still, the two vampires walked out of the bar arm-in-arm, in good charity with each other if not with anything else. "Claudia, if something happened...if I was in a fight, or something, you'd back me, right?" she shot him a serious look, and gave him a serious reply. "Always, Jack," she swore. "That's what I'm for." The worst part about watching her lie to his face, Jack reflected later, patrolling the streets in costume, was that he was fairly sure she believed every word of what she'd just said.

"I just think that there's more to life than how you and I have been living," Jack murmured quietly, neither of them touching the beers the waitress had brought them at their corner table. She was cute, and both vampires had been instinctively flirting with her since they walked in. It was part and parcel of what they were; what Jack was when he wasn't in costume. "Hmm...nope," said Claudia cheerfully, "I don't think there is. But good for you if you're happy, or whatever." She shrugged. "Everyone's got to find their own path. I'd rather you be happy on your own than hooking up with some other slut, that's for sure." She snorted, then laughed when Jack replied with a suggestion that maybe he shouldn't call them that. "What can I say, I've had reason to get in touch with my feminine side lately," Jack admitted, by no means about to get into the finer details of how exactly he'd become a woman and how exactly they'd solved that particular problem. "I think I haven't treated women with enough respect."

"Yes, actually." They'd made several trips down already, and Jack gathered up a large trunk loaded with a bundle of now-filthy sheets wrapped around even filthier things to load inside the back of the truck. Nearby, the slim Claudia was easily wrestling another huge trunk, this one holding the broken remains of her bed, into the back of the panel truck. "History, magic...a lot of things. I can't just be someone's boytoy forever;" he reiterated, not wanting to get back into an old, familiar argument with her. "Well, honey, the key is to be the one who _has_ the toys..." They talked only about business on their way to the incinerator that the vampires owned, and when Jack paid off the blood-servant there to look the other way while he and Claudia disposed of their vile cargo. The sun was especially high in the sky now, and the two vampires opted to shelter for a little while in the comforting darkness of a nearby dive. Neither of them were regular customers, or dressed like regular customers, but with the help of their natural charisma and supernatural powers no one objected to them moving into the Southside bar for a little while.

"Well..." Jack looked down at his hands for a moment, then said, "I'll tell you when we're done. We've got a lot of work that needs doing here." That, of course, was enough to make "interrogate Jack" Claudia's favorite game until they were done cleaning up the mess she'd left behind. It was hard to remember how much they'd hated each other when she parted; all the angry words and bloody tears, the animalistic fury and rage they'd both felt. Maybe seperation had been a good reminder of how hard it was to find a friend in the world where they both lived. When they'd moved from cleaning up to gathering up what they'd cleaned for disposal, Jack finally spilled the beans to his dam. Well, what she thought were the beans, anyway. "I've been studying," he admitted with a wry smile. "Studying a lot of things. I'm not like you," he said as they carried their heavy trunk full of things down the frieght elevator. "I can't just ride the circuit every night and do business favors every day. I want to make something of my eternity. And that is an adventure; for me, anyway." "You'd be surprised how much "something" you can have on the circuit, honey," said Claudia with a liquid smile. On the way down she told Jack a story involving her and a couple of handsome fellows with magically enhanced constitutions that sounded implausible, though entertaining. It never occured to Claudia that Jack might not enjoy hearing about her with other men, and Jack opted not to enlighten her about his real feelings. when they were in the back alley loading the truck she'd had him bring along, she pressed him further. "So, studying, huh? Something besides Melinda's neck?"

"I hear you haven't been having such a good time, though," said Claudia, her voice getting more serious as Jack turned away to get back to work. "Dave tells me you missed the last couple of parties Melinda threw, even the one with the ballet dancers. Got someone on the side?" There was definitely something teasing in her voice, but there was a solid note of concern expressed there as well. Concern for Jack's welfare; or concern that he had a girlfriend who wasn't her? To Jack's surprise, he honestly wasn't sure. "I've been running with my own crowd lately," Jack admitted, careful not to name any names. The social world of vampires was very small, and a butterfly of that scene like Claudia basically knew everybody. "Dave, Pitt..." "What, the old wizard from the Imperator?" Claudia thought that was hilarious. "What do you do, just sit around and drink vintage blood and listen to old victrolas? He's been dead about as long as I have, but that man's still frozen in the '20s. C'mon, honey, I know you better than that. You like adventure."

Claudia shook her head as she bare-handedly climbed the sheer wall to pick something off the ceiling. "No, not since Leonid was deposed by those [shlruk]ing terrorists." She tossed the piece down to Jack, who similarly caught the fragment bare-handed. "They ruined a lot of people's good times, let me tell you. I don't have thirty years to wait around for the local politics to settle down; I have a social calendar to keep, y'know." The vampire king of New York had recently been murdered by masked, unknown vampires each specializing in a particular vampiric talent. The chaos in the city afterwards had been a serious bummer for the parties Claudia loved, bad enough that she'd come back to the city of her siring. "Well, things are going all right here. Melinda's working on some big project that she's not telling any of _us_ about, but the parties are still going around the circuit just as much as ever." Jack smiled as she climbed back down, keeping his own thoughts on that subject firmly off his face. "You'll have a great time." He didn't hate Claudia as he once had, but that didn't mean he thought of her as anything more than his dam. That was a word that could mean a lot of things to different vampires.

Vampire and vampire worked together to clean up the mess, picking up broken things and disposing of them either in the trash or into the pile Jack would take away to burn, Jack making sure that his sire didn't turn away from cleaning up the messy consequences of what she'd done. She noticed the force in his voice as they talked, and seemed to smile as the two of them went about their work. "It sounds like you're really toughening up, Jack. Working for Melinda must agree with you." Sure, that's what it is. Jack actually thought Claudia would be amused rather than offended at the idea of him playing superhero in Freedom City, but he couldn't tell her something that would potentially put her life in danger. Vampires generally couldn't trust each other that way, and besides, it was just rude to tell someone you'd committed a capital crime nearly every night for the past several months. "It has its moments. You've done your share of tasks for her, as I recall," said Jack with a half-smile at memories that were both pleasant and horrid at the same time. "But you said things weren't so great in New York?"

Jack stood in an apartment transformed into abbatoir, the swanky Midtown pad adorned with a body in a way he really didn't enjoy looking at. What made it worse was that the culprit was right there beside him, a look of guilt mixed with anger on her face. "So just when I was starting to panic, he got back up!" Claudia threw her hands up in the air, her pale, elegant fingers stained with blood and other things. "So you can imagine how much worse I felt when he tried to bite off my head! I told him time and time again to stop taking the zombie powder, but did he listen to me?" She pointed down at what was left of the man on the bed. Jack had the idea the other man had been naked at his death, but it wasn't easy to tell. "You knew this couldn't last forever!" she shouted, her husky voice full of anger at the dead man. A moment later she coughed and went on, considerably more politely, "So I went a little crazy, and now there's a mess higher than I can reach. Can you help me out?" She gave her child-in-darkness a big-eyed smile, her elegant red lips transformed into a girlish pout. "Okay..okay, fine," said Jack, running his hands through his hair as both vampires tried to avoid the sunbeam streaming in through the window. "I know you can't call anyone else in during the day, and if you wait until tonight it'll make it harder to dispose of everything." Would he have been so generous, so instinctively helpful if Claudia had asked him to help dispose of someone she'd actually killed in cold blood rather than a zombie she'd torn to pieces in a panicked frenzy? He skated across that moral divide briefly for a moment...then decided it was better the question hadn't come up at all. "But you're going to help with this," he added, some heat in his voice as he pointed to the disaster before them.

Oh, what the heck. I'm in.

Indeed it does. Good thing Odysseus is crafty. Say, did Doctor Archeville miss Odysseus introducing himself, or does he not believe his tricky words?

Happy Birthday!

Capers: Damsel in Distress: The heroes receive a late-night phone call from Sharon Rosenbaum, begging them to help her escape the dire clutches of a wicked psychic ghost. When they arrive at her Southside apartment, though, they find a composed, lovely woman who invites them in for tea. Was it all a ruse? Or is Sharon less comfortable with the merged personality in her body than she really wants to admit? Money Money Money!: When Marionette gets a teaching job at the Shadow Academy to help pay the bills, heroic Claremont students now find that it's hard to resist the suggestions of the Shadow Academy's hot new field instructor! Marionette's not actually into teenagers of any stripe, but it sure is funny watching them beg! Do the boys have the willpower to resist her long enough to bring her in? Mud-Slinging: At a public charity event, two superheroes begin violently quarreling with each other, the situation ultimately escalating into blows and bloodshed. At another public occasion, two married police officers openly begin making out with each other in public. Marionette is tired of the public worshiping its "heroes" when it should be worshipping the beautiful people like her, and she's decided to take a little behind the scenes action. Why Can't We Be Friends?: When Marionette joins the Pinnacle Path, she soon decides that the New Age religion could use a little boost from someone with real power. Now the Path is more popular than ever, with hundred of people from all over the city joining up. When a loved one of the heroes falls into the now-cult's sway and the heroes investigate, can they resist the clutches of the wicked mentalist?

Caperzzz: Bee Aggressive! B-E-E Aggressive!: Like any good Freedomian, Barry Bowles hates the Flags with a passion. When the Flags come to town and win the first game of a double-header against the beloved Freedom City Comets, the Bee-Keeper goes into action with a team of specially-trained bees that stings each and every Flag player until they're too swollen to hold a baseball bat anymore. Can the heroes overcome their distaste for the much-hated Flags while tracking down the mad bee-meister? And what happens if the Bee-Keeper takes refuge in a sports bar full of rabid Comets fans too drunk to know any better? Civic-Minded: The heroes find that the Bee-Keeper helping rescue people from a burning building in the Fens. It turns out Barry Bowles doesn't want to see anyone get hurt, even though he'd happily have knocked the place over given the first opportunity. Can they work with the baron of bees long enough to save lives and catch the crazy man in the yellow and black powered armor? What happens if the crowd starts cheering Barry on? No More Mizzter Nice Bee!: Tired of not getting enough respect, the Bee-Keeper decides to pull off a daring extortion scheme at the annual Arbor Day Exposition in downtown Freedom City. He announces that if certain demands are not met, he will see to it that every single thousand-dollar orchid at the show will be forcibly pollinated!!! But who can identity a specific bee in an outdoor show full of flowers? Can the heroes stop Barry Bowles from perpetuating yet another mad scheme while fighting off hay fever? Whatever Happened to the Bee of Tomorrow?: After a little trip through a wormhole thanks to a misplaced time machine, the Bee-Keeper returns with the armor of the Bee-Keeper of 2525! Can the heroes (perhaps with a little help from the Freedom Legion) defeat the newly-empowered menace before he stings history right on the lip?

Eh, it's not really that big a deal for me. You guys go through enough hassle as it is. I've edited the character so that he has +10 ranged attack and does +4 non-lethal damage with his blasters.

Ah, but he doesn't use his Ranged Attack for his Perception Blast; the two of them don't stack with each other. And note also that his Blast is deliberately undercapped; it's built for flavor, not for maximum blasting power. I bought his ranged attack score up that high to reflect his Claremont training; it wouldn't make sense for it to not be fairly high given that he tries to rely on something besides his powers. It's no fair being That Guy with Attack +1 and Perception Range Blast. So yeah, his attack bonus is just points spent for character flavor; he's all of PL 7 with his blasters.

(this build draws very heavily on Elric's Emma Frost build on the ATT) Character Name: Marionette II Secret Identity: Sharon Rosenbaum Description: Sharon Rosenbaum is the classic "Hollywood Homely," wearing thick, heavy glasses and black ankle-length skirts suitable for a theological librarian. She wears sensible shoes and keeps her voice low and quiet. It's largely a front, though, and a close observer will note that she has a fire burning behind those glasses that her "costume" fails to hide. When she is Marionette II, though, the sensible shoes are replaced with white leather combat boots and the dark clothes with a tight white bodysuit that covers everything while leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. Her voice becomes a live thing, a sensual purr that becomes a mad growl, her eyes burning with passion and fire. She is nearly another person. History: Allison Geller's story is largely told in the pages of Freedom's Most Wanted. The Golden Age Communist mentalist was indeed murdered, though it was by a mind-shielded assassin hired by the Invisible Empire rather than by American agents. After all, the Americans remembered how helpful Marionette had been during the Soviet-American alliance in World War II, and hoped they could turn the Red mind-controller into their pawn after she spent enough time behind bars. The story of the Marionette did not, however, end with the death of Allison Geller. Her soul survived at the edges of reality, clinging onto a life that she felt had been taken from her unfairly. She went mad there on the edges of the Cosmic Coil, pulling her way back from the Lands of the Dead on nothing but sheer willpower and the strength of her mind. Some of her awareness faded away as she pulled herself back to reality, Allison Geller falling away before the memories of Marionette, memories of power and control. It was the late 1970s when she reappeared, the psychic ghost becoming a serious nuisance for the Bronze Age Freedom League and their "successors" Force OPS. She never said her name around her old enemies, not wanting them to know her secrets, but eventually was captured and held in psychic stasis thanks to the vigilantes Evening and Eye of Justice. The book where she was held was lost by those two heroes during the Terminus Invasion, eventually winding up in the hands of the Freedom City Library. There she waited, her awareness growing more and more fuzzy, until finally librarian's assistant Sharon Rosenbaum picked up a copy of her book. Marionette found a kindred soul in Sharon Rosenbaum, a repressed young woman who bitterly resented taking orders from the less-qualified men around her. Overpowering Sharon's will, Marionette enthralled her, merging the souls of Allison Geller and Sharon Rosenbaum into a single entity with the memories of both. The new Sharon Rosenbaum craves sensation and passion in all their forms, reveling in the power and glory of her new abilities, and only a still, small voice deep in her mind remembers her conscience. But that voice fades more every day before the powerful duality in her head, and she rarely listens anyway. She has already used her powers to become wealthy, having persuaded certain wealthy patrons to sign over much of their assets to her and then making sure they forgot all about it afterwards. But she craves more than that; more sensation, more adventure? Maybe...a fight with superheroes? The old Marionette preferred to avoid direct combat and Sharon Rosenbaum wouldn't hurt anyone. But the new Marionette, a merger of the darker impulses of both women, is looking forward to making Captain Thunder fall at her feet and worship her. Power Level 10 (150 pp) Marionette II Abilities: (32 pp) STR: 8 (-1), DEX: 12 (+1), CON: 14 (+2), INT: 18 (+4), WIS: 20 (+5), CHA: 20 (+5) Combat: (24 pp) Attack +3, Defense +12 (+4 flat-footed), Initiative +1, Grapple +2, Knockback -4 Saves: (13 pp) Toughness +8 (+3 flat-footed), Fortitude +5 (+2 from Con, +3), Reflex +6, (+1 from Dex, +5) Will +10 (+5 from Wis, +5) (+14 vs. Mental Effects) Skills: (80r=20 pp) Bluff 10 (+15/+19), Concentration 12 (+17), Diplomacy 6 (+11/+15), Gather Information 8 (+13), Intimidate 8 (+13), Knowledge [History] 8 (+12), Knowledge [streetwise] 4 (+8), Notice 6 (+11), Profession [Librarian] 8 (+13) Sense Motive 10 (+15) Feats: (8 pp) Attractive, Benefit (Wealthy), Connected, Contacts, Fascinate (Bluff), Jack of All Trades, Leadership, Taunt, Powers: (53 pp) Enhanced Feats 9 (Defensive Roll 5, Dodge Focus 3, Uncanny Dodge (mental)) (9 pp) Mind Shield 4, (4 pp) Super-Senses 2 (Danger Sense [Mental], Mental Awareness) (2 pp) Mental Blast 8 (32 pp base + 5 APs= 37 pp) AP: Telepathy 10 (PF: Subtle) + Comprehend 2 (Languages- Speak/Understand any) + Super-Senses 4 (Detect Life [at Range, Acute, Radius]) (29 pp) AP: ESP 10 (Vision and Hearing; PF: Subtle) (31 pp) AP: Emotion Control 8 (Extras: Area- Burst (40-foot radius), Selective Attack) (32 pp) AP: Illusion 6 (All Senses, Extras: Sustained, Selective Attack; Flaw: Phantasms, PF: Progression 2—25 foot radius) (32 pp) AP: Mind Control 10 (Extra: Conscious, PF: Mental Link, Subtle) (32 pp) Protection 1 [source] (1 pp) DC Block Unarmed DC 14 Bruised Mind Control DC 20 Will Emotion Control DC 18 Will Mental Blast DC 22 Will Illusion DC 16 Will Story Hooks: Enemy (Golden Age legacies) Obsession (Sensation) Rivalry (Female Superheroes, Especially Sexy Ones) Temper (Does Not Like To Be Crossed) Abilities 32 + Skills 20 + Feats 8 + Powers 53 + Combat 24 + Saves 13= 150 pp

After a few more tearful goodbyes, hugs all around, and a group picture, Alex's mom finally left her there with her friends. It was a bright, warm summer's day outside, the sort that promised a legion of possibilities for the assembled students. They were all officially enrolled now, even if their full-fledged IDs and uniforms would be a little longer in the making. The day was young yet, with many further opportunities for adventure.

Odysseus, if that was who he truly was, made a perfect landing on Doctor Archeville's patio. "Crafty man," he said sociably, "I have indeed come a great distance to speak with you. Both of you," he added in Dark Star's direction. "You are both of age as men. You remember when the dark lord Omega came to your world, yes?" He waited patiently for both men to speak.