Avenger Assembled

"Your powers. Describe them. Their origin. Their use. Crimes you have committed with them." Jack saw his own past in the boy, a childhood and youth brutally wasted when there were so many wonders to experience. This young man had happily thrown away everything Jack himself had lost. "Do not lie. Do not omit." He fell eerily silent at that, his gaze boring into Vulture's.

Oh. I didn't know if that would work. Jack hmmed mentally as he stepped through the crowd, circling Elena as he kept a careful distance from her and her Aryan escort. Listen, I know you're on the outs with me right now, but I need your help with something. I need you to make a friend of mine think I've killed you. He paused, his eyebrows furrowing as tension crossed his lovely, chiseled face. Wait, that sounded bad. Mental conversations aren't easy, are they? OK, it's like this. I need to kill the person who read my mis...boss's mind earlier, but of course that's not actually going to work. But if you make my friend think I did find and kill the telepath who read Melinda's mind, it'll all be good.

"All right." Jack rubbed his eyes, thinking fast. "Dave, here's what I want you to do." He leaned close to the other vampire, whispering quietly and intimately. "I want you to check the servants. That's the perfect way to infiltrate a party like this, especially if you have telepathic powers. Check them out as best you can, see if any of them react differently to you. Find me if you find anything, and we'll deal with it. Together." He squeezed Dave's shoulder and added in Slavonic, "No rack for us." When Dave was off, looking quietly fearful behind his mask of vampiric control and detachment, Jack was left with the still-thorny problem of what on Earth he was going to do to get them out of this situation. He leaned against the wall, all sleek detachment, watching as the humans moved. He certainly couldn't kill Elena, but he certainly couldn't go back to Melinda without blood on his hands. HEY ELENA! he 'thought' loudly, wondering if mental connections actually worked like this. Well, if it didn't, at least he'd be no worse off. CAN YOU HEAR ME!?! He moved as he thought, cutting his way through the crowd like a shark through seaweed as he made his way towards Elena and Archeville.

"What are they, sir?" "Don't call me sir," Jack whispered back to Dave, the two vampires speaking in sotto voice as they studied the phalanx of zombies before them. "And they're zombies," he added. "Dead ones, too. You can tell from the way they stand." "Huh." Dave snorted. "I guess they're not the only ones!" Jack and Dave, immaculate in their pressed tuxes, were an odd pair when taken against the shabbily-but-uniformly dressed undead before them. Jack laughed too, though they both kept their voices down. Their mistress and the zombies' master were busy upstairs in the tenement together. What could bring Melinda and Baron Samedi together? With any luck, Jack would find that out later. But for now... "Are you doing all right these nights, Dave? I haven't seen you since, you know, the thing in North Bay." "Doing all right. Night shift at the blood bank is dull and all, but you know, it's nice to have steady work." Dave cast a glance Jack's way. "I'm surprised I don't see you there more often," he opined. "I know how you are." It was a bold thing to say to a superior in the complicated pecking order of vampire society, but in the quiet of a pre-dawn Lincoln alley, there was nobody there to hear. "What, not feeding rough?" Jack waved his hand. "Just because I like people doesn't mean I don't like the way they taste. I mean, jeez, I don't know how you stand living on banked blood all the time. Might as well put you out to pasture." "Just never got a taste for wild." Dave rubbed the side of his neck, frowning a little. "What do you think they're doing up there?" he asked, nodding up at the brightly-lit window visible two stories up. "Look, man, I'm telling you, it's best not to think about. What do you think Melinda would do with someone who actually has necromantic powers?" The two vampire men looked at each other and crossed themselves, something of a blasphemy in the circles of the undead. "Yeah, I guess not. Is guard duty always this...like this?" He waved to the zombies, who continued to stare at them both with flat, dead eyes. It was a bit like being watched by sharks, or ravening birds. "You want to go back to guarding the blood bank full time?" asked Jack, trying to be concilatory for Dave's sake. The man really, really didn't want to be complaining where Melinda could hear him. "Because that wouldn't be too hard." "No, I mean..." Dave shook his head. "I was hoping this would mean more than it does, you know? I'm a free agent, you're a free agent, and we're working for Melinda because she treats us so good." "Freedom isn't something we're going to see a lot of, Dave. Not working directly for Melinda, anyway." Jack rubbed his eyes. "Didn't your sire tell you about this stuff?" "We don't do a lot of talking these nights. He's got his business, I've got mine." Dave didn't quite look at him, and Jack knew that "look" only too well. "I just...I think it would be like this. Being dead." "What, you thought it would be all the parties?" Jack asked, pain-flecked amusement in his voice. "Just the whole undead prince thing, forever and ever?" Dave gave him a look that said Well, yeah! "Me too," he admitted. "But it isn't. It's standing here in an alley while Melinda does God-knows-what up there; it's going out to bust up Grenville so they don't get any funny ideas, it's...you know. Everything." There weren't the words for the hungers and the passions, not in any language Jack knew. "But you know, there are other ways to do what needs to be done..."

Readying an action, just in case. There's no reason why Reaver shouldn't get credit where credit is due in the meantime, though. Given Reaver's high Sense Motive, I'll just come out and say that the guy is totally sincere in his fear and repentance.

"Oh, no! Please!" Alone in the alley, with no one to protect him from the bad guy, the executive begged and pleaded with Reaver. But he evidently wasn't a fool; summoning help in the Fens with cries for help was almost impossible, especially for a well-off man who was by no means a local. He was a normal guy faced with a supervillian, and that was all. Rather than get a beating, or worse, he spilled his guts, backing up against the wall and sliding to the ground. "The code is SWORDFISH, all right? It's my boss's idea of a joke! Please don't hurt me, I have a family! I-" He glanced up at the porno theater they were standing behind. "And...okay, maybe I shouldn't be here. But I will go back home and not go near one of these places ever again. I swear!"

Avenger will not actually kill Vulture, at least not on purpose. But he will certainly make it appear that he will. ;)

"Maybe they left already," said Dave good-naturedly, ever the peacemaker when it came to pleasing his mistress, the three vampires having formed up together in a tight little knot in a far corner of the ballroom, far away from the superheroes outside. "If they saw what you were thinking, maybe they ran away." "Oh, there's a wonderful idea," hissed Melinda quietly. "Straight to a witch-hunter, no doubt." She squeezed the bridge of her pert little nose, murder in her lovely eyes. "All right, here's what we'll do. Much as it...wounds me to be driven away, it is too dangerous for me to be where someone has already read my mind. I will return to the nest." She meant the local one, the bolthole Melinda had set aside for the city's vampires in the region. She looked up at Jack, and went on in Slavonic. "Jack, your place is higher than Dave's. You will take charge of him and find the telepath. And then you will kill them." "But I-" "Don't." Melinda replied. "I am aware of your twee feelings on human life, but they are less than adorable now that we are faced with a crisis. If you do lack the stomach to kill the telepath at this party, then you may let Dave do it. If either of you fail me, I shall see to it that you both suffer the peine fort et dure. Do you understand?" They did, and the two vampires watched as she left. Jack couldn't read Dave's mind, but he could certainly read his own. What am I going to do?

Huh, Reaver actually has enough Notice to spot Avenger. Go ahead and roll your Notice, it'll affect what I'll post. :D

I hope Avenger's most recent action keeps in the tone of the scene, all. It's a bit hard, but no worse than Neal Adams' Batman on a bad day.

"Patience beginning to expire." Avenger grabbed the young man by the left ankle and twisted it until he heard bones crack. "Stop what you're doing." The look of cold menace in his flat blue eyes, the only visible part of his face, was palpable as he stared down at Vulture, his odd, menacing voice a flat, emotionless growl. "Am capable of worse."

Avenger's Initiative is 21

"Appreciate the compliment to my abilities," Avenger replied from the corner of the room, "but have been unable to interrogate yet." Avenger carried the unconscious, battered teen over his shoulder like a ragdoll, the big man hardly stooping before the weight. "Scarab. You have recovered." It was not really a question. "Any new information?"

On a more serious note: how does Elena feel about having her mind messed with? How much is she willing to risk her own secret identity to retaliate at this juncture? How much does she really trust Jack? Similarly: How much is Jack willing to risk to keep Melinda's attention off Elena? What services will Melinda demand from him if he does so? How much does he really trust Elena? And also, we could get more people in here. :D

I suggest a bedroom farce, except with vampires.

"Not in the Freedom League," Avenger informed Divine with a flat, dead tone in his voice. "League objects to my techniques." He clutched his bloody hands into fists, then added, "Team might not be a bad idea. Phone?" His sudden inquiry ended with a glance at the walls all around them. "Cell would have troubles. Perhaps you two upstairs? You seem compatible. I can deal with monster."

Aight, Divine, Scarab, Dark Star, Slamdance, Hellbound, and Wesley, you have an invitation! The rest of you, I'm afraid I had to cut our numbers down to size! There will be other teams, though!

Let us draw a gentlemanly veil over the events of the subsequent night and day at the house occupied by the Blood Brotherhood. Suffice it to say that the cultists are accommodating to the vast majority of Belphegor's demands, and are happy to violate all seven deadly sins with him in a variety of combinations. They speak often of the imminent rise of the Red King, and the coming sacrifice that will render them all into living gods. Outside of the house, though, a great deal happened in Freedom City. Over the course of that day and night, telephones rang and phone messages were left, a famliar, gravely voice in everyone's ear. "Need you to fight a demon and friends. Empty house at corner of Warren and Kramer, sundown, Avenger said, naming one of the finer neighborhoods in Freedom City, perched just at the edge of North Bay. "Others will explain." With that, he continued to earn his reputation for frustrating taciturnity by simply hanging up. Heroes without phones had the same message placed where they could see it, sometimes tucked away in corners, often in places where it seemed almost certain no person could have gotten. The important thing was, several heroes had the same message, to come at sundown to the house at the corner of Warren and Kramer. Dark Star and Scarab got easier messages, letting them know to meet there to discuss their plans for the fight against the cult at the earliest opportunity. Meanwhile, at nearly the same time, Scarab was finally able to partially break through the psychic haze around North Bay and narrow down the location of the cult's safehouse to a single block of tony homes near the edge of the water. It won't be that hard to find the house inside...hopefully.

Shaen, you are assuming a degree of not-cheating on Avenger's part that I think is unwise. And if you are interested, quote, it actually works better if you start with Reaver going about his typical villainous night.

Trust me, I would have mentioned it if there was any new information you needed. He's not going to be interrupted.

I'd volunteer Avenger for a fight with Reaver, but I don't think it would go the way Reaver would prefer. Though being taken down by a blatantly cheating hero might do interesting things for Reaver's mindset. ;)

Hope Shaen gets through the days of doom OK! :o

Oh, they will definitely not be catching Bel with his pants down. If you get in an IC post, I will move the thread along tonight or tomorrow.

Nope, I'll post it up tonight or tomorrow night.

When the deed was done, Avenger snuck all the way to the murder house. His undead strength meant that Vulture's weight was nothing; his uncanny mastery of stealth meant the eyes he passed on the way failed to notice him. He was a vampire full of blood, a helpless human in his arms. The night was his.He headed in the back door, keeping eyes and ears open for Scarab and Slamdance as he went.