Avenger Assembled

Eira was silent as the others spoke, then spoke herself with cool precision. "The name is a misnomer, yes? The brain is not a computer." She concentrated on the drones for a moment and they sped away, then made a perfect landing among the humans, her wings folding down behind her like a metallic cape. "The most proven method involves destructive scanning of the brain to the sub-atomic level and then a recreation of the neural patterns in another storage medium. The organic brain is destroyed. It could be done to the unwilling. Or the unconscious." She looked away from the others and said, "I will guide you there." And without another word she took off again, up in the sky, and sped away towards the northwest.

Forever Boy: 24, bruised Thunderbird: 20 Angelic: 18 Da Troops: 17 Crystal-Gazer: 8 @RocketLordis up!

Olivia was born in Illyria, Iowa about sixteen years ago. Her mother teaches English at the local high school and had planned (after consultation with her father, who ran the local funeral home) to name all her children after Shakespearean characters - but it was a difficult birth and there was only ever one of Olivia. That was all right, she was happy enough being herself. Of average build and average looks, she got through middle school and high school fine - until some peculiar things started to happen. It started with small things at first - bizarre dreams about being in a male body especially. Olivia reluctantly confided in her parents and was happy enough when they told her that if this was her way of coming out, they were completely supportive of her. But after a few weeks of thinking about that, even as the dreams and sensory impressions got more intense, she decided that wasn’t right either. Therapy tried to dig down to the roots of whatever was causing this but it didn’t really solve the problem. She wasn’t sick, just changing. Olivia is a once-in-a-universe anomaly, a cosmic gateway point between Earth-Prime and the universe sometimes called Earth-XX. She trades places with her double on that Earth whenever they sleep, a change so abrupt she even wakes up inside his clothing. (With this in mind, they’ve both taken to dressing in a gender-neutral style, especially to sleep.) She shares enough of a psychic and empathic link to Sebastian that they can communicate with each other in times of great stress, and generally they have a hazy impression of each other’s world that’s strong enough they can get by. Sebastian was born in Illyria, Iowa about sixteen years ago. His father teaches English at the local high school and had planned (after consultation with his mother, who ran the local funeral home) to name all his children after Shakespearean characters - but it was a difficult birth and there was only ever one of Sebastian. That was all right, he was happy enough being himself. Of average build and average looks, he got through middle school and high school fine - until some peculiar things started to happen. It started with small things at first - bizarre dreams about being in a female body especially. Sebastian reluctantly confided in his parents and was happy enough when they told him that if this was his way of coming out, they were completely supportive of him. But after a few weeks of thinking about that, even as the dreams and sensory impressions got more intense, he decided that wasn’t right either. Therapy tried to dig down to the roots of whatever was causing this but it didn’t really solve the problem. He wasn’t sick, just changing. Sebastian is a once-in-a-universe anomaly, a cosmic gateway point between Earth-Prime and the universe sometimes called Earth-YY. He trades places with his double on that Earth whenever they sleep, a change so abrupt he even wakes up inside her clothing. (With this in mind, they’ve both taken to dressing in a gender-neutral style, especially to sleep.) He shares enough of a psychic and empathic link to Olivia that they can communicate with each other in times of great stress, and generally they have a hazy impression of each other’s world that’s strong enough they can get by.

Judy smiled thinly. "It's okay, Abby," she said gently, "if Ah bit the head off everyone I know at Claremont who wasn't a Christian, Ah'd be..." She considered a moment, obviously adding up in her head. "Well Ah'd be biting off a lot of heads, and that's no way to make friends." Her smile broadened as she said, "Ah actually wanted to ask you something about magic, and it sounds like you're definitely the right person." She shifted in her chair, obviously considering something, before she said, "Are the stars magic? Ah mean, not like how they work or anything, obviously, but...you know?"

Container 3 (Older Twin Power, Extra: Sustained) [15PP] Communication Link 1 [Winter] (mental) [1PP] Enhanced Con 4 (to Con 18/+4) [4PP] Enhanced Feats 2 (Luck 2) [2PP] Enhanced Weather Control 4 [8PP] 1 + 4 + 2 + 8 Container 3 (Younger Twin Power, Extra: Sustained) [15PP] Communication Link 1 [Summer] (mental) [1PP] Enhanced Con 4 (to Con 18/+4) [4PP] Enhanced Skill 8 (Concentration 4, Diplomacy 4) [2PP] Enhanced Weather Control 4 [8PP] 1 + 4 + 2 + 8 The twins have what appears to be a mystic bond that enhances both their Blessings and their other abilities. They grow uneasy when separated from each other for too long - and their abilities weaken. This is a Complication.

For a moment it seemed to be working. The soldiers on the helicopter were mostly anonymous in their body armor and behind faceshields, but they didn't seem to be hostile towards Pan. If anything, they looked friendly - and then he felt a tug at his side and looked down to see blood and bruising where a fired round had nearly hit him center-mass! The report of the rifle reached him a moment later as the amplified voice yelled over the speakers again. THEY'RE USING MIND CONTROL! PSION PROTOCOL! And then they had a fight on their hands...

Roll initiative, suckers! Eira goes on 18 the soldiers go on 17

It is a super-sonic rifle so the bullet gets there before the sound, and the guy is too far away to see clearly with the naked eye. Those Danes, so violent! =D Okay, that is indeed a bruise! Quite a shot by a PL 5 soldier.

The twins are literate (something that was a matter of pride in their community) and have between them committed substantial passages of the Book of the Lord of the Hill to memory, as well as various pieces of commentary on it. The language they speak is enough like Early Modern English that they can understand most of what they hear and see, though other people may occasionally have trouble with their meaning. It doesn't help that, like many twins, they are very good at communicating with each other without saying anything at all.

Works on the guys on the helicopter but not the sneaky ones on the ground! They're too far away for you to see or hear, but they can use their sniper scopes to catch you flat-footed. https://orokos.com/roll/840026 = 16, they hit! Give me a DC 20 Tou save!

Bornholm is a small Danish island located deep in the Baltic, as far as one can be from Denmark in this part of Europe and still actually be in Denmark. It's cold and dreary here in winter but it's a beautiful summer day when the teen heroes arrive amid an impressive landscape of towering granite stones, rockier and hillier than almost anywhere else in the nation. The Ecogrid Project is here, a sprawling complex of low-lying buildings and impressive power cables spread among the rocks, with a network of raised footpaths showing where the scientists must get around on a day-to-day basis. At least, that's everybody's first impression now that they've arrived where the courier is supposed to hand off the stolen ashes. The complex is obviously in a tizzy when they arrive, helicopters circling in the sky and armed troops moving around - a shocking sight in a country like Denmark but then this is a high-security installation full of super-tech. One of the helicopters overhead swivels to face them and it's a big Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawk, a multimission craft the US sells to Denmark. And then comes an amplified voice in accented English: PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEADS AND GET DOWN ON THE GROUND! THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING!

"How would one rehabilitate him?" demanded Eira. "How would one teach him that-ugh!" She didn't sound like an unfeeling robot, anyway. She concentrated a moment, then focused on Mette's words. "...they seek to breach the barrier between organic and synthetic mind. Simply put, they work to perfect the process of mind-uploading." The idea seemed to fill her with neither joy nor sorrow, but some churning combination of both. "Kay kept much from me even when we - spoke privately. But I saw the place; and again when I flew here." She spread her arms and said, "If it could be done; it would change everything. But that cannot be what you saw with Otaku," she offered uncertainly. "It must be a digital duplicate."

Judy stared at Lulu with glowing rainbow eyes. The colors on her skin skated through every color Crystal-Gazer had ever seen and some she hadn't, as if a soap bubble could somehow shine with the radiance of a sun. Her voice was resonant when she spoke, and deeper than its usual. "Ah don't...ah don't..." She hugged Lulu back, her skin hot as ever, and pulled back with the edge of panic in her soft voice. "Ah don't know what happened," she whispered softly. "Ah was there, and now Ah'm here, and Ah've never done anything like that before." She put her hand over her mouth and concentrated, and slowly the glowing colors on her skin faded until she was herself again. "Oh Lord, Ah just disappeared right out of the White House." Her eyes widened. "They have sensors outside my room, they must have picked up on it. Ah don't...Ah have to call Ashley. She's on vacation but she'll know what to do...Oh Ah'm gonna ruin her vacation," she said despondently. "She was so happy to be going home to her family and Ah'm gonna ruin it!"

About seven thousand people live in the Villages, scattered in communities that stretch across about a forest about seventy miles long and thirty miles deep. The trees are tall and thick, with brush only occasionally broken by animal or hunter's tracks. The forests are more fertile to the north, with bigger fruit, animals, and beasts. but that's where the demonic concentration is the strongest. Funny how that works! Sugar maple, yellow birch, beech, and white ash are the most common trees - along with eastern hemlock and white pine. Wintergreen, wild sarsaparilla, and wood sorrel grow wild, along with other herbs and plants, some of a more exotic nature. Birds and animals (beyond the monsters mentioned above) include the chickadee, sparrow, porcupine, snowshoe hare, white-tailed deer, squirrel, moose, bear, and wolf. The summers are warm and pleasant; the winters killing cold - at least for the People of the Faith. (The creatures of the forest usually do just fine.) The fall leaves are gorgeous; lending a special vigor to the various harvest festivals. The largest town in the Villages is Lords-Will, with a population of about three thousand. It's about fifty years old and was the first town the People of the Faith built when they arrived. Older homes in Lords-Will are the sort of thatched-roof cottages that they lived in back in the City of Destruction but newer homes are typically well-organized clapboard cottages with gardens in the rear. Lords-Will is also where their most skilled artisans live; it's where the powder works and the printing press are too. There aren't any colleges; the local population just isn't enough to support one.

Lifespans are long in the Villages - at least for an early modern society where gunpowder and the printing press are the height of technology. The People of the Faith attribute this to the clean living and good food they enjoy here (unlike those left behind in the City of Destruction) and they are right. They have had only a few generations to get used to the idea that there is such a thing as grandparents. Literacy rates are high too. The law of the Villages requires taxes that (among other things) support schools. The People of the Faith want their children to be able to read the Book of the Lord of the Hill, and certain other approved texts. The Lord of the Hill is no distant Watchmaker - the Lord controls all, personified. A builder who shapes the world to Their world, The Lord of the Hill rewards and punishes. The Lord of the Hill is kind, but vengeful to those who ignore the plan. The fate of Their people is always in Their hands. The People of the Faith are the Lord of the Hill's great tools - and responsible for it. If a community violates the Lord of the Hill's plans, there will be plagues and those within the village will be damned. But they live in less fear than you might think - their work is proof that the Lord of the Hill is real and you are Their testament. Events in the world are sacred - even those that might not seem so. For all of their belief in egalitarianism, The Villages are a male-dominated society. Women do not participate in town meetings and are excluded from decision making in the church. The ministers of the Faith preach that the soul has two parts, the immortal masculine half, and the mortal feminine half. A major exception to this rhetoric is women among the Blessed - as they have been "unsexed" by their Blessing they can speak in town meetings and even in the church, within certain strict limits. Female names include Patience, Silent, Fear, Prudence, Comfort, Hopestill, and Be Fruitful. They govern themselves by town meetings, on the common green when the weather is good and in the church when the weather is bad. The village green is also where they come to buy or barter from their neighbors. Occasionally merchants will come from other lands and the People will trade with them as long as they are respectful; trade is important. The people of the Villages live in family groups - single men and women do not dwell alone barring special circumstances. (A widow or widower, and then where are your family to take care of you?) New single arrivals or converts are assigned families to live with. The average Villager lives in a farming family tending a small plot of land. They grow grains - mostly corn, though there is some beans, pumpkins, wheat, barley, oats and peas depending on where you are. Most have at least some animals. They cut wood, build with wood, buy metals, books, cloth, spices, the latter often from other places like the distant city of Vanity Fair. (The People of the Faith only go there in numbers - the road there passes through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.) Men will typically have some trade beyond their fields - cooper, furrier, hunter, minister, surveyor, tanner. Women work in the fields and with animals - most have a garden. They may have a trade too; especially with textiles or childbirth. An average family will have a husband, a wife, and perhaps five children, with perhaps eight to ten children having been born in total. The People of the Faith are taught to think of the family unit above the individual. They rise at dawn and bed at dusk. They typically live in a Village (hence the name!) and living out of sight of one's neighbor is a dangerous thing, both physically and spiritually.

The Villages are in the Woods just south of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The People of the Faith came to the Villages years ago to escape the City of Destruction that was once their home. The Woods south of the Valley are full of creatures that don't like the People of the Faith much. Demons, dragons, fiends, satyrs, goblins, hobgoblins, monsters, creatures from the bottomless pit, beasts from the mouth of Hell, darkness, terror, and horror - it's not great. The People of the Faith aren't so different than we are. They "respect the dignity of the individual, regardless of social status, are egalitarian, stress the importance of education,, base government on the principle of contract or covenant, are committed to principles rather than to individuals or institutions, and reject tyranny." By modern standards they are rather dour, though. Many things are sins in the Book of the Lord of the Hill that are not sins by the standards of a modern person. The Villages are defended by the Blessed - those endowed by The Lord Of The Hill with certain powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men and women. The Blessed typically wear what would be formal garb for people in the Villages - dark clothing for men and women, hats for the men and bonnets for the women, buckles on their shoes, etc. The Villages support themselves by farming, timber, and furs, and in many ways are self-sufficient. Parties of armed men and the Blessed will occasionally go monster-hunting in the Valley, bringing back valuable bones, organs, and other artifacts. Really exciting times are if they can catch a Giant. People die when they fight Giants but Giant bone, blood, and trinkets have great power.

The girls closed their eyes together, and Judy thought about her friend who she loved, the first person at Claremont who had really seemed to be like her - and how terribly she missed her, and how far a few hundred miles could be - and suddenly - There was a flash of brilliant rainbow light inside Lulu's bedroom, a curling circle of iridescent beauty that flared up like a new star and vanished with just as much speed. A moment later, Judith Claudia Cahill was sitting there just a few inches from Lulu. The carpet underneath the wooden chair she'd brought with her no longer matched the one on Lulu's floor, a precise, smouldering circle standing out where she'd landed. Still clutching her Bible to her chest, Judy stared at Lulu, her mouth open - and fell out of her chair. "Oh mah God, oh mah God, oh mah precious Lord," she babbled, clutching her Bible to her chest as she looked wildly around the room, and even in her panic she wasn't raising her voice but rainbow light was spilling from her eyes and across her skin as she transformed into Daystar, scrabbling backwards across the room. "Ah confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead. Ah confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead..."

"Scared," she admitted. "Ah look at myself in the mirror and it's like Ah'm not really there, like Ah'm just wearing a disguise of my own face." She rubbed her eyes and said, "Ah feel like Ah'm getting further and further away from people. My parents don't like me to talk about Claremont or mah powers at all, and I think it just scares my sisters." Lulu knew well enough what the emergence of her powers had been like. "Ah'm not...afraid the way Ah was before, of hurting people, Ah know Ah can control the dangerous things. Ah'm just afraid Ah'll never really get a chance to be normal, or do the things a normal person does." She blinked a few times, then admitted in a small voice, "Ah, uh, and you _really_ have to promise you can't _ever_ tell anyone this, but Ah was going t-to let Leroy m-make love to me the night of prom. Before he left." She blinked harder, the closest she came to crying, and said, "Ah guess Ah may never get a chance to do that now. Ah know it'll be hard being at Claremont this year but at least that's one place Ah'm not different than anybody else."

"It's like whispering I can't quite hear. It was like that the first time mah powers started appearing," she admitted, "but that was just TV signals and stuff, since they're the same wavelength as my body. But this is...it's not like radio signals, it's something else." She'd set the Bible on the table in front of her, and the feed was good enough that Lulu could see her hands tightening around the binding. "And Ah don't know if you've noticed this lately, uh, Lulu, but Ah noticed the other day that Ah don't breathe anymore." She made a little gesture at her throat and said, "Before she left, Ashley took me to the doctors here and they said Ah'm using energy in my throat to talk and stuff, or to just inhale, but it's not actually...going anywhere." The tone in her voice made it clear she thought it was a personal failure.

"Yes. All of it," said Judy softly. "I can't actually see by it, of course." She smiled thinly. "Life ain't like it is - is in the movies." She thought for a minute, then said, "Can you promise that you will never breathe a word of this to anybody?" When she had that promise, she admitted, "Ah've been able to see the stars for a long time. When Ah look up at the night sky, Ah can see...things Ah can't even describe to you. Ah can't actually see things any further, but even the sky around Earth is full of lights and colors, and...and so many things." She shifted in her seat, and there was the sound of movement - she had retrieved the Bible Lulu had given her a gift. "Lately, though, Ah feel like...like Ah can hear them." She clutched the Bible tighter. "Like they're...they're actually trying to say something to me, but Ah can't...Ah can't make it out."

"...oh," said Eira suddenly. "You saw that, did you?" She turned around and even though the drones behind her were still not focusing directly on the group, it was hard not to see the machine flanked by other machines looming over them. "He is an...abuser of synthetic life. He is in particular an abuser of gynoids." she said, trying for coolness with the but with a distinct loathing curling around the edges of her voice. "What he did to what he made is not even a crime under the laws of most organic nations. No other place would have punished him. " She looked down at Miurne the way one might look at a sick child that doesn't belong to you. "I have learned the secret of the Great Work, but you are ill. Do you need to return to the plane?"

Judy laughed softly, seemingly over what had upset her. "Lulu, people watch me all the time, and that's just the people who work for the United States government, not to mention journalists and creepy perverts on the Internet. Only reason Ah can talk to you right now is because nobody is supposed to actually be in the bedroom with me." She smiled, then sat up and said, "Lulu, Ah wanted to ask you something about, uh, well...space." She ran her fingers through the back of her hair, where her long hair would have been until just recently, and said, "Ah know this is going to sound crazy and weird, but you're a very good friend, and Ah know Ah can trust you. When you look up at the stars, can you...can you hear anything? You know, with your telepathy?"

"I told you," hissed Malachite, "I came here to liberate the demonic forces being held captive by your soulless technology-" He gained a distressed expression on his face for a few moments while Angelic sneered down at him and stepped harder, but then she released her grip. "The Brotherhood will make sure you both pay for this. With your eternal souls!" "They are not even demonic forces," sneered Angelic. "They are just parasites on an electronic system. You are as stupid as you look." She knelt down next to the man, wings folding up behind her with a clink-clink-clink. "But you're right about one thing - machines have no souls." She laughed and Malachite flinched. "

"Oh Ah'm not very interesting," said Judy glibly. "Tell me about you, are you really gonna be the next Raven?" She was all smiles as she talked to Charlie, practically sunny as she stood by his side. "It was hot and they were armored, what can I say," said Ashley with a shrug. "You'll feel pretty stupid about things you wore when you were a kid when you're my age, buddy." She walked up to one of the bottles of ginger ale already sitting out for the party and cracked it open.

The twins are outsiders here, from another place, time, or dimension. They don't dress quite right and they don't fit in with other people their age, which is one reason they play up their resemblance and their ability to finish each other's sentences. They've always been good company for each other. They both like to read classic literature and drop quotes from it into their casual conversation. They really are genetically identical twins except one has two X chromosones and the other a Y. They have tan skin and dark hair. You might guess they're Italian - or maybe Arab?