Ari

If you'll take my advice Moira(which might not be an ideal plan!), I would suggest making Edone a more or less simple massively strong and tough lady, but with a generous Charisma score and a LOT of Interaction Skill ranks. That or a Dynamic Array setup that lets her mix and match being remarkably good with people and slugging it out, maybe with Emotion Control or some other mind-effecting power to better represent the Goddess of Love's heritage. The problem of somebody, even a capricious and easily-angered deity, handing off their baby to a random barkeeper is actually a lot easier than you'd expect. Like many believers do today, the Greeks considered their gods to be capable of seeing just about anything anywhere they wished. Even though they're disallowed physical entry to Earth, the Olympian lovers could have just searched the place from afar for someone who would be a good caretaker, and sent Edone to them through their worshipers. The question why they wouldn't just ask the followers to bring her up could be answered with something along the lines of 'they wanted her to make her own life'. Of course, if Sean's already a believer of theirs then it's even simpler!

GM "Thanks dude!" Joe said with a grin that lit up his face and nearly hid his eyes "And don't sell yourself so short, Joe" he added, giving a quick wave to the rest of the mill crew before sitting down next to Joe and Stanislaw while he signaled for another glass "you've got no idea how many people don't know how to lay things out like that. It's a gift, I mean it." "As for what I do and if I know that guy? Well Joe, I'm in a security service. Not a PMC," he added with a sharp glance over at the other man "to make that perfectly clear. We're a company and we contract our services to people, sometimes small executive groups, but we're not like those ****ing mercenaries. And that guy...I know his name, and we used to work together, but we weren't ever close. He's Pierce something-ski, got a bunch of degrees in robotics and tech-stuff. Always been kinda sore about people doin' work he thinks should be done by machines, but he's never been this mouthy." Taking a hefty drink from the mug, throat pumping visibly and eyes half-closed in relish, Joe slowly lowered the glass and let out a deep sigh. Then his hooded eyes opened and brightened with an idea "Hey, Joe, sorry to spring this so sudden, but you got a weekend free comin' up? Me and the other guys have got a meeting with some of my company's bosses a little later this month, talking over a little safety dispute, and it'd be great to have a guy who knows how to be diplomatic around. A lot of the guys and gals we've got are long on muscles and, well, just a little shorter on people skills." He said the last with a wry grimace. "Hah! Check it out Joe, your golden tongue's in high demand!" laughed Stanislaw.

GM After his destructive entrance, what happened when Gamma turned his glowing eyes to the display case was downright mundane. Shrugging his massive shoulders, he reached out, plucked the glass cover off the stand, placed it gently on the cracked and dented floor beside him, tucked the Nucleic Reorganization Field Emitter under his shoulder like an umbrella, and turned to leave the way he'd come. "Stop right there!" bellowed Cavesson, striding through the dust like a scholarly colossus and coughing into a handkerchief in one hand, the other outstretched quiveringly and pointed right at the impassive-looking intruder "Gamma...Adam, please! Stop this madness, that thing's nigh- irreplaceable, we were going to try and help!" "Help? Who, professor, me?" Gamma shifted like a muscled blue rock-slide, facing the startled man with a look of contempt "I don't need your help. And with this I can teach the world how wrong it was to treat me like a monster. Soon they'll know just what that feels like." For all the fact that Gamma spoke through gritted teeth, he at least seemed relatively cool. The man waved his arms desperately "Look, Ward, if this is about what happened with you and the Psion girl, we've heard about it. It's okay, you don't-gah!" Cavesson was lifted clean off his feet by Gamma, whose eyes burned with anger "We parted on splendid terms, uncle. We're fine, Cavesson. Just fine. You can't even tell where she lost the arm. My skin is nice and whole again. And after I did everything that professor told me." Gamma spat onto the floor, the saliva hissing and sizzling as it struck the tiles "Thinks she can call me a 'worthless dead-end lunk' and get away with it, her and her family think I'll just GIVE UP after they hurt me, the Atoms think they can just FORGET all they've done to me, but I'll show them all what happens when this 'dead-end' gets pushed too far!"

Red Moon had been so engrossed in the discussion(silently thanking the human girl below for her most fortuitous curiosity), that almost everything else around her had gone wholly unnoticed. That, sadly, included the warning thuds and faint creaks just before Gamma smashed his way through the roof into A.S.T.R.O. Labs. 'What...who is this? What's happening?!' she wondered as her baffled eyes stared at the blue invader 'Well, whomever they are, better get closer in case a fight gets under way!'. Raising hurriedly to her feet for better mid-air maneuverability, she happened to glance at a sleeve of her terrasuit and almost bit her dry tongue with horror: she was invisible, alright, but the attack had made sure she was covered in fine dust. Anyone who happened to look up would see her outline! Swiping the offending particles off as swiftly as she could still took precious seconds, and meanwhile the scene below had continued to unfold. Luckily, most of the visitors and the press were either too busy coughing dust from their lungs and running for their lives, getting to a safer distance to call the police or snap hurried photos, or staring frozen in terror at the metahuman menace mere meters from them to pay any attention to something near the roof. As quickly as she dared, Atraxia began her stealthy descent towards Gamma, hands clenched in fear and ready to bring forth the ethereal forces...

Crouched in front of the door, pressed against it to keep the light off his back with one goggled eye next to the lock, Alden fiddled with great care with the lockpicks. By now his teeth were clenched and a trickle of sweat was running down his chin. 'Gah, yeh bastard thing, unlock will you...there!' With a soft clicking noise, the last of the tumblers slid into the door, and testing the handle, Osprey grinned as he felt it give at last. 'Can't believe it took me that long to open a door. Need to get myself some more practice before this gets us in trouble on a mission' he thought, rolling his eyes and slipping noiselessly into the building, letting the door shut behind him on its own. 'Eh, can't be too bad. not around here.'

Entries submitted for Amelyth, Amorph, Argonaut, Life Knight, Polarity, Solvrytter, Spelldancer, Sunset and TNTeen. Fenris and Ironclad II's entries removed. Crusader's name given changed from Benjamin(actually his brother's) to the correct name Clark.

The gorillas with jetpacks seem to intersect very comfortably with what Life Knight and King of Suits have as their wheelhouses. And it'd be neat for two without any real flight ability(besides Stunts...) to battle aerial foes.

GM Alfonso raised an appreciative eyebrow "Oh, art from memory and stuff? That's cool! I think the Impressionists did something like that, didn't they? Hah! That was kinda extreme though!" Despite his loose and casual walk that had him almost lunging over rocks and chuckling streamlets, his shoulders were tenser than before, and he looked much serious than he had a second ago. "Pretty surprised you're all the way out here then. Magic ponds are not all that common, but surely you want more than to just..I dunno, capture it on canvas? Do you think it had something to do with the old days, before the Reconquest, I mean? Not that, like, the Moors would let it enter their darkest dreams to use heathen, godless magic." For a flickering instant, a dim shade wearing ancient clothes materialized just enough to Ghost Girl's otherworldly eyes to shake its fist at Alfonso before collapsing back into the ether. Christina groaned "You're lucky to have such a huge country, Corbin! Way more places for the deer to live than out here, but at least it makes for some good horseback rides when you try to find them." The bookish girl nodded in agreement with Indira "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But sometimes you just want to make sure, you know? You haven't lived unless you make gambles, but it's important to not just assume things too." For a second Ion paused in mid-step, visibly mulling Kimber's words over. At last she picked back up the pace, murmuring "You would do that, wouldn't you? Thank you. The last thing somebody that cruel needs is sympathy." her face softened and she stood taller "It takes a weight off my mind...Christina," she added suddenly, turning to her friend "Does that map actually say anything useful, or is it just a bunch of scribbles with MAP TO MAGIC at the top?" The other girl blinked, and looked downright hurt "Wha-, come on, Ion, that was when we were kids, I wouldn't try and do that now!" Adjusting her blue sport glasses, Christina declared primly "We've got guests along too, so it's double unlikely on top of that. Anyway, let's see..." coming out of a small copse of squat ash trees at the bottom of the hill, the sextet looked out at a broad, glittering plain spanned with noisy streams winding their way to the nearby rivers, a deep, earthy smell of the trees mingling with the scent of wild grass and moist flowers all around them. Oblivious to this, the impromptu guide scanned the weathered piece of cloth she was holding, eyes flicking from it to the biggest stream and ridge of hills before the band. At last she nodded, evidently satisfied, and gestured to the left "So...okay, 'between two rivers at the rising of the Moon'. the Moon rises from the west, right? So we follow that stream up to there." 'There' was a rather low, dark and ominous hill roughly in the middle of the rivers flowing from either side of the nearby mountains, crowned with a small ruined castle of red stone. The ground around it was uneven and crowded with enough narrow ravines to hide dozens of ponds. A similar rise was noted as only a few miles from the rough center of the attacks. "It makes for a good landmark, and is the last place we haven't checked in this valley," she explained to the three young superheroes, "but it should be a cinch with all six of us!"

Osprey dropped from the rafters, rolling as he hit the floor with a dull *clung* before springing to his feet and examining the captured agents. 'Don't see the need for secrecy about the soldiers. You don't tell the mops, they just find out later, get pissed and nobody profits. If your conspiracy thinking is right, that's all but certain. Besides, this is the first clue you've got so far: Champion found out something bad, tried to scuttle the Haven, and now he and the others have vanished thanks to whatever it was he discovered. Odds are good a little hinting will get the wheels turning in their heads; Vanguard's the best we've got after all, they've tussled with everything at least once.' Jasmine's mental 'voice' clinched it. If she was stumped, there wasn't anything he could do for the agents stuck in the solution, dead-eyed and bound in a web, much as he had hoped there might be. Strolling toward the towering computer terminal with long strides, much more at ease now that nothing was trying to attack, he took a second to admire the mighty technological marvel around them 'If you're that worried about it, why not send the victims, Jasmine and Miss Britannia on the hush-job. Then you can stick about and make sure nobody else gets a crack at this fine place.'

"Discretion, thy name is Cruxberry!"

Hi Sszinid! Welcome to the site! Wow. Jordan's a heck of a place to learn in. Don't worry about the time-zone difference thing, we have folks from all over, especially Great Britain and Australia, and all of them will be happy to hammer things out! Glad to know we can help you get your fix while you're away from home! As for the rules...it's good to make sure you know the basics(Power Level caps for Abilities/Skills/Power Ranks, the difference between damaging powers that require saves of Power Rank+15 vs. the rest that need Power Rank+10, and so on) but I'm sure we've had folks start out on far shakier ground than you, and will be happy to help you understand how it works. Trust me, it's actually a very easy system to learn compared to most of them! Here's hoping you can play in not too long.

Cobalt Templar realizes that Alfonso knows Cobalt's onto something. Ghost Girl sees that Her Bluff roll keeps her awareness of this from being noticed. Wraith notices that The Bluff roll keeps her discovery from being seen.

Sense Motive, Notice and Bluff(if desired) rolls requested here.

GM A soft crunch of rocky sand underfoot announced the arrival of two girls, both in much more rugged outfits than Alfonso, with long sleeves and pants, and gloves stuffed into their belts. Like him they both had short hair, though the one with a ponderous book-bag had hers down to the shoulders. They had been talking quietly to each other before rounding the small bend, and on catching sight of the trio they both stopped in their tracks, eyes quickly moving from them to the young man whose face positively glowed with joy when he saw them. Waving an arm he called "Hey there, amigos! These are some more crazy people looking for the spring like us. It's fine!" he added with a brisk thumbs-up. The longer-haired one hesitated only a moment, shrugged and resumed the walk, while the other hung back for a second to take a more careful look at the newcomers. "Bu-I mean, good evening, pardon me" the less cautious one(who turned out to be Christina Cazador) said when she'd gotten to casual conversation range and Alfonso had made the speedy introductions, smiling politely from behind thick sport glasses and offering her hand "Yeah, , friend of Alfie's. You're here for the spring too? That's great! I'm sure it's got something to do with the strange creature that's lurking around here, maybe some kind of psychic build-up? Ooh! Maybe it's an alien!" her eyes sparkled with glee "I've found more than a few traces of an alien presence in Spain's past, this could be a long-lost survivor from-" "Calm down." broke in a much more terse voice as the more cautious of the two(Ion, no surname given) arrived "we can talk on the way. Let's see that map, Christina." her dull gray eyes watched the superheroes with some care "Shouldn't linger, we might draw attention. I'm sure you know what from." The slightly awkward silence that greeted that remark was burst by Alfonso's merry "Yeah, park rangers can be grumpy this time of year! Come on gang!" With that he set off for the north, down into the tangle of dense forests that cross-crossed the river plain. "So, you're an artist Corbin?" he asked "What do you do? Photography? Digital? Do you do it for a living?" Ion fell in with Kimber. "Wish they'd be more careful" she muttered darkly "Some kind of monster is about. I can feel it. How can they be so...care-free?" Christina didn't say much as she sauntered next to Indira, though she did excitedly point out a deer as it flashed over a nearby rocky stream "It's so graceful! So strong and quick...awww. I wish we could catch one. That's always the best part though. The hunt, searching for something, hard to be disappointed then." she added thoughtfully as they picked around an outcropping of white stone that gleamed milkily in the moonlight.

Computers roll: 9. Oh well.

Alright! action time. Red Moon's Initiative: 22. Gamma doesn't know what's about to go down, so nothing for him yet. Tiff, if you could roll Initiative and let me know what Miss Grue's plan is? Red Moon flies down to get closer to Gamma, not wanting to risk making a premature attack she holds off until she's sure what he wants.

GM Pausing in the middle of a fascinating story about how the Field Emitter had ended up being funded, the Lab study head turned from the reporters hanging on his every word(their wide, fixed smiles clearly indicating how intrigued they were) to the curious newcomer. "Of course, miss!" he declared happily, dark eyes lighting up at this chance, and the physicist hustled the group closer to one of the blackboards "See, the basic underpinning behind Nucleic Reorganization is the first law of thermodynamics, which is...?" his eyes danced over the faces of the nearby technicians who understood at once "'Matter is neither created nor destroyed'" they chanted back. "Just so! And thus it is 'reorganized', the pieces reshuffled after the expenditure of energy. Now, if you've ever tried to sweep every speck of dust back to where it was before you collected it into a pile, you'll understand the problem we face. How do we totally undo a physical effect? But!" he raised a triumphant pointer finger "Thanks to the gracious assistance of Tess Atom, we've hit upon the crucial point of the solution. In fact, that's what we call it: the 'Crux effect'. Partly because when Mr. Brandtford says it, it makes it sound like we're stealing from the universe. By the simple act of tracing an outline of ionized radiation, bouncing very small particles into a rough shell around the affected area, we discover the rough epicenter(we are at the stage where we can detect this point to within a few molecules) and then...the electrons!" He slammed his fist against the blackboard with enough vigor to send a small cloud of chalk dust wafting from it, and it was a few seconds before he could continue. "Yes, *kaff*, the electrons, ladies and gentlemen. And the protons. They are carried by carefully modulated waves to specific molecules where they bond, while the air is chilled to slow the rate of further ionizations while the rest are dealt with, thus healing the radioactive decay from the inside out! I'm skipping over a few details, of course" he added, winking at the press and Celeste as he brushed plaster dust off his shoulder that drifted from the ceiling "but rest assured, this is but the start of a new era, an age of won-" A sudden crash of breaking glass and splintering wood cut him off, and as the guests screamed and started to dash frantically to cover from the hail, he stood frozen in place, staring up at the glowing man who landed next to the display case. From his bulk, blue skin, the sickening feeling of being near him, it was obviously non other than that notorious radioactive super-criminal Gamma, the Atom-Smasher! He was only slightly hidden by the cloud of dust that briefly followed his impact, as the ceiling debris landed and filled the air around him.

GM For a second the shorter man's eyes blazed, his shoulders tensed, and the expectant hush before fights broke out started to grow. Joe could even sense the bouncers starting to head wearily towards them. Then, with a muttered snarl, he nodded once and returned to his seat, grabbed his coat, payed at the bar and left without a backward glance into the snowy night. The craggy-faced man relaxed, sighing audibly, and approaching Joe offered him a hand like a slab of scarred rock, grinning broadly "Good work there, brother. Didn't think he'd leave that easy. You do a lot of speakin' like that? I'm Joe by the way," he added warmly "Joe Fielders. Mind if I join you and your merry band?"

The Osprey whistled quietly as he risked a backwards glance, catching sight of the young woman's deft handling of the unassuming weapons "Good work, nice shooting." He called over to the Jasmine as he stepped away from the Antibodies, another coil of wires flashing into his left hand as the right drew the grapple gun. Firing into the air, he anchored himself to one of the arching rafters high above, flying up to the roof just as he flung the wires around the shoulders of the captured agents. As he ascended, other wires flew thick and fast, wrapping around the few exposed limbs in a mass of steely fibers, and just as the last loop fell into place the air sang with several metal talons whirling through the air, the weapons embedding the loops into the floor and walls, creating a nigh-escapable spiderweb! 'Well, this isn't so bad...what now? Can you make the AI stop attacking us Dee?'

"Sadly, that is quite impossible. Infrastructural obstacles, Rene!" laughed Marceau, relaxing as the two seemed to hit it off fairly well despite the start of the encounter. He was used to people being untrusting of others, and this sudden amiability was as unexpected as it was pleasant. Besides, it seemed she knew something about their mutual acquaintance, and the old painter certainly didn't seem to need much help to get her talking. Admiring the suit of armor and watching out for anyone who seemed to resemble the woman he'd seen on the closed circuit were both simple enough, though the milling crowd had mostly passed into the con building anyway. Most people seemed to favor the classical Italian or German styles of armor when they built battlesuits, yet, to the young man's eye, this one seemed to have a style all its own, calling to mind more the powerful steam battleships of yesteryear than a medieval knight, with more than a little in common with steam engines. It struck him suddenly that it was already centuries since either had been in wide use, and he wondered if someday they would seem as remote as the mounted warriors of old. At Rene's question about just what the Lancaster Witch had been asked to do, he quickly shook himself out of the reverie and leaned closer "Yes, what are you looking out for? Just people with magical stuff?"

Oh. I'm sorry Supercape, didn't know it would be that easy.

Or is he?! Yes, readers, can any of you prove beyond a doubt that the Avian Avenger is, in fact, up for his actions? Yes? Well darn. Anyway, Move Action using the Grapple Gun to move up into the rafters and out of range of the Antibodies. Since he's hanging odds are good he won't be as good at dodging stuff. As for Standard Action, he throws some more snares around an unimpeded Antibody, Power Attack(-3 Attack, +3 Damage): 27. DC19 Reflex save.

I'm up for it, if any of mine catch your fancy/seem useful. What do you have in mind beyond that sketch?

Cerys was rewarded with him jumping slightly, his super-sensitive ears his bane, as usual. "Not intentionally!" he replied with a grin, stepping back to put his free arm around her waist so they could nestle more comfortably "Sorry Blodeu. Didn't realize I was taking so long, or I'd have been looking for you. And don't believe her," he added gravely to the others "If anything, I'm underselling her!" At the mention of dancing, his eyes lit up and the song clicked into place. "I'll leave some of this," he put the heavy plate down on a nearby table with grave care "for later. Gotta keep light if you wanna dance right, my Mom always said." He frowned as something struck him "Though she's always been pretty hefty, 'ccording to Dad...anyway!" Jumping off the floor and turning to the young superheroine still held lightly at his side, "Ms. Pfer, may I take this dance?" he asked with exaggerated grandeur, a hand held elegantly at his heart "Also what kind of dance? Not sure I know one that goes with this song!" "And how 'bout you guys, wanna come? Ooh! You can tell us about what crazy stuff you've seen out on patrol, Tiger!"

Maaaaan, Heraldo never gets to be in any harems.