ic Can I Borrow A Cup of Adventure? (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

Mark knew many of his listeners didn't speak English, but he didn't care. The language of heroism was universal. "C'mon people," he urged the heroes at his side and the Frenchmen and women along with them, "this is Paris! This is the city of light, of love, of culture! Are we going to let a bunch of robots bring down the greatest city in France? My name is Edge, and I say no! I stand with DeGaulle, with Napoleon, with le Renard Rouge, with all the greatest heroes of this great nation!" He pumped his fist for emphasis and winked at Erin-Prime, his words ringing out among the crowd to cheers. "Let's show them what one American hero said a century ago on this very spot: LAFAYETTE, WE ARE HERE! Let's kick some butt, Liberty League!" And the crowd cheered, and then the robot mimes came boiling up over the rail with inhuman grace and speed, and Mark cursed as they came right for him.

They'd had to stop to peel open the safety cage around the observation deck, slowing them down, but not enough! Without hesitation, he shoved the Erin he'd come with back, pushing her away from the mimes as he threw himself into the heart of their attack, getting their attention, taking hits so no one else would, especially not all the fleeing civilians. He tried to blast back, or zap away, but there were too many of them; invisible pipes and clubs came down across his back and face like a ghostly beatdown, invisible bullets whizzed past his ear and tugged at his cape, the robotic beatdown as violent as it was silent, the teen hero rapidly finding himself in a very bad place indeed as they closed in on him. But the taste of his blood didn't scare Mark; the Liberty League was on the scene.

[Electra]

Without a second's thought, Wander was in motion, her bat a spinning blur as she smashed into the robots nearest to her. If they could do the damage they were inflicting on Edge, a civilian onlooker would have no chance. There were civilians around, most of them crowding as fast as they could back into the champagne bar and the little museum atop the tower, but Erin was only concerned with one right now. Her family here on Prime was intact, it was happy, and it was going to stay that way. She wasn't going to fail again.

As robots fell in a pile at her feet, she looked to Midnight's blank mask. "I'll be right back," she promised. Grabbing Erin Prime up unceremoniously in a fireman's carry, she raced to the hole in the safety netting. "Close your eyes," she advised her counterpart.

"What?" Erin Prime squeaked, hysteria edging her voice. "What are you-" The rest was cut off by an earsplitting shriek as Wander leapt off the observation deck and away from the building, her legs pinwheeling in the air as she angled first for distance, then for a safe landing. Erin Prime, who had apparently not closed her eyes, screamed all the way down, right up until they landed with a gentle thud on the cobblestones a few hundred feet from the base of the tower. "Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmy-"

"Shut up," Wander told her counterpart curtly, already looking back up the tower. "The robots are going up, so you go away. Run and find the closest police station. I'll find you when it's safe. Go!" With no more prodding, but with legs that shook visibly, Erin Prime began running away from the tower, back towards the thick of city buildings.

[Gizmo]

Midnight gave Wander a brief nod of understanding as she took care of her alternate self, already fitting together pieces of miniaturized electronics from his belt and jacket. Within moments, he had assembled a narrow shaft of matte silver and black about a meter long, the raised end humming with energy as thin lines of electricity arced up its surface. "Ne craignez pas," the dark figure rumbled to the civilians close by as he fell to one knee and slammed the device into the the observation deck as though planting a flag.

Instantly a bolt of furious, eye-searing lightning whipped upward, striking the very peak of the national monument. The effect was immediate as loose jewelry, coins and other bits of metal flung themselves to the nearest girder, secured in place by the now powerful magnetic pull of the tower itself. The robotic mimes scuttling up the sides of the tourist attraction were caught, struggling to pull their spindly fingers and toes free, tilting their heads in mechanical confusion.

That was all the advantage the heir of Travis Hunter required. In a blur of living darkness, escrima sticks slid from their sheathes and were launched into a whirlwind of crashing blows. By the time it registered to most of the crowd that the invaders assaulting Edge lay in broken, dented pieces, Midnight was already vaulting over the twisted railing, free-falling toward the next wave of automatons until his boots struck the side of the tower and stuck there, magnetic soles allowing him to run across the near vertical surface as easily as if it were level ground. Gravity added to the force of his strikes as he worked his way though the trapped mimes, snapping through metal limbs to leave disembodied hands and feet attached to the monument while the rest of the robot plummeted.

[Avenger Assembled]

With the robots off his back, Edge ran to the opening in the safety cage of the observation deck, fearlessly peering down the 1000 foot drop to the pavement below. Midnight had cleaved away the robot mimes and Wander had made her escape with the other Erin. That left Edge alone against ten robot mimes, clawing their way up the tower side despite the magnetic charges Trevor had used, sinister intent in their beady little robot eyes as they came for him. That was okay; Edge had a score to settle with these bastards now. "Hey, you jerk-faced jack-in-the-box jongleurs!" he shouted down at the mimes, heedless as ever of the pain in his body and the taste of his own blood in his mouth. "Here's an invisible box for you!" And with that, he pointed at each and every mime, his hair ruffling in the breeze up so high.

As he did so, each mime lost its grip on the tower and fell to the Earth, suddenly pounding on the sides of an invisible cage with robotic fists in the mad moments before impact on the ground, when cage and robot both shattered to pieces on the pavement beneath the Eiffel Tower. For a moment or two, Mark relaxed as the crowd behind him cheered: had they won the day? Before he could speak the thought aloud, the cheers of the crowd around him turned to cries of astonishment as a figure rose from the pavement out of the piled bodies of the robotic mimes: a giant mime, forty feet tall or more, though bizarrely dwarfish to Edge's eyes given just how far away he was.

Pounding his chest, the giant mime raised his hands and began to...sign, first in ESL, then in ASL, perhaps for the benefit of any American heroes or tourists filming his work.

"Malheureux! Vous pensiez pouvoir vaincre la puissance impressionnante de mon armée MIME! Trembler de peur Avant que le pouvoir irrésistible de ULTRAMIME, LE plus grand mime de tous!"

And with that, the giant mime ran over and scooped up a tree, casually uprooting a maple as tall and thick as half a telephone pole, and hurled it straight up, directly at where Edge's shining figure peered down from the observation deck. The tree hit its goal, but not its mark, Edge jerked back just in time as a huge branch came within inches of impaling him through the body. Now there was a tree sticking out of the tower, and a giant robot mime on the loose down below!

[Electra]

As Erin Prime ran for safety, Wander turned her attention to the tower, just in time to see Midnight's, it had to be Midnight's, highly effective attack against the robots. He did good work, she decided, and even managed a small smile when what was obviously an invisible box smote the rest of the automatons.

Her smile disappeared abruptly as the new danger made itself plain, this one much bigger and more menacing, this one down on the surface where she had just tried to safeguard her counterpart. Nothing to be done about it now, she decided, and steeled herself to the new fight. With a shout of defiance intended to grab the thing's attention, she raced up and smashed the robot directly in its knee joints with her bat, then raced off again, exactly opposite the direction she'd sent Erin Prime.

[Gizmo]

Sprinting down the side of the tower until he was close enough to the ground to fire his grappling line and swing toward the new threat, Midnight grimaced behind his featureless mask. "Langue des signes, à partir d'un mime? Pathétique." He expected a certain level of professionalism and commitment from a theme-villain; this just offended his sensibilities. Touching down lightly, he poured midnight mist from his every pore as he ran, quickly blanketing the entire area is a shrouding cloud. Having used the bulk of his electromagnetic devices to magnetize the tower, the black-clad vigilante instead drew a handful of explosive throwing disks from his belt and lobbed them in an arc at the hulking robot. To his continued annoyance, despite finding their mark, the detonations didn't seem to phase Ultramime in the least.

[Avenger Assembled]

Edge stared down at the mime robot, sussing his chances out. Midnight was still clearly in the fight, for all that Mark himself couldn't see through the cloud of midnight mist below. On the other hand, the giant robot couldn't see through it either, and hadn't moved since Trevor had begun his attack. He could just make out the top of the robot's head, not even its eyes, poking out above the gloom, and he decided to take his chances. There was only one way he was going to get down there fast enough to join the fight.

Using his knowledge of physics to aid him here, he grabbed the broken shaft of a French flag left on the ground and hurled it down with pinpoint accuracy, then jumped down after it. "Oh wowwwww-!" He took a step forward and hurled himself right off the Eiffel Tower, the wind in his face for a long moment before suddenly the ground blurred and rushed closer, and he landed with a hard bump right on the robot's head! He waited a second, then dodged just as the flag he'd tossed down came crashing down at terminal velocity, punching a hole right in the robot's head! He realized a moment later getting down would be tough, but as he grabbed onto the now-proudly flying French flag stuck out of the mime's metal beret and deep into its circuits, surrounded by Paris in the night, somehow it didn't seem so bad.

Of course, with the giant robot still swinging at him, trying to get a grip on the slippery Edge as he hung onto the flag for dear life, it wasn't all sunshine and roses for the luck controller either. Agh, I hope the others are having better luck! He hung on tight, the mime's staggering movements still eerie for all that they were silent, and tried to cover himself in a fold of the steel beret, planning to drop down to the surface as soon as he had a moment.

[Electra]

As soon as her comrades dropped down to join the fight, Wander abandoned thoughts of getting the giant mime to chase her and turned back to the fight. Racing towards the huge robot, she took a brief and useless moment to remember a time when this wouldn't have given her so much as a pause, then dismissed the thought and focused. "Get away from it!" she called to Edge, her glasses letting her see through the midnight haze. Mark was already hurt, he was the last one who should be trying to grapple with the thing. She smashed the robot across the legs again and leapt away, not standing and trading blows like she would have once, but instead worrying it like a terrier. It wasn't until she was well out of reach that she realized the blow hadn't done a damn thing. This could be an uphill battle.

[Gizmo]

Midnight noted the ineffectiveness of Wander's attack with a deepening grimace. He wasn't exactly about to complain about the more careful fighting style Erin had adopted of late but it had certainly raised a few questions. The day she couldn't dent a giant robot mime on the first try was the day he asked her point blank what was going on, awkwardness be damned. She'd had plenty of time to volunteer the information on her own terms and whatever was going on was affecting their work.

Still, there were more immediate concerns. Darting about under the cover of his cloud of midnight mist, he cracked a handful of vials from his belt against Ultramime's ankles, the caustic acid inside splash across metal and slowly weakening the joints it touched, softening the impressively durable target up bit by bit.

[Avenger Assembled]

"It's all right, I've got this!" called Edge, focusing on the robot with great determination. He was hurt, he was tired, and he was desperately clinging to the head of a giant robot while his friends battered and bashed at it. He'd caused them enough trouble today; he wasn't going to get them in any more danger on his account. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon..." He concentrated, grabbing onto the flagpole that had impaled the robot's head with both hands, and called upon his powers to the utmost. The air around him visibly wobbled, and then, suddenly, the giant mime tripped and fell against the tower: the thousand foot high building did no more than vibrate, but the blow drove the flagpole in its skull through deeper into the body of the massive mime machine.

As sparks flew everywhere, big ones that sizzled on the pavement, the robot staggered as internal circuits overloaded and an eerie, nearly ultrasonic wail came from its frame. Under all that internal pressure, the metal Midnight's acid and Wander's earlier blow had weakened gave way like a balloon punctured with a nail, and with its skin falling away, revealing the robotic frame over the mime's exterior, the giant robot tumbled to the ground beneath the Eiffel Tower and fell so, so still. Edge fell with it, and not well, his body spread out to spread out the impact as he plummeted towards the pavement.

[Electra]

Wander was there in an instant, tossing her bat aside and catching Mark in her outstretched arms before he could hit the ground. He was no skinny guy, but the weight and speed didn't seem to faze her in the least. She set him down as soon as she was certain he could stand on his own, then looked over towards the robot. It was obviously not planning on getting up anytime soon, and its small minions were down for the count as well. "So what was that all about?" she asked, directing the question first at Edge, then at Midnight. "Who sends giant robot mimes to destroy Paris?"

[Gizmo]

Most people would have classified Midnight's silent response to Wander's question as 'standing still'. Objectively, that was a fair assessment but the amount of time the auburn haired powerhouse had spent interpreting the laconic young man's muted body language gave her deeper insight into his meaning. In this case, it was clear that a serious conversation was imminent.

In the meantime, he placed a pair of fingers to one ear as he activated the communications rig imbedded in his mask and connected to the local cell towers. Getting through to Isabel Martel, better known as the prominent French heroine Binary, thanks to a mutual acquaintance, he tersely explained the situation before handing the resolution of the situation over to Edge, the only one of them with any actual jurisdiction in the matter.

[Avenger Assembled]

Edge took the call with surprising aplomb, Mark's French (with the Swiss accent that said he'd learned it while working at UNISON) turning out to be excellent. He'd have used it earlier, but naturally he'd assumed that the people in Paris spoke English and would have understood his dramatic speech better that way. Evidently he'd spoken to Binary before, and the two spoke to each other on the line like old friends (which was how Mark tended to speak to most people) as Mark walked away to take the call. He kept up a running commentary for the benefit of the others, occasionally raising his voice to yell, "Ah, so this was connected to the Beefeater guy in London last week! I was wondering!" or "It's some jerk in Purnuškės with a really powerful transmitter and a robot factory! They're trying to get a team in there but the Peoples Heroes are being territorial...hey, flowers!"

One hand on the transmitter in his ear, he reached down and scooped up a small pot that had miraculously fallen intact from the observation deck above, the carnations inside still beautiful. "I'll go check on the other Erin," he said, "I'll be back in a couple of minutes. You guys hang tight!" And with that, he disappeared.

[Electra]

Erin's face went still as she sized up Trevor's posture and attitude. Her ineffectiveness during the fight had been too obvious to go unnoticed, especially by a hero whose stock-in-trade was combat tactics. Pursing her lips, she watched Mark leave, then went to pick up and stow away her baton. Standing out in front of the tower in costume was drawing more attention than she liked, so until their ride came back she led the way behind a collection of sculptures that offered a little privacy. "We should probably get in contact with Roger and Clarissa," she suggested, "make sure they know the real Erin is okay. They're probably really worried."

[Gizmo]

"Can call herself when Edge catches up with her." Siding back on of his sleeves to reveal a matte black gauntlet that met the edge of his glove and covered his forearm, Midnight calmly pressed a sequence of buttons, throwing up a localized interference field that would prevent any unseen surveillance devices from recording them.

He almost let himself become side-tracked by Erin choice of words about her 'real' counterpart, but instead set his jaw as he unfastened his mask and undid the the buckles of his coat, quickly adopting a passably civilian appearance. That done, Trevor folded his arms across his chest, his expression carefully neutral. "Don't like to pry. You know I don't," he began, a little frustration slipping into his level tone despite his best efforts. Erin had a way of bringing out those touches of emotion in him even when he tried to keep them as buried as usual. "Need to trust me with this."

[Electra]

Erin glanced at him for a moment before looking away, crossing her arms and leaning against the nearest sculpture. Even in costume, the figure she cut wasn't remarkable enough to draw a lot of attention, tucked away as they were. She was quiet for a long time, more than a minute, letting the silence stretch heavily between them as she tried so formulate some kind of response. "I do trust you," she finally said. "I trust you more that I trust anyone else. I just... some problems I have to deal with on my own. If I'm not on top of my game, that's my problem and I have to get through it or get around it or do whatever it takes." The hands she'd tucked under her arms clenched into fists, even as she watched the distant pedestrians like they were the most fascinating things she'd seen all day.

[Gizmo]

"It doesn't get to be just your problem," Trevor insisted, spreading his hands slightly in the closest he ever came to an emphatic gesture. "Affects the team, affects my planning, affects-- no." Abruptly stopping his train of thought, he lifted and open hand in a forestalling move as he took a breath. "No. Forget that. Don't care." Distress played over his feature, his distinctive eyes exposed with his sunglasses still in Seattle. "Are you sick? Injured? I don't know, and you won't tell me." Despite everything he'd seen, everything he'd done, the young man known as Midnight could still feel fear and he felt it now.

[Electra]

Despite her determination to keep her cool, Erin couldn't help but respond to Trevor's distress. "No, it's not like that," she said hastily, putting out a hand and then taking it back again. She raked her hands through her hair, making it stand on end as she turned to face him. "I don't have most of my powers anymore," she blurted out, her face coloring pink. "They weren't really my powers. Oliver gave them to me, all the stuff that let me hit so hard and so fast, and jump so like it was almost flying. I didn't know until he left, and he took them back. All I have left is what I started with when I was fourteen."

Her voice caught for a second, but now that she'd started she was determined to spill it. "It's not enough to let me keep up anymore, even though I've been training like never before. But I have to try. Hero work is the only thing I know how to do."

[Gizmo]

Trevor let out a slow breath as he processed the confession. On one hand, he was relieved. In lieu of facts, his mind had slowly begun to construct all manner of possible scenarios, each more awful than the previous. On the other, he found himself to be legitimately angry that Erin had intentionally kept this from him for so long. He could appreciate how devastating the whole ordeal must have been for her, given how much she'd come to define herself based on her strength, but he would have thought, would have hoped that she'd have felt able to come to him with it so that they could deal with it together. It was a stinging blow that she hadn't.

Inhaling, he began by raising a single finger. "First, raw power is not what makes you a hero. We can deal with this." Lifting another finger to join the first, he continued, "Second, you could have told me. Should have. Why not?"

[Electra]

"Don't you get it?" Erin demanded, spreading her hands before hugging her arms back against her chest. "It's not about raw power, or whether I can be a street brawler with what I have left. Being a good fighter, the best fighter, it's all I've got to build on. Everything I've made myself comes from that. And I worked so hard, I thought that was the reason I was getting stronger and faster and better, but it wasn't. Oliver knew he was going to use me to fight Omega, so he dumped all this power, magic, whatever the hell it was onto me. So being part of Young Freedom, getting my job, being your partner, all of that came because of something that wasn't even me. I'm not the person I thought I was. I'm not the person you thought I was. All I wanted was to get some of that back."

[Gizmo]

Trevor was absolutely still and silent for a beat, then another, then a third. Finally he raised his hands with deliberate care to place them on either side of his head, squeezing his eyes shut. "You... can be infuriating. Do you realize that?" Opening his eyes he took a step close and lowered his hands to place them over Erin's where they were wrapped around her own torso. "Love you, Erin White. You. Not going anywhere." Looking her square in the eye from under the brim of his beaten fedora, he admitted, "Pretty upset with you right now, for not telling me sooner. Still not going anywhere."

[Electra]

Erin squeezed her eyes shut against a burning that wanted to become tears. "I didn't keep it to myself because I don't trust you," she told him in a voice that was tight and careful, even as her body vibrated with tension under his hands. "I just needed to work it out first. I needed to make it so it didn't matter so much. I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me," she said firmly. If nothing else,that had been a constant in her life for a long time.

She opened her eyes, locked gazes with Trevor. "You're the reason I didn't go with him," she said, voice picking up more strength. "You goddamn well better not be going anywhere. I need you more than I needed the powers."

[Gizmo]

Lacing the long fingers of one of his hands between the digits they were enveloping at Erin's side, Trevor lifted his other arm to place his hand carefully on her cheek. His head tilted slightly to one side as he took a fraction of a step closer, examining her face as the hint of a faint smile pulled at the corner of his thin lips. "Inspire many emotions," he told her, his deadpan absolute. "Pity isn't one of them." He was still upset and a little confused - he'd have to get the full explanation regarding Oliver at some point - but he couldn't manage to work up any real anger knowing that she'd chosen to give up something so important to her rather than lose him. "Hm. Still your birthday. What do you want to do?"

[Electra]

Relief was plain on Erin's face as she realized Trevor was letting her off the hook. She relaxed a little, her shoulders loosening, and gave him the faintest of smiles. "I think I've had enough excitement for the day, and the Seattle people have probably had enough too. Maybe we could round up Charlie and go to your place. You keep telling me you're going to give me a look at that flying saucer down in your garage." It wasn't an answer to her problems, but knowing that she still had Trevor was like a weight off her chest. "I... we better round up Mark, too, but I don't want to tell him any of this yet."

[Gizmo]

"He's going to need to know," Trevor told Erin seriously, stepping back enough to slip off his jacket and hand it to her. Undone overtop her costume, it created a look that could pass for unusual but passable winter wear, while his black, long-sleeve top and black pants wouldn't draw any particular attention. His unusual eyes were a larger problem, but tipping the brim of his fedora low over his forehead would be sufficient if they could avoid speaking with anyone up close. "Not the most careful person in the first place." Mark having an inaccurate perception of Erin's current durability could be potentially disastrous in the field... and, really, anywhere was 'the field' when it came to the probability skewing reality manipulator.