Avenger Assembled

https://orokos.com/roll/1008249 18 on Stealth You know what, normally an HP spent on initiative is a waste, but I'll do it anyway! https://orokos.com/roll/1008251 = 28 w the HP

Sea Devil watched, her trident held firmly in her left hand, and relaxed as the students abandoned their fears and actually approached the Deep Ones as equals. She'd been worried about the one, Golden Star, but the strength in his grip and his powerful, manly eye contact seemed to work. In fact, Bunzi, a young female who had not yet mated, was watching the boy with what was clearly interest in her huge green and black eyes. Good, good! Aquaria thought, though of course she'd have to make sure the young one was cautioned out of mating with Surfacers - a degenerate practice that led to degenerate offspring. From the shouts of the little alien to the psychic and physical might demonstrated by the mentalists and by Spaceman, everything was going well. Things would be easier if they would really shake them up and bruise a few, but things were still going well. She relaxed a little, so did their teacher, and it seemed as if everything was finally going well. Grunting and squatting, then hooting and hollering, the Deep Ones all seemed happy with what they'd seeen. "Good! Now we shall sing you the songs of our people - and there will be gifts! Who wants to hear the song of the stars!" At her words several of the smaller Deep Ones, including Boal's spawn, wriggled and hopped their way towards her, grunting and croaking with great enthusiasm. Spaceman and Timeout noticed something happening - a silvery vessel had appeared in the water at the horizon and was making its way fast towards the rig. Timeout recognized the design from what he'd seen traveling with his mother; that was an Atlantean submersible. But that was okay; Atlantis wasn't a hostile power as far as he knew.

Neko paused only a moment before joining the others through Lawrence's portal. She had briefly thought to stay and provide a distraction for the escape of the younger students, but it didn't seem necessary at this time. She did leave one surprise behind for any who might be following, however. The last one through the portal, she snapped her fingers as she went, leaving behind an invisible forces of cat-demons to growl and hiss and torment any who might approach too close to where they had gone. They want to find us? Good. Let them look.

Copper Knight and Neko It wasn't necessarily time to retreat; but it was time to make sure they'd be able to if they did. Turning from the temporarily-distracted drones, Owain scrabbled over to a nearby manhole cover. He'd learned how to open these with his teeth from practice with his mentors at the Espadas house and they were no different here in 1993. He dug in hard and pulled, heedless of the taste, and wrenched open a passageway into Freedom City's ample sewers. For her part, Neko layered her illusions atop illusions, filling the air above them with Omegadrones that flew on wildly contradictory courses, the better to confuse any who might escape the blindness she'd thrown up for all of them, taking a few cautious steps towards the sewer opening herself. "Come on!" she called as loudly as she could, trying to make sure any civilians around knew about the escape route too.

Neko stared intently through the eyes of her cats, peering as closely as she could so she could actually see what the screens looked like, particularly those of the drone operator. She couldn't project her illusions through them but seeing her targets, knowing what they called themselves, would make things easier. They looked with machines? Very well; she'd have to make sure that when she told them things, she told them what the machines said too. "We are being hunted," she told the younger students wen she was back in her own body, her tail twitching behind her and her voice a low while. Her heart was beating in her chest like a jackhammer but her hands were still and her voice gradually assumed a more human tone. She quickly described what she'd seen, adding - "Hotshot and his 'Hounds' are coming to find us. We need to help Kazra first, because that man is going to kill her." She considered briefly, then said "Timeout. Can you push yourself and take the others with you?"

Neko couldn't translate Morse code into English fast enough to understand it but she knew it when she heard it, and her eyes narrowed as she focused on the younger teens - after all having heard all of Bernadette's songs many times before. There were innocent explanations for why they were communicating with each other secretly; but she didn't like the smell of the whole thing. Owain was already up and trying to dance with the handsome boy from that school he had been making eyes at all night, and she didn't want to ruin his good time - but something... Her nose wrinkling, she picked Merry out of the girls. Moving over there at speed, she whispered urgently and with some conviction, "Your hair, it-I can help," she said, holding up her purse in a sisterly gesture with the taller and broader girl as her head tilted toward the ladies room. Small and slender and perfectly human-looking, she hardly looked like a threat to anyone without the eyes to see what she really was. And if they could do that - well, they'd have said something already.

Okay - Owain is going to open up another escape route for the nearby civilians - into the city's ample sewer system! Ain't comic book architecture grand? Let me know if he can't actually open the grate with his teeth - he is a very large dire wolf even if he doesn't have any hands. His STR is 22 (+6) in wolf form, so he's probably strong enough if he does get teeth on there! Neko will use her action for total defense; she doesn't need to spend one to maintain the all-senses obscure surrounding them.

Okay, just lemme know when I'm up!

Yes, I had thought she was backstage too - I had made a point that she was letting the bad guys come to her. It sounded like she'd been moved up to the rafters at some point and I just ran with it, I didn't want to make RL go back and edit.

Owain is going to hold his action till it's Neko's turn, then the two of them will go together.

Reflex save vs. 25: 18

oh, feel free to add to the scenery if you like! there's all kinds of rusted-out oil rig machinery still around, even though the Deep Ones have cleared some of it out or colonized the rest of it. I'll go ahead and start moving us after you go, RL.

Sea Devil croaked a sad note. "We are more alike than you are, because we all hear the same song." She had long since given up explaining what she could hear to Surfacers; even ones as magically attuned as Nick. And if Artificer could hear it too - well, he would be the first Atlantean she had ever met who could. "We tell ourselves that we are all the same. But the seas are vast - and not everyone hears the same things. Perhaps they came when the sea was new and could not leave. Perhaps someone kept them here. Was someone here who would keep them? Atlanteans - or men like you?" She slid her hand up and down the shaft of her trident contemplatively, then said, "We should look here. Everywhere." Not even bothering to fly, she hooked her trident to her back and simply climbed up to the roof of the house, where she crouched on all fours and stared with goggle eyes, listening to that terrible noise in the night air.

It occurred to Neko that the Crimson Katana would have cuffed the junior students in the back of the head for their failures. Or pulled their ears. Her puffed-up tail was lashing, her ears flat and pointing backwards atop her head. "I am going to find them," she said shortly, settling down on her haunches in lotus position. As she did so, the jungle was briefly alive with a new kind of hunter - fast, sleek wildcats with white bodies and brown spots that darted through the brush with fantastic speed and stealth, scouting all around them for the mysterious interlopers.

are they within range of Neko's ESP, Poncho?

This is a good time to spend an HP on that Ultimate TOU!

I will spend an HP to double my dodge bonus so that misses!

Meeting the Patriot was a bit like meeting the mayor. Stadium security was waiting for them at Gate 8, where they were whisked through the crowd to a private office that the Patriot had carved out so she could actually get some face-time with Carmen and her boyfriend. "La Puma Negra, Golden Star, so glad you could make it!" she said, stepping away from a red-haired man in suit and bifocals to briefly embrace Carmen. Michael was tall, and big - oh well, Ashley had been the shortest person in the room more than once in her life and it was all too common with superheroes. He's so young though - damn, he's probably just going to get taller. She shook Michael's hand with a firm grip inside her red leather gloves. The upper part of her face was covered by her helmet and goggles, but the teens could see her smile. "Give us a minute, would you, Eamon?" Her presence seemed to fill the room, projecting a calm, cool air of authority. The redhead nodded and said in a slight Irish accent "They need you in five" before stepping out of the small office, which from the pictures on the wall belonged to someone in Comet publicity. The Patriot kept looking up at Michael for a moment before turning her attention to Carmen. "Glad you two made it! Sorry, I don't have long before I have to get back to work. If you've got your game faces on, I can take you with me to meet some people, or you can head straight for your seats. Just make sue there's no nonsense either way," she said, not sounding like she was kidding, "a lot of people are going to be watching. That said," she amended, trying to keep it light, "people forgive two kids on a date more than you'd think." Or so she guessed - not having ever been on a date on high school.

Richard and Paige got out to Meadowbrook the way they'd been going places together since they were teenagers - by holding hands and running. While technically that got them there in the blink of an eye; it also gave them time to talk a little more thanks to the benefits of telepathy amplified by temporal manipulation, the city whizzing by them so fast it might have been a blur. I know, I'm a soft touch for people from the old days, he admitted wryly. Don't worry, this isn't going to be another Gary and June. Hell...maybe we can at least decorate his room, get him a new television, all that stuff. He was consciously trying to keep images of their old friend in extremis from any number of causes out of his head.

@Thevshi that's correct! @Dracostern: the Deep Ones have appeared, climbing up onto the platform, and Aquaria has encouraged everyone to prove themselves with feats of strength or power! People are making their checks to see how impressive they are - and if they notice anything in particular.

When she had a moment to catch her breath - and not smell the sweet scent of nerve agents or the horror of mustard gas - Neko looked around and spotted something all-too-familiar. As her ears twitched, red glowing words appeared hovering in mid-air not far from them - THERE IS A DRONE HERE - highlighted by a rotating catgirl head that might have been Neko's. The floating catgirl heads pointed like arrows towards a zipping, mobile, floating robot drone that seemed to be spying on them. IT CANNOT SEE WHAT I AM DOING. "At least we are safe now!" said Neko loudly. "Everyone sound off!" The words plus floating catgirl heads around the drone were joined by - KILL IT BEFORE IT SEES YOU.

Notice: nat 20 for 30!

Sea Devil Aquaria stood back, a hand over her mouth, and when she spoke it was with a terrible, aching grief in her rumbling voice. "They were in cages. They were in cages!" The last word was an angry bellow, punctured by a crack of her trident's blunt end against the floor that cracked the wood beneath. She knew of the brutality of Atlanteans and Surfacers alike, who imprisoned their enemies rather than kill them, confining them to a small space where one's screams echoed along the walls and inside one's head - she stopped for a moment and turned, throwing open one of the windows. But of course the acrid, dry air here was hardly a soothing balm. "<I will free you, brothers and sisters. When the stars are right>," she croaked softly, almost to herself. "Are they dead?" she asked Nick. It was a horrifying thought in and of itself; the spirit surviving after the death of the flesh like some Surfacer phantom, but of course Deep Ones trapped or kept up here would have had no one to eat their flesh or crack their bones. "Did they die up here - in this place?"

okay, go ahead and post IC as you like, guys.

Neko popped up next to Vueriz, looking infernally pleased with herself. "Enjoying the show?" she whispered to her alien friend softly. With her illusion active around herself, she looked like nothing more than a modestly-dressed Japanese girl and not a swirling cauldron of magical energy. She smiled down at the little alien, showing not even a hint of teeth. It was good to have things go well.