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Avenger Assembled

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  1. Elsewhere: 

     

    Aquaria's teleportation was - tactile. They were definitely passing through something warm, clinging, and just a little wet - with a vague scent of brine. But then they were on the other side! 

     

    A proud Sea Devil stood by to greet the teen heroes as they arrived at their destination; high above the North Atlantic! 

     

    They were at the top of the oil rig Aquaria had mentioned and towered a city rooftop high above a near-mirror-smooth, wine-dark sea. Puffy white clouds filled the skies. The structure around them showed signs of abandonment; rust and thick with seagull droppings. There was even a nest of them on a nearby rusted-out crane, one that immediately began cawing and hollering up a storm at the sight of the teleported teens. 


    Standing next to Aquaria was a Deep One, a hideous frog-fish thing with great goggling eyes and a white, scaly body, topped off with an enormous blue hat that shielded its gigantic eyes from the sun. Most of the heroes heard an exchange of grunts and bellows, Aquaria banging on her armor with her trident; the smaller Deep One squatting and hopping around Aquaria, before finally gesturing for them to follow it below before it hopped away towards the stairs. 

     

    What Sea Devil said to the teens was: "Ah! Boal says the tribe has been feasting! A fine time to see them - there will be no trouble! Be warned," she added grandly. "What you see may be shocking to your eyes! But it is how a hungry people eat when they have no other means of food!" Heading down the stairs after Boal, they passed by strange signs of various sorts, each drawn on the metal, plastic, and wood of the rig by some alien hand - and eye. 

     

    "Be careful not to look too long at the Deep One art," said Ms. Harcourt, who had taken up the rear of the little makeshift tour. "Its non-Euclidean nature can make your nausea worse." Come to think of it, they could all smell something coming up from below...

    Spoiler

    What Boal had said to Aquaria was in the form of a song; a song that sounded a little something like this: 

     

    "Great One! You come along us again!" 

    "Yes, by Hydra's power - and my teeth! Come, I have strong champions to - What is that smell?" 

    "We had a whale, great one! We have feasted all day!" 

    "A whale - oh that sounds good! There is so little whale Up There - What kind?" 

    "A humpback. We brought it down all by ourselves!" 

    "You are strong, flesh of my flesh! And - oh the humpbacks are so good!" 

    "We saved you some of its guts!" 

    "Oh I had better not...maybe a little! But later, later...come, we have to take these children to see that you are strong!"  

    "Yes!" 

    "Yes!" 

     

  2. Sea Devil has no Medicine. 

    If she can take 20 on Notice she will and get 30. 

    Arcane: 20

    Theology: 15

     

    Don't forget Aquaria's super-sense; and that she can actually read the prayer...probably? 🐸

  3. Neko/Owain

     

    Neko pulled her disguise down around Vueriz like pulling the cover on an umbrella, standing back with a confident smile as she saw her friend's transformation. "You should look how you would like to look," she whispered to her. With that, she hopped up on the stage. Winking down at Blue Bolt, she spread her arms wide, catching the attention of the crowd. Glowing, translucent cats seemed to form in the air around her, dancing in an intricate pattern before they flew out into the crowd.

     

    Laughing in a voice that carried across the room, she said "Hello, friends! I am Neko Musume - the Internet's favorite catgirl! Supaa-kawaii!" She gave her usual double-V signal, making her fangirls in the crowd go wild. Up close, Blue Bolt could see the seeming transformation in Neko, as if a light had been flipped or a switch thrown, turning her into someone who projected More glowing images appeared, fast-moving clips of Neko herself from her show. "I am here to introduce you to my friends -" 

     

    Meanwhile, Owain, having exchanged phone numbers, had returned to his friend group looking very pleased with himself, sitting down next to Michael but casting his gaze towards the group from the other school thoughtfully. 

     

    "MUL-TI-PLI-CI-TY!" With every syllabus of Neko's words, another member of the band seemed to appear out of nowhere - Bernadette clearly visible as the star she was along with her usual crew but each backup singer bore a novel disguise, each of them kitted out like a different era of rockstar. There was a pink-haired glam rocker and rockabilly babe, and others that seemed to shift around when the eye wasn't on them. "And they are ready to par-tay - ROCK AND ROLL STYLE!" 

     

    Sweating just a little, Neko disappeared into the backstage, where she could have a little privacy and concentrate on maintaining the illusion. It wouldn't show up on cameras, of course - but that would only add to the band's mystery. 

  4. Neko set the fish down on top of a large rock and began the practical process of gutting it, slicing it open with her own sharp fingernails before she went to work on cleaning out its insides. Bottom-feeders were big, but all sorts of things could settle in their bellies. We work, because we starve otherwise. Of course she didn't say that out loud, since it wasn't true here. "We work, show them what we can do." She looked up at the jungle suddenly, body still, tail lashing - then went back to work. "Can you make fire?" 

  5. Sea Devil 

     

    Aquaria attached her trident to the back of her armor with a metallic clang as the magnets kicked in. When Artificer arrived, she wondered for a moment if the Atlantean found this place as abhorrent as she did - before she decided she couldn't show such weakness in the face of the enemy. Even one who had sometimes been a friend. "This place is - death. Perhaps they went mad!" she croaked with more firmness than she felt before trudging inside the house. 

     

    Inside a Deep One's investigations were - strange. She smelled the air around the two dead bodies, loud, wet snorts from nostrils that were more like a seal's than a human's. She studied the bodies themselves, peering with black and yellow eyes at the sad remains of the dead Surface-Men. She struck the walls a few times, upper body cocked as if she was listening for the sounds of the echoes in the building. When she came across the prayer to Dagon, she squatted before it, fully retracting her faceplate, and making a low, resonant thrum deep in the back of her substantial throat. 

  6. Neko thought of the stars overhead at night, in impossible numbers, but each with a name, of learning to hunt fish by a mountain stream so cold that it made her lips turn blue, of the perfect beauty of a magical time and place that had seemed like it would last forever - and of the day when it had all finally gone away forever. 

     

    She answered the other girl's question by spitting her fish out into her hands and holding it still. "Yes," she said in a voice like nothing else. "A long time ago." She stood there for a moment, looking down at her feline reflection in the mirrored scales and licked her lips, tasting fish blood and remembering a time when it was the most delicious treat she'd ever eaten. 

     

    "N-now," she said firmly. "we work." And with that she walked quickly towards the campsite, her tail beating frantically behind her, ears turned and flat on top of her head. 

  7. Sea Devil 

     

    This was, without a doubt, the most unsettling place Aquaria Innsmouth had ever been - and she'd been in some very bad ones. At least she'd arrived at night, so that overhead she could view the comforting blanket of the Sea of Stars as they shone down on one of the very worst places in the Hell Above - the place she usually called the Surface. In her power armor, taken itself from the stars, she was protected by a blanket of Freedom City water from the foul smells and unsettling wrongness of this place. She stood there silently, her face half-visible, as she contemplated the horror of this place. 


    She had seen drying lake and riverbeds in her time; places of death that the people must leave if they hoped to survive. But this place, so far from Ocean, in the midst of a dying sea - this was what it would be. She tapped the blunt end of her trident against the earth thoughtfully, making a faint crunch as soil and dead grass ground against oceanic metal. This place is what it would be if the stars were never right. If Surface-Men and their allies did what they do to the world, forever. 

     

    She had come here alone, taking a long flight across the nation while she dreamed of the vast and briny depths that should be (instead of this) - and though she'd arrived to find companions, she rather regretted it. "Far. Far to come, so far from home," she croaked softly for her companions' benefit as they stood there beneath the stars. They had not yet gone inside. "A silent place. "

  8. The Patriot 

     

    In the engine room, trusting Ghost to do his thing and knowing he needed privacy to do it, the Patriot stepped out where everyone could see her.

     

    The room was full of frightened-looking technicians, a few greyskins that looked like armed soldiers - none of the big meta-threats that might have been present. "Hey!" she called in Lor. "Look at me! None of you have to die. You've already lost." She hit a button at her belt, closing her helmet fully around her head, her blue and white outfit extending until it covered every inch of her skin in a tight, almost-vacuum-sealed appearance. "You can get out now and you can tell your commanders that you saved the lives of engineers and warriors so you could win the next battle."

     

    In one hand, she snapped open one of her tonfas, which gleamed with sharpened metal on both ends. She pulled a grenade from her belt and put her finger on the trigger, holding it directly against the glowing, pulsating thing behind her that she was almost certain was part of the reactor. 


    "I'm the Patriot and I'm from Earth. I know you think we're just - a bunch of dumb savages. If you stay here, you're going to see me count to ten. Ten. Nine - " 

  9. The Patriot: 

    activates her grav-suit as a free action: 

    Intimidate as a standard action: 26

    You can assess whatever penalties or bonuses you like to that total given the circumstances! =D 

    She draws her tonfas and prepares to drop a smoke grenade. 

  10. Sea Devil 

     

    "Do not worry!" Aquaria croaked for the benefit of the children and their teacher, who now looked ready to go. "I would not take you underwater without telling you! That would not be safe!" she added broadly. When Blue Bolt spoke she stared goggle-eyed at the tiny alien, because that was an insane thing to say. (That didn't bother her too much, because many people on the Surface said insane things all the time.) But when nobody corrected her, not even the teacher, Aquaria laughed nervously, her throat ballooning rapidly as she said, "Hahaha! I am not supposed to talk to you about religion! You will hear many things if you can understand our language!"

     

    She struck the ground with her trident and said "Here! I will show you!" With that, she climbed up into her armor, which made a wet, gurgling sound as it closed around her. Then she squatted down, then hopped through the portal, vanishing with an audible, slightly wet sucking sound. 

     

    "Does anyone need a dramamine?" offered Miss Harcourt, stopping to take a pill from a small vial in her pocket. "This makes me nauseous sometimes," she admitted, "and you don't want to get sick halfway through." 

     

     

     

  11. Almost inaudibly, Neko recited a soft haiku:

     

    "In the river's hush,
    Silent dance of line and fin,
    Nature's gift is caught."


    She waved her fingers around over the water, producing shimmering patterns of light and movement that filtered down to the perception of the fish below. Fishing was a slow task but she was willing to be very still. And so she did; her pupils dilated impossibly wide, hanging from a sturdy vine as she hung out over the water, doing her best to avoid actual immersion. When she saw her chance she took it, reaching down with lightning speed and scooping up the rainbow fish with one hand. By reflex she popped it in her mouth, biting down hard with her front teeth, the better to taste the fish for bile or poison (so that she might then spit it out.) 

    Tasting none, she pulled herself back up onto land and walked back to the camp, padding silently as she held the big fat fish in her mouth. It was an impressive specimen and still wriggling, with enough meat on it to feed everyone if the foraging for plants and berries was successful. (Personally she'd prefer another fish, but she could always get one of those if she needed it.) The fish was good; raw and wriggling, and it reminded her a little of childhood meals by the stream, albeit much larger. 

  12. Neko Musume 

     

    A psychic with a connection to Neko's mind would have heard the Crimson Katana whispering in her ear, his voice coldly paternal as he whispered Be clever. Be careful. Be better than them. 

     

    And Neko knew she could; because at the sight of the Omegadrones, she too had remembered the brown-skinned man with the sad eyes and scarred face who sometimes came to the dojo. She remembered that Omegadrones were not machines. There was flesh inside. And where there was flesh, she had power. She was not a weak, frightened peasant girl. She was Neko Musume, the last cat of the Iya Valley. And so she gave them something else. A monster no civilian would see as an ally, one that none would run to shelter from - but one that the Omegadrones would see as a more formidable target. 

     

    She opened her eyes without realizing she had closed them, golden lens flashing yellow, and whispered in a low, growling whine: "Ten. Thousand. Years." She raised her clawed fingers and slashed the air in front of her - and something stepped out of the alley behind them. 

     

    The giant was huge, towering tall as any of the buildings around them, and bore a blade bloody with dripping red and black ichor. It laughed in a booming voice like Death itself "Kekekekeke!" as it strode toward the drones. "Ahhh! At last, after seventy-five years!" it bellowed, Neko whispering in time with him. "I AM FREE TO CONQUER EARTH!" The giant was clearly recognizable as a building-sized version of the second Crimson Katana, among the most infamous Japanese war criminals of World War II. He raised his katana, long as a bus, while from another arm hung a gigantic banner that bore two car-sized Japanese characters in blood - which a reader of Japanese could see as BANZAI! 

     

     

     

  13. The Copper Knight turned and caught the spear in his teeth, an awkward maneuver that sent both him and the tengu tumbling, but spared him from impalement for the moment. But Neko couldn't see that, all she could see was Owain falling beneath the tengu's attack.


    She suddenly screamed wordlessly, a growling shriek of pain and fury, and something novel happened. Flames seemed to gather around her hands and eyes and behind her her friends could distinctly see not one but two tails twitching with the intensity of a predator on the hunt.

     

    "You think you can frighten me with monsters from the forest?" Her voice dropped into a growl that shook the air as she declared, "I AM A MONSTER FROM THE FOREST! <DAMARE KUSOTARE!>" She slashed the air with her taloned fingers, producing flaming claw marks in the space in front of her, and yelled "<SHINU! SHINU! SHINU! SHINU! SHINU! SHINU!>" And the tengu that heard her didn't simply die - they burst into flames and died in them, falling apart into so many flaming skeletons marked with just a few ashy fingers of flesh. 

     

     

  14. A paladin beset by demons, the Copper Knight knew just what to do - charge! With a ferocious growl different than his usual triumphant howl, he ran pell-mell for the nearest drone and tore out its throat. As it happened, he'd been trained on how to fight these things by his new master - with the help of his master's friend, the liberated slave of the Terminus called Harrier. He bit down on the parts of the neck that held vital connections that were not actually full of the poisonous black bile that ran in the veins of the Omegadrones. With a crackling tear, he pulled cables and wires free, sending the now-powerless drone collapsing in a heap at his feet. 

  15. Okay, sorry for the delay here: 

     

    Neko stunts the following effect: 

     

    Damage 8 (DIE DIE DIE!, Extra: Alternate Save [Will], Area [General, Burst], Secondary Effect, Selective, Flaw: Action [Full], Distracting, PFs: Indirect 3, Progression on Area 5) {32/32}.

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