Avenger Assembled

Patriot 

The Patriot came close to cursing in Vietnamese, but she knew all the universal translators about made references to Dovox vãi-ng cứt potentially undiplomatic. "Any enviro issues we need to know about?" she asked curtly as she pulled out her largest sidearm and racked the slide, producing a faintly audible charging noise. To the eyes of the Praetorians it looked a bit like a Lor Star Navy officer's personal sidearm, but built by a civilization that couldn't quite handle the miniaturization needed for really top of the line gear. "Or do the greys over there breathe regular air?" She hmmed, considering. "What defenses is he likely to have?" 

Sea Devil 

Aquaria responded to the blasphemy and the taunting from the fell beast by slashing it across the midsection with her trident, producing a great cloud of rotting ichor without seeming to do it more than a little damage. But moved by the creature's taunting and her own fury at this abomination, she took her trident and drove it directly into the ground, planting it tines-first with a crack of sound like a lightning storm heard underwater. 

"I will show you who the master of the world is," she croaked in a low, furious throb before bellowing in an unholy tone. "Come and see! COME AND SEE!" 

Neko rose to her feet, hand over her mouth, as she came back to herself. As she listened to Owain take a noble stand and Bernadette agree, she had a thought that came spilling out across the mental divide to Cerebral and Cerebellum. It was a thought laced with images of carnage, horrific scenes of apocalyptic murder and grisly carnage already taking place, all seen and head by her thanks to her psychic scan. This is the past - and the future cannot be changed. These people are already dead. Looking at her friends, she found little in the way of allies, even in the face of Owain - who of course was ever happy to charge into a deadly slaughter in the name of a righteous cause.

Her hands wrapped together, tail lashing behind her, she stepped back against the rear wall of the room. "Is there a safe place? I can tell people how to get there." Her accent was thick, each word slowly and carefully chosen, her rs rolling hard until they were almost ls.

Sea Devil: 

Spend an HP to acquire Power Attack 

Power Attacks for +5 with her Trident 

https://orokos.com/roll/1003262 almost certainly a miss 

Spending an HP to reroll 

https://orokos.com/roll/1003263 20 

Okay, hopefully that hits with the Set-Up. 

Growling and snarling, Owain charged the creature endangering the original Multi-Girl. He had no doubt of Bernadette's martial puissance or her tactical abilities, but that was what a man did - he protected a lady. He didn't recognize the demon she fought but it reminded him of the smell of Neko; of that world of shadow and magic that had been her home before she'd been dragged off to the same war as him. That thought, that sacrilege against his foster sister, drove him on as he knocked the bird creature to the ground and tore out its throat with his jaws like one of his father's war-dogs against a Saxon. Spitting out the filthy ichor, he stood atop the fallen beast and howled in triumph before charging after another one. 

He is a gentleman, he will go for the second option: 

DC 23 save for the first one, and then the second one if he can hit it. 

Owain shifted uneasily, looking like he was considering something for a moment. "My...father left me when I was but a lad," he said, which was true enough. "And my mother is very far away. They were all the family I had, and I grieve that loss very much," he said, emotion thick in his voice a moment. "If things are distant between you and your brother, you should - you should close that gap. Perhaps not today...but sometime." He looked away and said, "If I give offense, I ask your pardon." 

For her part, Neko tugged on Leon's arm. "I want to show you something," she said softly. "Somewhere...over there," she said, cocking her head towards the drugstore she'd been coming out of before Alice's brother arrived. 

Neko dropped on her haunches and stared up at the pterodactyls, a chittering noise coming from somewhere in the back of her throat as her gold eyes opened wide. "<Look at >" she started to say in Japanese before she caught herself and said, her accent thick. "Look at that." She missed Owain, who she knew might call this a dragon of the deep past, but instead was moved. She raised a hand and pointed, not towards the bird-lizards that had now flown off but to the distant triceratops family group, and recited a poem.

Ancient giants roam,
Silent echoes of the past,
Lost worlds whispering! 

With the haiku recited, she rose to her feet and licked the back of her hand, staring around them with fascination. "This place is beautiful," she told Kazra sincerely. "Your father is lord of a mighty realm."

Neko Musume and the Copper Knight had one thing in common besides the shared history that had made them closer than friends. When they'd been young, too young, they'd been taken to war. They'd heard explosions like this before, from men who wanted them dead without ever looking them in the eye. 

The catgirl thought of Crimson Katana and his lessons. Look and listen first. Always. Neko knelt on the floor and closed her brilliant gold eyes, reaching out once again with her mind across the city. All across Freedom, white cats with brown speckles peered out of dark alleys and windows, small, silent witnesses to Armageddon. 

Still in his wolf form, missing the sword he'd left stored in his luggage like a fiber drawn from his heart, Owain growled softly "...I know of time travel. If time is a river, one can make changes in the rocks without disturbing the river's flow. We need not abandon these people to their fate. I will not run." 

Thevshi

Multi-Girl (32) + 18 GM reward= 50 +1GM point = 5PP

Timeout (36) + 14 GM reward = 50 = 4PP 

Sri Kath'lana (2) + 2GM reward, +12 = 14 = 2PP

Veronica Danger [Titanium} (3)

Velocity [Titanium] (9)

Neko smiled at that, idly stirring her now-empty cup with the straw. "It started as just a way to learn English; and then to make money - but yes." She shrugged, spreading her hands wide, showing off teeth that were just a bit pointer than the human norm. "Americans love Japan, and they love catgirls most of all, especially when they are supa-kawaii!" She folded her hands under her chin and batted her eyelashes dramatically. "There are many - pigs on the Internet, but they are nothing compared to how I used to live. And their money is good. You know when I came to this country, I had never even seen one of your computers before? Now they make me enough money that when I graduate, I won't even need to get a regular job." She considered what to tell the other girl, then went on, "Your suit, does it record?" she asked. "You could make money just from that, even if you don't want to say anything." 

"Explodo the Great, really." The Patriot put her hand over the lower part of her face for a moment. "Really sending our best today. Thanks, Marty." Damn, they're really overcompensating, she thought, trying to stay sympathetic as she listened with half an ear to the Praetorians go on and on. They reminded her a little bit of the old ladies from the Giáo Xứ Maria Nữ Vương Việt Nam back in New Orleans, who hadn't been able to stop talking about the beauty of the old country and how crappy America was by comparison. 

"Doesn't have to be a bad guy by his own lights to plan something on Earth," she added for Artificer's benefit. "If you hold thirty planets in your hand, what's a little extra trouble on one if it gets you what you want? But it looks like we don't have to worry about that today, thank God." When she caught sight of La Puma Negra with Golden Star, she hmmed but kept her reaction otherwise to herself as they waited for the fight down below to wind down. 

When it looked that way, she reached past a technician and tagged a button to signal Fleur de Joie on her League communicator down below. "This is Patriot up in the Lighthouse. Nice work down there; do you need backup?" For all that Fleur - and for that matter Paradigm - were quite a bit more powerful than she was, it never hurt to ask. 

The moment dragged on and on, seemingly forever - 

And then they were back outside of the Claremont gym. 

And there, hovering in the air, was not Quirk - but a spectral image of their classmate Lawrence. Quirk's voice gave them one final warning: "I won't be there to save you. So don't. wreck. my. toys." 

"Americans call kami gods, spirits, many things," said Neko with a shrug. "Doctor Metropolis is the kami of Freedom City. There are others like him in other cities." She reached up and scratched lightly at the top of her head, where her usual white and brown hair (spotted like a waving cat's) was now a glossy black, where her giant cat ears were. "Yes," she added for Miri's benefit. 

"You ever try busking?" she asked Ryan. "You can make money if you follow tourists." The last time she'd gone out socializing with new students it hadn't gone very well, so she was keeping things light with the new girl. 

"You mean real hobbies, not for the show?" She smiled thinly. "I read, and do some art. I've actually been working on writing a story," she admitted. "It's about this boy who goes out one night and realizes everyone in the village next door is actually a spider wearing a human face. And then there's a girl who-" She grinned, and for a moment her teeth seemed distinctly sharp and cat-like. "well she makes him her husband but not in any ways he likes." 

The Patriot paced as she watched the fight, tensing visibly when she saw Predator in peril. It was good to see Star Khan defending her, even if it wasn't hard to imagine ways the space monarch could be working an angle. "We have a read on Halloween Man?" she asked tersely, pointing with a gloved finger at the orange and black terrorist Star Khan and Predator were fighting. "One of ours or one of theirs?" she asked the technician. She hated this waiting, she hated - being a spectator when people were in peril down below. She forced herself to stand still, fiddling with her wedding band for a moment. 

"With a normal - person, I'd say it was no coincidence he showed up in Freedom City to court his cosmic crush just in time for Valentine's Day," she explained to Sitara. "Making it more likely he'd planned something out here with local agents. But the thing with supers is that weird coincidences happen all the damn time..." She trailed off, hand against her armored chin. 

Though Neko was still a little rattled, she bowed to Kazra, introducing herself and her team before she set off behind her. She sniffed the air as they went, her pert nose wrinkled, and her ears twitched and rotated independently as they went. None of the young heroes in her party knew Neko particularly well, but up close they could see she really was a cat in a lot of ways - all the way from her twitching tail right down to have no human ears at all on  the sides of her head. A bug swooped by and she reached out with one hand, casually swatting the huge fly out of the air and holding it in her hand. "Is this your father's land too?" she asked. 

Neko and Owain, used to being time-tossed refugees, had been silent for a little while, taking in the scene with wide eyes. When the teen heroes were confronted by Archer, Owain spoke up, still in his canine form. "Greetings, fellow heroes!" he declared, padding forward. "I am Owain Celliwig, also known as the Copper Knight-Enchanter. We have been displaced to your era by - well, we are not sure," he admitted, scratching his ear. "We will be 'out of your hair', if you will pardon the pun, ha-ha, as soon as you But I am sure we can come to some arrangement. Say, could you tell us the year?" 

"...Archer," said Neko out loud. Suddenly she remembered Archer, because she remembered the time Arrow had tangled with the younger members of the Black Dragon Society die Jungeubersoldaten, and how she had followed the adventures of that family line once she had awakened in the distant future. This gave her a greater understanding of where they were, and when. He wouldn't remember me, she thought. This Archer had lived fifty years after her war, and his mentor would have had no reason to tell him of such things. We are there still, frozen on that island. But what would be the point of awakening us now, in another alien world. 

How many are close enough for Owain to bite? 

The hunter: 

They met the Aeldari while escaping from a drukhari ship - they met him by dint of him exploding the head of the pirate captain who'd been chasing them with a perfectly aimed bolter shot from across the city-sized cargo bay. Upside down. Inside a pressure suit. 

Some in the crew went for their weapons once they realized who their rescuer actually was but it was, of all people, Harrier who held up his hand. "From the pit. Ja. Gut." And that was all it took. 

(Harrier had been put into a gladiatorial arena aboard the ship. They'd thought it was funny to throw him a non-functioning rifle so instead he'd killed everything in it with his bayonet instead. Well. Most everything.) 

Ril'ey is shorter and stockier than the average Aeldari, meaning he actually can pass for human if you're not particularly familiar with his species. He's quiet, keeps to himself (a good trait for a xeno aboard a ship of the Imperium, even a Rogue Trader's) and tends to disappear when nobody's looking at him. He meditates where he can find the space and maintains an impressive trophy room deep in the bowels of the ship. He applied his brand of sanction himself - and before he was ordered. 

He doesn't talk much about what he's there for but he kills the Rogue Trader's enemies (and indeed those of the other crew) and stories of justice dispensed by riflefire from _somewhere_ keep the ship's crew in line too. 

He kills drukhari in particular but will kill anything you tell him to kill without much of any expression on his dark face. 

There's one particular group of Aeldari he seems to be hunting; a group that wears clothes in similar colors and cut to his. He prefers to deal with them himself and in one particular battle was seen to detonate the spirit stone of the wounded Aeldari leader with a single, well-placed shot, then kill him with the next one. That's a deep, terrible blasphemy among the Aeldari - but perhaps that's why he walks the Path of the Outcast among the mon-keigh. 

It sounded to the Enginseer (who has memorized the languages of all the enemies of Mankind) like he said "Go to Hell."

Which is true enough. 

What he really said was though

 

Neko/Owain 

"We met outside of schooling," said Owain pleasantly. "She proved a worthy friend. Your family has taught her well." 

Neko, leaning against her boyfriend, pulled out her phone and said, her accent thick - "I have lots of friends at other schools! Look!" 

Climbing over herself to get to Aaron, she proceeded to play a video of Catgirl Reacts! to the food at Riverview High's fundraiser night, a generally supportive video (outside of the chili bacon cheeseburgers) that ended with her putting money in the donation box. "It is a nice school. Much bigger than the one I went to - back in Japan," she added. "I had to wear my costume," she confided in Aaron. "For the show." 

"Neko and I are exchange students," said Owain, a bit too easily as he sat down next to Neko on the opposite side. "She is from Japan and I from, ah, Wales." 

Neko/Owain 

A gleaming Owain flew overhead, flapping his wings to shake the water from them. "At times!" he called to Jonah, his deep voice particularly odd coming from a large raven. He landed on Neko's shoulder and continued. "Tis better with a horse, I am not fain to travel all that way on foot. Besides, in the air I can have the pleasance of a fine view." He took the opportunity to nibble on one of his own toes. 

For her part, Neko had kicked off her sandals and was stretching out her small furred feet, her pointed toes far apart for a moment. "I grew up in mountains much bigger than those," she told Jonah easily. "I just hope America hasn't made me soft," she added, twitching her tail slightly at the thought. 

The cleric: 

Judith Brightstar is here because she betrayed everyone she loved.

When the Inquisition came to purge the mutants below her father's holdings, the confessor-in-training came along for the ride. The fires burned for days, the mutant and abhuman given the Emperor's Peace by any means necessary. 

It was good work, honorable work even if her own role was primarily a note-taker and witness. And witness she was. She noticed that the mutant shantytowns were all clustered around the outlet pipes for her father's factories; she looked at the maps the fire teams had prepared and noted that the corruption seemed to spread outward like so much spilled amasec. And then she realized, with sick horror, what had happened. Her father's factories, supposed to be lovingly managed for the Astra Miltarum's needs - were pumping corruption and poison into the Undercity. 

A stealthy heresy, spreading corruption and inhumanity through sins of sloth, greed, and neglect of the Emperor's people. But isn't that how heresy works so often? Innocence is no excuse. 

When she told the Inquisitor he listened attentively, studied her evidence, and agreed with her conclusions. (The Inquisitor is a man of deep feeling. He invited her parents to leap into the outlet pipe's green, bilish off-flow if it was _not_ a source of corruption, and to their credit they stood true to their principles and did.) His recommendation letter won her a place in the Ecclesiarchy and makes her one of the youngest holders of the title of confessor in the sector. 

Her bodyguard, Sister Chauvina, seems to her a stern figure, albeit one riven by her own inner pains and passions. (Heretics do make an appearance aboard ship from time to time but Chauvina's eerily methodical public and brutal demonstrations of their fate keeps such things rare.) Perhaps one day she'll reach out to her and try to learn her secrets. But Judith has a secret too. Not testifying against her parents, an act of courage that has made her famous in the sector church hierarchy. 

Her secret comes from the moment of her parents' death. A secret that makes her pray for forgiveness. 

Not what she did. But the look they gave her as they leaped, arm-in-arm, from the outflow pipe's edge together. She prays for forgiveness for how that final look makes her feel, alone in the darkness of her quarters. 

Neko 

Neko had slipped into 'character' as they studied the art, deploying her robot ladybug to film her as Catgirl Reacted...to Dr. Metropolis's Art! She'd changed briefly into kimono and geta for the recording, playing up her accent enough that she looked like just an enthusiastic Japanese cosplayer to anyone looking casually - and kept her distance from her friends in case they weren't interested in being social media celebrities. A public appearance in a mall meant she'd signed a few autographs and taken a few selfies with admiring fans, much to her very kawaiiful delight. But when she was done she'd changed in the giant bathroom into an oversized Fleur de Joie T-shirt and flowery jeans, and now she was sitting in the food court and drinking from a large strawberry boba tea. Her tail and ears were invisible to anyone looking - at least not looking through a camera lens. 

When she hit bottom with a discreet slurp, she raised her head and pointed up to the skylight and said "So, what do you think? Not many cities have their own kami; at least, not one so alive," she added. 

The Inquisitor's assistant knows a secret. 

This should of course be no surprise to anyone who knows anything about the Inquisition - particularly since the girl is a psyker. She is quiet and obedient, her short white hair in a boyish cut, her yellow eyes (a minor mutation!) downcast as she calmly and efficiently sorts through the mind of anyone her master asks her to break. (She specializes in terrible illusions pulled from the depths of the Warp, the sort to break a man's soul even before she tears into his mind.) When she lights up it's when she's instructing the young, giving them lessons in Terran history and the Emperor that teach them their place in the Imperium. They always listen. They had better, if they know what's good for them. 

The girl knows a secret that she learned when she was even younger than she is today, one that was confirmed for her by the Salamanders that rescued her from her father's ship when it came tumbling out of the Warp just a few years ago. Would you like to hear it? I warn you - outside of certain Space Marines, it's rank heresy. The sort that earns death to the speaker and to those who heard it, just to be safe. 

Are you ready? 

Yes, you're sorry you heard it now, aren't you? 

How does the girl know this? 

Very simply - 

Oh don't look so shocked, you know how long vessels can tumble freely in the Warp if something happens to their Navigator. Long enough that a ship that set out not long after the Unification Wars could tumble freely, so freely, amid terrible things, while a girl slept in a cryopod while unholy things hunted and killed freely all around her. She remembers those things at times, before she slipped into true sleep. Terrible things. 

She dreamed of him as she slept. The shining man, the perfect specimen of psyker too, who her father pledged his loyalty to when the Thunder Warriors came to his kingdom, who guided them to their ship when they departed to carry the word of the new empire of man out to the xenos-infested cosmos. It was he who touched her face and helped her still her nightmares, who smiled when he saw her bear her tattoo so bravely. She remembers his voice and the way he told her "very good, child. very good!" 

She awoke in the empire built in His name when one young Salamander, horrified at the thought of this frozen child amid such uncountable centuries of carnage, rescued her from the bowels of a ship that had been an unholy abattoir since before the Horus Heresy. There was no mark of Chaos on her, a miracle that seemed impossible until you consider that she had personally known the touch of the God-Emperor of Mankind. (Her tattoo is directly over where he touched her.) 

(the tech-priests aboard were happy to take a cryodevice from the early days of the Imperium - even now they study it and keep their secrets, as they do.) 

She is very lucky that Brother Owain, when she confided her story in him, told his commander - and that his commander was among the many Space Marines who knew the Emperor for what he had been in the old days and not what the Ecclesiarchy had made Him over ten thousand years of history. 

Being naturally secretive she accepted the idea that some secrets were best kept, lest the bearer die of telling them. The Inquisition is the best protection for a psyker who is strong enough; safer than the endless dangers of the Army. Her shields are strong, strong enough that even the psykers of the Inquisition were unable to see her as anything more than an amnesiac psyker delivered to them by a Space Marine chapter eager to prove its loyalty to church and state. 

She bore their trials. What was it, to one who when she dreamed remembered the looks on the faces of those who had died before her frozen prison - and the silence, the terrible silence, since? 

So now she serves the Inquisition, quiet and deadly and merciless as a cat. And when she dreams, well. It's a good thing no one else can read those thoughts. 

In the grim darkness of the far future, the most terrible, unholy secret of uncountable ancients of all is

Neko 

Neko had excused herself to get changed once they landed, and now padded last out of the plane. She was wearing her costume, a rarity for the usually urban catgirl. She wore a sleek, form-fitting bodysuit made of stretchy, breathable fabric in a dark navy blue color. The suit had long sleeves and pants, with a high collar and a full-zip front. Over the bodysuit, she wore a bright red and gold kimono-style robe with flowing sleeves and a wide obi sash tied around her waist. The robe was adorned with intricate gold and silver embroidery and bold, stylized Japanese characters. The kimono and suit were both cut to give her tail freedom where it twitched slightly behind her. To complete the costume, Neko wors a pair of tall, laced-up boots in a matching navy blue color, with thick soles and a slight heel to provide stability and support for her acrobatic movements. 

When she took her pack, she carefully strapped it around her shoulders. She was from a place and time very distant from the underclassmen, but didn't actually have that much experience on her own in the jungle. The mountains of home would have been better, but even there she had usually stuck to her village. After all, there was no reason to go live in the heart of the wood when you had a perfectly fine village to live in. 

Shuddering, she turned and faced her team. She opened her mouth to speak and found herself declaring: 

"Listen!" Her voice was a low hiss that seemed to come from everywhere, even inside Miri's armor. She paced back and forth in front of them, ears and tail twitching. "The jungle is a place of terrors beyond your wildest imaginations. Practice now means we will be ready in the realm of the Jungle Lord." She raised one finger, her nail slightly conical, like a cross between a human's and a cat's. "Timeout," she said, pointing at Lawrence. "I need you to check the - perimeter." Her accent thickened on the last word. "Cerebral and Cerebellum, what do your mind-eyes see - are we alone here?" she asked, pointing to the woods. "Star-Squire, can you see anything from the air?" she added.