Avenger Assembled

"Hi, Alex," said Mark with a warm smile. "You like them?" He looked very pleased at her compliment, gently handing her the bouquet already in a matching red vase. (It had been a long couple of hours since he'd hit the flower shop.) He smiled and looked her over, looking quite pleased with what she'd done with herself. "You look great, Alex. I really like that outfit." He had no idea if it was new or not; that wasn't the sort of thing Mark thought about. What mattered was how nice she looked; that they'd both dressed up for an evening out at one of his favorite spots in Freedom City. "Are you ready to go?"

August 3, 2009: Alex and Mark enjoy a lovely evening out, where surely no one will mess with them. D(ate) Day

This is where Alex and Mark have their date.

Alone in his room a little before six, Mark took a little while to check himself out in the full-length mirror on his closet door. He'd gone with a dress shirt and slacks for this evening out, taking advantage of a sale at a the nearby florists' to buy a classic bouquet of roses for Alex. Apparently posies weren't a real flower at all, an embarrassing discovery that fortunately he'd been able to make alone. He wasn't feeling embarrassed now, though; more confident, expectant, and just a little bit nervous. He'd planned to wait until exactly the hour of eight, but eventually his nerves were such that he gathered up his bouquet, adjusted his little Freedom League collar pin, and headed upstairs to greet Alex. He was going on a date!

OK, Dark Star, I need a DC 30 Toughness save thanks to the Autofire on Vestige's Strike.

August 5, 2009: The Claremont kids begin a trip to a place less friendly: Erde! Three Hour Tour

This is the thread where the Claremont kids start their trip to Erde. Later, it will be multiple threads!

Date: August 5th, 2009 Lawrence Normal Smalls was no one's favorite kid at Claremont, the self-styled "Gravity Master" combining the disadvantages of being physically awkward, incredibly brilliant, and a spoiled, immature brat whose attempts to ingratiate himself with his fellow students at best made him more everyone's annoying little brother than anyone they actually wanted to hang around with. Some people at the school worried that Lawrence (never Larry, always Lawrence) might grow up to be a supervillian, and what he was doing today was perhaps a step down that path. Up on the roof of the Diana Falk cafeteria, concealed by a special addition to his gravity belt, Lawrence worked on his latest invention; a teleporter that would allow him to beam anyone he wanted anywhere on the face of the Earth he wanted. He'd never have to worry about Sloth picking on him again! - Down below, Edge's attempt at recruiting another member to Young Freedom hadn't gone very well. At least he'd managed to get everyone sitting together around a big cafeteria table for their lunch-time meeting, even if it had taken some pretty heavy persuasion for some of his more recalcitrant members. The most recalcitrant of all, as it happened, had decided not to be a member at all. "Hey, guys, it's not that I don't appreciate the offer," said Hope Rogers, the erstwhile Agent H, "And I ain't getting high-hat on you or anything. Some of you are all right. I just don't think I'm a team player like what you want for the...team you've got here." "Well, Hope, thanks for coming to the meeting anyway," said Mark with a wry smile. "I'm sure you'll do well on your own, just like we'll do well together. And the rest of you guys, thanks for coming out too. I know a lot of us have pretty busy schedules or aren't fans of this kind of thing, and I appreciate you making the effort to come out here." He had a feeling some of the people there had needed a little encouragement to get out there. "In the meantime, it's pizza day; let's eat!" The boxed pizzas they'd ordered in was already sitting on the table, the good aromas wafting in every direction. Truthfully, maybe the teenagers would have been able to concentrate better without the food there, but Mark was a teenager too: he was hungry!

Eddie did indeed have an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, which made it all the more puzzling when he found that none of the bands he recognized were on the list. In fact, a closer inspection revealed some puzzling things! Final Madmen wasn't the name of a band that he'd ever heard of, but it did seem like a slightly reworded version of the band he'd recently gone to see with his Claremont buddies. Similarly, Lady HaHa and Tim Justlake were really bizarrely similar to existing artists with the names on the list slightly changed. He was familiar with hipster irony well enough, but he doubted that was enough to get Rufus so excited. While Eddie was looking over the music, a humming Rufus began setting up his equipment. "I'll just get it all set up before I go on," he said cheerfully. "That way all I gotta do is show up and start the beat!"

Adventures in Erde: Hi all. I need five Claremont students for an adventure in another dimension. That other dimension is Erde! This will be a serious-minded adventure in the style of Giant-Size X-Men #1 and the Bronze Age. (Hey, it's a Nazi-run dystopia; it should be a moderately serious adventure) To spare us from a Grim Visit to a Grim World full of Grim People, there will also be heroic triumph over adversity, scenic vistas from lands beyond the Midnight Sun, innocents to rescue from fiendish adversaries, pretty girls and handsome boys, and legion upon legion of robo-Nazis! (Especially the robo-Nazis!) We've got: Edge Hellion Hope Rogers (NPC) so far. Five more slots to go!

I volunteer my good buddy Edge for this one.

If I messed anything up for anyone, lemme know.

Date: May 24th, 2009 It was dark over Freedom City by the time the various heroes arrived in the sky, flying fast so as to avoid detection. Phantom could feel the strong charge of magical energy in the air as they went, blotting out even the strange feelings she got from Grim and Dr. Archeville, and knew perfectly well what was going on. This dimension wasn't yet a Dark Dimension, its laws of physics shaped entirely by the whim of its magical Dark Lord, but from the feel of things it was close. It wouldn't be long at all before Lord Arachnos could simply rip time and space asunder and send his armies plunging into the heart of Freedom City. And that was if they were lucky. There were worse things yet than armies that a mage of such awesome power could summon. Liberty Park had been the focal point of their most recent departure, and it seemed a prudent place to make their landing now, shielded by the psychic and gravitic concealment of Scarab and Dark Star. "Liberty Park" here was something far different, though, a place with monuments to very different heroes. Neither of the Trasks could quite look at the big set of statues labeled _The Liberty Brigade Triumphant_ at the center of the park, the visibly recognizable forms of Donar, Columbia, Raven, Magpie, and Odysseus all bowing before a faceless figure in arcane robes, at twenty feet tall towering over them as a father towers over his children. "The old one had Gladiator," murmured Rachel, her words an act of defiance in this place. "There it is." Above all else was the Tower of Arachnos, a great silvery spike driven deep into the heart of Freedom City. Magic radiated palpably from that place, obvious to the senses of everyone there with the slightest hint of magical awareness. "That's where my children are. And that's where _he_ is."

This is the thread where the Knights of Freedom defeat the forces of Arachnos.

Dark Star and Scarab, I need a Notice check from both of you.

Jack moved in silence and darkness through the vampire party, his own prodigious abilities to conceal himself giving him an edge even on many of his own kind. The undead were out in full force tonight, the party bustling with the whispery figures of vampires and their servants. Much of the party was all pale skin and soft voices, smiling men and women with flinty eyes and sharp teeth. The humans who followed them around had quiet eyes and minds, faces downcast when they weren't gazing in awe and wonder at their masters. Not every vampire had a human servant, though, and not everyone looked as cold as Melinda. There were other vampires who looked more like Jack than anything else, only their pale skin and lack of respiration keeping them from looking perfectly human. These younger ones were all jockeying for position, just as Jack had suspected, visibly competing with each other as they sipped bottled blood or danced together, showing off how strong and powerful they were with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The queen of the show, the arch-predator of all of them, was Melinda. She reclined on a magnificent throne of polished ebony, her skin perfectly pale beneath a lush black dress, with humans and vampires both sitting or standing by her side. Her eyes were hard too, but she was smiling, stroking the hair of a favored pet vampire, her fangs prominent as she watched her subjects compete for her favor. Even drifting among his friends, Jack heard no mention of his name, no one worried about where he'd gone. They had their own concerns, he could tell, the wide eyes and whispered voices in dark corners murmuring about their own worries and problems. Melinda was, what? Gone mad? Gone worse? No one could say, but tonight things were coming to a head. If they only knew...

"I've got a good feeling about this spot," said Edge with a confident smile. Having landed safely on the roof, he slipped his grappling gun back into its holster. "And even if it's not the right spot, hey, maybe there are free peaches or something." He coughed. "Not that we'd steal them, Mr. Danger, sir," he added, sincerely concerned about what the older man would think of him. "We'll leave money behind."

"I just wanted to make sure I got the good stuff set up for tonight," said Rufus with a big grin. He raised his CDs and commented, "This is sweet stuff, man. You really oughta hear this." He handed a case to Eddie, the shiny new plastic gleaming in the overhead light. "It's a little New Agey, I admit, but he really rocks up the classical violin stuff with the new electronic New Wave Funk! It's really awesome." Something seemed up with Rufus. Like all of the club's employees, Rufus was clean, a sharp break from the usual stereotype of club DJs, but today he seemed a bit sweaty and unusually enthusiastic and voluble as he praised his newest discovery.

Follow our team on their adventures over to "Checkmate" in The Lands Beyond section of "Other Areas Around Freedom"

"Will be there," growled Avenger. She was off the line after that, the rage Jack was just restraining pushing her into the sky and into the direction Dr. Archeville had relayed to him through Dark Star. It was time to move, and it was time to end this particular disaster through judicious use of fisticuffs. And make sure no one ever, ever told anyone about this particular story.

What if you separated it out as different parts of equipment? I.e, a build where the Gliding Flight was purchased as a separate piece of equipment from the Shield? That way there's less worry about the omni-equipment that does all and sees all. (I'm not sure you should have Deflect on it; if nothing else, Deflect probably isn't worth your money!) For flight, why not buy a hang-glider with the collapsible feature?

When he saw the badly-wounded supervillian down below, Avenger was left with some hard choices to make. He made a decision to stay far away from the crater, trusting the other heroes to deal with Malice, who seemed to be cooperating with the authorities rather than actually putting up a fight. What could I do about that suit, anyway?He headed back to the edge of the blast zone and concentrated on helping dig survivors there out of the rubble. He felt like a damnable coward leaving others to deal with a possibly dangerous threat...and maybe he was.

OK, quote, that can be done. Gimmie a Sense Motive check while you're at it.

OK, Vestige is up. You can just edit your action for this round into your most recent post, and then we'll go from there.

July 29: Breakdown dances the beat of his life when the Maestro comes to pay the piper! This Is a Journey Into Sound