Electra

Jessie listened carefully to the briefing, her brow furrowed but her face otherwise neutral. "What is the endgame?" she asked the military man curiously. "What are you hoping to do with them once you've mobilized your forces? Do we need to put them back in the mountains somewhere, or will you be trying to find some way to put them in jail?" She looked over at the elder. "And, um, do the stories you know tell about any ways of making them mad? Like things people could do that would make them want to chase somebody and ignore things like civilians and towns?" 

"That was quick," Erin observed, pulling up the outside security camera to get a look at the visitor. They'd retreated from the conference room for "consultation" which more meant "talk about the baby without the baby and his whole family watching." The security office was not far away, and a place where she felt a lot more personally comfortable. "Wow, she's still wearing her high school costume. Bold choice." 

Pressing the outside intercom button, she spoke to Copycat. "Thanks for coming so quickly. One second and we'll get you inside." She looked over to Steve. "Can you go escort her in?" 

"Keeping the station from collapsing saved a lot of lives," Paige agreed with a nod, remembering the research she'd done. "That seems to have been a common theme among the replacements; they caused plenty of damage on their own, but the collateral damage that arose from fighting them or from villains around them taking advantage of the situation was often as bad or worse. What happened after that?" 

Danica was relieved to see Eira reappear, though she wasn't exactly convinced by her friend's veneer of calm. It was still better that having her disappeared into the computer! She decided it was probably better to focus on the task now, and make sure there were no hurt feelings later. "Um, let's see. I like the stability of the Segway a lot, and that it has good handles to hold onto. I like that I can go on it in public and not draw a lot of attention even when I'm not doing hero stuff. I wish that it weren't so heavy, and it would be nice if it could be a little bit faster, and maybe better for going over rough terrain. It would be really neat to be able to go up and down stairs, but I don't know if I'm ready for all out flying. Does that make sense, sort of?" 

"I don't hear anything yet." Next to the heavily armored Sea Devil, Jessie made an incongruous picture in her khaki trousers, light blouse and sturdy hiking boots. A strap across her chest did secure her shield to her back, but it also served as a holder for her water bottle, camera, and phone case. Unlike her friend, Jessie hadn't really come prepared for action, but so long as she had her fists and her baton she was always pretty much ready. She turned to study the young woman who'd arrived ahead of them. "Hi, I'm Jessie, and this is, um, Sea Devil," she introduced herself. 

"Eira?" Danica looked stricken as her robot friend disengaged from the room, glancing from screen to camera as though she could somehow figure out where Eira's brain had gone. "It's a really nice hovercraft, I swear! If I were faster and had stronger legs and ultra-rad reflexes, I'm sure it would be perfect!" She smiled up at the nearest camera. "I bet we could find some hero who it would be perfect for, somebody who'd love a cool ride like the Wing! It's just that I sort of need a scooter that more, just stays on the ground most of the time, you know? And does normal scooter stuff." 

She turned to Voltage, giving him a smile as well, though this one seemed a little strained. "Um, yeah, if you've got some water, that'd be great. What else do you work on here?" 

"We've already seen his memories, but if you think you might be able to get us more it's worth a try, providing Agent Irons is willing," Miss A allowed, looking from The Scarab to the screen. "While you're working with him over here, Voltage, Angelic, why don't we go down to the other end of the lab and get Keres going too. Multitasking might get us some answers quicker. Voltage, if you can double check and make sure our partition is totally secure before we dump some evil robot brain into my business servers, I'd appreciate it very much." She led the way across the room to another workstation and set of screens, close enough to have a general idea what the other group was up to, but far enough away not to interfere with one another. 

Raina raised her eyebrows a bit at the total but passed both the check and the business card to her simian business manager, who tucked them into the pocket of his phone case. "Thanks, I'll keep that in mind," she told him. Sure, her ears were still ringing a little, but that probably wouldn't last too long, and it was nice to get paid to take down a bad guy for a change. And to actually manage to take down the bad guy, for a change. Plus, she figured, if she was taking jobs from a guy on the Freedom League, nobody could say it was shady, and if it was shady, then why did they have him on the Freedom League? The logic seemed impeccable, though she probably wasn't going to run that syllogism past Merlin. "We all done here, then?" 

Danica looked confused at the initial projection of the Wing, which looked very little like a scooter. The confusion turned slowly to horror as the simulated version of herself was launched into the air at four hundred miles per hour, anchored only by her feet. "I don't... what?" she finally managed, not able to look away. "I thought you were making me a new scooter?" She realized a moment later that this response was not exactly diplomatic for something Eira had obviously worked hard on, crazy as it might be. "I mean, it looks like a really cool flying hyperspeed hoverboard, and the design is very artistic, but it's not exactly..." She looked to Ryder and Voltage for help. 

Raina took a pair of heavy gloves from the concealed pocket in her cape and donned them before helping to stack some of the nastier magic items. Even through thick leather, she could feel the badness slime against her aura. Tonight would definitely be a night for a nice cleansing bath with salt and herbs. "Even babysitting is a one-hour minimum," she agreed cheerfully. "And I'll need to replace the gloves too, they're going to be ruined." It didn't look as though the gloves had a spot on them, but she figured a guy like Frost would know better if he was used to purging evil magic. 

Raina poked carefully through the items, avoiding the ones that stank of evil magic. That turned out to be most of them, but she did find a battered old wallet with a twinge of neutral magic on it that seemed worth a look. "Huh, guy put a spell on his wallet." It didn't have much in it, a decent fake ID and a fifty dollar bill. She tugged the bill out to see if it was real, only for the wallet to give a little magic twinge and another bill to appear in it. "Huh."

She handed the first bill to Merlin, then pulled out another, and another, and another, and another. After the fifth bill, the wallet stayed empty. When Raina looked at Merlin, the money had all disappeared. He gave her a bland look. Raina rolled her eyes, and did the same thing with the IDs, though she shoved those into her own pocket. Five fake IDs for middle-aged German men, then the wallet was empty. Still felt magic, though. Could be worth a look later. 

"Most of this stuff is serious bad news and needs to be destroyed," she told Frost. "The Freedom League has somebody on call for stuff like that, right? I don't want to be here all night drawing purification circles." 

"Wait, he's not dead?" Raina asked skeptically. "I literally burned him to ashes, that's pretty dead. Do we need to spread his ashes over running water or some Dracula BS? Because I'm not doing that, but if you have a shovel to go with your giant hammer, I mean you probably could." She remained on her broom, floating ten feet up and ten feet away from Frost, just in case he rethought his position on hugging. "He hasn't got minions in that mausoleum or anything that we need to pick off still, right?" 

It was easy for Velocity to follow the trail of destruction to its end, but for all her vaunted speed it was clear she was already too late. Fleur de Joie's empty eyes stared at the dark sky, her body obviously broken and crushed despite Tiamat freeing her from the pile of concrete. Even the yellow dandelions braided into her hair were withered and dead. Whatever had happened to her had probably been instant, too quick for her even to flee or call the plants to her defense. 

Across the park, the massive shadowy beast screamed with rage as the teenagers harried it, both of them scoring blows against it one after the other! Shadowborne's vampiric draw seemed to pull some of the very substance out of it, leaving it just a bit smaller, a bit less dark. The injuries, combined with Velocity's sudden arrival, seemed to take the cockiness out of it. It pulled away, glaring at them from a thousand shifting faces. "This isn't over!" it hissed. "You cannot fight the past!" A sudden wash of darkness and it was gone, leaving nothing but a faint musty smell like old bones in its wake. 

Frost was about as effective fighting this necromancer as Raina had been against that motorcycle gang, so she had to sympathize with him a little even if he was still a creeper. Certainly enough sympathy to have her looping back around after the next lightning strike faded away and lining up another shot. The Nazi necromancer was in pretty bad shape, like, real bad, corpsey-fall-aparty sort of shape, and another hit might finish him off. She took the risk and came in closer, still invisible, just to like, make sure that this guy was really as bad as he was cracked up to be. The giant swastika medallion around his neck was enough to convince her. She gathered her power once more and shoved it into him like the heart of a star, and in moments the undead creature was no more. She had to fly backwards quickly to avoid the puff of acrid smoke and ash that was left of him. Merlin silently approved. 

"The bus was late, so we fought a rage monster at the bus stop!" Danica added enthusiastically. She took the earplugs from Ryder with a nod of thanks, but palmed them for the moment. "It was huge, but it couldn't get past my tough shell, and then Ryder and I combined our powers and he got this ultra-cool finishing move in on it, and it disappeared! So, sorry we're late, the bus didn't come for like twenty minutes! You guys should think about trying to get a bus stop closer to your front door here, it would be super convenient and environmentally friendly! 

She turned her attention and a friendly smile to Voltage. "Hi, I'm Chelone!" she told him with equal enthusiasm. "Thanks so much for helping Eira with my project! I can't wait to see what you guys come up with! I miss my scooter a lot." 

Raina does not shake that dazzle (and how!) 

With the guy on the ground she's going to loop back as her move action, then fireball him again from the air. 

Her roll is bad, of course, so I'll burn that new HP right away and reroll for a hit with 26. Autofire is on. 

Scaring a bad dream is also very difficult, the startle does not succeed.

The hit does succeed, though! The monster takes another bruised level, and you may make a recovery check to heal your Bruised condition. 

Even behind the shelter of her handy mausoleum, the noise and light of such a close lightning strike was awesome, in the original sense of the word. "Son of a-" Raina began, then trailed off when she realized she couldn't hear herself cursing. She took a second to check on Merlin, who was shaking all over on her shoulder, but seemed unhurt after sheltering under her cape. He indicated that he couldn't hear much either, but the damage should be temporary. And the inner-ear shakeup, he added when Raina shifted on the broom and nearly fell. 

"Everything about this is gross," Raina groused, even if her words fell on her own deaf ears. Clinging to her broom for dear life, she aimed for the big, Nazi-shaped target painted gray-white against the dark sky. "Eat butt, ya ding-dong," she muttered, shooting a massive fireball at the necromancer before shooting off for safer climes, outside lightning range. 
 

Danica laughed. "I think the chance of me recognizing a gravity manipulation machine before it sticks me to the ceiling are pretty slim," she admitted, "but I'll keep a look out if I see the Grav-o-Flip 3000 or something like that! Maybe something with really easy directions printed out on it, or a "Push to float" button. Which would be totally wicked," she acknowledged. Even at their leisurely pace, at least the lab wasn't too far away. "I haven't seen Nat hardly at all at school lately. She must be really busy!" Danica mused as they neared the door.

Okay, here's Round 4! 

Shadowborne: 16, Bruised x1, Injured, -1 base HP

Memento Mori: 9, Bruised x1

Nightscale: 8, Bruised x1, Injured, +1 base HP

Velocity is also arriving this round but will not arrive in time to act. Tiamat is unconscious, Fleur is dead, additional Freedom League members will be arriving shortly. 

I can't remember if Muirne or Luke have enhanced hearing, but if so you can make a notice check, if you choose, to hear the chatter on Tiamat's League communicator. 

Nightscale's attack hits! 

The monster makes the fort save, so no drain this round. 

The monster fails the toughness save! It is bruised! 

Unfortunately it is very difficult to grab hold of a bad memory, and it wins the grapple contest.

Go ahead and post IC, and then I will invite in our Freedom League visitors and post Round 4 information. 

Sparkler’s Playlist 

1. I Like to Burn Things

The Spades 

2. My Monkey

Jonathan Coulton 

3. Once Upon a Time in New York City

Huey Louis 

4. Stray Cat Strut 

The Stray Cats 

5. Popular

Kristen Chenowith 

6. Firework

Katy Perry 

7. Double Helix

Knuckle Puck 

8. Teacher, Teacher

38 Special 

9. High School Never Ends

Bowling for Soup

10. She’s Always A Woman

Billy Joel

Okay, Raina's going to blast him again with more fire. So much fire. She does not like stupid lightning!

First roll is bad, so she will spend an HP to help her adequately express the depths of her displeasure. Reroll gets a 28. Also, autofire is on.

Once she shoots, she is going to Flight 7 her witchy little self a move action's distance away, which should hopefully protect from additional area attacks.

Raina fails the reflex save and fails the blindness save. But I would contend that she should have some protection because she's actually hiding behind a whole-ass building and probably can't see the lightning that well 

"Who you calling a librarian?" Raina demanded, equal parts insulted and baffled. Not baffled enough, though, to fail to take advantage of the opening Frost's stupid sledgehammer had given her. A quick, cheerful hum had her placid little fireball turning into a mini-inferno as it sped towards the undead Nazi with unerring aim. It shattered against his chest, splashing bits of fire all over his cold, dead body. Raina used the moment of brilliant light to hum herself invisible and dive behind the nearest non-smashed mausoleum.