Search the Community

January 24, 2013 It was just after beginning of lunch period on Thursday, January 24th, 2013 when a holographic dog appeared in the common room of the Claremont dorm that had recently been the home of Sharl Tulink, the young hero who had given his life to save his home world, and much of Earth, from the ravages of the Curator earlier in the month. Claremont's students had been hard at work rebuilding their damaged campus and making new connections with friends who had been falsely accused of being Terminus replicants, or had in fact turned out to be evil robots from beyond the depths of space. Lora, Sharl's familiar electronic German Shepard, woofed at everybody a moment before Sharl Tulink himself simply appeared in thin air with a faint electrical hum. Standing right in front of the TV, and in fact seeming to be partially projected from it, he was hard to miss. "Uh, hey everybody," he said with a little wave. "I'm back!"

Saturday, February 16, 2013 11:04 PM Megan Howell was somewhat quite as she and Kyle Conner rode the elevator in her apartment building to the thirty seventh floor. Because of Megan's business trip to Sweden last week, which had included Valentine’s Day, the couple had gone out tonight for a belated Valentine's Day. They had spent the last few hours having dinner and dancing at the Starlight Room, the revolving restaurant at the top of the Tremont Hotel in Midtown, which offered some of the most spectacular views of Freedom City's skyline. It had been a very enjoyable time, despite all the chaotic emotions that were currently at war within the young woman mind. In the month since she and Kyle has started dating, Megan had been enjoying herself, as one friend had put it, for a time she had practically been bouncing with every step. But then, almost three weeks ago, while out as Velocity, she had met another superhero named Siphon, who had inadvertently copied her superspeed and then joined her in chasing down a Chinese street gang who were on motorcycles or using Speed. While Megan really liked Kyle, there was something about Siphon she found so very appealing, someone that was part of the world she lived in as Velocity, AND could copy her powers and keep up with her, as she had allowed him to do when they had arranged to met up to patrol together once after that first meeting. As if all that were not enough, during Megan's trip to Sweden, she had gotten caught up in a situation involving her ex-lover from a year ago, Lord Robert Harrow, who had come into possession of a powerful artifact. She had also learned that in at least one possible timeline, she and Robert had been married and had a son, a son who had the ability to cause space and time collapse around him, and was driven mad by his powers. But the blonde young woman was determined not to let all that ruin her evening, and thus far, she had done so. Leading Kyle down the short stretch of hallway to her door, she gave him a wide smile as she opened it. "So, welcome to my little corner of the city." She said, stepping inside to a small foyer with hardwood floors, where she placed her small black purse and keys on a narrow table along one wall under a mirror. After she and Kyle had hung up their coats in the closet on the left side of the foyer, Megan led him straight ahead to where there was a step down and the apartment opened up into a dark area that faintly glowed with lights from other buildings. The living room area was a large space that ran perpendicular to the foyer, and connected to a small dining room area as well to the left. But the rest of the details of the room were quickly overlooked, as ones eyes were naturally drawn to the left wall of the living room, and the walls of the dining room. which were all large windows, providing a amazing view of the buildings of the Wading Way outside, including the three, twisting towers of Pyramid Plaza rising up in the distance.

GM Monday, January 28, 2013 1:30 PM Freedom Aquarium stood on its own pier along the city's Waterfront district, a large three story building that also included a walled-in area beneath the pier to serve as a habitat for the various marine animals that called the aquarium home. Despite being early afternoon on a weekday, the aquarium was fairly busy, a number of school groups and mothers with young children making up the majority of the crowds at the moment. Out in front of the main entrance to Freedom Aquarium, Katharine "Kat" Shade and Giang Trang made their way off of the public bus that had brought them from Bayview. The two teenagers were students at the Claremont Academy and had been sent to the aquarium as part of a report they had to work on together for biology.

January 23rd, 2013 FDR High School, Freedom City Late Afternoon FDR High was an unassuming building made mostly of brown brick, sitting in the middle of one of Freedom City's largest suburbs. It was bigger than most of the colonial and ranch houses around it, and the entire thing was enclosed by a chainlink fence. Jessica Parker had already walked around the entire thing twice, trying to figure out where students would come out (in just about ten minutes, now) and had found at least three, all spilling out in different directions. Which would make finding Baxter Bowles a challenge, to say the least. Jessica stopped underneath a bare tree and sighed, looking at her feet and snuggling a bit deeper into her fuzzy peacoat. The Day of Wrath had been a trying time for all of Freedom's heroes: she had engaged Victoria Atom in a rooftop duel to defend an apartment full of T-Babies, and even after subduing the heroine the body had burst into flames while Ironclad was flying her to Blackstone. Now the tangled wreckage was sitting at the bottom of the South River. Nothing could have prepared her for the news that the Bee-Keeper III, also known to her as Baxter Bowles and maybe-kinda-sort-of her boyfriend, had snapped and tried to incinerate a biker gang and a bunch of bystanders. It had hit her like a punch in the gut to think that someone she knew could be a cold-blooded killer. Now the truth was out and she and the rest of the world knew that the Bee-Keeper that had done such horrid things had been an imposter. But if what Jessica had heard was true, then it was possible that she had never known the real Baxter. Which made the possibility of talking to the real thing more than a little frightening to her. She had liked the Baxter Bowles she had talked to, but who knew if that had any relation to the real thing or if it had all been a lie? Nevertheless, she knew that if she didn't at least try she would always wonder, so here she was. Waiting for a guy who maybe didn't even know that she existed.

Wednesday, January 23rd 10:13 PM There was no reason the Levant Arms should have loomed the way it did. It wasn't even that tall - a mere five stories, and there were much taller buildings on this stretch of the West End. Likewise, the street was fairly well lit, and lights were on in most of the buildings surrounding it. But then, that just made the shadows inside loom that much taller. Nick took the building in, trying to get a more detailed read off of it. It had only been empty for the last few hours; there was no official word from the city, but so far, their opinions ran everywhere from "gas leak" to "undetermined event" - the usual code for "we don't know, but boy, is this weird." He'd heard rumors over the past few nights, from all over the city. Customers at the Black Petal whispering about the strange lights in closed-off rooms. Ghost hunting websites talking about strange wails. The ghosts themselves at Lantern Hill, speaking of an "overwhelming presence." He had been about ready to check it out tonight when all hell had broken loose. There was little word on what had happened, but a 911 call brought most of STAR down on the place, and the first response team had been quick to get all the tenants out. Nor was there any one solid account, with stories ranging from "phantom fire" to "I saw this horrible face looking at me in the mirror" to... "there was a unicorn in the elevator." He'd had to make sure he'd heard that one right. More than once, in fact. Nick checked his watch and kept his eyes firmly on the building. It probably wasn't the sort of place to go in alone. Fortunately, he wasn't going in alone.

With the winter break over, a large portion of Trevor Hunter's time was once again being taken up by classes at Freedom City University. The bulk of his classes for the new semester were theoretical studies that had little chance of capturing his attention fully, since he'd had opportunity to put most of the principles being taught into practice in his alter-ego as the second Midnight. The dark haired young man wasn't adverse to restudying fundamentals and the course work's exercises were worthwhile, but he found it easy enough to split his focus while taking in a lecture. Telepathic communication was at least more polite than texting or browsing social networking sites in the middle of class. --Wrapping up here. Five, ten minutes. Meet you in the quad?--

The chill of winter had begun to settle over Freedom City, the night air now bearing the biting chill that would soon extend into the daytime. But even as winter arrived, the holiday season provided a festive atmosphere and energy to the city that helped to lessen the cold in the air. Throughout the city decorations and lights had gone up, giving the nighttime skyline a very different feel. The cold night air did not seem to dissuade the crowds in downtown Freedom as people went about their holiday shopping; or taking in the various decorations throughout the city; or, of course, attending holiday parties. Just such an event was taking place this evening, at the very edge of Midtown. There, along 52nd Avenue, just across from Liberty Park, stood the mansion of the Midnight Society. Dozens of luxury cars and limousines were making their way into mansion’s grounds, delivering many of the richest and most powerful individuals in Freedom City to the Society’s annual holiday party. The massive mansion was set back from the street, with stone walls sheltering its grounds from the sidewalk. Just inside the walls were large trees that had long since shed their leaves, and well maintained lawns and hedges. A large circular driveway lead to the front of the old stone mansion, which had several towers and peaked roofs. To the right of the front of the mansion was the entrance to its gardens, which stretched around the building to continue on beyond. The large building, and many of the trees and hedges along the front of the building, had been tastefully decorated with lights for the season. Waiting along the circular driveway near the mansion’s main entrance were a number of uniformed valets, though they hardly had time to consider the cold air as they were busy opening the doors of limousines to assist their passengers, or parking cars driven by arriving guests. A couple of those valets moved up to a dark blue Bentley as it came to a stop in front of the mansion. As one moved to open the front passenger door, the other opened the rear passenger door, holding out his hand to assist the young female occupant to exit. Megan Howell shivered slightly as she left the warmth of her father’s car and stepped into the cold December air. The blonde young woman looked up at the old mansion, lit up by both the lights set up along its walls and those arrayed in the grounds in front of it. Megan had missed the holiday party last year, as she had been studying in England, and her family had decided to spend the holidays in Switzerland, and so she had simply gone to join them there instead of returning to the States. Though she had been to an event or two since, there was still something special about the holiday party that stood out from most any other of the Society’s events. The sounds of conversation and laughter drifted out into the night air from the mansion. She was dressed in a sleek black V neck sleeveless evening gown. The dress was perfectly tailored to her lithe and athletic body. Tonight she had her long hair up in a side chignon, and around her neck was a platinum chain from which hung a deep red ruby. In one hand Megan was holding a shopping bag, which held several unwrapped articles of clothing that her mother had purchased as part of the Society’s charity drive for numerous needy families in the city. Lowering her eyes from the sight of the mansion, the twenty-one year old moved near her mother, as her father came over to join them. Dressed in a dark green evening gown, with a slightly more conservative neckline, Erin Howell was carrying another shopping bag filled with clothing to be donated. Donald Howell, dressed in a tailored Italian suit, smiled at his daughter. "Are you ready Megan? Tonight you will not be able to avoid the business conversations all night." He asked as they started towards the door. Megan gave her father a slight smirk, thinking back to past events she had attended at the Society with her parents throughout the years, where she dreaded enduring endless business and political discussions, and always sought out ways to avoid them. "Dad, I think I knew full well what I would be getting into when I started towards my economics major." She then replied with a small smile. "But, I certainly plan to do more than just listen to business conversations." She then added, her smile growing a bit broader.

9:30AM January 10th, 2013 Katasrof & Sorenson Technologies, American Branch, Freedom City HQ K&ST's Hanover building somehow managed to look simultaneously "old world" and "shining future" as Jessica Anne Parker walked up to it. The strangely perfect fusion of stone, steel, and glass seemed like an impervious fortress...But the front doors appeared to be ready to receive visitors, so. Once inside, she could quickly spot the front desk. After introducing herself, she was given a guest pass, guided to an elevator, and told which floor to go to, as well as how to get to the conference room (she couldn't miss it). Indeed, once she stopped at the second-from-the-top floor, the elevator opened to a hallway with a few clearly-marked doors; a couple of bathrooms, emergency stairs, a couple maintenance/cleaning rooms, and at the far end, a set of double doors that were marked simply "Meeting", with an electronic indicator underneath that said "Open". When she stepped inside, it was a large, comfortable meeting room. The far wall was floor-to-ceiling windows that seemed to auto-tint themselves; the other walls had display screens covering most of their surface, including the inside of the (surprisingly thick) door Jessica had come in (which seemed to smoothly close into the wall. The table itself was metal and "glass", though it looked as if it could also serve as a display unit; the chair surrounding it were large and very comfortable. The ceiling had discrete climate control vents, some speakers, and some nodes that might just be holographic display units. Perhaps 2 minutes after she entered the room, a young blond man just a few years her senior entered the room, wearing a dark grey business suit, holding what looked to be a translucent tablet PC, and with a somewhat distracted look on his face. When he noticed Jessica's presence, he looked fully up and walked over, a smile on his face. He offered her a firm handshake. "Excellent! I was hoping you'd be able to make it this morning. We've got a lot to talk about, and probably not as much time as we'd like to do so in. Oh, right, names. I'm Baron Magnus Vilhelm Katastrof; welcome to Katasrof & Sorenson Technologies. Would you like to have a seat? Do you need any refreshments?" He sat down in a chair that was shaped a bit differently from the others (though not by much) at the "head" of the oblong table; he gestured to one of the chairs next/near to him.

GM Continued from Slave to Time Slave to Time - Part 2 - Journey to the Future! A carriage drew up ahead of El Heraldo and Young Brittania, who were short on water, food, sleep, and energy. "You folks alright?" said the Captain Yates. there were six of them. Northern soldiers, weary, dirty, and in at least one case, injured (with a grubby bandage wrapped round his head. Captain Yates was a youngish man, but lined by the war. He looked strong and healthy, with a mop of blond hair and a square jaw, his looks marred by a broken nose and a cauliflower ear. One would not call him an intellectual, by any means, but he seemed to have more wit about him than the average cannon fodder. He had a pleasant attitude, but a gruff voice. "Got to be careful up ahead. The South, they moving. Its going to be dirty fighting soon, all mud and swamp round here. Damn mosquitos nearly as bad as the war, to be honest. I swear, its more rotten and diseased than ever. Lost two of men to fever before we even saw action. Hell, I don't know why we are even fighting over that land..." He seemed genuinely puzzled by his own question. "Still, you folks got to be careful, you know..." he looked at Vile, bound and gagged. "Who you got their, Son?" he asked El Heraldo "a Southern Spy?"

January 18, 9:30am Three days after the havoc wreaked by the robotic hero doppelgangers, Freedom City was still finding a precarious balance of normalcy. The rescue work was done, the destroyed buildings were being put back together, the rubble swept up and carted away. Funerals and memorials were being held for the dead, funds raised for the care of the living. As usual in these sorts of events, the Viktor Archeville Foundation, the charitable branch of ArcheTech, was one of the earliest and largest donors of both money and equipment, but for the first time in more than a year, the charismatic CEO was nowhere to be seen. In fact, no one had seen the unmistakable Miss Americana since before the Day of Wrath, and people were beginning to wonder. On the morning of January 18, ArcheTech released a statement that Miss Americana had been injured while defending Blackstone Prison against a robot doppelganger and would be recovering at her home. All inquiries would be routed through her office until further notice. Not too far away from ArcheTech, in an unassuming house on an unremarkable street, Miss Americana herself was busy catching up on her correspondence. Or rather, Miss Americana lay in useless pieces on a lab table in the corner while Gina sat at her computer and picked through her messages. There were a lot of them. She felt no guilt about taking a couple of days off after the crazy trip through space to save Steve. It had taken almost that long for her to just start feeling normal and safe again. She might even have been willing to play hooky a little longer, but Steve had insisted it was time for him to get back to his job, so she'd done the same. The first thing that stood out when she checked her transcribed voicemails was the more than a dozen messages from Ghost Girl, aka Kimber Storm, all wanting to talk about Sharl. Gina remembered, of course, being told about Sharl's teammates, and suspected she knew what this was about. Sharl was another topic she'd been unfairly putting off, but it really had been a difficult couple of days. Steeling herself, Gina activated the voice modulator that would trade her own voice for the more dulcet tones of Miss Americana, then called the offered number. "Hello, this is Miss Americana, calling for Kimber Storm, is she available?"

Monday, February 4, 2013 4:30 PM Though the late afternoon air was rather cool, the sun was shining as Megan Howell made her way down one of the tree-lined streets of Riverside. She had left work at her internship with Summit Transnational a bit early today to take up Angus Stone's invitation to see the small recording studio she owed in this part of town. The young blonde had met the former pop star during the Midnight Society's holiday party back in mid-December. But given the holidays, starting her internship at Summit, as well as Angus' own busy schedule, it had taken until now for Megan to be able to take her up on the invite. Looking around as she made her way towards the address Angus had given her, Megan smiled as she took in some of the sights of the bohemian neighborhood. I really need to try to get down here more often. The young woman thought to herself. Especially now that it is an easy monorail ride from my apartment in the Wading Way. Reaching the street the studio was on, Megan turned to her left and walked down another block before coming to a stop in front of a building with the sign *Zenith Stuido* out front. Well here we are. She through as she opened the doors and made her way in. "Good afternoon," she said to the receptionist inside with a warm smile. "I am Megan Howell, and I am here to see Angus Stone."

GM Claremont Academy, September 15th, 9.45 A.M. The day had dawned bright and clear, a slight mist hanging on the ground that quickly dispelled as the sun rose and evaporated it, leaving everything outside the warm buildings of the Claremont campus feeling slightly damp. Birds were now departing for warmer climates in force, with flocks passing over Freedom City in great 'V's. Their calls rang out with the sound of approaching autumn and the inexorable march of winter, and they frequently stopped at Claremont Academy to rest, many students having the ability to outright speak to them, and the paths were often littered with stray bits of bread and other kinds of food. While walking across campus, Cerys happened to walk by a small flock of Canadian geese huddled around and hiding a still figure on the grass. Hearing her steps, they rose up in a noisy stream of wings and loud honks, soaring up into the cloudless sky. What they had been hiding turned out to be a small hawk, a bird with long claws and a red stripe down its back, lying still on its side. After a few seconds it stirred, weakly flapping one wing over its left leg, on which a small steel ring holding a piece of paper was bound.

With the heroes and two-thirds of the ship's complement beamed down into the heart of the Curator's central control room, it was just Jill and Vrix-117, and of course Quickstep as well. Vrix wasn't as talkative as Samran or Shepard, and admitted that as she showed Jill how to read the panels that showed everyone's life readings inside the Curator's construct. "Commander's tactical, Shepard's science, but I'm more engineering. I mostly keep the ship running while they're on missions." Vrix had removed her helmet too, revealing bronze skin and hair as red as a lollipop. "I...oh!" she pointed as one of the wall panels lit up to reveal a flash of light from the distant perimeter of the ringworld, a silvery saucer ship flying through the gap. "I don't know that design, but they're not local. Hang on." She tapped a button on the panel in front of her, then shook her head. "Damn. I can't reach the commander, but I got a tachyon squirt out to the fleet. They'll be sending reinforcements. Friends of yours?" she asked, cocking her head Jill's way. Dorothy peered at the screen and said, "Looks just like a flying saucer from the movies!" - The saucer erupted into the Curator's system as it dropped from FTL, spilling a wash of tachyons and neutrinos along with a spray of visible light. They were between the ringworld's star and its structure, and for a moment the sheer size of the magnificent construction, known to be one of the largest structures in the Milky Way, filled the scanners of the ship. Thanks to the Curator's famous paranoia, it had been a long, long time indeed since anyone had ever gotten this close. 'Beneath' them was an ocean big enough to swallow multiple Earths, a storm playing across it that could have covered the entire planet, with distant shores visible even to the naked eye beyond before the ring curved away into invisibility. Trillions of people were down there, living their lives, perhaps never knowing about the Curator. Above them, close to the star, hung a black sphere the size of the Earth's moon, part of the circle of rotating black squares the size of planets themselves that made day and night for the people below. It was the central control unit of the entire structure, the geniuses aboard could tell at a glance. And inside that sphere, somewhere, was Steve. And attached to the side, visible as they got closer and closer, was a white pod the computer recognized as a Lor military vessel.

20th, Sunday Normal Illinois Silverware went click, clatter, clink, on a square table in a room rectangular room. An old, antique cuckoo clock ticked in the corner, next to the staircase. The wallpaper was dark, and if Kat looked behind her she knew she’d see a glass case filled with exotic china. The tiles that Kat’s feet just barely touched were floral. She bit her lip, straightened her blouse, grabbed at the hem of her skirt and squeezed. Click. Her mother stared down at a slab of meat as she sawed at it with a knife. Clink. Her little brother set down his glass after drinking it all in one gulp. It did not break the silence as much as punctuate it. “So,†her mother said, tapping the edge of her plate with a fork, “Lyle, how has school been?†“Fine.†Bless him, her brother looked almost as uncomfortable as she felt, squirming in his seat, averting his eyes and reverting to monosyllables. But Kat’s mother just raised an eyebrow. “Oh?†Oh, how he squirmed under that. When he didn’t say anything she sniffed pointed her knife at Kat. “He’s been having trouble in Ms. Lynn’s class, Lilly. You did well with her; you should help your brother.†She was a small woman, with sharp, angular features and eyes like jagged flint. “Uh,†Kat eyed the knife and smiled. “Sure.†Her mother nodded as though to say ‘of course’ and drove the knife back into her meat with a wet thud.

January 15, 2013 Morning West End There's a man in a giant robot suit marching down the street, calling down vengeance on all who have oppose him. Just another day in Freedom City. "Fools!" boomed the voice of the giant automaton, the pilot just visible inside. "Everyone always said old Jerry Craven wasn't ever going to amount to anything, but look at me! I've got a giant warsuit! Now I'm big, and YOU PEOPLE ARE SORRY! AHAHAHA!" He laughed manically and stomped forwards, people fleeing in terror as he made his way from the warehouse that he'd simply walked his way out of, heading in a leisurely fashion towards the sea. His suit was big, towering as tall as the small tenements on either side, and wide enough that he nearly brushed them on both sides as he went. This was a big problem for the neighborhood; one false move in that big suit and the whole thing would come crashing down on the neighborhood!

Wiki Article Reputation 20Q HellQ

Early January After School Claremont Academy As it turned out, there were a lot people who liked teleporters at Claremont, and every one of them wanted to go see London, take a quick jaunt home and back before someone could note that they were gone. Kat had been happy to help at first, but time worn thin her patience at playing taxi for everyone who came to ask. She had things to do, people to save, bad guys to punch. She couldn't help with everyone who didn't want to bother with the actual traveling part of travel! There wasn't enough hours in the day. Normally, using her gifts to help someone go shopping was right out. But promises of free stuff along the way from Darren, one of the richest kids on campus—Maybe the richest!—had bolstered Kat's willingness to play taxi. There had been other reasons to say yes too, of course. Other reasons to try to corner Darren somewhere she could ask a few questions without being obvious. But the free stuff helped. Kat marched down the steps in front of Claremont along with the rest of the student body, all eager to get out of school and do their own thing. Rather than try to hold her place in the crowd Kat veered off to the side, stood on the green, knuckled a kink out of her back and waited for Darren.

The group of young heroes and their Lor allies stepped onto the transmitter pads and vanished, their atoms quantum-tunneling five hundred miles through solid computronium and re-emerging in the central control room of the Curator - the mighty cybernetic intelligence whose vast power and arcane manipulations of their world had brought them to this place. They found themselves standing in a vast, cathedral-sized hall lined with dark and silent monitors cut in a triangular shape, the too-bright silver light overhead a source of stark illumination inside the central hub of the Curator's lair. The air was stale and smelled musty, a relic of however many eons it had been sealed inside since the Curator's original construction. At the 'altar' of the room sat a massive chair, almost like a throne, covered in the same silver-black pyramids that were the Curator's symbol, tentacles of computronium rising from it to infiltrate the wall behind. Sitting in that chair, its head bowed ever-so-slightly, was a still, silent Curator drone, its three eyes dim and dark. And standing next to it was Dr. Sebastian Stratos, lightning crackling around his fingers. "Hey, kids!" he called with a wave. "Got your hive going, eh, Barry?" He chuckled. "I wondered if I'd see you again. You didn't happen to bring any food with you, did you? Because I am _starving_!" He waved his lightning-covered hands around for emphasis. "I found this zoo a couple of levels down, but most of the animals tasted terrible, and one kept trying to shapeshift into my mother or something. It was awful!"

Blodeuwedd was perplexed. She had spent months trying to track down the source of the statue but every lead led nowhere. She’d call in a few favour and gotten hold of some very secretive information but she was missing that one clue necessary to put all the clues together. She’d got the dorm room to herself this morning and she’d spread all her evidence across the floor trying to will it to make some sense when she spotted it. Casually resting on her sword stand was a large golden envelope inscribed with a rather fancy V. Inside was an invitation to the annual gathering of the Freedoninan Steampunk Convention. She’d heard about them, how they dressed up as Victorians and pretended that the last 100 years hadn’t happened or at least involved more brass and steam. The other thing she’d knew about them was that there was one guest they’d always hoped they could temp to attend…

Ready for anything, the heroes erupted from the pyramid ship, weapons raised as they prepared to do battle with unending robot hordes! But instead they found...stillness. The lights were bright, just as VINCE had suggested, the sharp white glow of the central spine overhead casting harsh shadows everywhere. There was a scent in the air vaguely like the stuff added to natural gas back on Earth, and everywhere there were robots! Eerie humanoid skeletons with three eyes and clawed limbs, ferocious-looking guardians of the Curator that were doing absolutely nothing. For a long time, Harrier eyed the robots, his armor having chunked open over his skin, before he spoke in a voice loud enough for them all to hear. "Look at them. They are not arranged. They are not armed. They are...immobile." And sure enough, the robots were silent and still, caught in the middle of walking, pressing buttons, circulating around the hangar bay, but not a single one moved a metal muscle. Harrier walked over to one, still wrapped in armor. "It does not react." "So what does that mean?" asked Quickstep, scrubbing her hands along her arms as she leaned out of the ship. "Is he waiting for something? Is this really his base? Are we were we're supposed to be?" She wrinkled her nose against the smell. "What do we do now?"

The night of January 15, 2013 2 AM The call went out to le Renard Rouge's, Cobalt Templar's, and the Liberty League's line, one after the other, at a time that just happened to catch them all when they were otherwise indisposed. The woman's voice on the other end is rough and raspy, with the tension clear as she speaks. "

January 15, 2013 Bayview "...and there are even rumors, my friends, of Terminus mutants so powerful that they can enter our minds and control our thoughts, taking away our God-given free will. Now I think the American people deserve the right to decide if they want their children to be in school with Terminus mutants. To be taught by Terminus mutants! Ladies and gentlemen, the truth is that Terminus mutants are very real, and that they are among us. We must know who they are, and above all, what they can do!" Aaron Walsh's rallies are always raucous affairs, the blue-collar Freedom City Congressman being something of a political showman. But something has happened recently, perhaps in the wake of his recent election, that's given the Congressman's simmering anger at the world outside South Freedom a particular focus. "Am I saying we should _abandon_ these people? That we should turn our backs on the _victims_ of Omega? No!" That silenced the crowd in front of him, a mixed bunch of Bayview locals who for a moment looked like they were ready to go beat up a T-baby or two. "Many of you, my friends, have lost family, or friends, to the forces of the Terminus. The wounds left on our bodies, and in our hearts, can't be healed as easily as those fixed up by Dr. Metropolis. The national T-Census will not only help keep us safe by letting us know the strength and power of the T-mutant problem, but it will also be the first step to finding a cure. So that our sons, our daughters, our friends and our family, can live free from the Terminus. Now and forever, I make you that my pledge! No! More! Terminus!" He pounded on the dais and the crowd roared. Maybe this wasn't how they had planned to spend Croatian Independence Day, but Walsh's charisma had swept the audience along anyway. Across the street, a less-friendly crowd, mostly college kids and hero groupies, had taken the other angle. "No more Walsh! No more Walsh! Take your hate back home!" The campus radicals are a plucky bunch to be out here in a Freedom City January for the sake of a protest against one of the most controversial men in Freedom City, bundled up beneath parkas and breath turning to steam. They waved banners high and chanted, "All heroes welcome! All heroes welcome!" The mood between the two crowds was getting ugly, especially with rumors that at least one T-baby group had put a hit out on the life of the Congressman. Walsh didn't seem to fear the danger, though, standing alone on the stage as he whipped up the crowd of his supporters, his wife, son, and traveling party guarded by uniformed Freedom City cops among the honored guests at the celebration.

January 15 It was not a good day for getting commlink messages in Freedom City. It seemed like every message that came in heralded some new disaster in the city, another hero replaced by a robot double, another fire that needed put out somewhere. In the middle of the parade of messages assailing the communications array of Dragonfly's suit on a day when she was already considerably distracted, one message managed to stand out, for its oddity at least. The message was in text, bald blinking letters that scrolled across the screen of her suit. <> That was one voice who had been silent through the tumult of the day, Miss Americana had been nowhere to be found during all the rescue work, though there had been word of her at Blackstone Prison early in the morning. What followed the message header, though, was no description of danger or location, but rather a long string of scrambled letters and complex equations.

The Morning of January 15, 2013 The Wonderbus roared through the skies of the Northern Hemisphere almost impossibly fast, the extra-dimensional construction of the craft shunting away the excess heat energy from its hypersonic flight enough to keep it undetectable in the air. They were flying thousands of miles, but the fantastic speed of their craft would get them there in less than an hour. Trying to keep his mind off the crisis of Erde-Tronik, the bioweapons, and the advanced plasma weapon that had nearly killed them all, Sharl had pulled up situation monitors from the computer inside the Bus, trying to keep track of what they'd left behind. "The good news is, the chaos seems to be limited to Freedom City, so it must be something there...I don't know, that bomb was extra-terrestrial, but I didn't recognize the maker. Maybe it's something with the Grue again." At least what they hoped to do with the Sanctum was easy enough. "I'll connect Erde-Tronik to the power supply there and keep it safe until Miss A and I can get it protected. As for the bioweapons, we can just drop them in one of the stasis fields there. It's not a long-term solution, but it'll last long enough for us to keep things safe. We-" A distant beeping interrupted Sharl. "That's the proximity alarm. Maybe there's somebody from the League there already." He tapped a few buttons on the bank of monitors they were all sitting around, the black and white screens looking as much like something from a 60s sci-fi TV show as the high-tech pieces of super-science they were. "I don't understand, there's something on top of..." The great grey vessel squatted over the Sanctum like an anteater scooping out ants, tentacles rising from its lower half scooping away huge chunks of ice even as they watched. The three eyes and slight horn at the rear echoed the face of the Gorgon, but Sharl knew that face well enough from his studies and his nightmares. He saw the details in an instant; the great digitizing towers driven into the icy Arctic landscape like tent spikes the size of buildings, the glowing red 'eyes' that bespoke an active subspace connection across the galaxy, and worst of all, much, much worse, were the smaller tentacles already buried in the exposed roof of the Centurion's Sanctum. His eyes wide with horror, Citizen managed to form the words: "It's the Curator."

Friday, June 29th, 2012 8:47 PM It had been a perfectly ordinary evening for the Liberty League. Then someone had to tempt fate. There had been the usual security briefing at the Midnight Manor, with a discussion of movements amongst noted villains, possible security risks, and other matters of importance. Someone had brought up the fact that the Super Museum was doing another wartime theater retrospective, including some of the safer treatises of Lady Celtic. And not fifteen minutes later, the silent alarm had gone off, instructing Midnight and everyone gathered around the table that four people who weren't supposed to were stomping about inside. One teleport by Edge brought the League into the lobby of the Super Museum, the statues of Freedom's fallen looming dark in the night. They could hear traces of movement down the hall. "All right," whispered Cannonade. "What's the plan?"