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It had taken a while, given the hectic schedules involved, but with her brother's insistence, Ellie Espadas had finally managed to find time for her girlfriend to come over to the Interceptor's underground base for a combat training session. Erik was adamant that Mara have at least some fundamental hand-to-hand fighting skills just in case she was ever caught without her inventions. Mildly annoying as the overprotective streak was, Ellie was grateful that her older sibling evidently liked her partner enough to be concerned in the first place, and if in the process the petite engineer ended up in sweaty workout gear, well, that was just a consequence they'd have to live with. While Erik got things set up below, the younger Espadas waited on the steps outside the brownstone apartment building's front door, already changed into shorts and a dark grey vest top and enjoying the sun while she flipped through a textbook she'd brought out with her.
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GM Lately a strange rash of disappearances has been afflicting the Riverside. For the past three nights a number of children, all under the age of twelve, have vanished during the night. While the number of missing children has finally come to the attention of Freedom City's finest, the police have been unable to find a single lead. There has been no sign of forced entry, no other commonality between the victims beside age and general location. The fourth night since the start of the problem opens clear and bright; the full moon watches as several heroes gather to put a stop to the mysterious misdeeds occurring underneath its gaze.
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The growing group of young metahumans and aliens found the flight to Canada considerably less eventful than the one to India, but their reception was equally less warm. There was no one to greet the four teenagers as they disembarked at Thunder Bay International Airport after a brief stop over on the west coast, walking through the long corridors of shopping establishments before finding a local map and a set of hastily scrawled directions left for them at the information desk. The path marked for them in ballpoint pen left the city and traveled northward, into what looked like a wooded area. The desk attendant's sunny smile flickered briefly as she glanced at the location of the broad X indicating the route's destination, but she was evidently too polite to say anything unbidden. At the bottom of the written direction, on a page that had clearly been torn out of a journal, the scratchy penmanship finished, DON'T stray into the woods. And thanks. --DS
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Wander had no idea why she was patrolling tonight. It was way too hot for anyone to be committing any sort of crime. Even up on the rooftops where there was a bit of a breeze, she was about to melt into a puddle inside the very sturdy, very long-sleeved and long-pantsed new uniform Frank had made her. She definitely preferred winter patrols. Normally she wouldn't have been out at all on a night like tonight, but with the city still unsettled from the latest world-shaking threat, who knew what could be going down? Not to mention the fact that Trevor was sleeping and every goddamned time she closed her eyes she was back on EZO1 and that wasn't where she liked to spend her evenings. Even Freedom City in the melting summer heat was better. Late in the evening she found herself down near Lincoln, not her usual territory, but a place where she'd spent some time. She'd patrolled every neighborhood in the city during her training, just to get familiar with them. There seemed to be something interesting going on here, at least. A lot more guys than usual wearing a lot more clothes than seemed necessary on a night like this were walking furtively down the streets, heading towards what looked like some old factory. Her nose caught the scent of smoke on the air, and dimly against the sky she could see puffs coming from the big old brick chimney. Curious, she began to draw closer.
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GM Raymond Nuclear Facility always had a number of protesters outside its walls, ranging from a half dozen to twenty or more. They sang songs, held placards, and drank tea and coffee. They were in many ways a family. THe Reactor, at least so far, had proved safe and reliable, and supplied a lot of the Cities power needs. Nevertheless, unease about nuclear power was always on peoples minds, particularly with Freedom City harbouring so much super-villain activity. Unsurprisingly, security at the facility was tighter than your average nuclear power plant. The protesters outside were engaging in a little banter and discussion as a man, covered in a thick cloak and hood walked down the road and past them. The ground cracked with every footstep he took. The protesters did not see his face, but looked on astonished as he made his way directly to the reactor. Nearby, some rocks by the road glowed a faint green colour...
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Standing on a Riverside street corner with her hands placed dramatically on her hips, Ellie Espadas turned to the eclectic group of women behind her and announced, "Alright, ladies, welcome to Meadow Street. A sensational hive of thrift and fashionability." Indeed, the line of shops behind her featured a generous quantity of second hand, vintage, handmade and fair trade clothing boutiques, several of which fell under two or more of those headings. "So, we've got two goals here," she reminded them. "First, to get Will and Trudy some actual people clothes." The dryad and goddess's limited wardrobes had become inconvenient enough that they'd quickly reached the limit of practical sharing and borrowing from the other Interceptors. "Second, we're practicing the 'secret identity' thing. Obviously Mo' is a little conspicuous, so if you get busted, we'll just say you're hanging with your girl Fulcrum on the downlow, but we're going for subtle, okay?" The young medic could perhaps be forgiven for directing the last part of her comment more to Thrude than anyone else.
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GM July 17, 2011 8:33 p.m. Nights on the West End were usually quiet, but there was a definite tension in the air. Men and women of various ages were turning up missing since much earlier in the week, and the police didn't seem to have much of a place to begin. The disappearances seemed random; a bartender walking home from the Secret Bar, two young women visiting a friend at Trinity Hospital... seven in all, over the past five days. The closest clue that could be found were other attacks in the same area, leaving a subway operator in a coma-like state, with two puncture wounds in his neck. Naturally, speculation went wild after that. No one was supposed to be going anywhere alone; it wasn't a direct order or martial law, just a friendly, sound suggestion. Just like with any friendly advice, however, even if it was coming from respected television and radio personalities, someone always thought they knew better than everyone else. The pair of graffiti artists near Ashton Mall had no idea they were being watched as the sun sank below the horizon...
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Date: June 17th, 2011 (Friday), later afternoon/early evening Continued from ArchEvil: Terrible Bosses Just as Ferros reached up the ring the doorbell on the building Doktor Archeville had instructed him to go to should he feel he was ready to audition for the fabled Interceptors, the building collapsed, threatening to fall upon him! Inside, in the secret basement lair of that team, Geckoman, Thrude, and Willow had just witnessed the team's secret benefactor -- Archeville himself, now some sort of hideous fish-man! -- usurp control over the core members of the team, then teleport away with them as he ordered Vince, the team's AI 'mascot,' to activate the building's auto-destruct, bringing it down upon them!
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Date: June 17th, 2011 (Friday), later afternoon/early evening mid-to-high 70s, clear/scattered clouds. 2 days after the full moon. (10 months after an ill-fated housecall, 3 1/2 weeks after the Interceptors' Wedding, 2 weeks after Claremont's Graduation; 1 month before the Gorgon announcement) Earlier in the day, Arrowhawk paid a visit to the Scarab and they compared notes on the strange series of murders and disappearances that had been plaguing Freedom City for the past nine months. Seeking additional help, they headed to the Hanover home of their ally, Doktor Viktor Archeville. But they were not the only ones coming to see Archeville: like Scrooge, the super-scientist was to be visited by three beings this evening. Wander, one of ArcheTech's newest employees, was also coming by. With her was a trophy from a recent battle which she wished to have examined; to know how best to store it, she needed to know if it was safe to be around! (She'd chosen discretion due to not wanting the details of Young Freedom's exploits getting out just yet.) None of them expected who -- or what -- they would wind up meeting that evening. But what was that fabled science-hero up to? At the moment, he was alone in his home, his fiance Fulcrum off training wit the Interceptors, giving him time to do some surgical experimentation. He was carving ham for a sandwich. "The most perfect ham-and-cheese sandwich ever! Now, which mustard to use?" The Doktor rummaged through his tesseract refrigerator (like his home, it was bigger on the inside!), selecting from the dozen or so small yellow and brown jars.
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After the excitement of their last flight, the final leg to India was likely a terrible anticlimax...but boring isn't always a bad thing. Still, after nearly ten hours of peanuts, recycled air, and terrible movies the rest of the passengers certainly looked like they were ready to be on the ground and stretching their legs. That plus a little more time to get through security and claim whatever luggage they'd brought and a plane's worth of tourists and natives were stepping out into a warm but overcast Mumbai summer day. The city was busy and streets were even busier, but as fortune had it the collective of heroic envoys didn't have very far to go: right there at the sidewalk stood a tall, dour-looking man in a button-up shirt and what could only have been his daughter. Both were standing almost unnaturally still, like metal rods against the shifting tide of the crowd, but they were clearly watching the groups leaving the airport. The daughter, an attractive teenage girl in fairly conservative clothes, was holding a sign that read only: CLAREMONT.
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ic Graduation Day: What You Leave Behind (IC)
Avenger Assembled posted a topic in Grenville and Ashton
Ashton June 7, 2011 A couple of days after the Claremont kids finally had their graduation, the general word went out in the superheroic community that Richard Milhouse Lucas, the long-time sidekick to the Freedom League back in the 1960s and 1970s, had perished in the line of duty. Rick had been a difficult man for many of his old friends to get along with in the last few years as his bitterness towards the current generation of superheroes grew, but he'd stayed in touch with everyone and always been there when they needed help. He'd regularly played host to various parties and fundraisers for that generation of heroes as they got older, using the celebrity he'd gained from his time with the League and his best-selling series of 'men's super-adventure novels' to help his old friends who'd never gotten a dime from their work stay financially comfortable even in retirement. He'd gone into seclusion some months earlier, and hadn't been seen much sense. Only a select few heroes personally associated with the Freedom League and the upper tier at Claremont knew about Rick's descent into madness after his son's short-lived death; what he'd done to rewrite the world and how he'd nearly abandoned it in disgust before giving his life to keep Omega from attacking it again. All superheroes invited to the service were invited to come in full costume, while in lieu of flowers Rick's testament asked that they donate to his son's alma mater: Claremont Academy. And now that a long life had come to an end, if too early for those who'd loved him, it was a time for the memorial service Rick had requested: a memorial service was all they could have, since his body was now somewhere beneath what had once been another version of Freedom City cast deep into the Zero Zone. At the Lucas house, Mark was studying himself in his bedroom mirror as he adjusted his suit and tie, trying to keep his emotions in check. Downstairs, his mom was entertaining Duncan Summers and his daughter Jasmine, the headmaster and his daughter being the first to show up for the service despite it being some time away. For Mark's part, after some consideration, he'd sent invitations out to all his schoolfriends, even those who he knew had had little use for his father while he was alive. If they didn't show, that was fine: he trusted them enough to know they wouldn't disrupt what the moment was about. It was about family...and when he thought about Young Freedom, he decided with a nod to his reflection, that meant they belonged there too. -
Date: June 17th, 2011 (Friday), later afternoon/early evening Continued from ArchEvil: Revelations The Brownstone! Home to the Interceptors! Dynamo, Fulcrum, Jack of all Blades, and Jill O'Cure, plus newer members Geckoman, Thrude, and Willow, were in the basement training hall, joined by former members Colt and Grimalkin, who had stopped by to pick up some forgotten items and were roped into the exercise by Jack. Some blocks away, a new potential recruit, Ferros, approached, having been told by Archeville himself -- secretly the founder of the fabled team! -- to come by for a tryout with them. ArchEvil appeared in the basement of the Interceptors' Brownstone, next to Vince's computer core. "Hey, boss-man, the gregarious AI's upbeat voice greeted, appearing in mechanic's overalls on the monitors along the walls. "Whatcha do- yeow! What happened to-" "Attend: Stratus. Nietzsche. Wave. Neper. Tornado. Shark. Venus Flytrap. Viktor. Vince. Viktor." Vince's image froze, the eyes went fuzzy, then his entire form flickered as the long-buried overrides were activated and hidden subroutines booted up. Now the AI was dressed in a very crisp, black uniform, with hobnailed jackboots and a leather trenchcoat. "I obey, Herr Doktor," he said, all trace of his jovial nature gone with the click of the back of his heels. "As shall you all, Vince. As shall you all." ArchEvil walked out of computer core chamber and towards the training room, as a hunchback!Vince began pulling on virtual cords, locking down the Brownstone. He entered the training room, using his Belt's intangibility function to simply bypass the door, so as not to interrupt their session. Eventually, of course, the Interceptors did notice the strange bare-chested fish-man in a labcoat and khakis standing in their danger room.
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Late July 2011 The Lab As secret as the arrival of Entity 31966 had been kept, the fact that the Lab crew had made the initial discovery and that their ranks held some of the finest scientists in the world meant that they were in a position to both know what was coming and have something to do about it. Harrier felt uneasy as he sat in the big conference room with Miss Americana waiting for the others to arrive: for all that his experience with Terminus technology gave him insights unmatched even by Earthly scientists, he was no Earthly technician to know how to build a solution for this crisis: the Terminus solution, to evacuate valuable assets from the threatened world and leave poisons in their place, was hardly viable for an inhabited planet. Instead he studied the yellow legal pad before him, making tentative notes with the white blue-inked pen in his hand, and nervously awaited the others. "I am sure you will solve this," he said to Miss Americana. Fresh from his now-frequent visits to Antarctica, Murdock looked tired. "The heroes of this dimension are extremely capable."
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June 1st, noon The figure cut casually up the street, clad in plain blue jeans and a battered brown leather jacket. He whistled merrily as he sauntered along, hands in his pockets. His face was covered with a big baseball cap, a faded green colour. When he got to his destination, the figure casually sauntered up the staircase, and pulled out a letter from his pocket, detailing the specifications of his employment. And, with a wide grin, knowing he was about to annoy some certain people, he pulled a pair of orange goggles up from where they hung at his neck and up around his eyes. And then hammered 'shave and a haircut' on the door.
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Continued from >There Won't Be A Next Time June 1st, 2011. 8:05 AM Young Freedom missed graduation, but then again, so did everyone else. The ceremony had been postponed the minute the five young heroes had disappeared from view, for all that they'd reappeared only five minutes later on the other side of town with the broken chestplate of Omega's armor and a wild story to tell. There were debriefings to come, no doubt extensive ones that would exhaustively pour over every detail of the fight at the end of reality and all that had come before it: the death of the multiverse, the trip to four worlds, the appearance and disappearance of Rick Lucas, and finally the seeming destruction of the Lord of Entropy himself. But first, Bolt's speedy trip back to Freedom Hall after the reappearance of Travis, Martha, and Erin's cat on the Claremont lawn had meant the League teleporters were already working. By the time the Young Freedom kids had given their hasty explanations to the startled Captain Thunder and headed inside for their debriefing, their missing loved ones, even Quo-Dis who was holding a very familiar orange cat, were waiting for them inside. For their part, Mark and Martha took a look at each other, Mark's look confirming what Martha had already known, and they simply embraced, the moment too sharp, too painful, coming after too much overwhelming emotion even for weeping. "I'm proud of you, Mark," Martha whispered fiercely. "So very proud."
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ic Graduation Day: There Won't Be A Next Time (IC)
Avenger Assembled posted a topic in The Realms Beyond
Continued from >The Earth Died Screaming Earth-EZO1 was a stark world of grim horror and sere beauty. Redbird's fast flight over the western United States showed them a world of dead cities and empty ruins beneath. Most cities had burned by now in their long untended period; Boise, Denver, St. Louis, and the rest were shells of what they'd once been. Streets were clogged with the rusting shells of cars and debris, and even unburnt buildings had begun to sway and fall. They were, at least, too high up for any lingering smells from beneath, though most of those had faded with the years of quietude. On another day, they might have appreciated the natural beauty beneath: the Misssissippi free of man's pollution, trees growing where cities had once been, a herd of bison stampeding beneath them in Missouri, what distinctly looked like a lion watching them as they skipped through Appalachian peaks in the Carolinas. But there was no time for that now, not with where they were going. Undersea was all quiet darkness as Redbird, with Midnight's skilled hands on her handlebards, took them beneath the waves. The ocean was dead of people; the Atlantean genocide having been one of the first outbreaks of the hero flu, but here too there were fish at play and the sunlight passing through the waves. There was life here, if no human life, and a vast universe beyond them. This world was more than just a tool for saving all reality; Earth-EZO1, for all its horror, was a world worth saving too. As they passed under the water, lit only dimly by the glow of Redbird's lights and the shimmering blue of Corbin's cold fire, Mark looked around at all the faces of his friends, thinking about the people underneath the masks. Erin, Trevor, Corbin, Eve, and their new friend Red Falcon, who with his plasma rifle would be defending Redbird even if they all had to leave it behind. They'd all come so far, over so many years and so much time, and now they were about to face their greatest challenge yet. They were approaching the river now, Edge riding behind Sage in one compartment, Cobalt Templar and Red Falcon on another side, and Midnight grim and determined behind the wheel with Wander behind him. For just a second, Mark closed his eyes and saw his mother's face, then his father's. Goodbye, Mom. Goodbye, Dad. And then they were erupting out of the water and Freedom City was given over to the forces of Hell: grim Terminus towers rising where once the Pyramid Plaza had stood and on the site of where City Hall had been, the downtown of Freedom City transformed into a Terminus hellscape of firepits and belching machinery: and as Redbird roared towards the battered bulk of Freedom Hall, he saw the Omegadrones beneath look up. "Let's do this! For Freedom!" -
July 11th, 2011 Liberty Park, Late evening Lucy always liked the park at this time of night, the day people had gone home and the night people had yet to surface. Which meant mostly she had the park to herself. She also remembered the park, it was founded long before she was born. But it still held a few surprises. Like the statues she had discovered on the hill of various Mystery Men, or whatever they were called now, though she only recognized the first Bluesman. So she was quietly sitting there trying to imagine who they were and what great deeds they may have achieved when she heard the scream. Without thinking she was barrelling down the hill, towards a copse of trees where the sound was coming from. In the gloom of the copse she could make two figures, and if it wasn’t for the fact that one was struggling and screaming she could swear they were in a passionate embrace. This would have had her mumble an apology and backing away blushing. But no someone was in trouble and this is what she was doing now. She was trying to think of something witty or clever to say when the attacker spotted her. Turning towards her he hissed bearing sharp pointed teeth. “No he’s mine, she promised me she did.†leaping towards her as he spoke. “A vampire, really?â€
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Another school year had finished, but at Claremont Academy, attention had already turned to the coming semester. The private school, secretly specializing in teenagers with superhuman abilities and the starting place for many new heroes, was looking at one of its largest groups of new enrollees ever in the coming year, leaving Headmaster Duncan Summers with a few logistical challenges even before they arrived. A number of the school's most accomplished students had graduated, but in the process a few of their younger peers had proven themselves to be trustworthy and able leaders. It was thus that Eve Martel and Corbin Hughes were assigned a most unusual extracurricular assignment. Summers tasked the pair with picking up four new students before the new school year, traveling across the globe to gather them together. Luckily, the first of the would-be-Claremonters was already in Freedom City, and was to be found at the Lab in Hanover. Inside the lobby of the expansive center for experimentation and learning, a well groomed man in a sharply professional outfit manned the desk, scanning a number of monitors in front of him and greeting new arrivals. The headmaster had been somewhat vague about the abilities of any of the students Eve and Corbin would be retrieving, supposedly as a matter of privacy and security, but the remainder of Young Freedom got the distinct impression that the entire trip was also something of a test for all involved. Of course, when Summers was involved most things were. Now that they were there, the telepath and ringbearer had little to go on besides an unusual name: Sharl Tulink.
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ic Graduation Day: The Earth Died Screaming (IC)
Avenger Assembled posted a topic in The Realms Beyond
Continued from >Leaves from the Vine Earth-Z-Omega-1 Edge froze in shock as the toppling tower came down right where he was! Unable to dodge in time, instead he stood his ground and fired back. "NO!" His eyes glowing black, he fired straight upwards as the reality of this dead world warped around him at his will. He would not die because of a falling building! Mark Lucas would not let this, or anything else, stop his friends in their efforts to save all of existence from the dark machinations of Omega! At his command, the falling debris broke around him like a tide breaking around a rock, the so-small clear zone around him the only island of sanity beneath the avalanche of falling steel, concrete, and glass. A falling brick bounced against his back, knocking him to his knees, but Mark did not fall as the collapsing debris fell around him, his powers warping the very air and very rocks to keep his friends from being buried by the avalanche, even if he wasn't able to save all of them from the damage produced by the collapsing Needle. Before he even focused on the aerial battle, he called out over the echoes of the collapse, "Young Freedom! Sound off!" -
Continued from >Familiar Faces Earth C-Future-2 With just enough warning to grab what they needed, Young Freedom slipped from one world to another in the early morning light of a clear summer's day. Within moments, they found themselves in a new world: this time in suburban Kingston, right under the WELCOME TO KINGSTON sign installed just a few years ago by the City Council. Pulling his costume all the way on, Mark pushed his thoughts about his father out of his head and looked around. It looked like everyone was dressed and in costume, though no one had had much warning about getting their clothes on and ready to go. For a moment, he thought they'd somehow solved everything and gone back to their world: Kingston in 2035 didn't look that different. Sure, the car in the suburban garage they were next to looked electric and had the sleek, efficient lines of something from a science fiction movie or car company special showroom, and sure the billboard down the street was a shimmering spectacle of light. It took him a few moments to take in the black. Black banners were hanging on every house, each with a date emblazoned in silver: 6/21/2034: NEVER FORGET! Turning around, he gasped at the sight of Freedom City; shining towers rose high in a monument to futurity, but every single one was under repair, with the marks of devastation visible even from this distance to his inexpert eyes. What had happened here, and what were they rebuilding from? Before he could react to the grim monument in suburbia and the recovering city before them, suddenly there was a cascade of light in front of them on the green lawn and five superheroes formed up out of what was obviously a very advanced teleporter's beam. In the lead of the largely female group was a >tall brunette in white and blue, a pair of dice on her costume's chest showing snake eyes. Next to her was a >muscular young man in all black, long ribbons extending from the back of his head like a novel kind of cape, a familiar symbol on his chest. Next to him was a young woman >Corbin almost recognized, her face like the young woman he'd met who claimed to be his daughter, but with a costume subtly different, more like Quo-Dis' than anything else and cast in purple from the ring on her finger. In the rear were two older women; >one with green hair and a purple and black outfit, and behind her a gleaming metal battlesuit with waving metallic tentacles like a robotic octopus. The group eyed each other for a moment before the ring-bearing girl said, her serious look suddenly cracking to pain, "You'd...you'd better be who you look like!" "Stand down, Vril Knight," said the dice lady, giving her ally a serious look before looking at the others, shooting a wide-eyed glance at Erin and Mark before mastering her own facial expression. "I'm Lucky Strike. Welcome to 2035, Young Freedom. We've been briefed on why you're here and we've located your target. Please, remember that you're from the past of an alternate world." It sounded like she was talking to her own team as much as Young Freedom. "You can't...you can't change what you see here. This is Midnight, Vril Knight, Amaryllis, and Fusion. We're here to help you get to Freedom Hall safely." "Call me Psilent," replied 'Midnight', his voice raspy and dry, with just the faint hint of a French accent. "While he's here."
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Continued from >The End of the Beginning Earth-M-Lucas-1 Young Freedom left the grim darkness of an Erde morning and found themselves beneath a blue, sunny sky. They were in a clean, well-maintained alley in what was clearly downtown Freedom City: the trashcans all had their lids, none of the windows were broken, and there was no sign of Nazis. Visible to their left was the Pyramid Plaza, the triple towers rising high against the clear morning sky, the American flag flying high overhead. For a moment, anyway, those of them not familiar with other dimensions could think they'd all gone home. That was, at least, until the black Pontiac Firebird Trans Am came roaring down the street opposite, and the first blasting sounds of funky disco came their way from its overpowered speakers. Outside, the streets of Freedom City looked to be pulled from the pages of the 1970s seen through a warped modern lens: men with elaborate mustaches and half-open shirts that showed off their hairy chests walked alongside ladies in brightly-colored wide-hemmed bell-bottoms, over their heads computerized billboards advertising a too-young Farrah Fawcett starring in the latest Michael Bay movie. The streets were certainly more diverse than they'd last seen, with muscular black men with magnificently coiffed hair in the company of ladies with impressive afros: indeed, from the lady speaker on the corner calling for equal rights for all men and women to the hippies playing in the park, it looked as if someone had gone around and collected as many oppressed minority groups as they could and dropped them on the funky streets of Freedom City. Suddenly, a startled exclamation came as a policeman walking by the alley spotted the quintet of dimension-lost heroes. In a hammy Irish stage accent that nonetheless sounded all too real, he exclaimed, "It's...it's...oh mother of Mary, it's Counter Freedom!" He took out his whistle and blew it as hard and loud as he could. "I knew you crazy criminals would be back one day!" he called, whipping out his gigantic belt radio as he backed away from the teens. "You just stay back! The Freedom League will set you whippersnappers right!"
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ic Graduation Day: The End of the Beginning (IC)
Avenger Assembled posted a topic in The Realms Beyond
Continued from >Worn-Out Places The black dots faded, leaving behind them an ominous natural darkness. They were all standing on a cracked concrete floor, the distant sound of rumbling machinery and gunfire echoing in their ears. The air was rank and still with the heat of summer, and the sound of scuttling rats was at least as loud as the noise outside. And inside they were: the room around them seemed to be a damp, ruined basement, with only the broken remnants of stone steps leading up to ground level. As the heroes walked closer to the steps, thin rays of moonlight stabbed through the edges of the ruined ceiling. The bits of rubble shifted and moved under their strides, stirring up full regiments of fleeing rats in their wake. It was Trevor who recognized where they were first, thanks both to his piercing gaze and a sudden, nagging familiarity with the room. They were in the basement of the Rothsteins, the elderly Jewish couple who lived in the same sprawling block of mansions as his grandfather, a convival enough bunch whose main virtue as neighbors was being too busy with their poodle-breeding hobby to worry much about their elderly chemist neighbor and his quiet grandson. Standing in the rubble of their home, looking fresh enough to have been destroyed just a few years ago, it wasn't hard to guess what had happened. For his part, Edge led the way: with a gesture from him there were new stone stairs to climb, and he was up pushing open the door to gaze out at the scene outside. And what a scene it was: three night-black helicopters were whizzing by overhead, making a beeline for the shape of a very familiar house, leading the way behind a half-dozen armored vehicles coming out of a darkened city with a broken skyline lit only by searchlights. The Nazis were out in force tonight, and they were heading straight for the Midnight Manor. The helicopters were going to be in range of the Manor in seconds... -
As day gave way to night a light rain began to fall, a gentle drizzle that filtered its way down through the canopy of a tall oak to its lower branches. There sat a copper skinned woman with a wild mane of long flowing white hair and a long shapely leg dangling below the bough. Her eyes were closed and her head was tilted back; a faint smile on her face that would gave the impression that she was enjoying herself in spite of the rain. Willow was humming quietly to herself, an old tune she had heard numerous times in her life. The words always changed with the passing of centuries, but the melody always remained the same. The gentle reminder that all things change, but nothing is truly lost giving her some measure of comfort
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Continued from >Noise of Thunder Mark felt first a whiteness, pure and all-embracing, then terrible, all-encompassing blackness, as if a quiet non-existence had been replaced with the certain knowledge of absolute destruction. And then he was waking up, his face pressed to an unfamiliar wooden surface that it took him a bizarre second to recognize: he was pressed against not the floor, but the far wall of his mother's art studio, surrounded by the furniture, art supplies, and his mother's scattered colored pencils that had all evidently taken a hard spin to the left at some point when the local gravity had taken a hard turn in the wrong direction. Pulling himself to his feet, he gazed around a room cast sideways and lit with an eerie red glow from outside. He counted off with his eyes: Wander, Midnight, Cobalt Templar, Sage, Trevor's grandfather, even his mother, all of them cast askew by the warped gravity just as the room's contents had been. Ignoring the shuttered window for a moment, not to mention of seeing the whole world swept away into nothingness, Mark focused right on Martha. "Mom? Are you all right? What happened?" He couldn't quite keep the judgement out of his voice; he'd had good reason to be angry with his parents for a long time now! For her part, Martha was dusting herself off. "Oh, Mark..." She embraced him. "I'm so sorry it happened like this, and that I left the way I did...but I saw you'd be all right and I had to spend what time I could with your father. I don't know if you can forgive me...but because we're all here, it was for a good cause." She let out a breath. "Your father is waiting for us in the study. For all of us. He'll explain everything."
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After long years of negotiations, UtiliTek, a proud subsidiary of the Grant Conglomerates, had been granted permission to bring Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, the legendary Grasscutter, from Japan to the United States for analysis in their Freedom City-based facilities. Part of the Imperial Regalia, the longsword had surfaced a handful of times in more recent history as the focus of various supervillainous plans and at least once as the instrument by which a particularly close near-apocalypse had been averted. It's impossibly shard edge had garnered it a reputation as perhaps the finest example of its kind ever forged, and piqued the interest of a variety of groups. UtiliTek hoped to discover the process through which simple steel could be made cut diamond, to be applied in any number of industrial capacities. The Japanese government had not surprisingly been reluctant to agree to the loan, and Grasscutter's arrival in Freedom was nothing short of the publicity coup for the company. As such, before the test were conducted, the blade was being put on display to the general public for one weekend along with an extensive collection of other cultural artifacts on the ground floor of the UtiliTek head office in Hanover. Amid the crowds of viewers was Erik Espadas, a young man from the city's West End with a particular interest in all things related to swords and their use. Wearing a wool lined brown jacket against the February cold and with a knapsack slung over one shoulder, the fencer studied Grasscutter from the other side of red velvet ropes and a glass case. Hm. Doesn't feel magic... at least, I don't think so, he mused to himself, extended his metamagi senses outward with a faint frown. I should really practice this stuff more.
