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(GM Post) Remote Laboratory Facility, Mountains, Sweden, Europe Monday, November 11, 6pm Local Time Anyone who knew Baron Katastrof wasn't truly shocked at what had happened. The man was methodical, safety-conscious, detail-oriented when needed, and demanded rigorous testing standards. He was also young, hideously intelligent, occasionally obsessive, and had a near-fanatical need to prove himself "worthy", not just of his place as head of his father's company, but also his place as a "super-scientist" in a world already brimming with them. Miss Americana had heard he'd been on the polar expedition to the remains of the Curator's ship. Archetech had had representatives there, and the Doctor himself had teleconferenced in. It wasn't known to the world, but basically everyone who had high-end scientific know-how and the trust of most of the world had been there. The place was a near-literal goldmine of data, materials, and technology samples. There'd been so many "dead" Curator drones you could practically build an office building out of them, and they were physically intact. Everybody had taken quite a few home, and Katastrof and Sorenson Technologies was no exception. They'd been careful, of course; all the Curator tech was set up in a couple of isolated lab buildings in the mountains, purpose-built a few years ago for handling "dangerous samples". The two sites were connected by 1 single tunnel with multiple security doors, and each site had internal and external airlocks, negative-pressure air systems, and a whole host of other standard and esoteric features. In the last couple of months, the primary site (where all the actual tests occurred, rather than storage at the connected site) had even received an extra dose of security in the form of magical wards, with the secondary site slated to receive them in a few weeks, thanks to discrete efforts from some contact or another of the Baron's. Which was all well and good, until one day every drone in the secondary site woke up and started moving on their own power, and suddenly the evacuation was underway and complete within 20 minutes. The staff was all set to use the emergency measures (which was to say, special explosive charges that would reduce both complexes to ash-filled holes in the mountain without disturbing anything else) when they realized one critical thing. The Baron had visited that morning and was not outside. That was Friday. On Sunday, the company had had no success penetrating the even-more-upgraded security, and, not wanting the matter to make regular public news (and thus strike a terrible blow against the reputation of KST), they made a couple of discrete calls. Which was why a small group of intelligent, talented heroes who focused on metal and wire technology found themselves standing on a tarmac at the foot of a mountain, the sun sinking below the horizon, and armed guards standing nervously to one side.

OOC thread for Miss A, Dragonfly, and Harrier going to help the Baron out after he gets in too deep thanks to SCIENCE!!! >Here is the IC thread. Feel free to ask questions. If you want to have made a check or two beforehand, let me know, and I'll tell you what might have worked out.

July 2013 There are thousands of big-rig accidents in the continental United States every year. And no wonder - America's roads are among the busiest in the world, and the vast majority of America's shipping takes place on the asphalt highways that bind the nation together. Sometimes these are terrible accidents near major cities, crashes that lead to multicar pileups or dangerous chemical spills that force evacuations of whole neighborhoods. These make all the papers. The small crashes, though, hardly anyone notices them, especially not the ones in cities most people, especially people in far-off Freedom City, couldn't find on a map. Not much goes on in Blackwater, Missouri these days. The town is small, with just over 150 inhabitants, and it's the kind of place barely hanging onto tourist dollars and people wanting a rural getaway. They do a lot of Wild West recreation these days, calling back to an imagined past that was rarely rural Missouri's to begin with. But it gets the tourists in and gets them to spend money at the antique stores and bed and breakfasts in town, or at the Volunteer Fireman's Whole Hog and Beef Barbecue. People born here tend to try and get away, pulled away by cities as small as 8000-strong Boonville at the heart of Cooper County, or even real cities like St. Louis or Kansas City. A small number, by some quirk of fate or other, find themselves in Freedom City, but not many, not many. Not a lot of super-people come here. It's right about between Maverick in Kansas City and Aquifer in St. Louis, and neither of them have ever needed to come within thirty miles of the area. Even super-criminals on the lam from big cities prefer to have some luxuries, and there's not a lot of local crime even of the mundane variety. The local cops are nice enough, but they don't have a lot to do most days - why would they? But sometimes things change. On July 3, 2013, in Blackwater, Missouri, there was a big rig accident. A tractor trailer driven by local man Peter Evans struck the rail on the small bridge over the nearby Blackwater River, sending truck, trailer, and driver plunging into the small river. The badly-damaged trailer spilled its 'machine parts' contents into the small river and the driver, new to the profession, was taken to Cooper County Memorial Hospital. As the 4th of July holiday began, the Cooper County sheriff's office promised a full investigation into the causes of the accident. But the sheriff is all the way over in Boonville, a solid twenty minute drive By the 5th, there was hardly any news. Unless you care about Missouri, and who cares about that?

They deal with issues, yes, issues.

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?"

January 15, 2013 Blackstone Prison With rumors of clandestine Terminus activity circulating through the city, it was only natural that the Freedom League wanted to interrogate their most high-level Terminus prisoner...and only natural that the most experienced expert on the Terminus would be part of the interrogation. Steve was waiting for Gabriel when the latter arrived on Blackstone Island, standing near the outer perimeter fence in a suit and tie and looking as menacing as any of the prisoners inside. "Good morning, Gabriel," said the former drone, his expression hard to read as he faced an imminent reunion with the monster who had destroyed his life. "Thank you for calling me on this case." With a faint smile, he cocked his hand towards the outer gate where the 'blackguards' were watching attentively at the arrival of the famous Gabriel. "They thought I should wait for you to actually go below. It seems I set off the security system." - Down below, in the ultra-high-security wing where the clone of Shadivan Steelgrave was currently sleeping in his cell, the man in the cell opposite was whistling. Miss Americana had been called in to repair a very high security, albeit damaged computer system; the tough, albeit rigid, circuits inside the cell's door control, among the most high-security in the entire facility and a restricted design trusted to only a few super-geniuses, had fractured into pieces like broken glass the night before. Only a backup system had kept the big impervium door blocking his cell from sliding right up and out of the way. "Yeah, 37042 thinks he's funny that way," Officer McInnis was telling Miss Americana, the stocky blonde rolling her eyes with a guard's amused distaste for a persistent prisoner. "Courts say we can't actually stifle him if he's not attacking people with his sonic powers, and he's been in here long enough to know the score. Nothing says we can't put you in solitary, though, does it 37042? " she called, rapping on the impervium with her billy club and making the whistling stop. "No pretty girls like me and Miss A to look at in there!" The only response was a single, defiant wolf whistle and a wordless grumbling that finally lapsed into silence.

The vaguely egg shaped skyscraper known as the Lab stood out even amongst the many research and testing facilities in Hanover as a beacon of progress. Named with typically efficient accuracy by its founders, the building represented the coming together of some of humanity's finest minds, working together to move the world toward a future free of the past's superstition and fear. The irony was largely lost on the chipper poltergeist known in an equally informative fashion as Ghost Girl as she floated through the large windows of the Lab's lobby as if they were empty air, pulling back the hood of her tattered reaper's cloak so that she could crane her neck and gape in wonder at the ultra-modern architecture. "Woooow..." the translucent blue teen murmured as she coasted about almost two meters off of the floor taking everything in. She'd missed a fair bit since her untimely death but it was moments like this that really made her feel like a time-traveler. Spotting the receptionist behind the desk, she sped forward with a sunny smile. "Oh, hi! I, um, have an appointment?"

October 1, 2012 Gina's silent alarm went off late one night when most of the rest of North Freedom was sleeping. Someone was tampering with some of the equipment stored in her lab; not her facility at Archetech or at the Lab proper, but at the personal workspace that only she, Harrier, and Citizen among a very small, select group had ever actually visited. Whoever was doing it was good; they'd disabled most of the obvious security systems in place around the restricted equipment: the laser eyes, the cameras, the touch-sensors, the air-current trackers, and even the hidden electromagnetic readers that she'd concealed inside the walls around the sealed equipment room. But they'd missed the backup IR readers in the light fixtures, an easy mistake to make if you weren't as smart as Gina. Most people wouldn't bother to look for sensors that were only active when everything else had been turned off. This was potentially a high-risk theft; the material stored in that particular locker were high-tech items she had confiscated from supervillains over the years she'd been active: Grue reactor cores, Terminus tech of gruesome provenance, dimensional reactors, hard radiation, and various other items that she would have preferred not to have out on the street.

Unfair Science Fair May 22, 2012 It was a big day at Joseph Clark High School; luckily Keith LaMarr was a very big man. The largest public high school in Lincoln was today hosting the 23rd annual George Washington Carver Science Fair, a cavalcade of the best and brightest from all over South Freedom. Kids from around there didn't get a lot of opportunities, so the chance for budding young geniuses to strut their stuff in public before potential college scouts was very compelling. It helped that today the school had managed to secure a celebrity judge for the GWC Fair: the world-famous gadgeteer Miss Americana! A lot of this was outside of Keith's area of expertise, of course, but few teachers at any high school in the area could bring a crowd of parents, students, and onlookers to heel with a look with as much ease as Mr. LaMarr the civics teacher. So he was on scene early to help with organization as Joseph Clark's kids got their displays set up and more kids began to arrive for the fair. It was a big day for everybody, with palpable excitement on the eager faces of the young scholars. Nearby was Patrick Grayson, an up-and-coming young senior whose intelligence had vaulted him several grades up, his research project having let him construct a minature gravitic generator like what Daedalus used to power his armor. The floating silver sphere was just a toy, but it bespoke good things for the kid who'd built it on his table using scraps. Keith had had special reason to pay attention to Patrick, and that reason was there too. Patrick's grandpa was watching his son work with pride, the grey-haired older man with his shock of hair and mustache vaguely slightly resembling Don King. Peter Grayson, aka the Mauler, had been a recurring foe for 1-800-JUSTICE back in the day, but the former prizefighter had abandoned his criminal ways after marrying Patrick's gramma Rose Marie. Pete had recognized Keith, of course, but the now- bespectacled older man had been very careful to stay close by his grandson rather than wander too close to his old enemy. -------- Meanwhile, across town, Glow and Citizen were flying along from the Claremont campus towards Miss Americana's laboratory; her facility one at the Lab, not the one at Archetech. It was Glow's 'ride-along day' for Miss Americana, part of her heroic training, which luckily coincided with Citizen's weekly day spent with his mentor. "You'll have a _great time_ with Miss A," Citizen was reassuring Glow, obviously looking very happy to be there. He didn't hang out with Kristen too much, but she was pretty cool, and of course Miss A was the coolest. "We're not doing much today, just some stuff around Freedom City, but she's great to hang out with. Her lab's got great gadgets, and she's just neat." He hadn't had a chance to hang out with Miss A much (as opposed to Gina) lately, and so he was looking forward to today quite a lot. Glow had heard of Miss Americana, of course, who hadn't heard of the beautiful, all-American genius whose charitable works made her so popular? From cybernetic limbs for injured kids all the way through blasting city-controlling abominations from the depths of space, Miss Americana was all right. It made a lot of sense that a famous science hero like Miss A had a cybernetic sidekick like Citizen, for all that he hadn't talked much about where he came from. Miss A had left the window of her laboratory open against the comfortable late spring day (since this was more a traveling day than a working day), and Glow and Citizen flew right in.

Miss A, Wail, Glow, and Citizen deal with a legacy from the recent past and the very distant future.

September 26, 2011 Jack of all Blades, Jill O'Cure, Miss Americana, Geckoman, Ferros, and Willow deal with some thorny problems. Yeah, Gizmo is running this.

September 26, 2011 The West End 9 AM Things were in a bad way in the West End, what with the upcoming apocalypse. The Gorgon was only about thirty-six hours from making contact with the Earth, her silvery shape as clearly visible as Mars in the clear Freedom City night sky, promising a doom for all humanity should she get closer. The Freedom League was fighting the Gorgon and her train in space; the Lab crew had gone into the sky to unlock the scientific secrets of the monster coming to devour the Earth. (Sure, that wasn't technically her mission, but good luck telling that to the man walking down the street listening to apocalyptic street corner preachers pronouncing the imminent doom of man to all passersby.) There was a war in space, but a battle on the streets was imminent. Street-level heroes had been busy catching crooks and putting down disasters, but there were so many threats. The heroes of the West End had reason to be a little understaffed these days, anyway...The flashpoint came outside a local bodega near the Espadas home, when two uniforms from the local FCPD station came out to move one of those doomsaying street preachers off the streets. This gentleman, though, a wide-eyed man with thick glasses and a "PRAY FOR MERCY" sandwich board hung around his neck, wasn't willing to give in. "What's the point of doing what you pigs say?" he demanded, his fear rallying the crowd of onlookers who'd been listening to his sermonizing (and, not incidentally, blocking the door of the San Domingo Market whose manager had called them in the first place) to shout at the cops. "We're all gonna die anyway! The supers have run off! They left us to rot down here on the streets while they ran away into space and into their fancy other dimensions. Don't we deserve the right to have a little happiness now before she takes us all!?!" he exclaimed, pointing to the sky as the crowd roared. Normally West Enders were a bit more skeptical than this, but nerves were fraying. "How dare these fatcat shopkeepers keep what they have when the end is coming. I say, let's take what we want and give them a taste of their own greed before we're all gone! Who's with me?"

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."

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.

EMP 8 (PFs: Extended Reach 2, Improved Crit 2, Incurable, Precise) [18 pp] The plane loses the maximum TOU from the Drain, which is 8, dropping it to +5 Tou vs 28: 10 Okay, so everything electronic is technically fried. IC post ahoy. Citizen goes on 16; Rogue goes on 9

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.

Freedom City was in danger! That was hardly different from any day in the city where weirdness never slept, but today was worse than most. Disappearances were being reported all over the city, people suddenly vanishing, other people and strange creatures appearing out of nowhere, fights and rampages in the streets! It was a bad time, but luckily, Freedom City had its heroes to protect it. One of those heroes, Miss Americana, was already in the air, flying over Hanover as she attempted to suss out the situation. There were disturbances on the ground, sirens blasting, and what looked like... was that a band of Vikings on the ground? A superhero in the blue and gold colors of Claremont Academy seemed to have the situation in hand there, so Miss A flew onward. A few blocks away, she noticed a strange disruption, almost as though reality were bending like the air on a hot summer day. She flew down to get a closer look, turning midair to land... Gina's eyes snapped open as her consciousness rudely and abruptly thudded back into her squishy flesh body. "Goddamn radios," she muttered, hastening over to her work chair and rolling it to her main interface console. Within seconds, she'd activated the robot's implanted locator beacon, the same type used on black boxes and EPIRB units to be traceable from half a world away and in just about any conditions. She zoomed in on Hanover, recalling exactly where she'd been, down to the millimeter and... nothing. There was nothing there. No disturbance, no robot, no locator ping. It was an empty stretch of sidewalk that didn't even show signs of radio interference. She quickly widened the scan, to take in the city, then the whole region. Still nothing! Scanning further would take time, but what else was she going to do? As she waited for the search to run, Gina considered the possibilities. Could the robot have fallen victim to one of the portals and been whisked away to who-knows-where? She had to admit it was looking distinctly likely. That was... not good. Nobody knew what the portals were, or where they opened onto, or if anything that went through one would come back. The Miss Americana robot had only an extremely basic artificial intelligence, enough to maintain a human mien, walk and act as specifically instructed, and seek out solar energy when its battery ran low. There was no possible way it could return on its own to Freedom City. For now, possibly for the foreseeable future, Miss Americana was out of commission. But Freedom City still needed heroes. Gina went upstairs and looked out her front window. It was quiet in the direct view of her house, but she could hear sirens, and people yelling in the distance. Bad things were happening. Surely she could do something. She headed for the door, only to catch a glimpse of herself in the reflection off her cabinets. Dumpy, dowdy, out of shape, dressed in sweats and with her hair ratty, she was nobody's idea of a hero. What the hell was she supposed to do out there anyway, just stand there and hope she scared the invaders or made them recoil with revulsion just to look at her? She didn't have laser beams, she couldn't fly. When it came to saving the city, she was absolutely worthless. Gina retreated downstairs to continue the futile search. Hours later, her search had covered the entire world to no avail. Gina was forced to concede that the robot might be gone entirely. That was a very depressing thought. She prepared herself a supposedly healthy frozen dinner, then added a half pint of Cherry Garcia and a bag of Doritos to her tray and carried it all downstairs to keep working. It could be months before she had another robot working, and even that would require a lot of very uncomfortable contact with the outside world. In that time, who knew what would happen to the contacts and work that Miss Americana had been doing? What would happen to the little girl in Switzerland? Just as Gina stuck the first spoonful of ice cream in her mouth, the locator beacon alert shrilled at her from the computer! Fumbling aside her dinner tray, she dove for the keyboard and interfaced with the local satellite to get a close-up picture of its location. The robot was exactly where she'd left it, in the middle of Hanover, on an empty sidewalk. Only... it didn't look the same at all. Gone was Miss Americana's skintight red-white-and blue uniform, replaced with a long blue dress that looked distinctly Victorian, corseted and with a full skirt that dropped to her ankles. Her golden hair was pinned up in ringlets and partially hidden by a large, feathered hat. Wherever she'd been, someone had been playing dress-up and gotten really carried away, it seemed. A bit of reflected light on the satellite picture caught her eye, and Gina magnified again. On the robot's finger was a gold wedding band. "What the hell were you doing while you were gone?" Gina demanded aloud, then dropped her body to go and retrieve the damned thing before it did anything worse.

Time: January 10, 2010 Place: Archetech The room was dark and quiet, mechanical humming and the whoosh of air recirculating the only noises that could be heard. Stesha lay on an uncomfortable bed, half-propped up by the lifting back and a couple of pillows. She looked at the blank screen in front of her, then over to Derrick where he sat on a stool next to the bed, and squeezed his hand. "I feel like we're waiting for a movie to start," she joked softly. He just smiled and brushed his lips across her forehead, even as the door to the hallway opened to let in light and the businesslike clicking of high heels. "Sorry to be a little late," Miss Americana told the couple, a white lab coat thrown on over her uniform. "You know how it goes, but I'm glad we didn't have to reschedule. I've been looking forward to this. Are you both ready?" "Absolutely," Stesha said with a grin. "I want to see who's kicking me all night... besides you, honey," she teased Derrick. He blushed. "You're certain there's no risk, right?" he asked Miss Americana. "Positive," Miss A assured him, sitting down on the opposite side of the bed and lifting up Stesha's maternity smock. "3-D ultrasound is just as safe as regular. We're just going to have a look." Stesha giggled as the gorgeous doctor poured gel lubricant onto her bare tummy. "It's cold!" she announced, shivering more with excited nerves than with the actual temperature. All eyes were riveted to the screen the moment Miss A picked up the wand and began applying it to the taut skin of Stesha's abdomen. "Oh..." Stesha murmured softly as the picture came into focus, her fingers clasping Derrick's. "Look, it's our baby..." At this stage, the newest member of the Lumins family looked a lot like something Dark Star might have encountered out in deep space, with a head half the size of its entire body and eyes that dominated the top entire half of the head. The surprisingly detailed picture showed the baby's tiny hands up in front of its face, its eyes closed. As they watched, one infinitesimal thumb went into the mouth. Stesha cooed, and Derrick wiped his eyes with a tissue. Miss Americana flipped a switch, and the quiet room was suddenly filled with a quick galloping noise. "Heart sounds good," Miss A told them. "You can keep watching while I move the wand around for some measurements. I've got a pretty good guess as to the sex, unless you want it to be a surprise." Stesha looked over at Derrick, her own eyes wet as she smiled at him. "We want to know," she said definitely. "I've been bursting to know for weeks! How can I get started on the serious shopping otherwise?" "Fair enough," Miss A acknowledged. She captured a picture of the screen, moved the wand a little, repeated the process. "The little one's not shy, that's for sure. Unless I'm very much mistaken, and I rarely am, you all are having a little girl." She smiled a little at Stesha's cry of delight and kept taking measurements while the couple took in the news. "A little girl," Stesha sighed dreamily, looking at the screen. "Somehow I was sure she was going to be a girl. Look at her, isn't she beautiful?" "Just like her mother," Derrick agreed, his voice thick with emotion. He leaned in and kissed her again, for once not seeming to care that anyone saw. "She's perfect." "She's mad," Stesha told him with a breathless laugh. "She's kicking the probe. I don't think she likes us messing with her." She rubbed her stomach above the gelled area, lightly and reassuringly. "It's all right, baby," she told their agitated daughter. "We can see how pretty you are now, we'll let you go back to sleep soon. We love you so much! I can't wait till we get to see you face to face." Stesha lay back and looked at Derrick, swamped with euphoria and love. "I guess it's time to start thinking about names now, too!"

December 23, 2010 It's a cold and dreary day in late December, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere where most people live. It's no better in Freedom City, where a heavy snowfall last night has transformed into dirty ice and slush by the unaesthetic mechanics of life in a major urban area. It's a good day to be inside with a strong cup of hot cocoa or eggnog, letting ceremonial libations shake away the incipient holiday blues. Luckily this is generally a quiet time for superheroes: most supercriminals are people too, and even the ones without Christmas cheer have been socked away at home thanks to the lousy weather. You need a good reason to be out tonight, whether it's carrying out the duties of a government agent's patrol, hunting for last-minute Christmas presents, or else dealing with problems that have nothing to do with the season. - "Growing tired of these lies," said Avenger, leering malevolently down at the snitch he'd cornered in the Fens back alley. There were new heroes active in the Fens, he knew, but these were _his_ streets, and he was possessive enough, and secretive enough, that he preferred to keep his own council even when dealing with notorious criminals. "Christmas will be difficult in prison. Worse in prison hospital." He grabbed the frightened man by the collar and jacked him up against the wall with one hand, a murderous look in his eyes. "Where's the shipment?" "Oh God, don't hurt me, please!" Mondale Tommahan whimpered, still wearing the shattered sunglasses that Avenger had broken on his face and then neatly put back there after dragging him away for interrogation. He'd heard all about the notorious vigilante, about his brutality and uncompromising violence, and watching him tear through his friends in the Irish mob in their favorite bar that evening had certainly put the fear of Avenger into him. "Look, the X-Ray stuff was just a joke, man? What kind of scuzzball would take naked pictures of Lady Liberty-" "A SCUZZBALL LIKE YOU!" Damn, Jack loved the look in their eye when he _yelled_. "Already know you inside. Time to show you!" He went for the machete on the wall, the one that usually had them wetting themselves before his hands were on the blade, but his nighttime exertions were suddenly interrupted as a brilliant white light shone on the wall in a pattern of brilliant hexagons!

It was a very busy day in Gina's lab! Sure, it was almost Christmas, but crime didn't take holidays, so neither did the people who supported the crimefighters! And what was Jack of all Blades going to do if she didn't finish his electrogauntlets before Zappo, the Energy Beast from the Fifth Dimension, found his way back from the space maze he'd been thrown into? Not to mention Victory's upgraded foot servos, the ones that would let him leap tall buildings in a single bound without needing to expend energy by flying! What if Santa Claus was endangered this year and someone needed to leap to the rooftops to save him? Right now though, she was stuck on the phone with her superior at ArcheTech Labs, delaying all her work for yet another conversation on monster-proofing the labs after the last ransacking by Froggenstein. "Yes sir," she murmured into the phone, "but if it could just... yes..." Her voice got even quieter as she held onto the phone with both hands. "Yes sir, of course. It'll be done by New Year's. Yes... yes... yes, of course. I understand. Merry Christmas." She hung up the phone with a sigh, massaging her temples with her fingertips. That was the worst thing about being an engineer for heroes. Having to work with strong-willed people and never being able to stand up to them, even when they were wrong. If only she had more courage! That was a foolish hope, though. Gina wasn't a brave person, and she certainly wasn't a bold person. She couldn't even bring herself to speak to the handsomest hero, the one with the most beautiful blue eyes, the most stunning smile... Whenever he was around, her mind went blank and she could barely work, let alone socialize. It wasn't as though he'd ever noticed, anyway, she reminded herself. She was the perfect support technician, competent and as good as invisible. Heroes looked at heroines, not at plain, shy women in lab coats. And it wasn't as though she begrudged Freedom City's heroes and heroines their glory; they worked hard for it! They kept the city safe by putting themselves in harm's way, day in and day out, and they deserved the applause they got. Sometimes she just wished there might be a smidgen of a curtain call left over for others at the end of the day. Speaking of the end of the day, it had come and was long gone into the evening by the time Gina finished her work for the day. She didn't mind, work was her life after all, and there was no one waiting in her boxy little apartment for her to come home. Besides, when everyone else had gone home, she could concentrate on her own project... Slipping out of the lab, she walked down the hall to an unused storage room, one she'd secured with an unbreakable combotron lock. Opening it up, she slipped inside and turned on the lights. There, gleaming softly under the fluorescent bulbs, was the realization of all her dreams, a red, white and blue chassis with the face of a beautiful woman and the power of a superhero. Her chance to be a hero, her chance to be noticed! Working quickly, Gina tugged off her lab coat and rubber soled shoes, and climbed into the robotic suit. It was a snug fit, but in moments, she was totally covered by the suit, her own movements directing it in how to move and where to go. "Hello, world," she said experimentally, the words coming out a dulcet purr from the robotic throat. She smiled, and in the mirror on the far wall, she saw the robot suit emulating the motion. It was working! Gina Evans, mild-mannered engineer, was gone, at least for the night, and in her place was the beautiful superheroine, Miss Americana!

"Confidentiality" Stesha had never been to ArcheTech's main lab before. It was a very impressive, almost intimidating place, even more so because today she was here in her civilian clothes. Her green hair, pinned up in braids and rings close to her head, and surrounded by flowers, was the only obvious sign of her metahuman origin. Besides that, she looked like any other woman in a flowing pink blouse and elastic-waist jeans. The nice receptionist put her somewhat at ease, giving her a pass and directing her to the arrows that would lead her to her destination. After a quick bathroom detour, Stesha headed up in the elevator, following the arrows that led her to a small side laboratory that looked somewhat like a normal doctor's examining room, except for a few extra large pieces of equipment around. It was also empty, which she hadn't exactly expected. She stepped inside anyway and found a note sitting on the bed. "Sorry I'm a little delayed, please get into the robe and wait just a moment." Stesha sighed and did as requested, stripping and neatly folding her clothes, then slipping into the robe and tying it closed. She sat down on the end of the paper-covered exam bed and covered herself with the paper towel sheet, then hugged her arms to her abdomen and waited in the quiet humming of the machinery. She hoped Doc was right about this referral. The wait wasn't long, much to Stesha's relief. In just a couple of minutes, there was a light tap on the door, and then a beautiful woman in a white lab coat walked in. A seriously beautiful woman, and if Stesha hadn't been used to dealing with Moira, her jaw might have dropped. The doctor closed the door and took out a fancy-looking iPad with a lot of extra technical baubles attached to it, and gave Stesha a friendly smile. "Hello," the blonde said, "I'm Miss Americana. You must be Fleur de Joie? I understand you asked Doctor Archeville for a female metaphysician?" Miss Americana did some sizing up of her own, looking over her new patient. She certainly looked the part of the earth mother, with her green, flower-bedecked hair, dirt-edged fingernails, and cutely guileless face. That face was a little green as well, but she couldn't tell at a glance if that was normal or if it were an offshoot of Fleur's current situation. Only one way to find out. "That's right," Stesha replied, "but you can call me Stesha. Doctor Archeville says that you're very good, and I thought I would just feel more comfortable with a woman doctor for this, you understand?" "Yes, of course," Miss A reassured her, with a totally believable smile that she didn't entirely feel. She knew more about medicine and certainly more about life science than most doctors, but she'd never actually conducted a proper examination of a living human being before. But a day of practice for her was equivalent to a year of study for the average human, so she felt reasonably prepared. Mostly. "This is a very special time for you, and I want you to be comfortable. Or as comfortable as possible while you're wearing a paper gown, anyway," she added with a wink. "Yes, that's sort of a limiting factor," Stesha grimaced. "Do I really have to wear this? It's sort of... drafty." "Sorry," Miss A told her sympathetically. "I have to do a quick pelvic check in a few minutes, so you need to wear the gown." "Oh God." Stesha's grimace deepened. "Are you serious?" "It's very important," Miss A assured her. "I need to check and make sure your cervix is tightly closed and in the right position, and get a couple of swabs. It won't take long. If it makes you feel any better, the table has already gotten your weight, temperature and blood pressure, so we've skipped the entire first part of the exam right there." "I guess, a little," Stesha allowed. "Just don't tell me how much I weigh. I don't even want to know." "No problem," Miss A told her, "but I will say that you've got nothing to worry about so far. You said you think you're about thirteen weeks, is that correct? When was the first day of your last period?" "The first or second of September," Stesha replied, with the air of someone who had long since worked out the answer to that all-important question. "That's really why I didn't notice for awhile, the beginning of October and November were both so crazy, I didn't even think about it till sometime in the first week of November." Miss A nodded and did a few calculations on her pad. "You're exactly right then, you're at thirteen weeks and four days now, with a due date of June 2. Though that's a ballpark, you have to understand. Those can be off by as much as two weeks in either direction." "Oh, I know," Stesha said with great feeling. "My mom is a midwife, so she's drummed that into me thoroughly. I want her to do most of my care if that's possible, but I want to get a clean bill of health first, before we tell them anything. I'm not quite human anymore, you know?" "That seems sensible," Miss A agreed. "How have you been feeling? Any dizziness, nausea, heartburn, insomnia, food aversion?" "Not as much now," Stesha told her, furrowing her brow in concentration. "Still pretty sleepy and hungry, a lot more so than usual. Generally my power allows me to go without when I want, but not anymore. But the nausea's mostly gone away, and I only had a couple of dizzy spells ever." "That sounds very normal," Miss A said approvingly, making a few notes on her pad. "Are you taking a vitamin and getting plenty of water? You said your appetite has been good, what are you eating?" "Everything I can get my grubby little hands on," Stesha admitted with a laugh. "I'm trying to eat plenty of fruits and veggies, drink a lot of milk, but the other night I sent my fiance out at three in the morning, in costume no less, to buy me another box of Rice Krispie Treats cereal. I think I've eaten a case of it by now. But it's vitamin-fortified!" she added, looking imploringly for Miss A's approval. "There are probably worse things you could be eating right now," Miss A allowed with a chuckle, "but sugary cereal is not going to take the place of a good prenatal vitamin. Why don't you lie back, and I'll let the sensors take a look at you before we do anything else. They'll be able to tell me what your internal chemistry is up to, and anything we might need to watch out for. We'll save the rest of it for last." She wasn't looking forward to that part any more than her patient was. "All right," Stesha agreed with a sigh, laying back against the bed with her head on the flat foam pillow. "I'm a little cold," she admitted. "Is there a thermostat in here?" "No problem," Miss A assured her. "I'll take care of it." Maybe it was out of some kind of nascent guilt for misrepresenting herself, but Miss A made sure to take good care of her patient. She dimmed the overhead lights and bumped up the thermostat, covering Stesha with a permeable sheet that the sensors could look through easily before retreating to the booth to take readings. As an afterthought, she turned on the ambient speakers to the soothing channel the company used in the wellness rooms for scientists in sort need of naps. Relaxing chime music played softly as the scanners went to work, checking over the prone superheroine's unique body chemistry. It was interesting enough work to hold Gina's attention, even as the scans revealed Stesha relaxing into a little nap on the table. The plant controller's body chemistry was very strange, but seemed stable and in balance for what it was. Gina wished sorely for a set of baseline readings, but apparently Doc had never managed to talk her onto one of his lab tables before today. She'd have to work with what she had, but it all looked pretty promising. As she worked, using the robot's senses and hands to access and interpret the data, Gina acknowledged to herself how much she actually enjoyed doing this sort of thing. The engineering was her first love, and what she was best at, but she liked helping real people, live people like this as well. Maybe that's why she'd been drawn to the idea of building medical prostheses in the first place. She didn't want to waste time in medical school or anything like that, but maybe it was time to improve her knowledge of the field even more. Miss A spent long enough looking over the readings for Stesha to get a restful little nap, waking gradually as the lights came up over a period of a minute or two. She yawned, disoriented for a moment, then looked around to see the labcoat-clad heroine coming around the partititon. "Mm, I guess I fell asleep there. How do I look?" she asked, a little nervously. "I don't have a set of baseline readings to go off," Miss A began, "but what I'm seeing now looks good. You both seem to be very healthy and doing just fine. I see a strong heartbeat and good blood flow. You can hear it too, over the microphone." She pressed a button, and suddenly the air was full of a fast, swooshing patter that sounded like a water pump working at full capacity. "Wow," Stesha said with a silly grin. "That's great. That's amazing. Wait till I tell D- Dark Star. He's going to be over the moon. Maybe literally." She laughed, closing her eyes to listen to the sound until Miss A deactivated the speakers. "It's all really good to hear. I feel so much better. Better enough to even be ready to get the pelvic over with." "It's good news," Miss A agreed, "but I think you really should get some continued monitoring here, just to be on the safe side throughout. I'm sure you'll be most comfortable doing most of it with your mom, but we have the equipment here to check up on your unique physiology. I want to make sure everything keeps looking as good as it does today." The talking helped to distract her as she got set up, enough of her mind on her work to let her be competent, but not enough to let her think too much about it. "All right, now scoot to the edge of the bed and put your feet in the stirrups." "I guess that's a good enough compromise," Stesha said, a little reluctantly, even as she moved to comply. The pelvic exam was about the same as she remembered, uncomfortable but fast, and then it was done and she could sit up, as quickly as possible. "Uck." "But now it's done," Miss A reminded her, hiding her own squick behind a perfect professional smile. She was just glad Stesha hadn't looked up to see her face. "The results will be back in a week or so, and I'll let you know if there's anything to worry about. In the meantime, get a good vitamin regimen going, and make sure to keep up with exercise at whatever level you feel comfortable with. And congratulations, you and Dark Star are very lucky." "I know," Stesha said, her reservations melting away into a brilliantly happy smile. "We're the luckiest people in the world. I'm so excited! Thank you so much for your help, Miss Americana. I really felt very comfortable with you as my doctor." "I'm glad," Miss A replied. "Just let me know if you have any questions or if anything comes up. My phone is always available." She left to allow Stesha to get dressed, waiting till she was outside to take a deep breath. In a life full of strange experiences, Gina wasn't sure that hadn't been one of the weirdest.

Power Level: 15 [12 combat w/o Gadgets, 15 skills/w/Gadgets] (241/250PP) [279] Trade-Offs: +0 Attack/+0 Damage, -0 Defense / +0 Toughness Unspent PP: 9 In Brief: A reclusive cyberkinetic who built herself a superpowered robot body for IRL heroic shenanigans. Alternate Identities: Robot Identity: Secret Birthplace: Freedom City Occupation: Superhero/Paperweight Affiliations: None Family: N/A Age: 3 years (Final version created June 2010) Apparent Age: Early 20s Gender: Female Ethnicity: Caucasian Height: 5'10" Weight: 180 lbs. Eyes: Blue Hair: Blonde, Long, Slightly Curly Description: Miss Americana is a beautiful and sparkling young woman who draws people in with both her looks and her confidence. Perfectly proportioned and with supermodel skin, hair and teeth to match, she looks a little bit like she stepped out of a comic book by one of the better artists. Curly blonde hair falls to the shoulders and over the red cape of her red, white and blue uniform, with a tiny circlet to keep it out of her face and accent her forehead. Fearless and nigh-invulnerable, she is a shining beacon in the heroic firmament. Power Descriptions: All of Miss Americana's powers are of the Technological descriptor, being as how she is a robot and all. Her scanner looks somewhat similar to a Star Trek: Next Generation medical tricorder. She's a nerd, sue her. History: Gina Evans was born the third of three children, and the only girl, to a lower middle class family in Blackwater, Missouri. Her father, Charlie, was a night shift supervisor at the paper products plant, while her mother Alice, called Lissy, stayed home to take care of the kids. To Lissy, her little Regina was her personal reward after birthing two boy children. At last she had her own little baby doll to play with and dress up and do all the things she wished she'd done herself. And Gina was undeniably a good looking baby, with her wispy blond curls and long fingers. At six months of age, Gina was entered into her first beauty pageant, the Missouri State "Show Me Smiles" competition, and inadvertently sealed her own fate when she gave the judges a huge gummy smile at just the right moment. She won Grand Supreme in the baby division, and Lissy saw a future that was studded with crowns and glory. Childhood got pretty weird from that point on, not that Gina had known anything different. While her brothers Pete and Charlie Jr. watched TV or played in the yard, from the time she was two years old, Gina spent at least thirty hours a week with her mother, getting her hair styled, practicing pageant walks, being fitted for costumes, and endlessly, endlessly smiling. She liked the attention from her mother, who left the boys to their own devices while she molded her daughter, and the pretty clothes, and seeing her little pageant friends on weekends. She also liked winning beautiful crowns and white sashes, and for awhile, she did pretty well at that. In the baby and toddler divisions, a lot of the winning was determined by who had hair, who got teeth in the right order, and most especially by how much money the parents were willing to spend on clothes. Lissy was of the firm opinion that money was no object when it came to winning. Charlie, a responsible if somewhat uncreative man, had set up college savings accounts for all three of the kids so they'd have a chance to get ahead in the world one day. Lissy thought nothing of continually spending whatever went into Gina's, on the rationale that once she was a champion, scholarships would be easy to come by, if she didn't go straight into modeling or acting, of course. Gina's frilly pink and white bedroom got a shelf full of little crowns and trophies, and her closet was stuffed full of thousand dollar dresses. As she got older, competition became more intense for Gina. Her baby teeth didn't come in as straight and white as they could have, so she got a "flipper" to cover them with the illusion of big white perfect teeth. She spray-tanned and got her eyebrows waxed every other week, holding tightly to her stuffed rabbit so she wouldn't cry and make it hurt more, and had extensions to fill out her less-than-lush dyed and permed blonde hair. By the time she was six or seven, Gina wasn't sure she wanted to do any of this anymore, but she knew her mama would be sick with sadness if she found that out, so she soldiered on anyway. When she got the chance, especially at school, she would sneak away from what she was supposed to be doing and play with the computers, which were wonderful and interesting. She taught herself about computers with the help of the internet, and got pretty good with them for someone from her age and background. Her pageant performance started suffering due to her ambivalence and growing distraction, though, and she stopped placing outside her age group nearly as often as she used to. When Gina only won her division, it usually made her mama so mad that she cried, and then wouldn't say anything for the whole way home. When they'd driven ten hours to a pageant, that was a long time. Gina brought books along to fill the silences, and eventually she started to enjoy that part of the trip the most of all. Gina hit puberty early, and it wasn't kind to her. Her adult teeth were as crooked as the baby teeth had been, and her features lacked the pleasing symmetry the judges looked for in the vital and ineffable "facial beauty" category. She didn't get much in the way of a figure, and her skin turned oily while her hair got dry from nearly a decade of being abused by chemicals. The other pageant girls had formed their cliques while she was busy reading, and at eleven she was an ugly duckling outsider without a hope of placing outside her division. She dreaded going to pageants anymore, but Lissy declared that this was just a phase that they would work through, and as soon as they got the acne cleared up and the braces came off, the winning would start again. She began looking into doctors who would do some facial work on adolescent girls, but for once Charlie put his foot down. Up to this point he'd been content to let his wife mold their little girl, but plastic surgery was a bridge too far. Gina was immensely relieved, even as a small part of her still hungered to be beautiful and bright like the other girls. At school all the kids thought she was weird because of the pageant stuff and how she would sometimes come to birthday parties in dresses and with her hair and face teased half to death because her mother had told her to. There were kids like her at school, kids who liked reading and computers and stuff, but they didn't think she was like them, and she couldn't seem to find a way to reach them. She was very lonely, but at least she could talk to people on the computer who didn't know who she was or what she looked like. She made friend there. By the time Gina reached high school, the pageant world was cutthroat and she was just not cutting it. No matter how many hours she practiced with her mom breathing down her neck, she wasn't coordinated enough to do the dancing and gymnastics routines, and she was too tone deaf to sing or play an instrument. She put on the fake teeth and the five pounds of makeup, did her pageant walk and smiled, smiled, smiled, but it just wasn't enough. The endless special diets to keep her weight down and manage her acne just added insult to injury, and between pageants and coaching, there wasn't enough time for homework, let alone trying to make any friends. Finally Gina had had enough and told her mother she was quitting pageants, only to have Lissy calmly drop the bombshell on her that she'd better not drop pageants if she wanted to have any hope of going to college, because there was no money for her to go anymore. Pageants were her future, and without them, there was no future. Gina was smart, but her dad made just enough money to squeeze her out of financial need scholarships, and there would be no good college without money to send her. Wretched, Gina retreated to her computer, pouring out her woes onto her Livejournal. Hardly anybody actually read her journal, since the site wasn't exactly popular anymore, but in a way she felt it was like screaming at the sky. Even if no one listened, there was something cathartic about putting the words out there, fingers flying across the keys as tears of anger and despair rolled down her face. She was surprised when her instant messenger chimed a message to her, and even more surprised when it was from someone she didn't recognize, but whose IM hadn't triggered a "Do you want to take this message?" window. As far as she knew, she hadn't ever talked to anyone named Gene_Elliot2U before. I read your sad story, the message read. Don't you ever get to do what you want? Okay, that was really weird, Gina thought, but was interested enough to respond anyway. The worst she could get was trolled. Not really, she typed back. My mom has always decided everything for me. I've got nothing that's my own. What do you want? her mysterious conversational partner asked. Cake? Gina typed back, adding a silly smiley face. I hear it's delicious. No, really, the text box insisted. If you could have anything, be anything, what would you want? Gina was taken aback by the question. "Gorgeous, duh," she muttered aloud, then shook her head just as quickly. Maybe if she could be beautiful it would make her win pageants, and make her mom happy, and get her a scholarship, but none of that would be hers, it would just be more of what other people wanted. I want to be good with computers and machines, she typed instead, catching her lower lip between her teeth as she worked. So good that I can do anything I want with them, and get any job I want with them. An interesting choice. Very well. Have fun! Suddenly, Gene_Elliot2U signed off, and an instant later, the chat window closed, and the name disappeared from Gina's instant messenger list. For all intents and purposes, the conversation might not have happened at all, according to her computer. "Hey!" Gina protested, leaning forward and grabbing for the mouse. "What the hell?" She focused intently on the computer, trying to figure out what had gone wrong, and suddenly she was inside the computer. It was an intensely disorienting experience that lasted only a few seconds, but it was the beginning of everything. Learning to use her new powers wasn't easy, but it was the most wonderful, most exciting, most fun thing Gina had ever done in her life. Finally she was special, finally she was really good at something she loved. That gave her the courage to tell Lissy where she could put her stupid pageants and the wherewithal to deal with the rage and tears and eventual estrangement that followed. Gina had never been close to the rest of her family, and she was happy to obey Lissy's edict and move out on her eighteenth birthday, since "she obviously didn't want to be part of this family anymore." Things were hard at first, and she had to take a crappy tech support job to pay the bills, but within a few months she'd come up with her first technology patent, a sweet little program that synchronized a half dozen distribution and bookkeeping programs and that sold like wildfire in the warehousing and trucking markets. With the money, and the money from several other patents she came out with after that, Gina moved to the suburbs of Freedom City and bought herself a house that was bigger than the one she grew up in. She sent Lissy pictures, but no address. When she wasn't working on ways to put her powers to good use inventing things, Gina put on her metaphorical white hat and went to save the world on the internet. There were bad people out there, and it was kind of fun to go out and slay malicious code and cage up malware before it could hurt innocent civilians. Now that she was making enough money to have her groceries delivered, her lawn mowed, and her upstairs dusted, there was nothing that kept Gina from burrowing into her basement lab and spending as much time online as she wanted. So she did. No one on the outside missed her. It actually took her a surprisingly long time to realize that fact, but when she did, it made her lonely. She didn't want to live and die in this basement, no matter what sort of valuable things she did down there. At the same time, she knew she was flabby and oily and gross and unsociable, and she didn't want to go outside, either. If she went outside, she wouldn't be admired or applauded or judged worthy. She'd still be an outsider, incapable of doing the brave deeds she did online, helpless as anyone else and perhaps more so than most. She didn't want to be that person. Then she realized she didn't have to be. It took months to gather the materials and craft all the parts, but at long last, Gina had her first robot. It was crude, boxy and inhuman, but it was proof of concept. Wearing the robot like a videogame character while her hateful human body lay motionless in the basement, Gina rocketed into the sky and performed aerial acrobatics, then returned to earth long enough to stop a purse-snatcher. It worked! Over the next year, she performed many tests and alterations, tweaking and planning, till finally she was ready. Miss Americana (similar to yet legally distinct from, of course), was ready to meet the world! Personality & Motivation: Miss Americana is pleasant and helpful to everyone she meets, except for villains, who she treats with all the outrage that they deserve! The world needs protecting, and she's just the hero to do it! Beyond that, Miss Americana is a mysterious creature, who seems to desire nothing beyond truth, justice, and the American way. Powers & Tactics: Miss Americana is strong and acrobatic, capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound, or even flying a little when the situation calls for it. Bullets do not faze her, nor do many poisons or mental attacks that might stun other heroes. Villains cower in fear of the red, white and blue power beams that shoot from her hands to quell their evil schemes. Complications: Barbie Doll: With her costume on, Miss Americana looks amazingly human and can easily pass. With her costume off, however, she is Barbie-doll smooth, with none of the parts that would be expected on an actual working woman. This is bad for her cover, and precludes much of a social life. Kill Switch: If Gina is ejected from control of the robot and someone attempts to open the robot and get it working again or reprogram it, it is programmed to immediately wipe its programming banks and melt down its servo control switches. Miss Americana will be useless until brought into the lab for repairs. Abilities: 10 + 4 + (-10) + (-10) + (-10) + (-10) = -26PP Strength 34/20 (+12/+5) Dexterity 14 (+2) Constitution --- Intelligence ---, 40/24 (+15/+7) when piloted by Gina Wisdom ---, 20 (+5) when piloted by Gina Charisma ---, 30 (+10) when piloted by Gina Combat: 12 + 16 = 28PP Initiative: +6 Attack: +6, +12 Blast/Unarmed Grapple: +22/+11 Defense: +12 (+8 Base, +4 Dodge Focus), +4 Flat-Footed Knockback: -15 Saving Throws: 0 + 8 + 0 = 8PP Toughness: +12 (+0 Con, +12 Protection) (Impervious 12) Fortitude: --- Reflex: +10 (+2 Dex, +8) Will: --- Skills: 16R = 4PP Acrobatics 16 (+18) Bluff --- (---); 20 (+30) when piloted by Gina Diplomacy 16 (---); 20 (+30) when piloted by Gina Feats: 61PP Attack Specialization (Unarmed) 2 Dodge Focus 4 Equipment 5 Luck 3 Improved Initiative Interpose Sidekick 45 (Gina, 225PP) Equipment: Headquarterses! 25 EP House Spoiler Size: Medium; Toughness: 10; Features: Computer, Concealed 2 (+15), Living Space, Personnel, Power System, Power, Security System. Workshop Cost: 11 equipment points. Lab Size: Medium; Toughness: 15; Features: Laboratory, Library, Personnel, Power System, Security System, Workshop. Cost: 9 equipment points. 5ep to The Lab Powers: 3 + 33 + 22 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 28 + 1 + 24 + 10 + 30 + 4 = 169PP Device 1 (Scanner, 5PP, Easy to Lose) [3 pp] Spoiler Super-Senses 5 (Analytical for All Vision {2}, Analytical and Ranged for Tactile {2}, Detect Weakness [visual] {1}) Energy Systems 15 (30 points; PF: Alternate Power 3) [33PP] BE: Blast 12 (laser fingers; PFs: Accurate 2, Improved Crit, Precise, Variable Descriptor 2[any electromagnetic]) {30/30} AP: Damage 12 (laser storm; Extras Selective, Targeted Area [Cone], Flaw: Action [Full], PFs: Accurate 2, Improved Crit, Precise, Variable Descriptor 2 [any electromagnetic]) {30/30} AP: Enhanced Strength 14 (to 34/+12) [14PP], and Flight 4 (total rank 5; 250MPH, 2,500ft per Move Action) [8PP], and Super-Strength 4 (effective Str 54; Heavy Load: 11.5 tons) [4PP] {14+8+8=30/30} AP: ESP 7 (200 miles, all senses; Flaw: Medium [machines]; PFs: Rapid 6 (1,000,000), Subtle) {28/30} Enhanced Charisma 22 (Extras: Affects Others, Flaws: Limited [Others]) [22PP] Enhanced Skills 32 (Bluff 16, Diplomacy 16, Extras: Affects Others, Flaws: Limited [Others]) [8PP] Features 4 (Alarm 2 [DC25], Eidetic Memory, Kill Switch) [4PP] (Alerts Gina when robot makes any unauthorized movement, either from moving or being moved. Built-in audio/visual recording equipment, Remote Deactivation) Flight 1 (10MPH, 100ft per Move Action) [2PP] Gadgets 4 (Assorted Devices; 20PP Variable Power, Any Power, Multiple Powers At Once; Extras: Duration [Continuous]; Flaws: Hard-To-Lose) [28PP] Illusion 1 (biometrics field/Technology; All Senses; Flaws: Limited: "I'm a real boy!" 2; Drawbacks: Limited: Does not effect normal un-enhanced vision) [1pp] Immunity 30 (Fortitude Effects) [30PP] Immunity 10 (Mental [Psionic] Effects, Extras: Affects Others, Flaws: Limited [Others]) [10PP] Protection 12 (Extras: Impervious [12]) [24PP] Super-Senses 4 (Communication Link [Radio, Gina], Radar [Accurate Radio sense]) [4PP] Drawback: -3PP Vulnerable (magnetic effects; Uncommon, Major [x2]) [-3PP] DC Block: ATTACK RANGE SAVE EFFECT Unarmed Melee DC 27/20 Toughness Damage Lasers Ranged DC 33/DC27 Toughness Damage Abilities (-26) + Combat (28) + Saving Throws (8) + Skills (4) + Feats (61) + Powers (169) - Drawbacks (-3) = 241/250 Power Points Spoiler Default Allocation {12+8=18/20} Enhanced Blast 6 (to Blast 18) {12/12} Force Field 6 (Extra: Impervious 2 [to 14] {8}