Mutants & Masterminds:[DCUO] Welcome to the New Age #1

[Aphrodite Pandemos]

Summer 2014

Within the last hour, the world has changed. An alien conqueror from out of nowhere does just that. Or at least tries to conquer. While you're used to monthly invasions from beyond time and space, this one is different. They're not over Metropolis or Gotham or Central City or Star City or Opal City or Coast City or even the continental US. They. Are. Everywhere. They're bottling up pieces if the world and making them disappear in some places!

For the optimistic citizen, this is just another day for the super heroes to save the day. For the pessimistic, this is the end of the world as we know it. Things like this bring out the best and the worst out of people. For all of you, life is about to get a little bit stranger. After an hour of scrambling for safety you see a pulse in the sky, a white light. You might think it's the Justice League fixing things but you'd be wrong. You feel awkward for some reason, like your mind and body is being invaded by something. By POWER.

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OK, this is to set up your prologue. Your breakout, you eruption, your whatever you want to call it. After you describe what happens to you and maybe a little bit of repercussions and/or action, I will describe you getting scooped up. Any questions, suggestion, complaints or anything other than in character posting should go in the OOC thread.

Happy posting

[SalmonMax]

Dorothy's cellphone was ringing again. She couldn't hear it over the loud electric buzz of her arc-welder, but she heard it in her head. It was one murmur out of dozens. The microwave oven she had parked over on the farside of her workbench for late-night snacks whispered what time it was. The DVD over her head, in the loft apartment of the converted warehouse she'd leased, was muttering that it had no disc...hard to hear with the range and floor in the way, but its wireless connectivity was strong enough. In contrast, her cellphone was brash and loud, blaring her voicemail answer out and then letting Hannah talk into it.

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She grunted and clicked another clamp over the tubing she was working on. Hannah was her mom's personal assistant. She sounded worried, but if it was a real emergency, her mom would call herse...

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The signal from the phone vanished.

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Dorothy paused in her work for the first time in...hours? How long now? The microwave eagerly flashed the time into her mind as she stood up and surveyed the workbench. Objects cluttered it. Things she barely remembered now. Her knees wobbled as she stood up off of her stool, and she realized how long it'd been since she last ate. The refrigerator cheerfully burbled about how its internal temperature was just under forty degrees, and it was currently detecting no ice buildup in the freezer.

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What was happening?

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Memory didn't so much flood in, as abruptly started reconnecting...as if it had always been there in little pieces, and was suddenly being assembled. She gasped and her eyes widened as she relived what had happened...the recollection coming crisp and clear, but it felt sort of disconnected, like she was -watching- her experiences play out in some kind of full sense playback. A little TOO perfect to be real.

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...sitting in the train, idly playing a quick game of BugSmash on her phone when she'd realized she could hear the driver talking. Not over the speakers though. And no, not the driver. The 'voice' was a string of numbers...coordinates...a GPS tracking their position as they moved. And then the noise rose up around her like a tidal wave. Music was being played, conversations had, games running, apps...a shrieking cacophony of numbers and pulses and...how could anyone stand the NOISE.

She'd staggered off the train, holding her head, at the next stop but the noise was only slightly lessened. Cell towers blared like ancient whales, while wifi repeaters hooted and hollered and always the shrill piping of phone after phone after phone... Almost immediately she realized it wouldn't be hard to build a kind of cage of conductive metal...copper would be good, but it was soft...at specific intervals to wear on her head that would block most of the signals in the range standard electronic devices used. Or a wearable mini-jammer that could broadcast interferance amplitudes to create a small deadzone around her. Other ideas. More ideas. It was in an alleyway a few blocks from the train station that she suddenly realized there were things she needed to do, because when she looked at some of her old ideas...the ideas that she'd never been able to make work right, all the issues melted away.

She'd called to one of the cell towers, gave it a phone number. It hedged about her network access, but it was easy to fool it by changing her call to sound like a passing phone. A taxi was summoned. The farebox gleefully counted money up as they drove. The driver tried to make conversation, but Dorothy wasn't hearing much with her ears at that point. He was talking about how things had been sighted. Some kind of...invasion or something? It didn't MATTER. She knew how to compress the fuel enough to make the bottles compact enough to fit now!

Rather than pay him, she just left her wallet behind in the front seat. It would have enough to cover it. It didn't MATTER. She had WORK TO DO.

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The memory 'replay' ended with jarring abruptness, and she looked over the long wooden workbench that lined the north wall of her space. Her stomach turned queasy as Dorothy realized it was cluttered with old parts and machined bits of metal and plastic, and over it were several things that looked...probably functional, if rather haphazard in design and not terribly 'polished' looking. She'd done work all right. She'd been a busy girl between then and now.

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It was...scary, and terrifying and she thought she might be dying...but her first reaction was to break into a wide grin and direct that thousand-watt expression at the ceiling as she punched the air.

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Cancer? Brain tumor? Totally worth it.

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Dorothy grabbed her phone and stomped upstairs to nuke up something to eat before she collapsed, and started dialing her mom's work phone. This changed everything.

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It wasn't until she got up there, and paused to look out a window, that she realized just how right she really was about that.

[Jenny "Maglev" Queen]

Upstate New York...

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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time. Jenny saw the opportunity to run and she took it. Her parents were all distracted and thrown into a prepper tizzy over the start of the invasion as some sort of "false flag" designed by the Justice League to bring their globalist masters into power.

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As Jenny's mother and father started the process of packing their bug-out kits and getting them into the bomb shelter they bought and placed in their cabin's basement, Jenny ran. Ran as hard as she could. She knew the forest. Every time her father or mother made her come out to learn how to hunt and live off the land, she picked up a little bit more.

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In her hurry, distracted by seeing the odd smaller spacecraft zipping by in the sky, heading around the region like angered hornets, She diverged off course and found herself at the edge of a cliff overlooking a river. But there was something else, a growl.

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Jenny turned and saw the Black Bear, it challenged her.

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That was when it hit her mind.

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Punch it... punch that sucker right in the death!!!

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She felt energetic. The fear disappeared and she swung as the bear charged. It was like lightning as the fist connected. The bear fell, it's nervous system fried.

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Jenny trembled, wondering what happened, falling to her knees, she was in mental shock. Then something odd happened. The Bear's body broke down into some odd, grayish sludge. It quickly leapt as it were unto her and started to cover her body. She struggled and screamed, but to no avail. She fell over from the ledge into the river below.

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While the impact didn't harm her, she was knocked for a loop, barely conscious she drifted with the current into a lake. The odd grey form now taking the form of a purple and grey bodysuit with a helmet. And she could breathe... while face down in the water.

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She turned herself over once she got her bearings back and looked up... it was all a blur, she just couldn't understand what has just happened... it was like for now her brain had shut off...

[z-Nochlev]

Misha rested his head on the back of his couch, his thoughts far away from his cold Moscow apartment. He could make it warmer but he didn’t spend much time there. He came here to sleep and gain privacy from his fellow cops; even eating happened in diners or at McDonalds. Taste didn’t matter as much as filling his belly, so the choices never ended. Nothing mattered to him more than closing cases.

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So being sent home and told to take a vacation – a real one, his boss had added with a glare – didn’t sit well with him.

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Rising, the middle-aged man went into his bedroom. Kneeling next to the bed, he pulled out a cardboard file box. Opening the lid revealed files crammed tightly into the available space. In another house, they would have been dusty. In his house, they weren’t left along long enough to accumulate dust. He carried the box out to his kitchen table and selected the first folder.

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He always left the reports on top, so that when he first opened the file, he didn’t see any photos. Picking up the first report in the file, he slumped back into his chair to read. He’d read it dozens of times before but he didn’t let his eyes glaze or skim. He forced every iota of his attention to the file. Somewhere in this file existed a clue or evidence that would find a murderer. Misha merely had to find it. A little boy depended on him to do so, so that his soul could rest in peace.

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Time had not eased the gruesome nature of this case. Someone had told him that humans could adjust to anything but he no longer believed that. Misha didn’t want to believe it, either. If time could erase the horror of this injustice, then time deserved the same punishment as these criminals.

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The pictures were last. He left to them to last because they were the hardest. He also wanted the details of the reports fresh in his mind when he went over them.

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The first image pictured a distant shot of the scene, the body still in situ. He had a system for doing this: first, he studied it carefully unaided, then he looked at it unfocused to get a larger picture, and last he would pull the magnifying glass over and take a detailed look at it. His system had worked well for him for years.

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Tonight, the image made his skin crawl. Misha gritted his teeth and studied the image diligently despite his discomfort. The boy lay naked in the middle of an interlocking pattern of geometric figures drawn in blood. The blood had come from the boy and another person, yet unidentified.

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The itching under his skin didn’t improve. Misha dropped the picture on the table and rose, scratching at his arms. The crawly feeling worsened as he went to the sink and got a glass of water. His skin felt as though it would jump off his body.

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What is wrong with me? No one answered the question and Misha felt his fingers tighten around the glass. The hard plastic buckled and shattered, the pieces dropping into the sink with a small stream of water. Misha stared at the broken cup, trying to understand what had just happened.

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Pain lanced through his skull and Misha lost a moment of time. When he came back to himself, he knelt on the floor by his kitchen counter. I mixed the blood in union. He had no idea where that thought had come from or why it had popped into his head. It felt almost like the headache had conjured it.

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Before he had a chance to figure it out, sirens began to wail outside, in the city. He’d never heard them ring out altogether like that before; he guessed that no one had since Hitler invaded. Misha hesitated before grabbing his sidearm and heading for the door.

[George Baker]

Ever since he was a small child, George had enjoyed knights in shining armor, chivalry, and the romanticized notion of the Middle Ages. As he grew up he realized that those romantic notions really were romanticized, but he enjoyed learning about the real deal as well as the modern perspective. While it was his dad that had gotten him into the SCA, it was his love of the time period that kept him there through high school, one bachelors degree and into his masters; especially since they focused on the future horizons of science and physics.

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In fact, it was very fortuitous for him. It just so happened that the SCA was holding their largest regional gathering of the decade just outside of Metropolis, which housed the international S.T.A.R. Labs headquarters, the same week(end) that he was able to get an interview for a physics internship there! What luck!

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There were several days of exhibits, demonstrations and small scale battles before things really heated up, and he still had two days before his interview, so he was partaking. Or, at least that had been the plan. He had just finished a sword vs. sword and shield demonstration where he had gotten beaten for the first time in years. Honestly, it wouldn't have happened except for the fact that he had suddenly gotten very queasy and lightheaded. They were using real weapons, as both of their skill levels were high enough to avoid serious injury; but when he had been overcome he had allowed himself to take a serious blow and the ref had called the match. His chainmail had protected him from the worst of it, he was only bleeding slightly, but he knew from experience that it would bruise quite nicely over the next few days.

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George was lost in thought, reliving the demonstration and trying to figure out what had caused his dizziness and nausea and how he could've compensated. As he walked, he passed by a group of roleplayers. In a sense, they were all roleplayers, but there was always a group that focused on fantasy that just happened to be set in medieval times as opposed to either the romanticized or actual medieval time period. Mostly they used these gatherings to pretend that they were using magic, and so George had always looked down upon them. Rumors of sorcery and witchcraft, and the ensuing panic that they had caused simply underscored how far human understanding had advanced between then and now. And while he knew the stories of Raven, Trigon, Zatanna and others, and knew that they were real, he always assumed that there was some physical explanation for what they did, like how it was the radiation from our yellow sun that superpowered Superman's alien physiology.

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Today was different though. He heard them talking about different incantations and rituals for fire, but instead of thinking that they were weirdoes, simply thought they've got it all wrong. He then proceeded to mutter, under his breath, the correct words for summoning a ball of fire.

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"Fmaleaona Flaberilabsalta. "

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And with that, George's chainmail suddenly appeared to be on fire, and a fireball erupted from his hand and exploded on the ground right in front of him. He hadn't been aiming or trying to control what happened, so the uncontrolled ball of fire landed, basically, right at his feet. The power from the explosion lifted him up off his feet and carried him a short distance. Luckily or not for him, it carried his head straight into a pole and knocked him out cold. The flames on his armor disappeared, but the grass that had caught fire kept burning.

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And when George woke up, he wasn't in Kansas anymore...

[TeleForce]

Blake floated above the chaos. Below him people were running and screaming through the streets of Metropolis as the robots tromped after them at their own pace. Anyone the robot caught was encased in a bubble of energy and left for another different kind of robot to collect a scurry off with. Blake didn't know where the robot were taking the captured people, nor did he know where they had come from. One moment he'd been panhandling in front of the Daily Planet,the next minute it was covered in a giant energy bottle and people were freaking out.

Blake drifted down and into the crowd, he shouted at people to run, to get the children away from the attacking robots but no one was listening to him. It was if they couldn't hear him. A panicked businessman who was using his briefcase as a shield and running haphazardly through the crowd ran straight into Blake, and passed through him! What was going on? For a panicked moment Blake wondered if he was dead, and then he saw it. His body was lying not 15 feet from him, sprawled on the ground with his overturned wheel chair beside him. There was a play of violet energy dancing along his body and as he watched a costume of some sort materialized on him. What the hell!? What is going on?

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At that moment Blake felt a tugging and snapped back to his body. Above him materialized a giant humanoid robot. Oh fuck. Blake prayed that that superman and the Justice League would show up. Wasn't it their job to deal with crap like this? I don't want to die!

[Wilson_Chamberlain]

Wilson was late. He was on his way to a meeting in the 10th floor conference room that was crucial to his future at Goldman Sachs. He had to get there before Gene Filmore took more of the glory that was rightfully his. He began to run from his office to the elevators, but Wilson suddenly remembered that the Elevators were being worked on, and therefore not operating. Wilson sighed and ran even faster for the stairwell. As he hit the stairwell, his legs felt like they were on fire. He ran as hard and as fast as he could, then looked at the floor number. He was already at the 10th floor. He was there faster than he had ever gotten down there. His legs still felt as if they were burning from the inside out, and as soon as he got out of the stairwell, his legs gave out. Wilson collapsed to the floor, and the last thought through his head before blacking out was "I bet this is Filmore's fault somehow."

[Craig ST]

Deezy
Deezy dropped her phone when she got to the top of the stairs, the phone forgotten. Outside the window she could see downtown Metropolis. Large energy structures that looked like force fields encased a number of the taller buildings that she should see, and more disturbingly, she could see humanoid looking robots moving through the street. She stared dumbfounded for a moment as a group of robots drew close to her location and an emotionless, monotone voice burst into her mind.

“RETRIEVE THE EXOBYTE ANOMOLIES,” is said in mechanical fashion. Deezy sprang back down the stairs to her workshop. She couldn’t explain it but she just KNEW these things were after her. She grabbed for the bodysuit on the bench first and did double take as she took her first real look at what she had created. “Oh nice Deez… What, you think you’re Catwoman or something?” She quickly mocked herself as she examined the stretchy, zipperless one suit. She struggled to squeeze herself into the armored bodysuit hopping around like a madwoman.

“Mark….2 is….Totally….getting a …..a zipper!” She exclaimed with a final tug.

Slightly out breath but no less conscious of her current danger. She slipped on the clunky jump boots and was pleased when they sealed themselves without a hitch. She slipped her goggles over her eyes and then stepped up to the large backpack unit hanging from chains suspended from the rafters. “At least this is easy to get on,” she muttered as she slipped her arms into the shoulder straps and began buckling everything up. She was just finishing when a flash of energy blinded her and a metallic figure stood before her.

“ANOMOLY LOCATED,” it said as it raised its hand and the world went white.

Nochlev
Gun in hand, Misha hit the streets. A crowd of terrified civilians came screaming around a corner and ran past Misha’s apartment bloc. Overhead, what looked to be two giant spaceships hovered ominously, and he watched in horror and fascination as a force filed covered a building just down the street; bottling it in a sickly yellow energy. Robots materialized out of nowhere and began a patrol around the bottled building.

Inside the bottle Misha could just make out the silhouettes of people who’d been trapped when the force field descended, beating their fists futilely against it in an effort to escape. Anger swelled in Misha and he raised his weapon to fire at the robot. Any thought of his own safety gone; only the gun was no longer there. Instead his fist glowed with power. He thrust his fist towards the invaders with a cry or rage and that same power lanced out to strike one of the robots.

“ANOMOLY DETECTED,” the robots droned in unison as Misha fired again and again. They rushed him and with a flash of energy everything went white.


The Rest
Each of you blacked out. George unaware as he laid in the burning grass that robots had materialized and collected him while he was helpless, Jenny unaware that without the robot’s intervention she most likely would have drowned and Wilson being collected with a group of others as the robots swept through his building.


Some Time Later in Some Other Place
Each of you awakens with a jolt to find yourself trapped in a pod-like machine. Through the translucent glass front you see a large room with at least a dozen other identical pods, some already open. It takes little effort to open your pod and when you do you become aware of a klaxon sounding an alarm and a voice over a loudspeaker.

“ATTENTION. POD MALFUNCTION IN HOLDING AREA 621-JZ5. DEPLOYING MAINTENANCE UNITS IMMEDIATELY”

A panicking woman who seems to be tangled in copious amounts of her own raven black hair struggles on the floor, while a young man tries to calm her down. A large man in what looks like some kind of super suit is attempting to pry open another pod containing a sobbing young boy of no more than 10 or 11 years old. And three other people a woman, a teen boy and a teen girl all seem shell-shocked and are listlessly sitting on the floor.

Feel free to describe how you break out of the pod. There are no rolls involved but this give you a chance to show off a bit. Alternatively you can stay in the pod and hope someone is nice enough to break you out.

[Jenny "Maglev" Queen]

Jenny glared as she came to. "Dang... I should install some sort of flotation system on... wait... why am I thinking... What's this thing I'm in?!?"

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She looked around panicked for a moment. "Like hell I'm being in here!" She lifted her arm in front of her, glaring as her hand sparked to life. "Time to punch out." She collected herself and got an idea...

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She punched again and again, cracks forming until with one final effort causes the hinges to snap and the clear material to break. Below her pod was a litter of clear chunks and metal bits. Jenny hops out as her helmet visor slides back. "Damn I'm a cliche..." She said as she realized she was in the classic 3-point stance every superhero and anime heroine and video game character does these days on landing from a jump.

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She looked around, seeing her other pods and others squirming. "Who needs assistance!?"

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Note

Don't worry about using me to escape, I give permission for that if you want. What I would do is assist others in getting out of their pods anyways.

[George Baker]

George woke up feeling a little woozy and disorientated. The fact that he was enclosed in a small space that he didn't recognize didn't help either. It took a few moments, but his ears finally found familiar, if muffled, sounds to latch onto. I need to get out of here, NOW!

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"Fmaleaona!"

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With that, George's body seemed to burst into flames. Those outside his pod could clearly hear his exclamation of "What the?!?" immediately following the sudden appearance of a gentle glow inside. Ok, this is weird. I knew that was going to happen, but what the hell just happened? It looks like I'm on fire, but it doesn't hurt. Besides, I know that chainlink doesn't burn... at least not on its' own. Besides... I think this is what happened just before I blacked out... Fire... and an explosion... or... Ugh! I can't remember! But let's try something else...

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"Etrahasiripta!"

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And with that, the fire faded away and George gained about 200lbs. All his motions made grinding sounds, like rock on rock, and when he looked at his hands, they looked like they were made out of a dark grey/brown rock. He hadn't paid enough attention in geology to know exactly what type of rock, but once again, he had known that this would happen while at the same time having no idea what this was or even if he believed that this was actually happening.

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Feeling the new strength in his body, George wound up as much as he could and punched the front of the tube that had him contained. It made a satisfying noise as he struck it, and it retained the shape of his fist when he pulled his hand back, but it would take a while to break out this way. So, as he started giving in to panic, he also gave into instinct and reached down to the floor of his tube. His fingers sunk into the bottom and he knew he'd found his way out.

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"Dgdoercoka!" He yelled at the top of his lungs as he ripped up the bottom of his containment devise and threw it through the door with a mighty heave. The rock and the door that it completely broke off its' hinges sailed across the room, narrowly missing some of the other freed captives, and demolishing the recently evacuated tube across the room from him.

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"Good thing that didn't hit anybody..." He said in a gravelly voice as the rock man clad from head to toe in chainmail stepped out of his confinement. His sword rattled in its' scabbard on his left side as the bottom of it dragged across the threshold as he stepped into 'freedom'.

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Surveying the room he looked at everybody that had already been freed. "Does anybody have any idea of what's going on here? What's happened to me?" He finished by looking down at his hand and flexing his fingers, complete with grinding noise, as though he'd never seen it before.

[z-Nochlev]

Misha’s eyes fluttered open-

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-union in the blood-

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-his head spun-

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-angels reborn-

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-burning in his stomach until he felt-

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-my angels-

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-as if he would belch fire. His gray eyes stared at the scene before him listlessly, unable to comprehend what he saw—until he saw the child. Red fire burst in his mind, his instinct overriding his disorientation. Protect the young.

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With a loud scream, he brought his hands up and pressed them to the door holding him. At first, the door resisted, right until he shifted both hands to one side of the pod and pressed over the latch on that side. Then it seemed to take so little effort for him to push up and out, tearing through alien metal like thick taffy. The door clanged to the floor loudly as Misha hopped out of his prison. He didn’t pause in his quest – he marched over to the tube with the boy and pushed the man in the suit aside. “Pozvol'te mne sdelat' eto.” Let me do it.

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Misha grabbed the edges of the boy’s pod around the locked latch, put a foot against the panel next to the tube and heaved. The panel groaned and buckled in a flare of sparks, unable to stand against the pressure he put on it. He found a new brace, this time on brackets holding in the pod. When he pulled it open with a bellow of exertion, the door squealed open.

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Misha leaned down and offered his hand to the lad. “Idi syuda. Eto bezopasno.” Come here. It’s safe. Misha wasn’t sure that the boy spoke Russian; it didn’t matter because whatever the kid saw in Misha’s eyes was enough. The boy bolted forward and wrapped his arms around Misha’s waist, while the big Russian put his arm over the boy’s smaller shoulders. As the kid cried into his shirt, the cop in Misha came out.

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“You.” He pointed at the woman in the suit. She’d been speaking English and he switched to that language. His accent was heavy as he said, “Go help open pods. You two.” He looked at the rock man in armor and the super suit. “Go, to the door. They come soon. Guard it.”

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Moving to the man comforting the woman, he ordered, “Get her out of center of room. Then go help at door.” He began to get the woman and the two teens in motion, herding them to the side and leaving the still crying boy with them. The kid tried to cling to Misha but the teen girl seemed to come out of it enough to grab the boy and pull him against her. The young kid collapsed against her after a brief struggle, as if he only needed someone to cry against.

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He wished he had his gun as he went to open more pods, directing people out of the way or to the openings, if they seemed capable. But even as he lamented the loss of his weapon, he glanced down at his hands. He’d seen a burst of purple-red power, hadn’t he?

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His fingers clenched tightly as he listened to the klaxons. He’d find out soon enough.

[Jenny "Maglev" Queen]

Jenny's fist sparked with life... She'd use her Electromagnetic pulse, but who knew if that would lock people in their pods and suffocate them? "No... I can't risk hurting them." She said, turning off her electricity.

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Jenny looked for controls on the pods, before deciding on simply pressing the red flashing button, opening both pods. "Okay... best get out quickly. We might have to make a run for it!"

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She grabbed some metal shards from her pod. "And mind the floor there might be broken glass... stuff."

[SalmonMax]

Dorothy Zane Klatta, 'DZ' to her friends, blinked woozily and looked around, gauging her situation almost instantly. Alien voices whispered in the air...communication protocols she hadn't yet learned. Encrypted? Yes, almost certainly.

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It didn't work on me right, she realized. I'm supposed to be unconscious.

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She reached out to tap a fingertip against the greenish crystalline 'glass' of the pod. Through it she could make out the distorted image of other people moving around, doing things. Deezy grinned. Not just her then. System malfunction of some kind? Without a doubt. The general technological level suggested such a thing wouldn't be possible without external factors, which could only mean one thing.

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Her finger tapped the glass again, harder. tonnnnng. Someone noticed the noise and started heading her way. Unnecessary. She just needed to hear the resonance frequency.

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There wasn't much room in the pod, but she wasn't a big girl. She could aim the bell-end of her weapon towards the pod door. It didn't need to be exact. She tightened her grip on it, and thumbed the firing switch.

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Immediately the pod was full of a hypersonic screech that Deezy could feel in her teeth more than hear. She dialed on the little wheel control not far from the firing catch and tuned it down...down...until it was audible, like a dentist's drill. Tuned it a bit more...through the din, she laughed.

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It was WORKING.

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The glass in the pod door rang...it flexed as the vibrations added over and over. Cracks formed. Then, unceremoniously, the cracks widened and the glass broke into dozens of pieces and clattered and clashed to the floor. With some relief, Deezy switched the weapon off and carefully stepped out of the pod.

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She was a skinny young woman with a shock of messy red hair, freckled round face, and a much-too-big grin for someone who'd just escaped from an alien stasis pod in the middle of an invasion of Earth. She had some kind of weird, off-white bodysuit that showed off what she didn't have much of to start with. On her back was a big, complicated-looking machine in a backpack frame that featured flashy lights and spinny things and which was humming ominously. It looked a bit like the things in Ghostbusters, right down to the handheld, similarly over-technological 'wand' connected to it via a heavy cable. A pair of large-lensed goggles were pushed up on her forehead, and an oversized set of boots with weird and unsightly tubes and pipes running along them graced her feet.

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"Hey!" she greeted her would-be savior. "I'm about, like, eighty-seven percent sure wherever we are is under attack right now, so we should take advantage of the distraction and get out! Also, I'm Deezy, and..."

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Her salutation trailed off as her mouth caught up with her brain, which was busily being totally blown by the vista revealed. Row after row of stasis pod. Giant sci-fi interior shot.

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"I want ALL of this," she breathed, awestruck.

[George Baker]

George didn't know who had put the Russian in charge, but he simply grunted and went towards the door that he'd indicated. Seemed like a good enough thing to do, and he didn't have any better ideas... at the moment... so he cooperated. Once there, he reached down and sunk his fingers into the floor once more, ready to dislodge another section and throw it.

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While they waited for the 'bad guys' to show up, he tried to steady his nerves by making some small talk with the other guy guarding the door. "Hey, I'm George. Nice to meet you. I like your suit, where'd you get it?"

[TeleForce]

Blake came-to with a start. He'd been dreaming again, only this time he knew it wasn't a dream, but some for of out of body experience. The term psychic projection popped into his head. Somehow he'd gotten powers but he couldn't remember how or where. he just knew it all started with the invasion.

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outside the pod he was trapped in, Blake could see the chaos in the outer room through the tinted glass. the woman drowning in her own hair the the Latino teenager trying to help her. the man in chain mail and the man in the white costume heading for the door, and the rest of them.

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WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON! He thought, unaware that he was telepathically projecting those thoughts, and quite loudly, to everyone within a hundred feet of him. I'VE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS. OKAY YOU CAN DO THIS JUST MOVE IT RIP THE DOOR OFF. OR WAIT...

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Blake disappeared from the pod with quiet thumping noise and appeared just outside the glass ...I CAN JUST TELEPORT OUT...

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He fell to one knee, and then roseto his feet, his legs shakey. OH MY GOD, MY LEGS!

[Jenny "Maglev" Queen]

Jenny turned to the Teleporter. "Please... just stay calm." She said, opening her helmet on what seemed was by thought. "We need to focus right now if we are going to make it through this."

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She looked about. "I wager this is some sort of alien plot to facilitate an invasion of our planet. By whom I wager we'll find out sooner or later."

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Looking about at the growing number of people on foot Jenny smoothed out her hair and some how a couple purplish strands came out. "I... I got purple hair? So anime... I digress, if they're coming, we need to get our bearings and get moving... preferably to a defensible spot so we can defend ourselves. We didn't know it but I'd wager we've just been drafted into defending earth!"

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Finally... finally she could be like the heroes she's seen on television and the internet... well before her Parents forbade her from looking at such things.

[Craig ST]

The man in the white super suit looked at Misha like he was going to say something, but instead turned and jogged towards the door. At Georges greeting he extended his hand so the man could shake it. The name is Raymond, tho most folks call me Big Ray. Not sure where the suit came from. One minute Im roarin down the I-61, the next minute Im on my back and this suit is on me, He said with a shrug. He reached over his shoulder and tugged a small rod that had been attached to his back which rapidly unfolded into a 6 foot staff.

Got me this here fancy staff too, He said with a smile and pointed one end at the ground. The staffed purred with a mechanical hum and ice spewed out of the tip. In short order a 5 foot long, 3 foot high fence of ice was strategically positioned in front of the door. There, that should give us some cover, He said as he took up a position behind it. So what about you; whats with the knight in armor look?

The young man trying to help the panicked woman with the living hair threw Misha a dirty look as he uttered a stream of angry words in Portuguese at his back while he strode off to handle the other group. He tried once again to grab the womans hand. When he made contact she screamed and some of her hair wove together forming a crude sort of tentacle. It grabbed the teen, lifted him fully off the ground and hurled him several feet away from her.

The boy landed with a thud and rolled once. slowly he got to his knees. He was breathing heavily and a slight nimbus or sheen of energy began to manifest around him; shock and surprise clearly registered on his face.

[Jenny "Maglev" Queen]

Jenny saw the momentary conflict and she sighed, moving in between the boy and the woman. "Both of you, stop... last thing we need is to hurt each other when we'll need all hands on deck here. Help more people out of their pods. Please." She calmly, but firmly implored the two, loud enough for others to hear. "The more people we get out the more we can stand against these... things."

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Jenny opens a couple more pods herself after her short speech. "Now, come on! We're running out of time!"

[SalmonMax]

Dorothy snapped back to reality at the purple-haired girl's shout. Pods? Oh RIGHT. Pods!

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She slid her goggles down over her eyes and adjusted them until people started showing up as heavily colorized blobs showing temperature. How the hell had she gotten thermographic imaging without some kind of coolant reservoir? Everything was still kind of a blur. She'd have to take them apart again sometime...

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Right. People!

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It was fairly easy to tell which people were awake or coming awake...they were warmer. She headed for the nearest pod that had a conscious person in it and started hammering away at the crystalline window and door to get them out.

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"Uh," she called after a second, "This is...look, why don't I just tell the big strong ones which pods to open first? And also..." She looked around. "...might want to get the guys who have powers ready. Probably don't have long before they get here."

[Jenny "Maglev" Queen]

"Hey... Goggles... there is a control panel on the right, the flashing orange button is the release. Figured that out over there..." Jenny said, pointing to the first two pods she opened and demonstrated with the one she was at. "As for getting ready... I'm already ready."

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There was a tone to Jenny's voice, one of serious focus. It was almost as if she had been preparing for this moment all her life. In all honesty though Jenny was scared. Anyone should be. She's just made a conscious choice to step up!

[SalmonMax]

"Oh hey! Thanks, Purple!"

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She turned to flash the other girl a big grin and waved.

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"I'm Do...Deezy, by the way. Deezy Klatta. Founder and president of Klattatech! You know...uh...once there actually is one. Which will be soon! Right after we finish saving these people and possibly the world or whatever."

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She starts opening pods.

[z-Nochlev]

Misha turned with a frown when he saw the woman toss the boy away. Quickly, he went to the young man’s side. “Are you alright?” he asked in English. The boy gasped for air and didn’t look like he understood. Quickly, Misha pointed to the young man’s chest and then made a hopeful thumbs up. After a second, the kid nodded.

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That left the woman.

,,

Her hair was fanning out farther from her body, like vines questing for the sun. Only from the woman’s ashen expression and shaking hands, Misha was laying his bets on a super-powered panic attack. He hoped not – panic could be dealt with, while a panic attack had to be ridden out.

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Misha caught the kid’s attention, noticing that his breathing was slowly easing. He pointed across the room where the other non-combatants were and waited for the boy to understand. When Misha thought he understood, he approached the woman.

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Her hair lashed out at him but he was expecting that. His hands spread wide, he caught a hunk of the animate material and clenched his fist around them. She tried to throw him across the room but he countered with a sharp tug that sprawled her on the floor. Feeling like an evil bastard but unsure how to end the confrontation sooner, he stepped on her hair, pinning her head.

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The woman shrieked and wept, pulling harder against his imprisoning hair. “Please calm yourself. “ Misha spoke with as much gentleness as he could muster, which he knew wasn’t much. Stress and exasperation at the woman made his words hard and sharp. They certainly didn’t help to calm her and her tentacle-like tresses pawed and pulled at him futilely.

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Kneeling carefully so he kept her hair pinned, he grabbed hair closer to her skull. He lifted her head just far enough to give her a light slap across the face. “Please. Calm. Down!”

[George Baker]

George gave Big Ray a nod. "Nice to meet you Big Ray. And nice work with the ice. I've only used fire and earth so far, but I think I can control water and air as well. So maybe we could work up some combos once we have more time to experiment." He shrugged. "Or not, we'll see what happens."

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With that, he released his grip on the ground, straightened up, unsheathed his sword and assumed a stance. "As for the knight look, I've always been fascinated by knights and the medieval period. I do demonstrations of authentic swordplay, as opposed to the stage fighting you see in plays and movies. I'd just finished a demonstration when I blacked out and woke up here." He sheathed his sword with a flourish. It wasn't the entire truth, but it was close enough.

[Jenny "Maglev" Queen]

"Purple... right the hair and suit... I like the change..." Jenny said with a smile, while wearily looking at the woman with the seemingly sentient hair squirming around with the big guy trying to talk her down.

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Jenny's right hand sparked. She knew getting physical could just make things worse, and she just can't start burning off her power just to try to get a quick solution to all this.

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"Alright... I'm gonna get more pods open... at least before they manage to lock this place down."

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She starts opening more and more of the stasis pods, easing out those that needed help. To be honest, the group needed all the number they can get, now.

[TeleForce]

Blake gathered his wits about him quickly and began assessing the situation. Clearly he’d been kidnapped, or abducted, and now he had powers. How did I get them? No, wait, that isn’t important. Okay so I can talk in people’s head; that’s telepathy right? And I can teleport. What else can I do?

He glanced around and instinctively waved his hand towards some pod debris which shuddered then floated off the floor. Telekinesis. How do I know this? Not important Blake, get your shit together get out of here and worry about the whys later.

Blake watched the Russian snap the woman on the floor out of her panic with approval as he crossed to the growing group of confused and frightened people that the two enthusiastic young women were releasing from pods. This was bad, very bad. “Purple! Goggles! Stop! Stop opening pods!” He shouted to them.

“We need a plan, a way to figure out where we are and how to get out. Just Stop!”

[Craig ST]

TeleForce’s words came too late. As the 7 people Deezy and Jenny released got their bearings, the woman Misha slapped regained her senses and some of her composure. She had just enough time to introduce herself as Emily to the Russian as he helped her to her feet before the noise started.

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It sounded like a violent, heavy rain on a tin roof, but it was coming from the far end of the long room, away from the doors. All heads turned to the source as 2 panels about half as tall as a man opened in the back wall. Form these panels poured packs of crab shaped robots the size of large dogs. They had sensor eyes that glowed a dull red and instead of pincers at the end of their arms there were a variety of high tech looking tools. The noise was the sound of dozens of robotic legs pounding on the floor as they flooded into the room. Other than the noise of their passing, they made no sound and seem to beeline directly towards the front of the room and the pods that lay empty and broken there.

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Okay we are going into combat. Everyone will need to make an initiative roll. I am setting up a combat thread so please post your rolls there. Going forward IC Posts will be going in order of initiative.

[Jenny "Maglev" Queen]

Jenny saw the maintenance drones come into the room... it was obvious what they were... janitors.

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She pawed her ammunition for a moment but then the thought crossed her mind: "Make sure you're safe first. Can't save anyone when you're dead."

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She turned to her right a moment as if to talk. Dropping her visor to make sure nothing could hear her if she did speak while kicking up her internal monologue to 11. "Okay, whoever is in my head I think we'll need you to be a coordinator. We need to get out of here. I saw a gap between that wall some of the group put up to provide cover. Thing is I don't think we wanna be here for very long. Those are maintenance drones... not worth tipping our hand towards. We should get the heck outta here! We've saved who we could."

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She hated thinking that... the Justice League always managed to save everyone, why can't she? "Understood, Mr.?"

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She kicked up her heels and made a run for the closed exit. She waved across the room to make sure Goggles saw her, as well as the people they did manage to rescue. Hopefully she can figure out how to open the doors...

Actions
Free: Think to Tele, and hope he heard me and can relay that to everyone.
Free: Signal to vamoose.
Movement: Start booking it to the ice wall and crouch down as
I figure how to open the doors

OOC Note: Jenny is not speaking verbally. She's hoping Tele-Force heard her.

[George Baker]

George turned around as the robots entered from the other end of the room from where they'd been guarding. He knew that he couldn't get to the other end of the room in time to actually do anything, and he couldn't hurl rocks that far... he needed the swiftness of the wind to get to and deal with those robots to protect everyone else. He couldn't, but he knew someone, or better, something that could.

,,

As he spoke, his hands formed magic sigils in the air, and his voice and appearance faded from rock-like to normal human. "Wnidacortnola!"

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As he finished his incantation, the air around him seemed to bend and to begin to coalesce, into floating humanoid forms...

,,

... and then two apparitions appeared while the air went back to normal in two other spots, and George was left standing there looking confused.

,,

So soft that only his fellow defender could hear him, he murmured, "That should've worked differently..."

,,

[stargaizer] 1:21 am: Air Elemental will save to avoid being summoned (DC 14)

Stargaizer *rolls* 1d20: 16+1: 17
[stargaizer] 1:21 am: Well, that bites... ,,

[stargaizer] 9:00 pm: Will checks for Air Elementals (DC 14)
Stargaizer *rolls* 1d20: 20+1: 21
Stargaizer *rolls* 1d20: 8+1: 9
[Rebecca OOC] 9:01 pm: BOOYAH!
[salmonMax] 9:01 pm: I like sorcerors a lot, but summoners are intriguing
Stargaizer *rolls* 1d20: 11+1: 12

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Can't summon 2 of the Air Elementals for the remainder of the scene... crap.

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Free action: change from Earth Control array to Summon array

Move action: activate summoning array

Standard action: only summon 2 of the 4 air elementals... but it's ok because the others were stupid anyway

Free action: stand around a look dismayed at why it didn't work the way he thought it would.

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Here's an idea of what the air elementals look like: