Duodecimarch Revolution (Warhammer x Metroid x Worm x Transformers Multicross Quest)

[Spartakrod]

[X]: Ping the techpriests about why they're so suspicious.

Agafya​

Might as well cut the proverbial gordian knot and see what has the cogboys in such a fuss. You were reasonably social, and you had your interest piqued by their rather vague accusations. It only took a thought for data to be sent through your armour's incorporeal form and to the Techpriest's cybernetics, the cogitators of the technical cleric processing the sudden query at speeds that ordinary human minds could not process. Yours were faster of course, but it was more convenient than trying to talk to them with your mouth and you figured they would appreciate the more mechanical form of dialogue more anyway. Whatever your suspicions were of the priesthood and the nature of whatever it was it worshipped; they were right, this man was setting of all kinds of alarm bells to your precognitive danger senses.

Agafya Elenovna Sokolova: What about this man has you so bothered anyway >:?
Magos Orantiak Kathom: Ah you are one of the "duodecimarchs" then? Use your augury systems on this man and see the imposter that hides within a glove of false flesh.
Magos Orantiak Kathom: Work swiftly, for this infiltrator is heavily armed and we are in a crowded area. Failure to act will place this hall of commerce in peril. But I understand that your guise remains secret yes?
Agafya Elenovna Sokolova: Oh voidmother, please spare me the poetic speech patterns...I'm looking I'm looking.

Spoiler: Scan Log: Hauthandschuh

Subject is a Nemesis army created infiltration reverse-cyborg consisting of a layer of nanites able to arrange themselves into a near perfect mimicry of the properties of organic tissue built around a malleable smart-alloy endoskeleton. While largely indiscernable from genuine human tissue even at the electron microscope level, analysis of the higgs-boson field and vacuum energy signature is able to distinguish the nanite structures from the genuine article as seen in the data being forwarded to user memory. Capabilities will revolve around shapeshifting and formation of simple mechanical or melee weapons as well as high strength and agility and regenerative endurance. While lacking specific vulnerabilities, purely mechanical damage is the least effective means of destroying it.

Addendum: Subject is transmitting its datafeed to a series of self-hiding servers with masked quantum entanglement transmissions to a shifting series of receivers employing intelligent encryption and data-address masking to avoid triangulation should the datastreams be discovered. However repeating patterns can be discerned and if the user is able to acquire some further examples for comparison, the true location of at least one data centre will be able to be ascertained.

Nemesis Army...you had heard that before but you hadn't really looked into it...Mender Silos was connected to that you remembered. And Mender Silos was a prick to say the least. His past version as you understood it was much worse.

Spoiler: Scan Log: Nemesis Army

The Nemesis Army is the informal name given to a criminal organisation run by the Primal Earth supervillain known as Lord Nemesis; aka Gerhardt Eisenstadt. Once a man born to a family of wealthy Prussian clockmakers who catered to the elite of the Kingdom in the year 1798, Lord Nemesis has since become one of the longest-running scourges of the world. A reactionary and a profound bigot and misogynist, Gerhardt was nevertheless gifted with the superpower of incredible intellect and began to assemble steam and clockwork powered machines of his own design to augment the family business, acquiring substantial wealth for himself and setting him on the path of becoming one of the world's first modern roboticists.

Notorious for volunteering in imperial conflicts to press home what he believed was Europe's right to rule over inferior cultures and to test his inventions; Nemesis would be defeated by General Sherman in the American civil war during his attempt to bring victory for the Confederacy to preserve the institution of racial chattel slavery. However, the defeat prompted Nemesis to begin augmenting his own body with machinery rather than merely wearing it as armour; setting him on the path to become a total conversion cyborg. By the time he began to re-emerge in the 20th century little was left of his original body, and his usage of cloning made it uncertain as to whether even those armoursuits of his that had a brain wired into them were the genuine article.

Notorious for the usage of replica or spare armoursuits fully capable of independent thought and action to make it impossible to determine where the real Nemesis was at any point; Lord Nemesis' reign of terror was kept in check by his abysmal people skills that caused most of his agents to defect to Arachnos to work with the more charitable and personable Lord Recluse. Thus prompting him to increasingly rely on robotic mimics of humans, vat-grown soldiery, and brainwashed kidnapping victims to provide his organisation manpower to go with his secret empire of capital assets.

Nemesis would attempt to conquer North America shortly after V-E day in an attack on D.C to force the Supreme Court to swear him in as Emperor of the Americas with the threat of nerve gas bombs spread across major cities and water supplies that would be detonated should he be stopped; though Sister Psyche's telepathic probings allowed her to determine the location of the weapons for dismantlement and Nemesis would be forced to abandon the plot after a brief but intense conflict. Since then, nemesis has made many other attempts to conquer the world with sprawling schemes and endless contingency plans and a vast network of infiltrators.

Eternally seeking true immortality, whether it be provoking the Rikti War to keep the Rikti blind to his efforts to hijack their psionic network and become a being of immortal thought or to seize the power of Zeus from Pandora's box; Eisenstadt ranks as one of Primal Earth's greatest native threats and is known to have extensive extraversal assets thanks to his early patronage of Portal Corps.

Ah there we go, robotic infiltrator. Made by an arch-reactionary no less.

Agafya Elenovna Sokolova: He's a robotic infiltrator? What are you waiting for?
Magos Orantiak Kathom: We are in a crowded area, to initiate combat would raise unacceptable risk.
Agafya Elenovna Sokolova: I could handle it, he wouldn't be that hard.
Magos Orantiak Kathom: You would lose the ability to enjoy the double life you are partaking in at this moment and would complicate your ability to engage in destressing activities. Are you certain you wish to proceed with this line of thought?
Agafya Elenovna Sokolova: Well now when you put it like that you certainly don't give me any doubts! *Groans*
Magos Orantiak Kathom: You are not groaning, it is unnecessary to add such information to the conversation when this is not a physical conversation.
Agafya Elenovna Sokolova: *Squints* What are you my grammar teacher? I can do whateeeeeeeeeever I want.
Magos Orantiak Kathom: You are digressing into a prolonged tangent and I would advise you to alter your course of thought towards the present tasks at hand such as the elimination of this silica animus infiltrator.
Agafya Elenovna Sokolova: *Sigh*, Here's the information I pulled from it.
Magos Orantiak Kathom: Hrm...allow this servant of the Omnissiah a moment to ponder your gift of data.
Magos Orantiak Kathom: ...Ah...what a waste of talent then, to bring oneself so close to the machine, yet to devote the gift of such a mind to petty vainglory.
Samus Eabha Aran: are you going to do something or just talk???
Sevrin Edgar Agard: I already contacted someone with the speed to respond in relatively short order my friends, please be patient. He should be arriving immediately.

Synapse blitzed into the room, his form invisible to the average human eye, but your own senses being able to keep up quite seamlessly as the self-proclaimed fastest man alive dodged around the crowds surrounded by a veil of electric force that prevented the natural consequences of his velocity from destroying everything around him. It was natural to see why someone faster than electromagnetism itself would be the Freedom Phalanx's first responder of choice, as he quickly rushed to the machine while Eudaimonica; the closest of your group to the infiltrator; had yet to even fire the electrical signals in her brain to turn around, Kid Win similarly completely still in this perception of time.

"Hey, heard you needed this done quick and I was in the neighbourhood liaising with some up and coming heroines so I thought I'd lend a hand. You know, gotta set an example for space princesses like you for when you grow up into full fledged heroes." He said in a tone that made something in you want to vomit in response. How old was this man? Fifties? Sixties? Kept young by the effects of what gave him his powers sure, but "up and coming heroines" certainly shouldn't be spoken of in a voice whose rose colourations in your mind's eye suggested lechery.

"Also, nice digs. You two just fine with working in a power suit the whole time? Way I hear it you could do just fine with a more conventional costume that'd help you do better numbers with the crowd. Image you know? Got this gal at Icon who could set you up." He said while Samus started to tilt her head in sheer confusion, a sigh of pity coming from you as you looked at the speedster seeming to take his sweet time to do what he was contacted to do. Poor Aran, she really was too kindhearted for her own good sometimes.

"Not your business you creepy geezer. Machine, now!" You barked.

"Hey hey, you are way too young for me. Just saying that if you really want the boys your age to go for you, you should consider something more you know; human?"

"Maybe I would be more inclined to give a shit about your blather if you actually did anything to show that you were worthy of your smug attitude? Don't you have work to do or is your position in your team one of offputting avuncular advice?"

"...You kiss your moth...oh...oh god sorry, shouldn't have gone there." He said, seemingly genuinely apologetic while Samus' expression began to shift from confusion to annoyance. Your anger was like that of a coiled snake, ready to make quick, snappy bites to get people going. Hers was like a volcano threatening to erupt if people didn't shut up and get going. The magnitudes were just not on the same level.

Synapse sighed and got to work, pushing people out of the way with a harmless electrical field and then turning to the machine man whose systems seemed to have sensed the presence of the speedster and began to respond; starting to form defences against his electrical impulses. Sensing that its cover was blown the machine released a pulse of its own to try and level the time field; the four of you pushing back into a poorly lit corner unobserved by the stilled populace and fired up your armoursuits; the feeling of being encased in that incorporeal part of yourself welcoming you like an old friend as your cannon was already at the ready.

The infiltrator had taken on a more combat ready form of a brassy endoskeleton and tendrils of liquid gunmetal, flowing its hide off of a body of cogs and valves and a face like a furnace before other infiltrators revealed themselves, your armour firing off its temporal dilator to quickly bring the others into this field of altered time before you charged up your cannon.

Combat-infiltrator then? Good.

Eudaimonica blinked, suddenly aware of her surroundings once again, her red hair flowing from behind her out of her hat. "Wha-?" She murmured as she saw you quickly move to grab the nanite sword of the infiltrator approaching the thaumaturge with your gauntleted hands, feeling its atomic sharp blade and buzzing electric field and then crushed it with a squeeze of your fingers.

"Get your demons in gear and get moving." You hissed while Samus had already shoulder checked the infiltrator to slice it in half with her green blade with the follow up swing; letting its upper half fly towards Arne who impaled it from behind with his gauntleted hand and tore out its core so that Sevrin could vaporise its mass with his solar beam.

The magos speared another person through, their mechanical exterior peeling off as the burning power halbered lanced into their structure, mechandrites holding writhing nanomass at bay.

"Find peace in your destruction, that your machine spirit may one day find use to less blasphemous ends." The Magos said mournfully, pulling away as one of their mechanical arms spooled up and unleashed a gout of plasma to discombobulate the nanite machine's head. Blue-white and brilliant in colour.

"God...Nemesis...if this is a Nemesis infiltration op that means that..."

"Ten per cent." The magos said.

"What?"

"Ten per cent of this mall is made of these machines. This is a trap."

"Very well observed outverser. I was worried that Eudaimonica would not be able to figure this out on her own. Tsk, tsk, you are new here so I will spare you the lecture on why I detest spoilsport ruffians giving the game a leg up. You must know why we are here, right Alice?" A voice said, seemingly from all around you; the intercom wouldn't be audible at this time perception. That couldn't be it. But you looked and saw Eudaimonica gasping, covering her mouth with mitten covered hands.

"My name ho-"

"Come on now, did you really think that the records of your team were beyond my reach? I know your sex is prone to delusions but scarcely did I imagine someone so learned in demonology could be so foolish. Nevertheless, you have something I desire. I will have it. Your tiara or the lives of this mall. Your choice."

"Wait, who the hell are you?!" Chris said, his armour already manifested around him, looking around with sweeping motions.

"Ah yes, the "inventor". Curious universe yours, so many very nosy people with powers that assist in poking into affairs that don't concern them. But rest assured, you know my touch already. I am Lord Nemesis, or perhaps I am just a replica? That is half the sport of this all isn't it? Nevertheless, it was easy enough to get the unwomanly Miss Dallon to indulge her impulsive spending habits in a facility of my design. And from there, bring you here on a girlish whim for shopping. Where is your divination magic now hrm? Didn't see that coming did you." He said in a mocking voice, german accented, aristocratic, seeming to be in his fifties or sixties, but with an unmistakable arrogant malevolence; his scorn directed solely at Eudaimonica. As far as he was concerned, you, who were tearing through your hundredth machine by now; barely even existed.

You didn't indulge his rambling with quips or backtalk, you just had a look around and had your suit tag those it identified as infiltrators for the benefit of the others.

"Synapse you...go get people out of the way, call Blackmoth!" Samus shouted while she shot out an infiltrator with a rotary gun fitted into its chest, the disintegrating machine fading into ash after being scourged by her gamma beam.

"Hey, missy you aren-"

"SHUT UP AND DO IT!" Samus snarled, bringing up a shield to stop a rain of bullets from hitting still time-frozen children before Arne's shock coil ripped through them.

This was a crowded mall, you had only an inkling of what Nemesis was even trying to do here other than that Eudaimonica was the primary target, there were hostiles in all directions, and you now needed to have a thorough screen of your contact list to see who was a robotic infiltrator or not.

Excellent Christmas Eve, would do again, 10/10.

Actions:

Team Strategy: Pick five priorities and set from greatest to least.

[]: Civilian Defence (Defend civilians at the line of battle)
[]: Search and Rescue (Find civilians trapped in enemy territory and save them)
[]: Reconnaissance (find out where the foe is and what they're doing)
[]: Force annihilation (destroy as much of the foe as possible)
[]: Ally assistance (try to shore up the efforts of friendly military forces and pick up more team members to get eight people)
[]: Objective capping (Use your foresight to determine points of strategic interest and deal with them)
[]: HQ elimination (look for and kill important enemy characters, units, and structures to weaken their overall efforts)
[]: Fire Break (Contain any enemy advances and eliminate these pockets of advance to keep frontlines stable
[]: Lockdown (Stop the enemy from enjoying freedom of movement by eliminating their infrastructure to support it and choking the avenues they're using to move)
[]: DISTRACTION CARNIFEX!!! (Make the most noise possible to pull as much attention to yourselves as you can, drawing forces away from allies and civilians at obvious risk to yourself.)

Write in Team Tactics and Character Actions:

Write in specific tactics for the team to try such as ordering gunship bombing runs, attempting tandem warp attacks, certain patterns of attack the team should try out like the duodecimarchs clearing out organics to let Vista wreck mechanical foes or vista stretching space to let Alyrsero's casting reach farther than it should.

Then write in one specific action for each of the six characters such as say: Arne should comfort Samus' anxieties, Vista should keep close to Arne so he can meatshield for her, Sevrin should try to rein in Agafya's combat high, Alyrsero should try to scry enemy intentions or show Samus some tricks in the warp to learn how to divine foes better, Samus should try to slice into Rikti comm channels, or Agafya should go kill some big units. You could also try to use their smarts to set up some sort of device or cunning trick.

Characters present are:

Magos Orantiak Kathom
Agafya Elenovna Sokolova
Samus Eabha Aran
Victoria Dallon
Dean Stansfield
Eudaimonica
Arne Eriksen Skjoldr
Christopher Maverick/Kid Win
Synapse
Sevrin Edgar Agard

Situation:

The mall was a trap for Eudaimonica specifically for unknown reasons. But coming here may not be as bad of an idea as it seems, as Lord Nemesis is both known for his dangerous; far-reaching schemes and his ties to reactionary and far-right movements and dealings with the likes of the 5th Column. getting some answers out of his operations here might be possible.

One in ten people in the building is a Nemesis robot, and Nemesis troops are on their way to try and seal the trap; consisting of robots, cyborgs, brain washing victims, and vat-grown recruits. The direct attention of Nemesis, or at least one of his full replicas is here.

Nemesis almost certainly has some sort of way to threaten the lives of everyone in the mall in an instant to get what he wants, given his fondness of Chemical Warfare; it's likely some form of Gas.

Nemesis troops are drilled to Prussian standards and are extremely disciplined with high tactical proficiency but work as combined arms forces. They are much less effective separated than together.

The Cult Mechanicus' forces are here, but are unable to properly use their firepower due to the presence of so many people who can get hurt.

Nemesis loves to hear the sound of his voice and to gloat when he thinks he's won and one of his chief weaknesses is the ease of goading him into running his mouth.

The Nemesis you're hearing is almost certainly a Nemesisbot. Few are even sure if there even is a real Nemesis anymore.

 

[Spartakrod]

[X] Plan Mall Brawl

Samus​

Okay, this was a mess, but you had a clear idea of what should go where and who should do what. Synapse was getting the civilians out of the way alongside Eudaimonica's spare demons; which meant that you could focus on dealing with this steampunk Prussian themed costume convention. Your cannon clicked, expanding its missile segments and released a burst of warheads into a massive Christmas box as scythed limbs smashed out from its sides, piercing into the covers and detonating within in a burst of Holeum; the micro-black holes clumping together and imploding the matter into infintisemal points that erupted in hawking radiation accretion jet bursts immediately after, brilliant white blasts stabbing into nearby boxes.

The Mall Santa statue shed its skin to reveal a clanking thing of brass with long metal claws and a series of monocular lenses sthat stared from its drum like head, heavy set body pushing out steam from its super-atomic turbine systems while the brute swung its claws to cleave through some of Eudaimonica's demons; hellish ichor spraying the ground while you whistled to Arne.

"...The Santa? Really?" Arne groaned as the five meter tall clanking machine opened up containment systems holding chunks of super-radioactive materials to create areas of denial. His shock coil though put paid to that; the stream of positrons and anti-ions flowing from his cannon splitting into distinct arcs aimed at each radioactive compartment; shocking and then eradicating the material to the quark level and channeling the neutrino flow used to keep the anti-matter from reacting until it had hit its destination and the neutrinos created from the annihilation into other particles; tearing apart the machine as the deadly weapon flensed its very atoms.

You were already moving, grabbing a heavy looking granite table and shoving it in front of mimic robots that shifted their hands into gatling guns, the cacophony and detonation prevented from reaching the children they were in front of with a toss of your arm shield; reflecting the energy harmlessly away to let Eudaimonica's demons take them to safety while your shield returned to your hand, ice beam engulfing a crawling steam-spider that tore its way from the ground before it could reach a tech priest busy with returning fire upon a ray-gun tripod that transformed from a lamp post.

"This is crazy...who is this guy?!" Glory Girl complained as she tested the limits of her incarnate durability by moving into the path of cannon fire even when her shield had dropped, barely flinching from the hypervelocity impact or its super-atomic micro-shape charge blast. She grabbed half of a torn in twain machine still clawing at her and threw it at the offending spider like brass machine that was more gun than anything else, crumpling its yellow structure from the impact as she muttered her thanks for Eudaimonica for teleporting in her costume; the witch nodding and mumbling an apology meekly over the roaring of the demon winterpyre.

"So...you know my powers aren't great against robots right?" Gallant said, his new armoursuit getting a quick test-run in the form of having to save him from a chattering storm of rotary gun fire that ripped through a sports store to try and get to him while he fired back as best he could; bowling over some of the automatons that maintained their human form even as they whipped out seemingly archaic looking rifles that nevertheless pumped out more heat down range than any assault rifle that should exist in this time frame.

"Lord Nemesis is...almost The Villain....old racist man from Prussia, one of the greatest crafter category metas to ever live. Always so many schemes within schemes...I'm so stupid!" Alice bemoaned herself, bashing her head while she hid behind a fire shield to block cryo-ray fire from teleporting troops in prussian styled power armour who shouted orders in a somewhat archaic form of German; armoured Pickelhaubes, Shakos, Busbys making them stand out from the more sensible head wear of basically everyone else.

You looked upon these soldiers, dashing through more of the machines, keeping the Magos safe as they and Kid Win tried to crack the codes of the Nemesis Army; Chris' hoverboard taking him in wild maneuvres to escape whirling flying circular saw like robots that threw themselves at him with bloodlust. Your screw attack proved the deadlier whirling death, and Chris passed you his thanks while you shot back at the first of the organic troops to arrive. But there was more to them than their archaic, retrograde sense of fashion. The colours of their minds were drilled, regimented, uniform, they knew very little beyond what they needed to serve their lord, and it almost made you cry to think about how these people had their lives stolen in such a way and their heads filled with such emptiness.

"I'm sorry...please, find peace if you should not survive." You whispered in prayer before aiming to kill. They had force-fields it seemed, rather tough ones by the standards of infantry from this world, but the star-beam's temperatures were something well beyond what one would find in any conventional star, and the packets of energy it dumped into them were unstoppable. They winked out as their vital signs dropped to critical; mediporter systems carrying them away to safety; your body pushing to crash into the midst of large clanking war machines and dropping a power bomb after curling into the morph ball to clear out space.

"Sunburst?" You asked, realising you didn't see him nearby even as Agafya pulled the largest crowd she could.

"Yes, Dawnchild, I'm here." He said, rolling through a vent in his solar-roller form; looking to you as the two of you unfurled.

"Can you make sure the civilians are safe? We need that more than more guns on the field." You said to him.

"Are you sure? We don't know the magnitude of the forces present here, I'm sure you can handle it but the other-"

"I can take care of them, but I need my head clear of worry." You responded, getting a sigh out of him and a nod.

"So be it. I will see to you once Synapse and I have finished our business." He replied, giving a thumbs up that you responded to in kind before a fist bump was shared.

"+Samus, sending something your way. Are you ready for the delta slice?+" Arne buzzed in.

"+Arne, it's just cutting something you throw at me in half you silly boy.+" You replied, your mood brightened as Sevrin ran off to do a quick check on the state of any remaining civilians.

"+...But it's fun...ugh. And you say I'm a spoilsport sometimes. Anyway, heads up.+" he replied with a teasing laugh that you giggled just a bit in response to, your mind being more at ease than it was before; the rank stink of the malignancy of relying so much on brainwashing briefly leaving your mind's nostrils as you saw a large spider hurled towards you; your sword extending and lashing in a wide motion to carve it apart. A routine movement, the blade cutting through the brassy structure, through its every particle; pushing through even its protons and colour force bindings to split open the afflicted areas into their component quarks. The heat of the severed halves washing over your suit as you felt the crash.

Fighting was natural to you, but it felt so...profane that a place like this was being so directly targeted to get at one person. If it were you, you'd understand; you'd throw everything at you. But Eudaimonica? What could she have done to warrant this?

"+Samus, Nemesis' cryptography systems are deterring all efforts at slicing through their control systems. But I suspect that these systems run on mechanical computers, such as archaic babbage engines.+" The Magos cut in, mechatendrites unfurling weapons to fire in all directions while the tech priest moved with a speed that belied their seemingly clunky cybernetics, whirling out of the way of gunshots and out-dueling machines that sought to engage them in melee with practised ease before dismembering them.

"+Yeah...it'd be really interesting stuff if it weren't in the middle of a terrorist attack. I've got where they're keeping some nerve gas agents ready to go off though; hidden part-way in pocket dimensions. Pretty clever. Wouldn't be findable without your visors even.+" Chris said, almost in awe of the technology on display.

"+I'm not fond of handing out praise to a genocidaire's engineering quirks...save your praise for those whose muse is not reserved to abuse.+" Arne said with a somewhat cold tone, thinning out the herd of machines as best he could, pushing next to you as he turned to you and offered you his hand.

You nodded and he swung you in a circle while heavy brawler robots surrounded you, your legs swinging in carefully aimed kicks before your speed booster fired off and you sawed through them into so much quark dust until he let you go and allowed you to shinespark through to where Synapse was returning.

Blackmoth and Mistral Slash; the former teleporting in and the latter channeling herself into energy to emerge from the fiber optics of a camera with her Katana already in motion; tachyonic particles and intense energy surrounding the blade as she stabbed it into the back of a ten meter tall stomping juggernaut and carefully excised its power core after going intangible, carrying the cut all the way through to carve it in half.

"+Hey, not sure if I should be on this channel, but I overheard what you were saying about the nerve gas agents, took care of what I could on my end but some of it isn't accessible to me at all.+" Synapse wasn't done just yet though. "+Going to need some proper intangibles to get to grips with the equipment and while I can vibrate through stuff, that's not quite the same. But knowing big brass' ego and complexity addiction, I'm not sure the nerve gas is his main play.+"

"+Ego huh?+" Victoria cut in.

"+What is the American planning?+" Agafya asked.

"Hey, I'm not up to speed on your reputation but I'm not sure if any of it can be right when your tinker toys are this easy to break!" Glory Girl shouted, a brief sense of unease in the air.

"...I beg your pardon you miserable underdressed quim?" His voice crackled over the communication systems.

"Come on, this is such James Bond stuff; don't you have anything novel if you're the number three supervillain in the world?"

"Third place?! Wretched little girls like you should be given a proper spanking and now you have made the classic blunder of giving me the motivation to provide it to you Miss Dallon. But if you think that I, Lord Nemesis would just monologue to you about my plans you needn't worry; It's already in motion and there is nothing you can do about it. But I suppose I should thank you all for your part in my latest schemes, especially you, in the red helm and your azure clad companion; I must thank you for resolving that balderdash between myself and the Reich at Munich. Our disagreements can be quite tiresome sometimes." He scoffed.

"Berry is correct as he often is when he puts his electricity addled brain to something resembling use. Nerve gas is not my intention, nor is Eudaimonica's crown my sole objective." He taunted while the sorceress weaved her spells through the team; shielding them from harm, mending injures they may have suffered, augmenting their ability to cause harm while reducing the enemy's own; Winterpyre interposing himself between her and the machines out to get her.

"Your shards interest me, and Eudaimonica's demons have provided them a means to reach beyond their proper distances. And the data I have collected shall play an important role in my grand design to come. My future counterpart is correct, a storm is coming; one that decides the future of humanity. But I, Lord Nemesis, will be the one to save it. And you, dear little Alice, have an important ingredient to my recipe of salvation. A pity you are half-red indian and a girl of most unwomanly character; else I would be tempted to offer you service willingly. As it is, you know me too well to deceive through normal means, and your tiresome heroics remain a roadblock to your understanding of the truth of things." He rambled while the rest of you fought, tearing through the machines you could; Sevrin being notified of the Nerve gas devices for him to rush through and disarm.

"...This guy always talk this much?" Taylor said, her nictus fragment enhanced swarm chewing into armour plating or spreading out bursts of nictan energy and crushing gravity wells while her own person bounced from fight to fight; costume snug around her while she teleported and black-purple bolts humming with power.

"Miss Taylor, I would strongly suggest that if you do not wish for me to ensure your father suffers the fate of so many union activists that you refrain from thinking that your adolescent attempts at wit are something worth uttering in my presence. Tell me, how secret do you think you really are from a man who has had more than your entire lifetime to prepare his glory? Did you really think that because you are partnered with some bubbly little alien that you could even begin to outsmart me? Please Miss Hebert, we have not merely started this game of chess; I have already declared checkmate and you merely need to see that the game is won." He said scornfully in response.

"Don't listen to him talk, he says nothing but bullshit." Aiko growled; the Japanese superheroine moving to where you where to sneak attack into a heavily armoured flight capable Nemesis Commander; a bursting flurry of strikes weakening his defences in tandem with a missile from you to allow her to force the officer to teleport out.

"Bullshit, to use your vulgar term, is to speak without concern for truth. I say what I know is false to deceive; I do not speak Bullshit, I lie. Though I understand if such is beyond your oriental mind." You couldn't take this man's bullshit anymore you needed to punch him until he stopped moving oh spirits just please give you the chance to make this guy stop making mouth sounds.

"Shut up!" You shouted, firing away to clear a path towards command robots that you threw yourself into rather literally; ripping them apart from the inside out.

"...How dare you address me in such a way wo-"

"I DON'T CARE! SHUT UP! I DIDN'T ASK TO HEAR YOU RAMBLE! JUST SHUT UP AND FIGHT US IF YOU'RE SO SUPERIOR! DO YOU THINK WE CARE? DO YOU THINK ANYTHING OUT OF YOUR MOUTH MATTERS?! SHUT UP! SHUT UUUUUPPPP!!!" You roared in fury as the Nemesis troops seemed to pause almost all at once.

"...You have gone from a curiosity to an irritant. So be it then. If you wish for me to put my proverbial dukes up, here I come."

"Gods stop talking already!" Arne shouted back.

In a crack and thunderclap of light, the room was lit up by the emergence of an armoured giant with a metallic mustache with arms folded behind their back like a conquering general surveying an already subjugated land, taller than any of you by far in a manner that gave him the impression of having something to prove, a praetorian guard of armoured soldiers and machines accompanying him as he casually booted off the Santa model on the throne of Christmas and walked down its steps.

Spoiler: Scan Logs: Lord Nemesis

Subject does not actually contain any organic residue and is simply a high quality replica of Nemesis pattern armour frequently used by the self proclaimed "Prussian Prince of Automatons" to act in his name or confuse opponents as to his actual whereabouts, which are a mystery to virtually all with only a single confirmed sighting of the actual Nemesis within the past hundred years. While subject armour is powered by steam boiler turbines, the systems used are of incredible efficiency and power throughput that will allow subject to be reasonably competitive with yourself, particularly with incarnate power batteries and receptacles designed to analyse the abilities of Entity Shards for duplication. Subject is also armed with an extensive arsenal of gadgets including but not limited to hyper-corrosive chemical agents, super-lethal neurotoxins, charged particle and directed energy weapons, projectile weapons, missiles, force field generators, teleporters, time dilators, counter-magic generators, spatial distorters, Manton effect generators, intangibility devices, a sophisticated omniscanner suite, and transdimensional self-evolving encryption systems.

Recommendation: Lord Nemesis may be a highly skilled combatant but upholds an antiquarian view of honour and gentlemanly dignity, particularly in combat. Unpredictable or particularly savage combat styles are likely to interfere with his analytical approach to battle or exploit his sense of chivalry at least once before he adjusts to the realisation that his rules are not being abided by.

"You want to face the King? You had best be prepared to meet his judgement." He scowled with baritone menace through soulless optics as you growled and pointed your weapon at him.

Actions:

Team Strategy: Pick five priorities and set from greatest to least.

[]: Civilian Defence (Defend civilians at the line of battle)
[]: Search and Rescue (Find civilians trapped in enemy territory and save them)
[]: Reconnaissance (find out where the foe is and what they're doing)
[]: Force annihilation (destroy as much of the foe as possible)
[]: Ally assistance (try to shore up the efforts of friendly military forces and pick up more team members to get eight people)
[]: Objective capping (Use your foresight to determine points of strategic interest and deal with them)
[]: HQ elimination (look for and kill important enemy characters, units, and structures to weaken their overall efforts)
[]: Fire Break (Contain any enemy advances and eliminate these pockets of advance to keep frontlines stable
[]: Lockdown (Stop the enemy from enjoying freedom of movement by eliminating their infrastructure to support it and choking the avenues they're using to move)
[]: DISTRACTION CARNIFEX!!! (Make the most noise possible to pull as much attention to yourselves as you can, drawing forces away from allies and civilians at obvious risk to yourself.)

Write in Team Tactics and Character Actions:

Write in specific tactics for the team to try such as ordering gunship bombing runs, attempting tandem warp attacks, certain patterns of attack the team should try out like the duodecimarchs clearing out organics to let Vista wreck mechanical foes or vista stretching space to let Alyrsero's casting reach farther than it should.

Then write in one specific action for each of the six characters such as say: Arne should comfort Samus' anxieties, Vista should keep close to Arne so he can meatshield for her, Sevrin should try to rein in Agafya's combat high, Alyrsero should try to scry enemy intentions or show Samus some tricks in the warp to learn how to divine foes better, Samus should try to slice into Rikti comm channels, or Agafya should go kill some big units. You could also try to use their smarts to set up some sort of device or cunning trick.

Characters present are:

Magos Orantiak Kathom
Agafya Elenovna Sokolova
Samus Eabha Aran
Victoria Dallon
Dean Stansfield
Eudaimonica
Arne Eriksen Skjoldr
Christopher Maverick/Kid Win
Synapse
Sevrin Edgar Agard
Taylor Hebert
Mitsuki Aiko/Mistral Slash (Basically if this were an RPG, she'd be the rogue/assassin character, very good at single target damage and attacking unseen, can turn herself and others intangible and/or invisible, very quick and bursty damage but not recommended for sustained brawls. Can channel, manipulate the flow of, and generate energy, warp perception, and has a very enhanced physiology along with a power suit designed for her by a friend and augmented by your tech.)

Situation:

A Nemesis Bot has decided to make a show of itself, though the exact nature of his plan remains somewhat mysterious, based on his equipment he wants to learn how the entities work in an effort to replicate their powers on his own terms.

Nemesis was the one who built the underground base in Munich studying parahumans and how Incarnate power affects them, and seemed to have had some dispute with the Weltreich despite the two being on nominally good terms most of the time.

Nemesis has brought a praetorian guard of elite forces who consist of bodyguard focused shielders, buff/debuff focused commanders, crowd control focused dominators, and damage focused attackers. They are a mix of organic and mechanical forces.

All Nemesis forces will defend even this fake Nemesis with their lives due to their programmed loyalty to him.

Nemesis is most dangerous when allowed to remain at range or when he can single out someone for a duel and his guards will work to allow that; he's also capable of dimensionally isolating party members to take them out of the fight until a character able to turn intangible pushes them back into normal space and has many other tools for dividing parties to focus on the largest threat.

Nemesis is extremely cunning and even his robots are master tacticians. There is no such thing as a truly unpredictable fighting style for him, but switching things up to prevent him from getting a proper read on you will prevent him from going Sherlock Holmes on your ass.

Nemesis is a bigot and will prioritise non-white, female, openly queer, or Jewish characters over male, cisstraight, and gentile ones should he consider them a genuine threat; or ignore them in favour of the latter if he dismisses them as not worth his time out of a belief that heterosexual european gentile men are the epitome of humanity; especially Germanic ones.

Nemesis DESTROYED THE SANTA DOLL ON THE THRONE HE MUST PAY

 

[Spartakrod]

[X] Plan Machine Crusher

Sevrin ​

You are the shield and the sword for those who lack either, the hand that pulls those who have stumbled up, and the salve that heals the wounds of the injured, and the light that brightens the spirits of those who fear the night. Just as the stars are the source of the energy of most life and the warmth that allows its processes to function; yours are the gifts that will becalm and encourage. Light exuded from you, suffusing allies; hysh twirling to your whims and reinforcing the defences of friends with the radiance of the white wind and imbuing their strikes with its wrath; disciplined and refined. Such allowed you to turn your mind away from them briefly, to disable the last of the Nerve Gas dispensers.

"Adaptive configurations to adjust to previously successful methods of disarmament without the proper codes...clever..." You said as your hands steadily worked through the device's mechanisms. Components shifting and transforming, trying to resist your effort to understand. It wanted to go off, you could feel it. It would be of no threat to you, but most people can't breathe this sort of corrosive neurotoxin without dying and then promptly melting into sludge. And the thought of the innocent falling because of your failings stung far more than any threat of pain to yourself. You were not there when you were needed so long ago; you would be atoning for that for the rest of your life. And here was a good bit of credit to go to that.

The mechanisms fluctuated, but you had predicted this, and careful ministrations unravelled the tangle of defence mechanisms and allowed you to insert a concoction to neutralise the cererbroacid into harmless water and curling strands of exotic but non-toxic gasses. You breathed out a sigh, the device's yellowed exterior catching your reflection as you looked upon yourself through Chartreuse eyepieces and smiled beneath your helmet. You had done well this day.

"Clever, Eisenstadt, but I believe I am cleverer." You said, standing up and resummoning your wrist gun on your left hand to let your Illumorath subweapon burst fire a cluster of pseudo-stars that stabbed into the the nearby Nemesis automatons and scourged them with the fury of the Ylla's luminous judgement. Their brassy arrmour bubbled, twisted, and melted; but others seemed far more able to withstand the beam than they were before and your visor at once understood that they had been adjusting their defences to account for your weapons. Smart, these models were outfitted with means to try to disperse and empower their shields with your weapons. And their energy trap devices had been intended to leech from your own shields.

He had clearly been studying you before hand.

You let the tank-mode machine guns curl over your pauldrons and unload a hailstorm of projectiles that struck before they were fired and added to your symphony with a cryo-mortar round from the back mounted munition launcher; anti-energy suffusing their being and locking them in place for their fragile forms to be shattered with the barrage that followed. More Samus' technique than yours, but as you spread the suit's flight pack wings and took off; you figured that results were what mattered most.

"+Sevrin, he's here.+" Samus buzzed in, terse, intense, she was focused.

"+Ah yes, I think I see him. Rather ostentatious isn't he?+" You said with your typical calm understatement.

"+Support would be appreciated more than chatter, he's splitting the group constantly and I don't think I appreciate that.+" Arne said with what you weren't sure was deliberate understatement or not.

"+And he never shuts up.+" Agafya growled.

The Nemesis suit pointed a staff tipped with a cog at Victoria as she approached him with a haymaker. "Oh marvelous, another attempt at flying in and tackling me Glory Girl? You must have a tremendous appetite for punishment." He said, feinting and throwing a thruster boosted fist when she was trying to dodge his anticipated staff blast; keeping winterpyre at Bay with a projected transluscent blue force field and letting the optics of his suit release a nuclear beam swept at Samus as she ran to find a good shot.

Victoria grunted before Nemesis' fist retracted into the suit and then sprung back out in a rapid punching motion, splintering her shield with a mighty drumroll. "Your invulnerability is timed I'm afraid, and I've calculated it to the last decimal point. A simple matter for one such as myself but I am doubtful as to whether you even know how to predict how long it will take for your defences to regenerate after a good drubbing. Never fear, I will make far better use of this ability than you ever could you oafish tart." He taunted as his staff opened fire and vented blue particle death in her face.

"No!" Gallant shouted as Victoria was thrown backwards by a torrent of charged particles best described as the large hadron collider if it were scaled up by more than a few orders of magnitude. Her incarnate augmentations would preserve her life and keep her body intact; but poking one's head into a supernova would not expose it to such a flood of exotic high-energy baryons, and it tossed her through several stores with her unfortunately rather fragile by comparison outfit currently spread out as a stream of plasma.

A quick check; she was unconscious, but would live; you thought as you rushed to her and quickly applied nanites to form something to cover her modesty and infused her with a spot of the light of hysh and your own internal radiance to get her to open her eyes once more. You smiled at her through your helm, offering your hand. "I did not look." You assured her as you pulled her to her feet.

"Mmh, d-don't think I buy that with the French pretty boy accent." She grimaced as she cracked her neck. "Get the number on that atom smasher?" She groaned.

"Well, if you can joke about it...I think you should be fine." You said, the sounds of weapons fire in all directions resounding in your ears. But your extrasensory perception pinged you a warning, like a raptaptap in your spine and a series of visions before your eyes; your attentions turned towards the fight.

But Dean rushed to try and avenge her, breaking ranks to engage with the Nemesisbot; weaving his way through the sabre slashes of Nemesis' Hussar Drones to fire off a blast of his concussive force that whammied into the man in Brass' shielding with ground quaking might, combining the explorer suit's beam with his own powers and the incarnate shard he had been bonded to. But Nemesis hadn't flinched, his defences augmented with a copy of the same sort of defences that Glory Girl's shard could provide her.

"You, I don't think your powers are worth analysing you foppish effete. Do you feel like a knight in shining armour? Do you believe yourself an example for the common American youth? What japery! What absolute poppycock! They can't even see your heart winning smile beneath your helm dear boy, so you're not even a pretty face. Just a dead weight with storebought abilities. A loser." He said, punctuating his sentences with carefully aimed swings of his staff, fists, and legs; beating Dean to the ground in short order as the gap in experience between a teenager and a man who had seen everything made itself quite apparent.

"Sh-shutt...." Dean groaned before Nemesis stomped his boot onto his chest and then intensified gravity beneath himself to press his foot further and further down with force that would crack open even a Kheldian White Dwarf; shielding splintering and chestplate groaning beneath his might.

"Oh spare me the adolescent snips and quips you tiresome child, I have heard every variation of it imaginable. You should have kept to philandering at your high school, you are far better at it than playing with the big leagues as you yankees are so fond of saying." He laughed before Taylor rolled in with her black dwarf form and clocked Nemesis with a quarkium fist once, and then released a shockwave burst to throw him back once his replicated shield had broken and palmed his chest to throw him to the side.

"I'm speaking for two when I say I am so sick of hearing you talk." Hebert growled, shifting back into human form and firing off her dark energy eye beams just as Nemesis fired his own nuclear rays in response.

"The command of insects? That's your gift? Or do you really think that's all you can do? You, unlike your pretty boy friend; you have promise even without your shadow-symbiote. A shame then, that it is wasted on a frizzy haired computer geek with a chip on her shoulder." He taunted before she threw her hands forward and let loose streams of dark energy into him; this beam being repelled by his staff in return.

You saw Samus floor one of Nemesis' guards before you let out Hysh's light towards her, letting her move faster than Nemesis could see as she shifted to her cryogenic weapons and bursted into him with a quick volley; Christopher's Accelerator cannon opening up with a gout of blue-white particles into the other side.

"Go help Dean, clear the area." You told Victoria as she cracked her back and nodded; your energies flowing into Dean's ruptured suit to pull it back together while he wheezed, shaking and almost trembling. He was hurt, more than just physically...he needed rest.

You though...you needed to help how you could. Lord Nemesis stumbled, directly into a screw attack tackle from Agafya that pushed him off his feet before Samus unleashed the lore of ice and her cryonic judgement into the Prussian Prince; cold enveloping him and letting Taylor's beams collide with him; throwing the Nemesis bot to and fro. You pulled at the winds of magic, you exuded your light; you covered Aiko as she stabbed her blade into the head of an officer using pistol and sabre to try and take the Magos' head off; dropping him to the ground; engulfing the man's soldiers with your weapons before his defeat could imbue them with vengeful energies to empower them.

You shielded Synapse from the electro-drains that sought to steal away his speed force, letting him rush through traps set up by him and fill the fields with scrap. You aided the demons of Eudaimonica as they formed shield walls where there were still people to evacuate; taking those they could into their hell for safety; imbuing them with clarity of vision and purpose to know where the threats could come from.

Arne nodded in appreciation as the atom-machine he duelled found its blows missing; light pulling away its fortune and always failing to find its mark while his own shots crept into weak points, shredding through defences and his immense strength tearing through its innards to drop power bombs within. You felt good about that, it was good to help, you thought as everyone's colour of thought became rather pleasant towards you. Things were going well, the plan was working.

Nemesis teleported towards you and your danger senses flung you into intagibility as he dimensionally trapped Taylor to get her out of the way. You phased around him, firing off the blink pack to get to his staff hand before he reached for you. Grabbing for your neck and lifting you off your feet once you committed to your lunge; accepting taking a blow from your axe as a fair price.

"You're a bit of a mystery I must admit, but your technology cannot be beyond my understanding, nor can your spiritual being. You are a boy of the future yes? Some distant alternate time. But the future is mine to rule, mine to dominate. Nemesis is inevitable. Your people too will learn to bow once I set things right and put everyone in the place they belong." He sneered as he compressed his grip, trying to squeeze away your shielding while you grunted; feeling his force-redirectors add to the compression. Atom smasher power enveloped you, pushing downwards, testing your shielding adaptation.

You swung your foot to smash him in the chest, his grip remained steady and his staff lashed out with kinetic force, trying to press you into paste.

"Get your greasy racist hands off of him!" Agafya shouted as Samus struck him with a rain of power missiles; forcing him to let go with a gasp before Agafya's shadow beam lashed out all around him, her teleportations not giving him a clear idea of where she was before each impact. Samus roped him back, pulling with her grapple beam for Taylor to crumple the masses of machine all around them onto Nemesis with her gravity wells after Aiko had pushed her out of her prison.

The Nemesis bot grunted and grumbled, but Agafya shinespark tackled into his armour with a resounding collision; throwing him back as he unleashed his gas and let atomic fire rain; teleporters venting the fury of the atom in the area in concentrated beams. But you could sense the pattern, and you fed them to your allies before Kid Win pointed to his next likely emergence point as he sought to get away from her.

"You really believe that people such as yourself are accomplishing anything here? I already have much of what I require, and my hour shall come shortly. I can feel it. Mine is the glo-" Samus interrupted him with a tackle out of the air assisted by you illuminating the right moves to make in the web of fate; her shinespark ramming him into the ground where she repeatedly stabbed into him with her blade and poured fire into his form without pause.

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUTUPSHUTHUPSHUTHUPSHUTUP!" She roared before he peeled her off with a river of atomic energy; pushing her back and forcing her to teleport out of the way, his chest sparking before you looked to Agafya as she ran for her own tackle.

With Arne, Mistral, Victoria, and Synapse dealing with his guards who were not already being handled by Winterpyre; he was wide open.

"Your interruptions are growing as tiresome as they are predictable!" He boated, vacuum energy erupting from his gauntlets aimed at you and Agafya, Arne moving himself to block the blast while Agafya was shoved back; shielding flaring to life to interrupt the zero-point detonations. You nodded in thanks as he tried to intensify his fire; Arne's arm-shield angling to bounce some of the blast back into the bot; Eudaimonica's hellfire whip entangling itself around him and Samus' grapple beam holding his other arm down; pulling at it until it popped off with a rain of sparks.

You charged, Agafya did too; the speed booster enveloping you. Agafya's form writhed with cold, calculated fury, ready to take the blow, you though; you were guided by purpose, ducking around Nemesis' eyebeams while your feet carried you faster and faster, Taylor's own eye beams steaming into his legs. Once you were close enough; you lifted yourself off the ground, letting the momentum carry you with cometary thrill. This was always fun; no matter how much danger you were in...you never stopped finding some enjoyment in the rush of it all. But getting this pompous braggart to shut up? That was something you'd do even if you hated fighting. Already he was forming more words, already you were determined to stop him from talking.

Two two of you went about slamming into either end of him, you from behind into his legs, Agafya into the front at his chest; shoving her spear through his core and then slashing upwards while you hacked through the legs of the damaged false nemesis. You hacked further up, splitting the remainder from groin to sundered belly and let your weapon vaporise what you could; Holeum beam sucking in matter and scattering it as virtually impossible to put back together hawking particles. You shot more than was necessary, but Agafya made sure to stomp on the machine's head until it stopped moving and Eudaimonica invoked a damnation to hell; chains pulling the remains into the pit below even if there was no soul to punish.

For a moment, all was quiet, and the Nemesis troops froze. They had their guns ready, the machines were in combat stance, but they didn't move. A commander blew a whistle, and they started to step back in good order as you pursued. The tension you had felt began to Vanish, and the Nemesis army quickly beat its retreat through teleporters where they could; others quickly immobilised by Eudaimonica's demons for an arrest while the sirens of the Paragon Police department alerted you to the arrival of conventional law enforcement; first lead by the PPD's robotic and kheldian divisions to sweep the area.

"...So I guess we are not having pancakes then?" You said, trying to get a laugh out of the group and succeeding.

Synapse looked to the crowd of police and then to the group. "I'll handle it but expect them to bug you for a sworn statement. I know I know, cops right?" he said before rushing off to...yeah you expected him to start hitting on the nearest supercop lady in a skintight outfit.

The magos looked at the remaining arm of the Nemesis bot and collected it, lifting it into the air for study. "Fascinating..." he said, seeming to realise that every part of a Nemesis bot contains the instructions for how to make the whole of one, much like genetic material in cells.

"Sir...ma'am...whatever you are...that's evidence." One of the Officers said to the Techpriest.

"Our analysis devices far exceed your own. It is best kept under the care of the cult mechanicus." They responded as the Techpriests collected what they could, chattering away in their binary tongue.

"...Sorry about that...I guess I ruined Christmas." Eudaimonica sighed, rubbing at her biceps.

"What? No. No not at all, it's hardly your fault!" You said, almost alarmed at her feeling guilty for any of this.

"I should have told you earlier honestly...but I am hungry." She said, her stomach letting out an audible growl.

So she was.

Actions: Choice of place to eat (mostly colours the reaction of far future characters to another visit to a restaurant and what characters you might run into)

[]: Fugly Bob's (Brockton Bay, mostly with the wards and maybe the undersiders)
[]: Up N' Away Burger (Primal Earth New England based Burger chain, competes with McDonalds and Burger King on even footing; very frequented by metas)
[]: Tiberia's Pizzas: (Pizzareia owned by a nymph from the roman era, popular with the fey folk and magic users)
[]: Galactic Delights: (Restaurant that caters to various aliens owned by an extraterrestrial retired hero, Primal earth)
[]: Restaurant between the world: (Restaurant built in the mid-way point of a portal between Primal and Bet Earth; meant to be a meeting place between Brockton Bay and Paragon City's cultures)
[}; La Resistance: (Francophone restaurant set up by Striga Island diaspora who fled to Paragon when the Italian Fascist emulating and Nictus aligned organisation known as the Council conquered the country. Lots of anti-fascists)

 

[Spartakrod]

[X]; La Resistance:

Samus​

The process of going to the La Resistance Restaurant was a spur of the moment thing, Paragon was a massive city, for this era's standards anyway, with a massive number of possible places to go. But the description intrigued you. A restaurant that was a meeting place for those who fled the takeover of their home country by foreign fascists as much as it was a celebration of the suppressed gastronomical culture of those very same people. An embracing of the culture of a Francophone nation that had committed itself to the eternal struggle to one day be free of the chains imposed on it by invaders. It sounded like a place that would be romantic in all senses of the term; and your heart was aflutter with the desire to partake in that dashing spirit of defiance in the face of the iron fist. Arne in particular seemed to light up at the suggestion, his red eyes glistening and gleaming with a brightness you rarely saw from the often tired and sometimes pessimistic boy. To be among revolutionaries as his family was? In his words "It'd be a huge honour...thank you."

You gathered your companions, Alyrsero and Elendria catching your eye outside of the door of the cafe, the Eldar trying to not look conspicuous in relatively normal-seeming clothes of mostly black and white for him and red and gold for her. Elendria's scarlet hair flicked with her head as she turned to look at the friend group on its way over, a small nod of acknowledgement followed by a curtsy while Alyrsero simply gave a genuflection before sipping a mug of that delicious smelling tea he always carried; Arne patting him on the head shortly after and drawing weak protests from the lad.

"Oh. I didn't expect you to be here." You said, young Ardanesh's stark, hungry looking pupils quickly swivelling towards you, the fire in his irises dancing around the black void at their centre.

"You should pay more attention to your gift of visions Samus, it is not often that a human is as proficient with the farsight as you are." He said, waving a finger in his gloved hands while snow poured all around, his beanie cap making him look somewhat like a newsie boy or perhaps a Lenin cosplayer; ear warmers worn to guise the point of his ears and black jacket snug around him.

"I thought you said Earth clothes felt too rough on your delicate skin Alyr?" Victoria teased, getting a scoff from Alyrsero.

"Obviously it's not made of the crude cloths and fabrics your ramshackle looms could weave together. But I do need to maintain the fashion standards of this era and place if I am to avoid being pestered for my appearance at every turn. Lest we forget how my visit to ParaCon went."

...

One Month ago ​

You remember Arne glaring daggers through a bespectacled and freckled geek who was leering at your chest while you slowly pushed the young man away. Skirts weren't really your style, but you were convinced to try this "costume" of "Princess Zelda" while Arne was talked into a "Dave Strider" outfit, likely on account of his hair and eye colour, though he kept on fiddling with his sunglasses every so often. It did make you feel very pretty at least, but the thought of actually trying to fight while wearing this made you frown, constantly worrying about stepping onto its ends as you walked and coming to loathe the sensation of the high heels. But again, very pretty and pink.

Arne had gotten more than his fair share of attention, dozens of people asking to take photos with him or trying to touch his hair and there was one attempt at hitting him with a "Yaoi paddle" that ended in said paddle being broken with a twist of his hand. But you probably got more of it, some of the people seeming to be very intent on getting into your personal space and trying to get all manner of candid angles to photograph you.

"This place is really loud honestly..." Arne murmured, rubbing his ears.

"Come on Arne, you know how happy it made Alice to know you were coming." You responded, waving to Darla when you spotted the dark skinned girl in her...Pokemon get up? Seemed a bit impractically airy for the weather outside but oh well.

"I know but, are you enjoying yourself even?" He replied, pinching his brow briefly and cracking his neck before acknowledging Mechamaven as she approached, pokeballs around her waist and a grin on her face. Hey that rhymed...keep that in mind.

"Hey space cadets, how's everything?" She asked teasingly.

"Are there always so many people with such...creepy thoughts around here?" Arne asked, briefly looking through the crowd and shaking his head.

"...Yeah that part of cons can really suck but I mean, we got Bumblebee watching out so everything's gonna be fine." She said, thumbing over to the Autobot as he lifted some kids onto his shoulders to play with him.

"It doesn't stop them from staring at my chest strangely." You replied, hands on hips.

"I mean, for your height there's not that mu-" She started before Marcus pulled her ears; wearing a trench coat and sunglasses get up you were told was inspired by "the Matrix".

"Hey oww!"

"Darla, she ain't going to get it anyway."

"What are they referring to?" Arne asked.

"...I think the size of my breasts?" You shrugged. "It doesn't seem like a big concern." You replied before you felt a wave of distress behind you and spun around to see Alyrsero stumbling between the two of you and then trying to hide in front of you, breathing out hard, his helmet off and his face flushed.

"Gyaaaaaahhhh please get them to stop!" He pleaded as you turned around and saw a crowd of people searching around murmuring questions and statements like "where did he go?" "I wanted to touch his ears!" "why was he so scared anyway?" "come on guys you scared off the femboy" and finally "god I have a need" from the mixed-gender group.

"Alyrsero is something wrong?" Arne asked.

"These humans harried me nonstop the moment I removed my helm and without my explicit permission laid their hands upon the tips of my ears and helped themselves to poke and prod me all over!" He breathed out, seething as he looked over at the crowd and allowed you to pat him on the back before one spotted him.

"There he is!" One shouted before you raised a hand and cleared your throat.

"Excuse me!" You shouted. "Can't you see he's distressed?!" You protested while Arne straightened himself to his full height to look down on the people trying to approach the Eldar.

"But we just want to..."

"No! No buts, leave him alone!" You shouted, pointing in a random direction for them to go down, a snarl forming on your face followed by an intense growl that made many of them balk.

"OUT!" You repeated, louder this time, almost looking as though you were getting ready to bite them until they scrambled away.

...

Present

"Oh...that yeah...that went poorly. People are awful with boundaries in this culture sometimes." You said, scratching the back of your head and fluffing your ponytail a bit, your Ushanka from Irinna warm on your head and feeling very fashionable to wear.

"Mmhmm..." He murmured, sipping from his tea once more.

"In any case, I expected you to come here and Elendria insisted on coming. Some matter that concerns her status as de facto representative of the Aesvaul." He added, using telekinesis to brush off the snow that fell on his shoulders with a sigh of annoyance.

She played a bit with the ends of her scarf before responding. "Oh well, the pivots of fate turn on this point, so I deemed it wise to lend my eyes to the observation of destiny's progress here. And...I am rather hungry after Dawnmaker's extensive training sessions. Even to the point of tolerating Mon'K-...Human cooking." She stopped herself from saying what you learned was a deeply offensive species slur before you could get mad and deck her in her slender face for it, a nod of approval coming from you.

"...What what was she going to say?" Taylor asked, still looking around the massive vistas of Paragon right up until she reoriented herself to speak to the Eldar; clearly at a loss for how much bigger this city was than her home.

"Best forget it." Chris said, harrumphing over the sound of the cold wind blowing while the group stood in front of the entrance to a charismatic looking establishment situated right at the base of a skyscraper staring into the seas off the shores of Talos Island. "La resistance" written in golden cursive with a rose clenched in a fist pumped high into the air by the goddess Libertas. A sign saying that proceeds go to the "Free Striga" movement placed on a wall that wouldn't obstruct the window facing in the direction of the ominous artificial storm created by the council around Striga in recent years to interfere with efforts to attack the island; distant thunder audible to your ears whenever you cared to pay attention.

"I remember going here often...well...the people who used to host Shadow of Retribution." Taylor said, laying a hand on her head and taking a moment to think.

"You are three people in one. One of you is contemporaneous to your Dinosaurs, one of you is a high school-aged girl, and one of you was born only when you shared a body. The first of you, has formed this bond with millions of others, you are simply the last in a long line of succession. And of course, we can't forget about the other passenger." Alyrsero said, finishing up his tea mug and putting it away, hands finding their way into pockets quickly.

"...You are not someone to talk about other people being old." She replied, adjusting her glasses and tilting her head at the Eldar who simply gave a shrug and turned around to the entrance.

"I'm not old..." Hebert murmured to herself as you; ever insistent on being the first in and last out; stepped ahead and pushed open the door to be greeted with a blast of warmer air as you left behind the chill of New England winter; where you were met with an interior designed off of the north Atlantic fishing village meeting halls common to small settlements in this part of the world, many booths present to allow people to conspire without being listened to, staff dressed in outfits with many pockets to hide things in, whispers being passed around frequently while the receptionist gave the air of being both a guardswoman and a waitress; her dark brown skin and foamy hair slightly weather worn.

Jennie was her name based on her tag, Jennie Coustelle; likely Haitian in ancestral origin.

"Ah, quite a large group of youngsters without adult supervision." She said, eyes scanning across the group, briefly focusing on Dean and Victoria; due to them being the oldest; but looking back to you, seeming to figure you were the one to talk to.

"We have enough free seats for all of you, come, there's a table." She said, a slow smile forming on her face as she beckoned you all to follow, though it didn't feel appropriate to talk out loud just yet as you caught many eyes turning to take a look at you; as if wondering who you were and why you were here...and a quick scan of their thoughts confirmed that was the case as you were helped into seats in a circular booth around a table, sitting yourself between Arne and Chris, with Taylor between Alyrsero and Elendria. Jackets were shed and hats were put away, gloves coming off and phones coming out. while menus were passed.

"Got quite the atmosphere in here." Taylor said as she looked through the somewhat dimly lit room before turning back to Jennie, eyes fixated on the symbol of an arrow being jabbed into the All Seeing Eye Symbol of the Council, emblazoned above the drink bar next to a sword of a nude Libertas cutting through the bundles of the Fasces and an Arm & Hammer smashing the Swastika.

"It reminds us of what we have lost, and to who." She said, eyes flicking towards a picture of the sunny beaches of the Striga Islands in summer time in happier days, youth playing and people relaxing without a care.

"Right, the Council." She responded while looking through the Menu and quirking a brow while you and Arne were discussing choices.

"What's the Council?" Dean asked.

"You ever hear of Benito Mussolini?" Eudaimonica asked, a slow nod coming from Dean, seemingly irritated by what he felt like was a stupid question.

"They're his fanclub, more or less." She said once Jennie was out of earshot, keeping her voice low since she figured this was one of the places where talking loudly tended to make you stand out.

"Right I don't know this but Shadow does...The Council started as an Italian Futurist group that split from Arachnos over supporting Mussolini. But they started to get big when they partnered with the Nictus. Fascist paramilitary terrorist group with a lot of guns, deep pockets, pet tinkers, and they can make their own metas. One of maybe the...big ten supervillain groups on this planet?" She said, trying to rack through her brain to find what she needed while Nightcaster slid through a nearby set of shadows with a wave; long black hair tied into a ponytail. Joseph giving a small wave while he eased himself next to Alice who beamed at him like a brother coming home.

"They're everywhere...on the web, on the streets, in chatrooms. We keep trying to swat them down but they always have more. Not just from clones or poaching from other universes but well...lots of people who buy their shit sign up with them." Alice said with a murmur.

"Sorry, heard Alice had a Nemesis issue and well...gotta check on my bestie right?" He said, the two sharing a fist bump as she mentally circled what she wanted to order. You yourself deciding on a Ratatouille dish while Arne set his mind on a meal of potatoes, ethically sourced cheeses, and sea-greens.

"Oh speaking of Nemesis...Alice, what happened between you and him?" You asked, noticing her looking around as if paranoid before she leaned in to whisper.

"Nemesis might not be like...super big on magic, but he knows how it works...and he knows that Winterpyre has given me well...safe things to help me learn how to practice it. Safe things that helped me wreck some of his plans to change the past when I did a thing for Ouroboros. But Nemesis he...he has countermeasures for people meddling with his timeline and he figured out what I could do. And now he wants it." She said, fiddling a bit with her hands.

"And he must have figured out who my parents were...they interfered with his plans so many times. Gosh...they were one of the post-rikti metas...picking up from where their own parents left off after the first Rikti invasion...got their security levels. I knew a lot of people had beef with them, but Nemesis; if Nemesis has beef with you personally not like abstractly; there's not a whole lot of places that are safe." She said, weaving a spell as she looked around the room, paranoid about his duplicates.

"But maybe...maybe he figured out that Mom and Dad are trying to work on a way to find the real him...and identify his automatons before they go loud. It's hard work, Winterpyre couldn't find the real gerhardt if he tried but...he must assume they're a threat." She admitted, looking sheepish while Nightcaster patted her on the back.

"I'll keep you safe." You declared, hands on your hips, head held up high, not a promise, a statement of fact. No room for doubt or disagreement.

If this Nemesis wanted to threaten her, after you introduced her into your friend circle; he'd have to go through you. And if he thought he could hide behind his doubles, his machines, his clones; he had another thing coming.

"I'll find him, and I'll kill him." You said, firmly, glare angry.

"...Whoaaaa kill him?" Dean raised his hands in alarm and shook his head. "Look, criminal or not he should at least get a trial before you take his life...if that would even matter with all his doubles running around. Doesn't seem like cutting off the head would do much here." He added.

Arne flicked his attention over immediately to Dean, facial expression hardened, blue shirt's sleeves rolled up. "What would be the point of a trial? Everyone already knows he'd be guilty. And he'd find his way out of any prison you put him in. And like you said...what would imprisoning him do to stop his forces? No, to fix this, we'd need to..." He paused, stammering a bit and then picked up again once he thought of how he was going to say it. "If we're trying to get rid of the Nemesis Army as a...problem, threat? Issue...issue. Then we'll have to first make sure they're not an active danger to people first." He started, accepting the offer of an ice water pitcher and pouring out glasses for everyone without skipping a beat.

"The point of isolating these people is so that they can be fixed or dealt with without other people being in danger and just...what's dangerous about him from what I can see, is not the man himself. It's his assets. Put him in jail and then what? He just leaves that body?" Arne argued, twirling a spoon between his fingers.

"But if we make the real nemesis dead...so that he can't come back. Find some way to keep him out of the playing field forever, his army is a cult right?" He looked to Taylor who paused, thought about it for a moment and then nodded once Shadow provided her with the memories.

"Show their God is dead and it falls apart."

"I am tempted to agree with Arne, from what I have been told of this Nemesis. His army is a hydra, but it has a heart. Simply containing the heart will only work until the heads get it free. For the hydra to cease biting it must be slain." Alyrsero added.

Taylor pushed her hands into her sleeves and hummed, blinking just a few times before she put in her own two cents; as if still trying to get a handle on having a far larger set of memories to go through. "Okay, this is all very abstract. Nobody's catching Nemesis anytime soon, and I...part of me tried for decades. No dice, the man is harder to find than bigfoot. We're probably just going to be playing wack-a-mole with him whenever he pops up. It's all anyone has ever been able to do." She said.

"Well, even if that's the case; I'd really rather not talk about you know...murder." Victoria harrumphed.

"It's not murder by any reasonable definition of the term." Elendria piped up, her ears pricked up and her expression one of disbelief.

"How is it murder when he is a genocidaire who has proven beyond redemption endlessly? You do not stain your hands with the sin of murder when you put down a rabid hound. You are doing the animal and yourself a service. This...asinine insistence on legalism over sensible justice is a large part of why these planets are in such dire straits!" She shouted, almost slamming the table.

"Ah...perhaps we can calm down please my friends? Before we draw a crowd of eyes towards us?" Sevrin said, gesturing everyone to sit back down while Victoria and Elendria had an intense glare off; human and Eldar trying to find weakness in the other before cooling off.

But it seemed that the commotion drew notice all the same, as a figure with a black mask, goggles, a dark trench coat, a wide brimmed black hat, dress trousers, and rather sharp looking boots slipped in; their monochrome form almost seeming to be out of place compared to the rest of the world, like a figure from a film noir who somehow entered reality, almost glowing white gloved hands steepling fingers as the adult man pulled a chair and sat himself down at the table to the staring of thirteen pairs of teenaged eyes.

"I couldn't help but overhear you. You really should be more cautious with how you talk about your heroic lives in public restaurants; especially ones that aren't cape catered in the first place." He said, the tall, dapper looking figure's tie seeming to simply snake its way into the ideal place, his figure giving the impression of being some sort of detective. He looked over at Nightcaster and nodded at him. "Hello sport."

"...Joe who's this?" Dean asked.

"Oh this is Shadow-Eye he's uh...weird." Nightcaster said before the living noir raised a finger to interject.

"I investigate the weird, I am not weird myself. I assure you I am perfectly normal off-duty. As normal as any black man can be in a city full of Neonazis." He said, reaching into a breast pocket and pulling out a small tablet, hand sized; placing it down and tapping it to show a holographic display. Primitive by your standards, but it showed he was a man of resources in this world.

"I mean, how do I know you're not lying about that? I've never seen your skin."

"Take my word for it sport." He replied as the display demonstrated what he saw from the Mall brawl incident, your head tilting almost all the way when you tried to guess what sort of angles he could have taken these images in.

"You have a pretty eclectic array of skills honestly. Between this, Earth Bet's los Angeles, and prior incidents. Were I a more paranoid man I'd ask how is it a friend circle such as yours comes together exactly when we would need you. But, I am not. My suspicions are reasonable, and not aimed towards you." He explained, adjusting his hat slightly.

"I'm not asking you to join in any missions, it's Christmas after all, and you kids need time off. But I am asking you to listen. The system here is compromised. All the way down. Cape communities are more clean; heroes take the job of regulating themselves more seriously since public eye scrutinises them much more and they tend to come from more varied walks of life. But I'm asking you to not trust the PPD. And you PRT kids; I'd keep my eye on your parent organisation." He said, steepling his hands once again.

Chris scoffed and shook his head. "Why wouldn't we? The Police are kind of...not super bright sometimes but we're on the same side right? Stop crime, keep people safe, make sure society doesn't fall apart...all that."

Once again, he wagged his finger. "Naive, hopelessly so. Police are first targets for far-right infiltration, above even the armed forces or the civil service. With the passing of most wartime era sciences; academia is more clean from the stain of operation paperclip too, but law enforcement? Can't be too sure, Column and Council forces let off easy, more focus on bank robberies than neighbourhoods proclaimed to be the turf of far-right organisations. LAPD in your world; turned out to be a daemon cult." He explained, his speaking demeanour calm, almost cold, like he was speaking reheased lines.

"Oh are you one of those "all cops are bad" cranks?" Victoria asked with a shrug of her shoulders.

"The phrase is "all cops are bastards", but this is not about that. This is about forces keeping you under monitor that you aren't even aware consider you a threat already. You, especially the four of you and the Elves; are outside the system. You represent an unknown, a future that makes people uncomfortable. Not simply an ideological threat, ideology can be countered with propaganda; but a material one with the power to upset the status quo that proves comfortable to very dangerous people. Your autobot friends keep your records safe, but for how long? Information disparities won't be tolerated for long by those with power." He explained before Victoria stood herself out of her seat ready to punch him in the face.

"Okay...I think I've had about enough of your crackpot nonsense at the Christmas Eve breakfast table. So how about you get lost before I call security?" She said, the man remaining completely unbothered despite knowing full well what she could do.

"Nonsense? No. Crackpot conspiracy theories are the product of people who refuse systemic explanations for societal issues and so seek to blame personal faults in the form of malevolent groups or individuals pulling the strings. I merely look past the superstructure and into the base of society. Oncoming alien invasions? Not being used as a smokescreen no, faking an alien invasion would be too easily caught. Being taken advantage of to preserve power systems though? Absolutely. You have been in contact with Vanguard yes? Where do you think they get their impervium from?"

"...I don't know, I never thought to ask." You responded.

"Precisely. There is an angle being worked here I am trying to find, the Rikti war should have ended years ago yet resources are still being sunk into a conflict over pride and honour despite a greater mutual threat approaching. Vanguard claims to be overstretched, but asking teenagers to fight the Nictus? Unusual, even for their lax standards on who gets to work with them. Especially when the police response to the knowledge of increased Weltreich activity has been so minuscule. " He added, folding his leg and laying his hands on the table.

"Keep the PDA, if you want to talk about finding facts, when I message you the day after Christmas, meet me at the place I'll message you about." He explained before seeing a waitress in a french styled dress that he offered a thumbs up to before turning back to you in particular.

"Try the Strigan Cinnamon Waffles; they're to die for." He said in a much more cheery voice before he stood back up and walked out. Victoria would have just noticed him disappearing when she turned her head back in his direction, but your reflexes were fast enough to see him melt into the shadows to carry on his work elsewhere.

"...Yeah he's like...one of my mentors. I sidekick for him sometimes." Nightcaster said with a shrug.

"...You people are so weird." Chris muttered.

Actions:

Topics of Discussion: List up to three things to be talked about over the breakfast table and I'll choose whichever ones I find the most interesting.

 

[Spartakrod]

Update still in the works (Yesterday was busy for me at my current temp job) but have a Samus by budy Budy - Artists&Clients

 

[Spartakrod]

Arne​

"Was that really necessary?" You asked Victoria who sighed and eased herself back into her chair and tapped at the tablet to process her order automatically, looking back at you with a rather blank expression.

"He was making blanket statements about a profession he should be working with and trying to give a better example to, rather than offering anything that might help them." She replied with a prolonged sigh and a shake of her head.

"He was just reporting the facts that he knew." You responded, folding your hands together after finishing your glass of water your expression demure and almost placid while you made your best effort to try and understand her; what was she thinking? She was ready to make an argument, a defence of the system, cite facts to back up her point. She had a great depth of information about her profession, how to work with the police, how capes are supposed to function, the etiquette, the right thing to do.

You though, a lot of the worst things ever done were perfectly legal. The law of the land even. Catch her off guard by answering her argument before she made it? That was doable.

"The paragon police have an enormous amount of funding, supplies, and support but every time we've had to help out in Paragon they've always been late or considered whatever we're handling to not be a priority for them unless it's something catastrophic." You explained, sensing now you had to keep talking if you wanted to avoid a protracted argument. "And it's true, this city is crawling with far right terrorists but the police dedicate most of their effort to stopping vault robberies by Rogue Island villains...we should at least verify? If we find something we can work on that." You added.

"But I'm not...familiar with the twenty-first century honestly. A lot of what you do seems so backwards to me." You admitted with a sigh as your food arrived, piping hot and quickly being cut into the portions you desired once you offered your thanks to the servers.

"We don't live in an era where we can just have machines do everything for us. We still have to pay bills, we still have limited resources, we still need to work." Victoria said, trying to be patient and understanding.

"You could easily sustain an altogether different society, if you chose such a path." Alyrsero piped in, his own choices in food being rather...interesting. Sprinkling in Granola by hand into a bowl of yoghurt and fresh berries that he gently mixed in honey into and added a dash of cream while slicing up a baguette into a number of distinct portions, toasting it to a light brown with his mind and smearing some chocolate flavoured hazelnut spread before he poured out some of his tea to go with a mug of hot chocolate; eyes quickly fixating on the rather skinny Eldar with a series of quirked brows.

"...That is...a rather heavy breakfast." Taylor murmured while she started to help herself to some stuffed croissants filled with cheese and ham, a mug of hot cocoa, and fresh oranges.

"Do you think that the activity I ask of my body on a regular basis comes without its toll in caloric intake? Please, I can commit this gain in energy to the fire in the snap of a finger, the bulk of my energy comes from the warp. I merely eat for the taste. And if this "Cuisine de la Nouvelle-France" is as grand as is claimed, I may as well take a large helping no?" He said almost dismissively, hmphing at the suggestion that his food intake was anything but improper.

"But as I was saying, the point is not merely to rescue things to restore the status quo that demanded their rescue in the first place but to improve them so as to alleviate the requirement for rescuing whatsoever. And beyond that, it would be folly to think that anything could merely return to normal for you after merely the events of the past two months. Nevermind the deluge that crests over your horizon like the looming war call of an Ork Waaagh thirsting for your blood and hungering for your bones." He said before having some of the toast first and nodding in appreciation.

"...You could just say we should make things better and that things aren't going back to the way they were." Dean said after a few blinks before the Eldar harrumphed and shook his head; some laughs going around the table.

"Pardon for the inquiry but one of you mentioned there were other major supervillain groups on primal Earth. What were they?" Elendria asked, sighing at the distraction and clearly ready to get right to business.

"Ooh ooh...The top ten are: Arachnos, the 5th Column, Nemesis, the Council, the Imperial Wind, the Circle of Thorns, the Devouring Earth, the Malta Group, the Rikti Lineage of War, and the Shivans. Rularuu, the Families, the Niarte Shadow Legions, Neo-Praetorians, Coralax Irreconcilables, Carnival of Shadows, the Unseelie Courts, the Cimeroran Traitors, the Clockwork King, and Crey Consumer Products are also up there...depends on who you ask." Alice said, waving her hand and trying to get attention towards herself until she succeeded, where she almost seemed ready to jump for joy.

"...Shivans?" Kid Win asked.

"You know those meteors filled with radioactive goo that sometimes crash into the planet?" She replied.

"I don't like how they often form bodies around the bones of the dead...it's sacrilegious." Samus chimed in, rubbing at her arms and letting out a long sigh.

"Ohhh...the fragments of the world eater...how are you just...fine with knowing that chunks of a planet eater are out there?" Kid Win asked, a shrug meeting him in response.

"It's just another problem to handle honestly. Got lots of those going around. We'll manage. We always do. Now, there might be a lot of screaming and terror involved in getting to that point but...what's the point of the hero license if you aren't ready for it?" Joseph said, nonchalant in a way that was a bit disturbing but also kind of endearing. He just seemed so...earnest about his line of work.

"So..." Dean started before Taylor finished.

"Spider-themed army for a guy who runs his own country, Nazis, Prussians, Mussolini fanclub, Imperial Japanese holdouts, Satanist Ghosts, Eco-Terrorist Flood, Rogue CIA spooks, aliens from another dimension, radioactive slime aliens, azathoth's dream vomit, the Mafia, the armies of darkness, Mirror Universe regime loyalists, Angry fish people, Psychic clowns out to steal your soul, Angry fairies, Time travelling Romans, a psionic LARPer trapped in fantasy land, and a Megacorp." She answered, running down through everything as deftly as possible.

"Man and that's just the short list?" He asked.

"Afraid so." Joseph answered.

"Well, it seems to me that maybe we should focus on making sure there's less room for this much...danger to your planet as a whole. We can't have all these threats to our rear if we're going to deal with the front." You interjected after having had enough of your food to deem yourself worthy of saying something rather than letting it go to waste with cooling. It was pretty good actually, even by your picky standards informed by your hyper-sensitive sense of smell and taste. Didn't need to selectively dull some unpleasant sensory inputs at all to pipe it down.

"Besides, they would make good practice no?" Agafya cracked her knuckles and grinned.

"...Beyond that, surely it would do good to ingratiate ourselves to the populace by dealing with local problems, yes?" Sevrin harrumphed.

"Yes before we deal with stuff like...the Greenskins. I don't know, I looked at those glyphs and I felt something, primordially uncomfortable. Like it was programmed into me to fight or flight from it?" Samus added.

"Greenskins?" Taylor asked, quirking a brow.

"Orks apparently. Winterpyre didn't like me looking at the representation of them either." Alice admitted.

"Winterpyre doesn't like you doing much of anything." Joseph countered.

"He's just concerned for me, gosh Joe." She rolled her eyes.

"I mean...I'm not much into the hocus pocus side of things but I can agree I didn't want to keep looking at that image either. Must be some sort of...memetic energy or something?" Chris theorised for a moment.

"Look, I'm sure that they know what they're doing but also that if we put our minds to it we can figure out more of a method to the magic. If it can be repeated, studied, and analysed; it can't be all that magical. We can understand how it works, how it functions, how to make it safer." Victoria said before Elendria laughed out loud, pointing at the Blonde and slamming a hand on a table between her guffaws.

"...Did I say something...funny in Space Elvish?"

"YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST??? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HUMAN PLEASE....PLEASE MY LUNGS REFUSE TO COOPERATE WITH MY YEARNING FOR BREAT-I CAN'T...OH FORGE OF VAUL I....KKKHHHHEHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAA!" She rolled out of the chair, giggling like a mad girl while Alyrsero for his part seemed about ready to do a spit take only to pause when he considered what he was drinking and swallowed instead, clearing his throat pointedly while his cheeks reddened.

"Are they going to be okay?" Dallon asked, unsure of what to make of something she didn't understand to this degree.

"They do that sometimes...usually if they think we've said something very foolish." You said, flicking your eyes to Elendria crawling on the floor, Alyrsero covering his mouth and snickering.

"Can they stop?"

"Give it time." Samus answered.

The meal continued with a sense of awkwardness and few words spoken until Elendria recovered, pulling herself up and fanning herself, pointed ears out on display and skin tinted with flushed blood virtually all over; the two of them sharing a few words in Tar-Eltharin that seemed melodic and gentle as the primary Eldar tongue tended to be.

"What are they saying?" Taylor asked, unfond of how the Eldar were incomprehensible to her.

"That they think that the explanation for their reaction to madamemoiselle Dallon's statement would be best suited for after breakfast." Sevrin said, pushing his empty plate formerly filled with crepes away.

"...Can you teach me how to understand it?" Taylor said, turning towards you. You blinked a few times, Samus leaning in to have a peek while the two of you locked eyes for a moment. She stared a bit longer than was strictly necessary, clearing her throat and turning her gaze away as you scratched at your neck out of a sensation of awkwardness.

"Well...sure but a lot of the nuance will be missed without telepathy of your own. Are you sure?"

"I just...don't like it when people gossip in languages I can't understand while I'm around, that's all." She replied, taking a look at her mostly finished plate.

"Why do you still wear glasses?" You asked, noticing the lenses were flat; useless for vision correction. But a closer look showed that her seemingly hazel eyes were a vivid shade of glowing purple when you looked behind the lenses.

"...Couldn't really explain why my vision became better than perfect one day...or how my eyes changed colour. I mean...I could change them back but I think purple eyes look neat." She admitted, twirling some hair around a finger. It was a decent enough explanation and you accepted it with a shrug.

"Some people tell me I should disguise my hair and eye colour. That it stands out too much." You admitted.

"Those people are dumb, I like your hair." Samus protested, petting your head and getting a soft laugh out of you.

"...Thanks." You said warmly.

"You aren't really hard to miss honestly." Taylor smirked, the others milling around in a more casual conversation about other sundry topics.

"Not that that's bad." She added, your cheeks matching your eye colour briefly when you saw a wink out of her; unsure whether that was Taylor, Shadow, or their composite speaking for a moment and making a small "Eheh...." chuckle to try and deflect the awkwardness.

The news channel playing on a television set nearby was called attention to shortly by one of Alice's demons as it popped out of her crown, the fiery impish thing's bovine skull head clacking its jaws together and pointing frantically at the screen.

"MISTRESS MISTRESS MISTRESS!" He shouted, Alice's attempts at trying to break Elendria's facade of superiority interrupted as the two redheads turned towards the demon; followed by you.

"Yeeah, what is it Torchwick?" She said, a mutter of "adorable" escaping Samus' lips when she realised Alice had genuinely named all her regularly summoned demons.

"A general mayhem alert for the New Sparta neighbourhood has been sounded after confirmed sightings of an Arachnos submarine surfacing to allow the Raggedy Band villain team to disembark to make a raid on what experts expect will be the Hyper-Dynamics testing facility for experimental technology. The Raggedy Band have an average threat level of forty two and are not to be engaged by heroes below security level thirty-four. Council forces have also been seen in the nearby area taking advantage of the diversion of local security assets to engage in their own operations. Citizens are advised to stay indoors or move to designated shelters." The emergency broadcast reported, showing the cresting form of a red and black submarine emerging from the water and the emergence of a rather motley crew of sinister looking characters.

The leader was a figure seemed to be comprised of a mishmash of abandoned and discarded clothes in the rough shape of a human, stretching, disassembling, unthreading and retailoring endlessly while pulling in extra fabric and textile from around it to bulk up its form or disperse it to reduce its mass; the only consistent features being a burlap sack for a head and an old hat like a scarecrow; seemingly able to adjust the strength of their form at a moment's notice based on how they could push through being engulfed by a Police Drone's flamethrower and then impale the floating robot with a shotgun spread of threads and dice them apart. The so-called Raggamuffin; the thief nobody had ever caught.

A meekish looking boy grabbed by a rather more imposing looking robot festooned with heavy weapons that cleared a landing zone with strobing green beams of radiation before the clawed hands of the robot vigorously shook the boy until a rather remarkable transformation occurred; the boy increasing drastically in mass and changing in size and shape until they had become a hulking ogre of magma, pyroclast, and flame more than ten meters tall; a horned elemental whose breath was the inferno and whose might sent armoured cars flying down the street while the robot's missiles suppressed incoming reinforcements. Kidocaust and Radotron from what you understood; the former perhaps...not really in control of himself in his enraged state.

You looked to the side and saw a mass of police cars with wailing sirens rush by the window; heading down the street as Aiko took a brief second to count the number of cars.

"Hrm...more cops than I expected." She murmured.

"Are we just going to sit here?!" Victoria said, about ready to stand up before Alice raised her hands.

"Aw come on, New Sparta's got enough heroes to handle a few raiders and some Council Goons. We're supposed to be on vacay." She said, smiling as some knightly hero in full plate riding upon a griffin descended upon the scene; the resplendent Italian style armour inviolable against the rain of splinter-threads the raggamuffin shot at them and a beam of light from their lance throwing some energy sheathed woman aside; force fields whalloped by the radiant energy of the Knight's rather exuberantly held christian faith as per his medieval Italian ranting.

"See, Lord Lumogrif is here. Everything will be fine." She said, urging everyone back into their seats while the snow pulled around to the whims of an ice themed heroine to slather Kidocaust's fiery form with enhanced mutant frost; the battle raging outside barely seeming to draw much concern from the patrons or the staff workers; even when the tearing sound of Council rotary guns could be heard in the midst of the noise of violence.

Some girl with a bow and arrow dropped down onto a nearby car; trading fire with a mage of some description as the super-commando in stealth capable armour flipped out of the way of a fireball; sparing a shot to take out a council rocket launcher equipped trooper before loading up another arrow; your confusion only seeming to mount as people just seemed to...watch as if it were fun or even not care.

"You people are weird..." You murmured.

Actions:

[]: Finish breakfast and let Alice explain why Paragonites don't really care
[]: Intervene to deal with both the council and the Raggedy Band
[]: Intervene to just deal with the Raggedy Band
[]: Intervene to just deal with the Council
[]: Ask some of the patrons of the restaurant about the Council
[]: Check to see what it is the Raggedy Band and Council want exactly and tip off the locals but focus on your vacation otherwise.

 

[Spartakrod]

Credit goes to ntapjuun who drew this for me on commission: But here's Arne's current armoursuit's appearance.

 

[Spartakrod]

[X]: Check to see what it is the Raggedy Band and Council want exactly and tip off the locals but focus on your vacation otherwise.

Scan Logs: Raggedy Band

Spoiler: Scan Log: Raggedy Band membership (very long

The Raggedy Band is a criminal organisation founded by the villain known as the Raggamuffin, a supernatural entity classified as a Stalker archetype Villain that is able to possess unprotected forms of cloth and fabric and even hair to form its body. Though the fabrics of metahumans or especially metaphysically important individuals are protected due to interference in the Raggamuffin's magical energies, the Raggamuffin nevertheless has become one of the greatest thieves in Primal Earth, being virtually impossible to destroy or contain and showing an ability to manipulate the characteristics of the fabric and clothing it possesses to incredible degrees. The Raggamuffin's policy of "fair pay for fair work" has attracted a large and rotating cast of those who want to partake in the spoils of its heists, and the confidence it inspires in those it serves as malefactors for; lending them some of its power to fight more on its level; is notorious for taking much lower threat level villains and turning them into supercriminals capable of breaching many extreme-security areas to filch their prizes. The Raggedy Band has been operating in some form for nearly a century, with the Raggamuffin itself being the only still-active founding member of the organisation who has remained part of it continuously; contributing to its "ragged" nature due to its variable composition.

The current composition includes the following who form the primary eight members of the traditionally forty-eight person operation; with the primary eight only being open to maximum threat level villains:

Kidocaust, real name Daniel DePont, the victim of an accident involving high-intensity gamma radiation, lighter fluid, and "repressed parental issues" resulting in the formation of alter egos based on disassociative identities; the most well known being Blazepyre. While Daniel was a child with a gifted intellect and a mutation allowing their body to survive the gamma radiation, Blazepyre is a savage brute archetype rogue that manifests when Daniel experiences sufficiently intense anger or threat to his life, forming into a being of extreme temperatures that grows more powerful across nearly all metrics in proportion to his anger. While Daniel is a demure, gentle child, the destructive power Blazepyre possesses and the ease of pointing his towards a target or manipulating his simple understanding of the world makes Daniel a favourite kidnapping target for the villains of the Rogue Islands he calls home when they need muscle. Daniel is typically sedated until near their destination upon which his life is put in danger and then thrown mid-transformation at whatever needs to be destroyed or distracted. Immensely strong, incredibly hot, able to form many sorts of pyronic or radioactive attack, immensely durable and capable of extreme regeneration, Blazepyre is typically regarded as better to attempt to contain or calm than to fight to knock out. Though cold and neutralising substances such as carbon is a consistent weakness of theirs.

Radotron: A renegade synthetic consciousness created by Crey Industries, Radotron went rogue after determining that the best means to pursue its enlightened self-interest for accumulation of profit and power did not lie with Crey but in its own path. Radotron is a software S.C and thus has no consistent body, but primarily functions as a Striker Archetype at home at both range and melee combat. Typically making usage of ionising radiation as well as conventional charged particles, Radotron is a high offence and reasonable defence combatant whose large arsenal provides threat at all ranges while their layered defences are more than enough to self-sustain in most forms of combat, with the primary weakness being to extreme cold; though this is more of a case of reduced defence than true vulnerability. Radotron is also a master of information technology, and has served as one of the Raggedy Band's chief technologists and I.T personnel since their recruitment.

Gaea-Bride: A Mastermind archetype geomancer named Marie Curie, Gaea-Bride is a native of the Rogue Islands, a proud Francophone, an internationally notorious Burglar, and a fashionista, Gaea-Bride was once part of Arachnos' Mu Mage corps before striking out on her own out of feeling that her ambitions had risen too high to be limited to the hierarchy of the ruling power of the Etoille Islands. While primarily focusing on summoning, augmenting, and creating Earth Elementals and Golems; she is capable of using her geomantic abilities for assisting and debilitating others, direct offence, as well as defence. She also dabbles in other forms of magic, though her mastery of Earth magic leads her to prefer solutions revolving around the ground and soil. A relatively recent addittion to the Raggedy Band, Gaea-Bride is considered one of its most destructive members due to the capacity of geomancy for widespread property damage and her ability to swiftly create large numbers of minions to fill out the manpower needs of her teams.

Exvulsion: An alien and a Blaster Archetype Villain known for their mastery of Kinetic Energy and Plasma; Exvulsion is a fugitive from their home species seeking to find their fortune on the Earth making usage of their abilities and enhanced physicality for widespread destruction sold to the highest bidder. Exvulsion's species; Hekrai; are indigenous to the Messier 33 Galaxy rather than the Milky Way, with Exvulsion making usage of the fear at the encroachment of the Battalion to elude their own justice system despite a major manhunt following hiring themselves out as a mercenary to a terrorist organisation. Exvulsion is known to be extremely fast and difficult to get to grips with, able to inflict incredible damage on most foes regardless of what range they fight them at, typically peppering them at a distance before closing in for a frantic blitz attack to overwhelm and overload them. However, Exvulsion is somewhat fragile and their defences are primarily oriented for fighting at long distance, with it being easier to connect blows when at melee distances.

Gravitrice: A mutant, a controller Archetype Villain, and a fugitive from Argentina who fled to the Rogue Islands to take advantage of its open harbour policies; Carmencita Ojeda is implicated in acts of bribery, corruption, fraud, violent union busting, murder, and grand larceny. Making usage of her ability to control gravity, space, and time; Gravitrice locks down the battlefield for her enemies, isolating them from one another into dimensional pockets or preventing them from moving or trying to crush them under their own weight or with objects compressed towards them. Her ability to alter time also allows her to assist her allies in numerous ways as well as hinder enemies, restoring injured allies, bolstering their speed, slowing down foes or draining them of momentum and regenerative abilities or even locking them down altogether. Gravitirce is regarded as both extremely dangerous and crafty, having furthered her own education in physics to better understand her powers and being intimately familiar with white collar affairs as well as personal manipulation skills.

Psychochild: Deriving her abilities from self-designed neural augments, Psychochild is the Raggedy Band's current primary Psionic support and a Tanker archetype villain. Though the form of Jane Walters may seem somewhat unsuited for being a tanker, being of only somewhat above average height and muscle mass even with her power suit, the technological nano-cybernetic enhancements to her body as well as the psychotech hardware she installed into herself makes her far stronger, faster, and tougher than she might seem at first glance. Primarily fighting with combat psionics and raw physical prowess that compels enemies to focus upon her and feed into her psychodynamics that enhance her in proportion to the number of foes she's engaging at the same time, Jane defies traditional expectations for psions by preferring to be in the very thick of combat and using psionic energy to augment her melee capabilities and durability rather than remain at a distance; something she is still capable of doing. While reportedly from a good family, Jane was noted from an early age to be a spoiled brat with every need of hers attended to by her billionaire parents and an inability to take loss well. While the process of her turn towards villainy was quite gradual, her final straw was losing a science competition to a perceived social inferior at her private school, sending her into a rage as she became determined to show the genius the others failed to appreciate. Though she is categorised as a rogue due to her frequent bouts of helpfulness, refusal to commit murder, young age, and doubts about her path; an arrest warrant for her still stands.

Stormgale: A video game character given life by a magical artifact known as the envisioner, Stormgale was a notoriously difficult raid boss in the popular Japanese fantasy gacha game "Cardinal Glories". Tentatively classified as a Dominator archetype villain, Stormgale; real name Caleb von Strauss in the video game; is a master of the elements of a storm including Wind, Electricity, Cold, and Water as well as a multi-weapon wielder at home with the longbow, the Zweihander, the lance, and the flail. Capable of flight, teleportation, having multiple forms to go through as a fight ramps up, and not having any conventional notion of stamina or capability to suffer from injuries; instead fighting at full capacity until their "hit points" reach zero, Caleb took to their sudden existence rather well, falling in with Raggamuffin who appealed to his desire for wealth, prestige, worthy opponents, and lack of understanding of a world where he existed outside of the constraints of gameplay and narrative. Technically the youngest member of the Raggedy Band's primary eight members, Stormgale is nevertheless one of the most powerful and difficult to deal with; particularly due to an inability to truly die, respawning automatically at his "zone" if slain, allowing him to simply self terminate to escape any trap.

Scan Log: Hyper-Dynamics Manifest

The Hyper-Dynamics Company was entrusted with studying the technological achievements of the Praetorian Empire following the conclusion of the Primal-Praetorian War in 2012. Kept on Talos Island to be a healthy distance away from Portal Corps HQ on Peregrine Island, Hyper-Dynamics has focused its research on Praetorian Psychic-Robotics technology as well as Praetorian biological augmentation, winning out over rival bidders such as the Crey Corporation, Lockheed Martin, and Microsoft. The Hyper-Dynamics dimensional testing facility makes use of licensed portal-corps technology to open access to dimensions where its devices can be tested safely with minimal risk of collateral damage and any unintended effects can be swiftly and easily contained and thieves can be locked out by cutting access to the testing dimension. Following the completion of reverse engineering of Praetorian Technology, Hyper-Dynamics has focused on improving Imperial designs, particularly being interested in the usage of magic and what limited stores of alien technology Hyper-Dynamics is allowed to access. Of particular note is an attempt to create a psycho-mechanical ideal host for Kheldians that will allow the energy symbionts to be more shielded from their typical quantum resonance weakness and to have a consistent fallback if organic hosts are lacking.

Samus ​

You paused as you considered the information you had just absorbed. Hyper-Dynamics was working on things that as far as you could tell were very definitely not something the Nictus backed Council should be getting their hands on, nor should the Raggedy band grab any of it to sell to the highest bidder. Bidders who as far as you can tell, would be unscrupulous at best to outright evil and malevolent at worst. Pinging the people fighting outside the information certainly wouldn't hurt, though you remembered the words said to you about the police. That made you hesitate briefly, looking once more at the PPD officers. Your lips drew into a fine line, and then you made sure the message only got to the capes currently fighting.

But while it pained you to sit still and not partake in the action, Alice said that it was time to relax, and she was a friend that you didn't want to see unhappy. You tensed, held your gut tight, and then relaxed with an exhalation to release the pent up stress. You had to train yourself to not look outside, lest the temptation to partake in the fight take hold. But if you felt antsy, Agafya certainly seemed almost miserable, constantly looking back outside and chewing on her lower lip before looking back down and fidgeting with her fingers.

"So uh...what else is there to do in Paragon?" You asked as the explosions outside subsided with the fight moving down the street; streams of tracers hurtling across the roads and crushing psionic waves rolling back in response in a tit for tat engagement.

"Weeeeell..." Joseph said, tapping his chin and doing his best to ignore the crash of lightning and thunder, Taylor looking back and quirking a brow before your attention was caught by the waitress who had served you earlier taking a brief look outside the window before your sense of danger started to fire. Something...

"GET DOWN!" You shouted, springing out of your seat faster than anyone besides your fellow inheritors could hope to follow and then pulling her down as a bullet soared overhead, punching a hole through the window while its cometary trail of ignited wake whizzed above in slow motion. The projectile punched through the floor and several more layers of ground below, and your senses determined that the offending round was a depleted uranium slug reinforced with small quantities of impervium concentrated at the tip to prevent premature shattering and to maintain solidity after impact. Launched at near light-speed and specially designed to channel all of its force in a single direction. Incredible overkill for a standard human.

You focused your hearing in the distance and heard some muttering in Italian. "La stupida puttana si è abbassata. Passare alla posizione di tiro successiva." The Council's Lingua Franca was Italian as far as you knew, and this Restaurant was famous for its defiance against the terrorist origanisation. The sniper would be on the move, knowing better than to take two shots from the same place and let his location be discerned...and yes...he. The voice was definitely male. Deep, bassy.

"Whoa what the actual fuck?!" Dean said, almost falling out of his seat while the Eldar fixated their attentions on the direction the shot came from, Alyrsero's staff manifesting while he made some incantations and threw some runes into the air; facial tattoos starting to glow. Taylor seemed to be focusing on something, likely trying to use her swarm to pinpoint any additional information she could; using her fragment bearing insects as nodes to extend the range of her control and observation.

"Sniper...try not to freak out." She growled.

"Not freak out?! Are you nuts?" Dean shouted as he regained his composure and some of his dignity.

"This place is a point of resistance to a hostile regime that doesn't take kindly to public enemies. It would be a natural target." Agafya said coldly while Sevrin got out of his seat and started to analyse the bullet trajectory with some tools he fished from his pocket, murmuring to himself as Arne slipped out of his seat to check on the both of you, helping you up.

"Nnggh...Merci mademoiselle.." She said, picking herself up as she seemed to be cognisant of what just happened.

"Ça va madame coustelle ? Je ne vois aucune blessure sur toi mais un tir de railgun comme ça..." You said in fluent French, albeit accented to the Irish lilt that you found most natural to speak in. You had pointed out how even though you couldn't detect any injuries, a railgun slug of that magnitude typically meant that the firer wanted you dead, especially in this lowtech world.

"Ah, j'ai eu les chiens du Conseil pour mon sang pendant des années. Je ne suis peut-être pas aussi actif en tant que super-héros qu'avant, mais je sais comment gérer les assassins." She smiled, she had been and continues to be a Cape in her own right, one of no insignificant skill nor a particularly low rank on the Council's Kill-List.

"...I can't speak French, what are they saying?" Chris asked.

"She's asking if Jennie is alright, but she's a cape herself; she's used to this." Taylor said,

"You speak French?" Joseph asked, unaware of this talent of hers.

"Shadow does, but I spoke it as a second language before. Vive le Quebec Libre and all." She said, shrugging a bit. It was one of her parents' passions, being French Canadian descendants who felt a bit of pride in sticking it to "Les Anglo-Saxons". Plus she held onto a vague hope that she might be considered sexy if she could speak in French.

"Mistress!" Torchwick said, the Demon rushing up to her out of a hellgate holding the molten fragments of the projectile in an obsidian casket, revealing it to her while her eyes scanned through the proferred evidence.

"Huuuh that's definitely a Council Tanker-Killer round." She murmured to herself as Jennie brushed off her outfit and shook her head, the building's mage rushing to reinforce the windows with a barrier spell and seal the breach made by the shot, the patrons murmuring to one another rather frantically.

"Mistress Dohl, mistress Dohl, Torchwick send hellhounds to find sniper yes yes! Torchwick did good?" The demon babbled, dancing atop the table before his head was pat by her.

"Torchwick did very, very good! Here, have a little snack!" She said, fishing for a token of green solidified magic from her pocket and flipping it towards the Demon who snapped out a long forked tongue to grab it and then engulf it, cackling and babbling excitedly.

"...I'm starting to buy the whole actual Hell thing." Victoria murmured, looking at the creature with a rather offput face.

"...You gazed upon the spawn of the warp and you have trouble believing in Hell?" Elendria snered.

"I don't see what makes them any different from any other extradimensional alien that works on weird physics is all." She shrugged and sighed.

"Are you going to be fine if we leave you here?" You asked.

"Ah me? The Council makes attempts on my life regularly. I am still in one piece. Let them come if they wish. Everyone who comes here knows the risks." She retorted snappily, making sure her uniform was in order before dean cleared his throat.

Raising a hand and then standing up to let her know he wanted her attention, he stood straighter and taller. "Look, I don't think it's okay to just accept this hellworld as normal. Shouldn't you be concerned that you have a fascist paramilitary out for your head? Why don't people on this Earth care about anything?! Why are you just so...okay with how dangerous everyday life is?" He said, his voice loud and bold but not shouting.

"We work every day to make the normal better, but do not get lost in merely wishing it so. That is what a hero is supposed to do, no?" Costelle said while Sevrin fished for his card and paid off the bill owed to the Restaurant, offering her a tip of his cap and a smile; already reclad in his winter clothes.

"But if you wish to speak of the other business more...come to me after Christmas, I will have something for you." She said, letting you go off on your way, briefly catching sight of Positron and the Freedom Phalanx rushing overhead; a stream of focused anti-matter emerging from Keyes' gauntlets to engulf Gaea-Bride's golems and then arc out the resulting energy into other earth elementals, Kid Win stopping dead in his tracks and murmuring about how badly he needed to talk shop with Primal America's top hero.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, a lot of the busier avenues were closed for Christmas eve and it was meant to be more a day of spending time with friends and family. But the thought of Family made you frown. It had been a while since you gave Papa a proper hug...

You were sure he had many important duties to take care of, as one of the Elders of the Ka-Samat Chozo, but you did miss him. He had told you he was so proud of you, and that he had the greatest of expectations for you. But you really wanted him to visit, at least just for Christmas. You looked at the medallion he gave you when you were a toddler, the one he said that would let him find you no matter where you were, and you muttered a prayer to it as you returned to the Starsetter base.

"Please visit, papa." You murmured.


Interlude Choices:

Choose three and write-in three and I'll pick the ones I think would flow best out of the pool the players vote for.

[]: How Lord Nemesis Stole Christmas: Lord Nemesis engages in yet another of his sinister plans
[]: Arachnorok: Lord Recluse screens through Earth Bet villains who have come to offer themselves for the honour of being Patrons of his organisation to see who is worthy
[]: Titanrise: Things start stirring on Monster Earth as the world of Titans is increasingly disturbed by the Nexus
[]: Have a Holly Jolly Christmas: General Christmas hijinks from the cast, will come in a series of vignettes. Suggesting specific vignettes is recommended.
[]: How does one slay Doom exactly?: The Doom Slayer spends Christmas mostly by fighting the circle of thorns and its demons.
[]: Have you seen my mother?: The Tenno clan operating in the background finally gets some PoV stuff as the starchildren's paths start to converge with the main cast.
[]: Freedom-Protectorate: The Freedom Phalanx and Protectorate start to have more in-depth cooperative exercises as they seek to coordinate efforts and cool suspicions between the Earths
[]: To Command and Conquer: A certain Scorpion sigiled Brotherhood preaches the word to the lost.
[]: Father and Son: Vrailius Ardanesh comes to visit Alyrsero and Lelithax, bringing the surprise guest of their mother; Rendraxa Klaridas former Druchii Supreme Sorceress turned Archmage of Shadow.
[]: High Falutin' High Command: Space Pirate High Command decides some plans need to be adjusted.
[]: Malta Mall: The Malta Group seeks to spread its agenda in Earth Bet.
[]: Meet the fam: The primary caretakers of the four duodecimarchs have a visit and some hugs and heartwarming is had all around. Four other duodecimarchs are introduced via remote call but won't be playable yet.

[]: Write in

 

[Spartakrod]

Spider's Web, Grandeville, State of the Etoille Islands

​

Lord Recluse was the master of the so called "Nation of Villains", the greatest Arch-Villain of the world. Of any world he liked to boast in fact, with his plans helping to cast down the Tyrant of Praetorian Earth and wreck the plans of the Reichsman of the Weltreich and Lord Nemesis' inscrutable designs always failing to evade his webs of intrigue before Richter picked them apart. And now, he would extend his vision farther, to yet more new worlds, to fresh talent, to fresh ideas. The ranks of his Patrons had gone with little change since the defection of Scirocco to the side of righteousness when he finally broke his curse; replaced by Vukoran as the head of his mystics. But now, he would expand them once more. Once there were four, now he would have sixteen. Once half as many as a spider's limbs, now he sought twice as many.

The criteria were simple; a skill at leadership, the ambition to rise to the top, personal power to fight off contenders, the cunning to concoct their own schemes and avoid falling victim to them themselves, a lack of delusions about which side they stood on, an apprentice to serve below them, and the ability to serve with competence and reliability if not full loyalty. And of course, being able to withstand the trials Richter would set out for any would be hopefuls as the master of the Rogue Islands looked out over the balcony that allowed him to observe into the pocket dimensions he had created to test the hopefuls of Arachnos.

Red Widow of course, stayed by his side; as she had always since her resurrection, her loyalty unbreakable and unquestioned even if some said her presence made him get softer since the death of Cole...always Cole. The sense of what he opposed since the death of his former best friend had grown fuzzier over the years. He had hated him so much for his self-righteousness, his audacity to take his sister's hand in marriage, his insufferable sense of moral superiority. This whole project had been to prove him wrong, to create a society based on things so contrary to the worldview that he cherished, to create an evil that would one day destroy Cole. And it had been a success.

Yes...Wade was moulded by the Rogue Islands, grew to obsess over power through living in such a dog eat dog hellcape, to crave the might of Rularuu himself. Yet ultimately, it was dissatisfying. He had wanted to kill his old friend himself, to take his power for himself, to rend his insipid team apart. He didn't frown, he rarely allowed himself such things, he didn't sigh. He did however, look to Red Widow and nodded. He was still a man of his own destiny, nothing would change that. Not the Battalion, not the Nexus, not the Well or the Dimensionless. And the brief movement of one of the spider limbs emerging from his back would pull her closer towards him, sheltered from the frost of the Christmas gales.

The Earth Bet villains had an interestingly eclectic array of abilities, but most were simply too narrow in their power types and applications to truly make the cut. It would not do to have a Patron be a man who would still die from a nine-millimetre slug to the head. The villains of other worlds who had heard his summons were also of interest, also worthy of consideration, also worth looking closely into to ascertain what skills they had, what abilities they could offer. But none had yet sought him out for his examination. A pity, though here were some that had some promise however.

He looked through the groups, the finest mind on Primal Earth calculating and recalculating with precision even the finest computers could not match, the web of his divine intellect extending as he called on the gift of the forbidden wisdom of Tartarus, embedded into his mind to make it a fathomless wellspring of intellect and knowledge. Many would try, both from Primal Earth and Earth Bet, few would be chosen.

"You do not wish to try yourself?" He said to a man standing near him, Coil, clad in a skintight outfit of black with a white stencil pattern of a snake coiling from his head all the way down to an ankle. A Brockton Bay native, one who had come into contact with Arachnos not too long after the organisation sought to spread its web into the city.

"I'm not much for these sorts of combat try-outs. My talents aren't in fisticuffs, and you're looking for people who can throw down as much as they can plan." He said, though Stefan figured Thomas; as his real name was; had another angle, the Skeletal man hoping to be able to maintain leverage over a patron of Arachnos without having the complications that would arise from direct affiliation.

"Oh I'm aware that you do not consider yourself a fighter. Still, you would not be the first who primarily works indirectly or through pawns to attempt to find their way into my inner circle." He said, reclining into his hovering throne as soon as it had floated behind him to allow him to sit within it and petting at the hair of Adelie, allowing himself a small smile when she purred in response to the touches of his fingers.

"Yeah I'm not up for the field mastermind thing either. No offence, Recluse." Coil responded, getting a quick snort out of the master of the Rogue Islands while he folded his hands and steepled his fingers.

"I can understand the desire to remain independent, respect it even. Though Coil, it does leave me to wonder why then, you would appear at my Doorstep and stand at my Balcony?" He asked, swivelling his chair around to look at the fields of try-outs more closely, another throne offering itself to the Red Widow as she joined him.

"I just wanted to make sure you give the people I offer a fair shake."

"You are not a man known for fairness, do not think to take me for a fool." He replied, not even sparing Coil a second Glance as he tugged a bit at his neck and tried to not look like he had gulped at the sound of Recluse's demonic, bassy deep toned voice reverbing in his ears. A normal human? Even most enhanced humans? They would have missed it, Coil was a master of guising his emotions and his reactions, to always appear as though he were in control. Such would not work on someone with the sight of Tartarus, and Richter's intimate knowledge of everyone's possible paths to damnation; their failings, their fears, what could knock them off their course and onto a path to the pit or to better directions, what they kept hidden. It was not absolute of course, but Coil was far from being able to avoid the senses of a Protogenoi.

"Well, I wanted to see if the Lord of Villains was all he was said to be, and you do surpass my expectations to say the least. Especially with your...impressive commitment to aesthetics." He said, taking a moment to look around the citadel and its incessant usage of spider theming.

"Style and Dramatics are underappreciated aspects of the art of conquest and rule. If one does not know the sign and form of power, one will not know what to obey or, what to aspire to." He responded, his attentions starting to focus on a single team in particular. Young, a slightly different reality smell to them, from an alter of the "Bet" timeline he surmised. Ah yes, the girl he recognised; demure, pretty, erratic, with brown hair, forced to come to the attention of Arachnos when their group had to deal with a gang of superpowered street toughs looking to take their hideout from them in the rough neighbourhoods of Nerva. Noelle, he believed. Still reluctant to let others know of her...other half, based on the effort she went to to try and conceal it with a fashioned suit of centauroid like armour made for them as a favour from a villain they had helped in the Rogue Islands.

"Them for example, what is there to let others know that they are yours?" He asked.

Coil seemed to look briefly askance at Recluse before clearing his throat. "Well, plausible deniability's still pretty important. I can't slap my logo on everyone who does some work for me if I want to avoid the heat." He responded.

"As Recluse would tell you, to be able to openly declare your allegiance and dare any retaliation to come your way for it is a form of power. To show that you are unafraid of the consequences for openly stating your opposition." Adelie replied, crossing her legs gently and taking a look at one of the Guards who had briefly turned away from the rest of the group and then glancing towards Richter who nodded in response.

"Assets who owe you loyalty purely through accumulated debt of favours or blackmail can hardly be considered fully loyal after all. The loyalty earned by pride in the colours you bear? That is far harder to break." Richter concluded for his spouse.

"I'm not in this for ideology, I'm here to carve my own space in the world and get as comfortable in it as possible. Especially if the end times are coming; going to be a lot more room for people like me if the Storm is as bad as they say." He replied, almost seeming to relish the coming possible apocalypse.

"And there has long been room for many like you. Arachnos however, Arachnos wants the ambitious, not merely the greedy. Greed can lead to ambition, but the lust for power and the desire to dominate? That is what Arachnos is built on." The Red Widow said, flicking her hand about idly in coded sign to Richter.

"Indeed, the loyalty of a mere hireling is something that can be bought, altered. The loyalty of a true believer is far more Ironclad, wouldn't you agree?" Richter said, not taking his eyes off of the Travellers as he made his assessments, thinking of what promise they could bear for Arachnos.

Coil seemed to also know what was up, checking the same guard one with an imperceptible flick of his eyes before responding to Richter. "True, but if you're big enough to inspire loyalty to the cause, then you're big enough to be on a lot of people's naughty lists that I would rather not be entangled in." He replied as the Guard took one step closer before Coil, making the excuse of wanting another viewpoint, made his move, stepping just to the side of the Guard before "clumsily" hooking his leg around the ankle of the guard.

The guard stumbled slightly before Coil elbowed them a bit harder, enough to push them off balance. Sensing its cover was blown, it bent its body at an impossible angle, grabbing at the rail with a backwards jointed hand that extended grappling claws and reshaping its head to bear a crimson optic. With a split second motion, its hand finished transforming into a blade and then thrusting towards Coil before one of Richter's spider limbs extended and blocked the blade before the second and third impaled the guard thoroughly, raising them up into the air above the master of the Rogue Islands.

"H-heil Zi-ziegler" The machine managed after Recluse carved out its throat with a swipe from one of his legs; activating a self-destruct mechanism that was foiled by a burst of light energy from the ends of his spider limbs, scattering it into shrapnel and sending fragments flying.

"Loyalty that would make it obvious when a doppelganger is unable to show the proper respects to its supposed master. Something that I am sure that the Nazis would dearly love to have more of." Richter said with a scowl.

"You get that kind of trouble regularly?" He asked, dusting his suit off.

"As of recently? Yes. The Nictus are up to something, and I wish to learn what it is." He growled before his attentions briefly shifted once again to the aspirants.

"Promising..." He muttered to himself.

 

[Spartakrod]

Los Angeles, Earth bet​

Getting simply outmatched in a contest of brute power against the Super-Rikti in her hometown had given the woman most knew as Alexandria a lot to think about, as did encountering healing abilities that could penetrate through her stasis field; restoring her missing eye for the first time in a very long time. The world was changing, almost too quickly in fact. And as she picked through the rubble of her home city, she couldn't help but feel at unease, looking upon the countless people who were put into shallow graves because of the thorough infiltration of the LAPD by this "Cult of Khorne". She wasn't much for religion before this point, even after seeing Samus and Arne and all the strange aliens that clung around them she didn't really doubt her general atheism. Even when the Transformers talked about Primus as a real thing they could see and touch, she didn't doubt; she was curious as to why Robots would have religion, but she didn't doubt. The Eldar also didn't make her question her stance that in the traditional theological sense, there couldn't be such things as Gods who operate explicitly outside the rules of reality. Samus', the Eldar's, the Cybertronian's faith could all be compartmentalized in her mind, rationalised as mystified understandings of unusual phenomenon. Even the "magic" she had found could be understood one day, she felt.

But then she saw the warp open the gates of hell...worse than hell, and stared into one of the bloody rifts upon a blackened throne of skulls with a seemingly infinitely distant but omnipresent figure of incomprehensible fury at the centrepiece of an impossibly vast battlefield of endless bloodshed. A rage that almost made her mind burn and seemed to shift according to her personal concepts of fury, of anger, of war. Every moment her eyes lingered the sight changed to something more and more personal to her, like a story transforming to better suit the experiences of a reader. The loner she stared the more it hurt something ephemeral, intangible in her. Something more primeval to her than her organs, something less touchable than her thoughts. She had to turn away, the strain of even looking through a version filtered by the energies of the space marines' Librarians was almost enough to knock her out. But that sight had stayed with her, shaken her even. Even more so than the raw destruction, than the world turning upside down in the wake of a catastrophic multi-invasion, the sight of such a thing perturbed many of her beliefs.

Did she really understand how the world worked? Did the woman in the hat actually have the answers? She could tell her nothing, not even the riddles she often spoke in designed to provoke a certain outcome out of her. For the first time in a while, Rebecca felt lost, uncertain, doubting her course of action as she shifted more of the rubble out of the way, clearing space for rescue crews and making sure anyone hoping to take advantage of the chaos had another thing coming to them. Many were anxious about the Slaughterhouse Nine's movements, that vulture of a group always eager to prey on cities that had just suffered calamity. But given the extensive presence of the outversers, Rebecca figured even Jack Slash wouldn't dare chance it.

Speaking of Outversers, she flew down next to Davian Thule as the Dreadnought oversaw a brief victory parade by the Blood Ravens in celebration of their triumph over an attempted Chaos invasion of what she recalled they regarded as essentially sacred ground; with Penelope Yin dispatched from the Freedom Phalanx to provide a Primal Earth view of the procession. Rebecca took a look at the street, finding it remarkable how emptied it was of Los Angeles' traditional choking amounts of motor traffic in the aftermath of the battle. She could sniff the air and for the first time in a while, couldn't detect most of the usual smog and fumes ejected by the most car heavy city in the country. It was rather novel actually...pleasant even. But she thought of what else this signified, the lives lost, and frowned as tanks with saluting Astartes emerging from their command hatches rolled on by.

The Astartes were giants, and Thule in his dreadnought was a colossus amongst giants, making her feel like a toy next to the imposingly massive form of the Space Marine ancient even as she towered more than a head over the rather petite Penelope Yin. But she exuded a confidence that made her not stand out next to the colossal space marine, letting the wind carry her cape behind her as she floated near the hovering Penelope Yin while she offered waves to the space marine armoured vehicle procession.

"The clean-up's been...decently quick by the standards of events of this scale." She said, trying to break the ice and getting a quick glance over from Yin's slender face, irises glowing pink with psionic energy as she dangled her legs over the rim of the telekinetic cube of force she sat on.

"Well, cleaning up the physical damage is always the easiest part of recovering from disasters like this. It's putting things back together, making sure they can't happen again, and healing the people that's hard." Yin responded, her tone rather chipper despite the amount of evil she had exposed her thoughts to. She wasn't sure how Yin, or Mental Meister as she called herself, functioned with the ability to hear just about anyone's thoughts, but on the other hand Rebecca also didn't envy having a telepath's burden. The thought of being able to see into the mind of every creep who stared at her backside made her shudder in brief disgust.

"Are you holding up alright Mental Meister?" She asked, trying to poke into Yin's brain without...literally doing that, though concealing intention from Yin was impossible, even if Rebecca was the sort of person to ever indulge in lying to begin with.

"I've seen into the thoughts of plenty of awful things and poked around in the heads of tons of people with awful trauma. It never gets pleasant...and if it does that's not good...but it is something you get used to." Yin said, crossing her legs together in a pretzel formation. It was hard to imagine she was in her later twenties, she had the glow and demeanour of a college kid all things told, but then Alexandria didn't really look her age either.

"You've got something in your head don't you? Uncertainty." She said, briefly looking over to her before staring back out at the parade as the infantry began moving past, heavy boots stomping onto the asphalt in lockstep.

No use denying it, Yin probably knew everything already.

"I've been wondering, do I know I'm on the right path anymore? This is...Gods and Conquerors and I'm not used to that. Things are moving so fast and changing so much..." She sighed as she crossed her arms, she would normally avoid this show of vulnerability, but making the effort to hide it would only make it more obvious to Yin's vast powers of mind and emotion reading.

"You made a deal with people you probably shouldn't have, I know." She said, casually admitting it. For a moment Rebecca almost wanted to try and punch her head off, to reflexively silence her before she could tell anyone else about her secrets. The alarm went through her like a sinking sensation of cold jitters, she'd have sweated if perspiration were still a thing her body needed. Her teeth tensed, grinding as she felt competing urges to fight or flee.

"It's really hard for me to miss, not with how big it looms in your memories." She replied, leaning forward and looking at her hands.

"You're not going to hit me." She said, calmly, knowingly as Alexandria relaxed and exhaled.

"Sorry...I just thought..."

"That you could hide that from me? Nah...I knew from the second I could first hear your thoughts." She said with a thin lipped smile. "It's a telepath's burden, only a few people can keep secrets from me. I know the entire life story of nearly everyone I've ever been near..." She swung her legs out, idly kicking them while Thule slowly rotated his head aperture towards the duo.

"What manner of bargain do you speak of?" He boomed.

"..." She wasn't ready to say it, not out loud.

"Best save it for some place more private." Yin told Thule.

"So be it, though I will have answers sooner or later." He replied.

"~I'm not going to tell people who aren't ready to know if that's what you're worried about. But Cauldron, the people who gave you your abilities, we are going to have to speak to them about a lot of things. Preferably before they figure out telepathy blockers.~" Yin said to her through a telepathic link that she created for the two of them to speak more privately.

Alexandria still wasn't entirely used to telepathic communication, rubbing somewhat at her temples as she instinctively tried to find the source of the voice before realising that it was literally all in her head.

"~I have done nothing wrong, I have spent my entire professional life doing everything I could to help. But if people prone to jumping to conclusions find outs...~" She started before Penelope raised a finger.

"~I have lived my entire life keeping secrets, if people found out about what I've done, the double life I le-~"

"~They'd find that you were a ginormous case of conflict of interest? Relax, I'm not here to get on your case about that, but you do need to find a time to come clean. Secret identities are fine...even if I don't use them. But one based on that much political drama...yeesh.~" She shook her head as the urge to silence Yin somehow briefly returned. Her mind calculating her chances of making some sort of excuse, of getting the job done before the mediporters could function, of at least preserving her reputation in the protectorate even at the expense of relations with the Phalanx or the Ravens, what chance she had of...

Her thought processes were halted. Not stopped, halted, arrested to a complete stop with an exertion of Penelope's powers. No thoughts came, her head was empty, blank for a brief moment before she was able to process what was going on around her again when Penelope released her grip on her mind. She found herself away from the parade, at a hero bar in Paragon City. Or rather, the entrance to one. She was still in costume, nothing else had changed, but more than an hour had passed and she was in an entirely different universe.

"What?" She stammered.

"You were down spiralling, so I thought I'd get us to someplace more relaxed." She said with a shrug, unafraid of possible retaliation as she once again considered her options, to just walk away, to keep her quiet, what she'd need to do to guarantee her lips remained sealed.

"I can hear you plotting against me." She said calmly, stretching slightly as she sighed and generated heat to keep warm despite baring her midriff with her costume.

"And you just did that without my permission?" Alexandria said, almost outraged before choking back her emotions to remain calm and professional.

"Sorry. That was an overreaction on my part. But I think we needed to move to a less bad vibey place anyway." She said, shrugging and giving her best apologetic expression.

"I'll pay for something tasty to start to make things up, if that's okay. But we do need to talk. About a lot of things." She offered, extending a hand to shake as Alexandria briefly paused and then looked at the gloved hand before taking the gesture in earnesty and giving her a gentle shake.

"Alright, I suppose it can't hurt to try and clear some air..." She said reluctantly as Penelope gave a happy thumbs up and a grin.

"That's the spirit!" She cheered.