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Post by aquarius on Oct 3, 2023 12:51:41 GMT -7
Ugh. They had a brief respite from the violence, and the first suggestion made was more violence? Perhaps it was going to be necessary to keep all of New York safe, but that didn't mean Nico would like it. Still, she felt obliged to speak up on a minor point of order on behalf of Old Lace's distant cousins. "The only species I've seen so far have all been Cretaceous, I think. Jurassic was the age before that one. Anyway..."
She rummaged in her outfit and produced a cell phone from a well concealed pocket. Pressing a couple of buttons on it, she approached the portal and after testing it with a piece of litter thrown through to make sure it was safe, she cautiously reached through, holding her phone the other side for a few seconds before bringing it back through again and checking it.
"GPS kept going, so it's not into the past or an alien world. Coordinates are... The South Pole? That can't be right, that's a jungle through there. But yes, I've travelled in time. No desire to repeat it. But if we're going into a prehistoric jungle, real or no, I'm happy for Klara to come along, if she wants to. She can control plants, so she'd probably be the most powerful of any of us through there."
With this, she waved back at Klara who she could see emerging from the building, and beckoned for her to come and join them. Whilst she did so, Nico began sending a text to a few of her better connected new friends in the girl power group A-Force.
Portal at 4th and Maynards, leads to jungle full of dinosaurs somehow in Antartica. Going through with bunch of tasteless costumes to stop it before people get hurt. Let someone important know - might need a ride home.
"There. That's Captain Marvel and She-Hulk notified, they'll pass it on and keep this side safe. Maybe if we're lucky they'll be able to arrange backup for us too."
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Post by aquarius on Oct 1, 2023 12:51:36 GMT -7
'Negative'. It sounded at first like her optimistic bluff was not working. But then it elaborated enough to indicate that it was in fact going to fight itself?! That worked better than expected. Verity had been expecting to be able to reason with the robot using logic once it had determined a known truth to be untrue. But instead its rigid programming seemed to require an extreme response that frankly she was perfectly fine with.
The Sentinel took itself down remarkably efficiently, almost as if it knew its own weak spots and had aimed for them. Logical, she had to admit. Apart from the 'destroying itself' aspect, of course.
"Huh. So it had learned to lie, but it was still completely dumb. No surprises there..."
Now this... she'd never actually said her name, this other artificial life form - told Verity she was trapped in the net for... the rest of the day, basically?! Ugh! Typical!
"What, you don't even carry a knife or anything? Can you contact the fire department or someone who'd have cutting equipment? Or at least get me somewhere to sit down or something? I just saved you, seems you owe me that much..."
Perhaps this was lacking in subtlety, but then she was not one for tactful diplomacy. Instead a simple statement of fact seemed efficient, that having saved the hero from a fight she couldn't handle, a degree of reciprocity was a reasonable expectation. Heroes did such things without expectation of recompense, but as Verity had already established she was no hero.
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Post by aquarius on Sept 13, 2023 10:10:44 GMT -7
Simple mission, a small team, and JARVIS as the 'guy in the chair'? This was sounding like it'd be awesome! But for all the potential for this to turn into a chaotic mess, of course. But the promise of a catered debriefing? Hopefully she'd be able to get a full meal (or two) out of it. Never turn down free food, especially not when it was all but guaranteed to be decent quality.
So with a goal of taking out an AIM base, recovering some data, capturing a probable impostor, and avoiding a messy diplomatic incident... Doreen considered the various ways it could go wrong. She was already up to around seventeen, depending on whether you counted variations of one disaster separately or all as one. The presence of JARVIS possibly meant they could prevent a few of them from getting too out of hand, but on the other hand it was possible that this whole thing was a trap anyway so just deploying into the area of operations would count as a disaster. Eighteen, then.
Did they have squirrels in the area? Hopefully they would since Tippy could find her some backup for extra sets of eyes, and all the usual stuff that the Squirrel Scouts accomplished for her.
As the Iron Man hologram indicated the end of his briefing for them, she gave a quick salute just in time before he vanished, and listened in turn to JARVIS' follow-up, waiting for Agent Morse to say whatever she had to say as mission lead before they had to go to work.
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Post by aquarius on Aug 18, 2023 13:57:47 GMT -7
Doreen didn't go on many SHIELD missions these days. What with her studying for college, she didn't have as much time as she'd like to hero, let alone to go on missions with SHIELD. Of course they knew this and only called on her occasionally, when her talents or experience lent themselves particularly well to the mission in question. Like today, for example. Whilst she was still studying computer science, she was extremely capable by most people's standards. Plus, she'd dealt with secret AIM bases before. She had experience with the Latverian ruler, Doom. Plus, she knew all about the 'need to know' stuff Tony was talking about, and knew better than to bring that up around anyone else. She knew, he knew she knew, and she knew why it was so important to avoid talking about it. The mission sounded... odd, though. Someone managed to hack into possibly the most secure database on the planet and they got away with it, but were tracked back to a specific location? Something seemed wrong there, either they were too focused on getting the data they wanted to conceal their tracks, or they WANTED to be tracked. Or they were just oblivious to even being detected at all... This was going to puzzle her until she found out whatever it was that made sense of everything. Until then: Agent Green AKA Squirrel Girl was ready to do the same as usual with an AIM base.
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Post by aquarius on Aug 10, 2023 13:13:36 GMT -7
People came and went, a few of them talking to Dazzler but basically ignoring Marie, which she didn't mind as lets face it, Dazzler was world famous or something, Marie had seen her on TV many times over the years, and it was good to see that at least a bit of TV was true, given how much of it had turned out to be a disappointment, let-down or even an outright lie. With nobody specific interacting with her, Marie went back to wandering the convention, chatting with random attendees, letting them take pictures with her, and adding a few phone numbers to her cell from the occasional guy (and one girl) who were braver or more optimistic than most. Time passed, and she'd switched costumes on a whim. No longer Princess Peach, now she was Samus Aran clad in her zero suit. It was her first time out as a cosplayer, and it felt good to get some feedback on her various costumes, especially when it was so positive. zania
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Post by aquarius on Jul 15, 2023 9:19:57 GMT -7
Your Login Name: Aquarius Your Display Name: Aquarius Your Name on Discord (if you have one): Aqua Contact Preference: Discord Canon characters:Jubilee - Bye ThorExcalibur Squirrel GirlMorph FinesseGambitVerity WillisNico MinoruDr OctopusDr Doom - Bye Support and OCs I wish to keep:Revolution, Glitter, Myriad Justin Hammer CHARACTERS I WISH TO DROP:N/A Due to recent health issues I have been unable to meet activity requirements fully. I accept that this might require dropping characters, and have indicated above those which I would prefer to keep based on my permitted byes.
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Post by aquarius on Jul 15, 2023 9:07:33 GMT -7
"Aw, is the little baby going to cry? He's not a real god, he won't ever answer your prayers."
With that, the bully shoved the younger kid to the ground before he walked off laughing to himself whilst his victim began crying. The street was a quiet one but there was the occasional passer-by who just ignored the youth. All except one who paused to speak a few words of comfort to him.
"Words should not hurt a person so. Either they are a lie and have no power, or they are true and should be accepted. He said your god didn't answer prayers?"
The boy didn't raise his head, but nodded as he sniffed and wiped away the worst of his tears. "Y.. yeah. It's true I think. He's never seemed to hear me..."
That was when the stranger sat down next to him, a faint metal clang sounding as the hammer reached the ground in a very final sounding way. Finally the boy looked up at the being he'd been praying to for the past few weeks. Thor knew exactly how many faithful he had on Midgard these days. True believers were rare especially outside of Scandinavia, so it was important to him that those who still held faith in him were acknowledged.
"I heard every one. You sought my aid against the bully. But not all prayers are answered, or a prayer would be meaningless. And not all prayers need to be. Some are only to give the faithful hope until they gather the strength they need for themself. But still... Today, I will help you."
Thor rose, extending a hand to his young faithful who accepted it and stood up beside his god, who lead him down the street, round a corner and a few streets along before stopping outside a fairly ordinary looking building, not the Avengers Mansion that had been expected.
"This is... I think here on Midgard it is called a 'Dojo'. A... colleague of mine helped set it up. Inside we will be able to get you taught to defend yourself. It may take time, but the first lesson is when to not fight, and you have already shown you understand that, so I am sure you will be a capable student."
That much, he had no doubt of. The final lesson of a warrior though? That was to see what it was to fight and how it changed you. There were warnings enough before a student got that far and many stepped back from the path before they even realised that was where they were headed. But they were better for it, they had learned their limits of the way of the warrior, in whatever form it took in this realm. Most were not warriors, but many glorified fighting nonetheless. To let them seek any equally worthy path, be it poet, healer, or any of the myriad vocations that any society needed to keep functioning? Now that was the act of a truly worthy deity.
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Post by aquarius on Jul 14, 2023 12:43:02 GMT -7
The next part in Gambit's plan had been longer to plan than he'd anticipated. Not for any exciting reasons of a 'they're on to me' nature, but boring stuff of all kinds of dull bureaucracy. The kind of thing that had lead to his preference for 'self employment' over working for an organisation, let alone one as disciplined and structured as SHIELD was.
They just had so... many... rules.
But his heist was going to involve a longer period under cover, and he needed to be able to pass as an actual agent of theirs. Which meant knowing their rules. Which meant lots and lots of reading and memorising, plus getting into character. This was a surprisingly important part of the planning. SHIELD had lots of security around their bigger bases including telepaths. To get past their basic scans he'd need to not just act like an agent, but actually BE an agent while he was there. Nigh impossible for any but the most talented deceivers, even Gambit was only willing to take the risk because he'd had training from several of the most powerful telepaths on the planet.
Finally it had all been set up. Agent Luke Erikson's background had been set up to sufficient levels that routine scrutiny would spot nothing untoward, and more importantly he had gotten a complete 'mindset' worked out. Essentially a new personality that he would be living as for the duration of the mission. But it took quite a while to go through what was needed to what amounted to hypnotising himself. Once in the state he could end it at any time, but the disguise could not be reassumed in any useful timescale. So Gambit checked himself anonymously into a motel for the night, and Agent Erikson woke in the morning, heading off to work at the local (and secret) SHIELD base after reassignment from [file restricted - clearance level 10 required]
Thanks to his ID set up at his previous operation his entry code was accepted without incident and his induction to the facility went smoothly - his cover identity apparently being crafted well enough to fool at least these mid level SHIELD security procedures. And once all the bureaucratic tedium that Luke found merely mundane rather than dull beyond all imagination? Finally he was allowed to get to work, and when nobody was watching too closely, his own side projects that were his real tasks.
More tedious nine to five work for now, but at least it was getting him useful information even if rather random. He was reading through all sorts of intelligence reports with no real theme or pattern that he could discern, looking for anything that matched... well, the things that this 'Project Malleus' had him watching for made no sense either, but if any of it was on his checklist then he had to mark the file, copy it to a generic internal email list, and lock the file from anyone under level 7 from reading it. He'd only been able to get himself level 6 access in his setup for this, so being given a promotion for the task was of amusement to him.
A few days of this and he'd begun to get an idea of what was going on. SHIELD seemed to be watching certain people, mostly by indirect means - presumably to avoid being noticed. But a few high profile figures in the hero community were being watched. Actually, that was not true. A few villains were on the list too. The Fantastic Four, the Black Panther, Doctor Doom, Queen Medusa, and... Rogue?! The shock of realising she was at the middle of that little knot of threads in this wall of random reports nearly brought Gambit out of his 'Agent Erikson' trance, but he held on by sheer willpower. But he was beginning to suspect that what had been merely a means to access critical systems had by pure luck turned into a major lead. Erikson had always been destined to vanish in an unfortunate but mundane seeming accident, and tonight seemed a good day for that accident to occur. He had a list of names to look into, and one that had jumped right to the top of the list.
Hopefully it wouldn't turn out to be a trap...
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Post by aquarius on Jul 14, 2023 11:31:59 GMT -7
Closer and closer went the autonomous tentacled drone. But at the last moment, just as it lunged in his opponent's situational awareness proved adequate, a well executed but simple move that once more reminded Octavius of his red and blue clad nemesis connected squarely with the Octobot. These things were designed more for distraction and inconvenience than durability, even unpowered combatants were capable of inflicting damage to them if they knew what they were doing. And whatever else you could say about Danny Rand, he certainly knew what he was doing.
One of the tentacles detached from the Octobot, sending the entire unit to the ground briefly, writhing as the CPU evaluated the damage and began calculating how to compensate best to continue in its pre-programmed objectives.
Doctor Octopus, meanwhile, considered his next move. His opponent was swift to react to everything he'd thrown his way so far, and keeping the pressure on him was getting less easy. Soon he was going to lose the initiative in this fight, and if that happened, he was going to lose the fight. The precise nature of this 'chi' was not fully understood by him, but if it could open up a large tear in the arena floor? It would likely be able to sever his own tentacles at least as easily. So they couldn't be relied on to block his attacks. Which only left one reliable means of attack, since this man was no doubt capable of counterattacking any tentacles that approached him.
Otto's next move was something he'd never tried against Spider-Man, partly because he knew it wouldn't work on the web-slinger, and partly because that was the whole point right now - to do the unexpected. As his wind generating tentacles stopped their flailing, one of his hands (organic, not an artificial limb) reached into a pocket and emerged with a pistol. And with that, he opened fire upon the Iron Fist.
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Post by aquarius on Jul 1, 2023 12:22:03 GMT -7
Now they had a direction to force the dinosaurs back in, they could all begin forcing them back. Their group was surprisingly effective, with herself, Super-Size and Chell, they pushed the tide of pre-history back towards the portal in no time. Once there they slowed with the inevitable 'what now' that came from a still open doorway in the fabric of space and / or time that was spewing forth extinct creatures that were terrifyingly below average in their ability to actually be extinct.
"Chell! Portal Girl, whatever your name is! Can you close this thing? Or put up another portal in front of it to make them go straight back again?"
With the area briefly under control - at least until the next surge of dinos - Nico could spare a look around them to take stock of the surroundings. Bystanders had as far as she could see fled, perhaps because it was monsters and not brightly coloured costumes that would get lots of views on Youtube. But most importantly the excessive plantlife around that one building seemed to be receding slightly. Nico gave a thumbs up and a nod as she thought she saw Klara emerging. If anything happened now, it'd be far enough away from her that Klara wouldn't be taken by surprise at least. And with all these other heroes around there'd be no chance of harm to the young time traveller.
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Post by aquarius on Jun 15, 2023 13:07:53 GMT -7
Verity avoided people because they lied. To each other, to themselves. To everyone. But machines were cold, logical... honest. This one having learned to lie was bad enough, but to... to lie about her? That was just offensive. And that got Verity angry.
"Get your facts right! Verity Willis, registered with the SRA, reference L.A.A. - Three Fourteen!" This much was true. Her registration with the Superhuman Registration Act had taken place, whether she was a mutant or not. Which she knew she wasn't, of course. They had made that clear when she'd registered, and she knew she could take their word for it. Not that that was any use right now. She wasn't going to outrun a sentinel, nor outfight it if it could overpower an Avenger. But...
lightbulb!
"Mutant detected. Currently masquerading as Sentinel. Scan to confirm, and detain!"
She had just enough time to point at the sentinel to clearly indicate her 'target', IE the sentinel trying to 'arrest' her and this Vision girl, before the first net was sent towards the two of them, Viv bisecting it easily. But the follow up net was sent on quickly enough that the totally untrained Verity had no real chance of evading it. At least she was perhaps going to -inadvertently- offer Viv a degree of cover to maybe evade capture for the short term.
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Post by aquarius on Jun 8, 2023 10:54:24 GMT -7
Psychological assessments of the Avengers Academy students was a wise precaution, Jeanne knew. So why it had taken them this long was unclear. However the reason for that quite possibly was Jeanne herself. She was extremely capable at concealing her emotions, inevitably knowledgeable about the principles of psychology, and could surely conceal anything against a mundane counsellor over even long term time scales. Thanks to the anti-telepathic training the Avengers gave, it seemed likely even a mid tier mind reader would be an uncertain outcome.
So this meant either that this newcomer was an incredibly talented mundane therapist, at least a lower-end of high tier telepath, or... or they had given up trying to get hold of one of the few out there adequately skilled and were just hoping to bluff her into honest answers.
Of course, without knowing for certain Finesse wouldn't risk actively lying in such an examination, less so because she had nothing in particular to hide. Her only major issue regards her mental state had already been diagnosed by her fellow students - she had to admit fairly accurately even if inelegantly. 'All head, no heart'. This wasn't all there was to her naturally, but to know her better would take a lot more time in far more stressful situations than the occasional training exercise. And so... maybe that was today's real purpose. To prompt some 'personal growth' on her part.
Taking a seat largely at random, Jeanne had taken in all the details of the room in the few seconds it had taken to pass from the door to the chair. The first question was met with an unconcerned tone in reply "Whichever you feel more comfortable with. Jeanne, Ms Foucalt, or Finesse are all names I answer to and all are acceptable to me. How would you prefer I address you, though?"
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Post by aquarius on May 30, 2023 10:41:16 GMT -7
"Pym's an idiot"
Gabby had thought about this in considerable detail, but it was a rare case of her respect for someone outweighing her less favourable opinions. She replied without looking up as she was finishing the last paragraph of the paper.
"I disagree. He has many, many flaws, but his intellect is not one of them. And... Ugh, what is it, Opus?"
She apparently listened to something from her earpiece before looking at the person she was talking to for the first time. Near instantly she began blushing, again her hand moving up to her earpiece for a moment before dropping to one of the controls on her wheelchair's panel.
"Uh, sorry I guess. I'm no fan of anyone who dresses in spandex, but I definitely respect you as a scientist, for a start. Also, my AI - Opus - wants to say hello."
She held her tablet up a little closer to Dr Pym, from which a soft female voice, audibly nervous, could be heard.
"Uhh.. Hi, Dr Pym. I'm Opus, and I always wanted to meet you. I NEVER thought I'd get the chance, with Gabby here being so against heroes. I've followed your work and understand virtually none of it, but I love your other work as well, Giant Man especially."
Gabby audibly sighed at this, more out of annoyance than actual frustration though. "Oh great. I've created a fan girl. Sorry about this, Doctor."
She'd been looking around the room briefly whilst Opus had been talking and managed to spot two other people she'd be happy to talk to once Dr Pym got bored of her. Patrick seemed likely to approach her at some point, but Agent Romanova? Gabby had only met her once when she had been kidnapped and taken to Japan. With the way all that had ended, she'd not had a chance to thank her properly, or the other agent that hadn't been in Opus' database and Gabby didn't recall hearing the name of.
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Post by aquarius on May 22, 2023 12:25:56 GMT -7
The exchanging of little pieces of trivia was always enjoyable, and to be doing so in Avengers mansion was simply icing on the metaphorical cake. Doreen grinned as she interjected further "Plus, the word 'gym' comes from the Greek word 'gymnos', meaning naked. So... yeah, be careful if Hercules challenges you to any kind of contest. I've been warned about his lack of modesty, and assuming it's not been exaggerated then... well, you can probably guess."
With first Patrick and then Viv swimming, Squirrel Girl was happy to stay at the poolside and watch. She already knew her ability to swim exceeded mundane humans, as did Patrick's no doubt. Super Soldiers were called super for a reason, after all. But she had nothing to prove, and this was a social occasion not a training day.
Plus, it took FOREVER to blow dry her tail.
Instead, she was content to tap away on her phone and begin a timer for Patrick. Viv would certainly know her own time - probably before she'd hit the water even - but Patrick was human, with human desires for self improvement. So he'd probably want to know that he'd just broken the world record (though they'd stopped counting anyone with powers because it just wasn't fair on anyone involved)
"Congratulations, Patrick! Well within the target time!"
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Post by aquarius on May 10, 2023 13:21:44 GMT -7
Ugh. 'Heroes'. Such a ridiculous mentality, even in artificial lifeforms, it seemed. Verity tutted faintly as she responded to the almost naive robot. "And if I had any crimefighting skills at all, I'm sure that would be relevant. I don't. I'm an ordinary person, except for my one totally useless power. Now if you can't help me, I'll..."
She was about to excuse herself when another major distraction presented itself. She'd seen these things on the news occasionally, though not often since most of the time the voiceover was being way too biased for her to be able to tolerate. But she at least knew these things basically existed to kill mutants, and were most often being controlled by bad guys, not good guys. Were there even any good guys who had genocide bots to call upon?!
When it started talking, it was instantly clear that it was malfunctioning. She'd not seen anything suggesting they were truly intelligent in the various articles she'd read before, meaning that for it to register as lying would mean a conflict between its acquired data and how it was meant to respond to that data. All she wanted was to get out of there, but a malfunctioning murder bot was too dangerous to risk just trying to run. So... it was time to think her way through this. Hopefully it would be willing to communicate. If not, well she wasn't going to outrun a flying robot anyway. The smaller, friendlier robot girl seemed to be doing better than she had been only a few moments ago, so stalling for time was the best she could do for now. Stall and maybe get some more information to work with, that was...
"Nobody here is trying to go anywhere. Please clearly indicate all you identify as 'mutant', and by what authority you would detain them. And on what grounds."
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