better_ted_than_dead: (blue beetle)
[personal profile] better_ted_than_dead
"Status, Unknown. Status, Unknown. Status, 'Believed deceased but who the hell can really tell, these days?' .. No, that won't fit in the field."

Blue Beetle leans back from the console, sliding his fingers under the mask to rub at his eyes. He glances at his coffee mug - empty now - and then looks back to the screen with a sigh.

"We'll stick with 'Presumed dead' and lose the sarcasm, I suppose."

The metahuman census project had been started as an informal, low-priority effort to figure out which heroes and villains were active and which were still missing, in an attempt to determine what resources were available for the good guys, and what threats they might run into. Unfortunately, a complete rearrangement of space and time is a difficult thing to sift through - Ted himself had shown back up in Europe, and according to most of the other people he'd talked to, he was supposed to have been dead.

Circumstances, then, did not bode well for the completion of the project, but it was something that kept drawing Ted back in, due to some sense of .. sympathy? Nostalgia? Foolish hope, beyond reason?

Well, that, and seeing how the other half lived before the big shake-up.

"Wait, they actually had a guy who was a living cartoon character?"

(no subject)

4/17/15 12:19 am
noboothneeded: (Flight)
[personal profile] noboothneeded
Up above the rooftops of Metropolis, a portal opened and unceremoniously spit out a teen in a Superman costume, before shutting again. Clark tumbled in the air a bit before righting himself. He wasn't certain what was going on. The last thing he'd remembered, aside from a blurry mess, was that he'd been somewhere above Los Angeles, rescuing a plane. He turned around, trying to get his bearings, and suddenly stopped.

He might not enjoy the Superman comics, but years of having them foisted upon him meant he could recognize many things in them by sight alone. The famous globe of the Daily Planet was one of them.

"What." Clark said flatly. He looked around, some more, enhanced vision picking out the Lexcorp Towers and Centennial Park.

"This can't be happening. I can't be in Metropolis. How am I in Metropolis?"

[AI] It begins

4/5/15 12:22 am
holyscoopbatman: (Extra! Extra!)
[personal profile] holyscoopbatman
The Defenders: A "Just-Us" Society?
by Sally Floyd

Every week brings new challenges to the Post-Cataclysm world we live in but the recent actions of the Defenders have left the public wondering if the team is up for the challenge - and if they think they're above the law. A solid week of questionable actions started with a tantrum by the younger Blue Beetle, usually polite and soft-spoken in his appearances, caught on youtube yelling at a freelance journalist and breaking his camera.

Read more... )

[AI] Time Loop

4/2/15 10:20 pm
timeslipping: (thoughtful)
[personal profile] timeslipping
It wasn't supposed to happen again.

Rina had been glad when she'd regained her powers, a good while after being at the epicenter of the power-nullifying bomb of the Dire-wraiths. It had happened not long after the Stamford explosion and after such a horrible thing had happened to her old friends, she'd hoped that having her powers back meant she'd be able to help avert that kind of catastrophe in the future.

Especially since she'd found that, after her powers had finally come back, they worked differently. Some of her visions were preventable. Sometimes the people dying in them could be saved in time, because now, instead of seeing the catastrophe itself, most of them them showed the lead up to something horrible happening rather than the event itself.

Maybe if her powers had come back earlier she would've been able to see a vision of the lead up to the Stamford catastrophe. Then those innocent people wouldn't have been killed by Nitro. Namorita and Night Thrasher and Microbe wouldn't have died.

And Robbie...

She remembered what he looked like on the news, shot on his way to testify at Congress, head shaved, already battered and beaten down with a dead eyed gaze even before the gun fired off. Robbie had always been so light-hearted and cheerful and happy so to see him like that had broken her heart.

Her powers had kicked on right after that, almost like some sort of cosmic insult. Then again maybe it was the action of seeing all that horror that had triggered their return. She'd heard the story about Night Thrasher tossing Rich off a building to reawaken his powers. Maybe just the sight of something she wished with all her heart she could have prevented was what brought them back in the first place.

Read more... )
unorthodox_greek: (Default)
[personal profile] unorthodox_greek
Far too many heroes remain missing. Far too many friends, colleagues, siblings ripped away to abandon their return to sheer, capricious fortune. Search efforts were undertaken, though the circumstances of the universe-shattering events remained unclear. How could those who returned do any less?

The scientists had concocted many theories. Sensors, probes, mathematics - a dizzying array of ephemera that meant nothing to a warrior born. Several months ago, however, someone finally gave Hercules something he could understand - a door. A portal, more precisely, to one of those realms between realms that still existed, and to which some of his colleagues may have returned. He had volunteered instantly to explore this realm for any sign of other heroes of the two worlds, to bring them home. He had set forth from the secure 'Exploration Laboratory' of the Baxter Building, alone.

Today, as regularly scheduled, the gateway flickers back to life to permit the return of the mighty explorer it had sent forth - and he is no longer alone.

The power surges as the gateway emits two entangled figures - the son of Zeus, and an immense, translucent white bulk, covered in grasping tendrils and enormous red eyes. They burst from the portal with sufficient momentum to impact the far wall, the tentacled creature burbling in an utterly alien language all the while.

Hercules recovers his footing, pushing back against the wall with one foot - using the other to pin one of the creature's manifold limbs, as his hands seek to constrain several others.

"Aye, so you've said. How was I to know it was your wife and not your daughter? I think you will be forced to agree there's a certain resemblance!"

The response seems to anger the creature further, limbs twitching and lashing at Hercules's flesh as it burbles more rapidly.

"Then perhaps you might pay more attention to the both of them, so this sort of thing might not happen again!"

Slowly, but surely, Hercules begins to move - his feet digging into the durable metallic floor, sliding the enormous creature inexorably back towards the portal.

[ooc: Hi, folks! Feel free to jump on in here if you have a character who might be at the Baxter Building and feels like helping Herc get the jealous jellyfish back through the gateway, and/or chat afterwards.]
iamresponding: (bucketless - out of it)
[personal profile] iamresponding
Something had hurt him. He wasn't sure what. He had been doing something. Something something. Getting something for someone. Home. Getting something for home?

He remember crumpled flowers in a puddle in an alley. Broken brick. A fight. He'd staggered around and fought. A suffocating feeling over his face. Energy pouring out. Molten brick, burning the flowers, vaporizing the puddle. He'd gotten free but the world had shattered into a million confusing crystalline shards. So many voices, perspectives, alien images and words in his head.

Crumpled flowers. They were important. They'd belonged to someone. After that, the voices told him to hide. They were broken like him, all of them.

SYSTEM FAILURE +++ ERROR ERROR +++ WORLDMIND GESTALT DATA CORRUPTED +++ REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.


They tried so many times to fix themselves to fix him but something was wrong. So the voices told him to hide, to survive. It was still looking for him, trying to take him. The star.

"Star tryin' t'take me," the man said to the older woman doling out soup at the soup kitchen. "Told me to hide. Voices tol' me to hide. Starfish, bad starfish."

He trusted the old woman. For some reason. Something about her face. White hair, reminded him of someone. Another older woman. Flowers.

"I lost the flowers, ma, I'm sorry," he said to her. "But the star - the star got me. Now the voices're saying to hide. Voices."

"Oh, you poor dear," said the woman. "Why don't you sit over there, young man? I'm going to get someone to help you, okay? We have someone on staff here, they're going to talk to you to get you some help."

"Help," he echoed back, taking the bowl of soup gratefully, going over to sit where the woman had pointed him. "Help. Help me."

Someone could help him. Faces. Floating spheres and pink light. Fire. Winged feet. Black and red. Faces. There were people that could help him, good people, but he didn't know how to call them. Couldn't remember their names.

"Help me," he said into his bowl of soup. "Wish you were here, Pete. Always know what to do when things are broken."

They were stuck like this. Surviving. Him and the voices. They didn't know what to do, how to get help. All of them were too confused, too addled, splitting and blending.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.


"Restart. Need to restart," he said, in between spoonfuls of soup. "How? How do I...? No button. Can't use a button. How? Why can't you tell me? Brother. Brother could. Where's my brother?"
beetlebutt: (013)
[personal profile] beetlebutt
Jaime's return to Defenders tower for the day consisted of him powering down the suit, walking into the loungey area where Paco was hanging out off-duty, and repeatedly kicking the couch about ten times while making abortive angry hand gestures, then diving face first onto it near Paco and screaming into the cushion.

Some days were good - great even.

Some days were okay.

This was a fairly standard bad day, probably a 4.5 on the Jaime's Temper Richter Scale. The only thing particularly notable about it was that he'd really had one too many of these lately. Definitely way more of them after the Merge than before.
iamaghostfearme: (001)
[personal profile] iamaghostfearme
With the Thunderbolts sometimes it was quippy fun time but sometimes it was serious time. Danny'd learned the difference very early on. This was some shady stuff they nosed around in and Luthor and Osborn weren't the be trifled with. It meant that sometimes they had to go slow and steady and cautious to take care of something.

To his credit, he'd stepped up to doing that with surprising grace and earnestness.

That was why, as he and Somgbird crept through what was almost undoubtedly an underground government facility filled with some kind of nastiness, he was perfectly quiet, only speaking the few times he needed to.

Most of those times were to make sure he and Songbird weren't about to run into each other.

"Which way?"
earnedthename: (oops...?)
[personal profile] earnedthename
Apparently, the universe decided that when it was spitting out heroic archers, it might as well deposit a pair of them at once because they go together, right? Right? Close, but no cigar, universe. You tried.

Kate staggers as her feet hit the street, reaching for an arrow automatically even though her head and vision are spinning. The arrow's on the string by the time it stabilizes, and... there's nothing there. No villain, no threat, just empty and unfamiliar street, a few passing cars... and a guy with a bow she doesn't recognize at all.

She lowers her bow, frowning a little.

"Are you lost, kid?"

Like he's more than a couple years younger than her. Shhh.
trickonometry: (Difference between you and me?)
[personal profile] trickonometry
Amadeus has been out of the game far too long. Supporting the Defenders, charities, and sometimes even the T-bolts with so much moolah, your hand might cramp writing all the zeroes. Hacking police databases, keeping them in check. Keeping an eye on the world in general. His usual shtick. He'd made contacts, played nice, and dammit he was good at it. With a moniker like Mastermind Excello, he's gotta be a good DM.

Everything's set up to go on basically forever, financially. The charitable foundation he set up and named after his parents won't run dry for decades, at the rate he's going. He's got Hebe, notable staff, and a bunch of other helpful people he can never remember the names of to continue whetting lips and rubbing elbows. Anything he could do now to help with the finances would be busy work. Not much of a challenge. And if Cho hates anything, it's being bored.

Now he's itching to get back into the hero game. And luckily, one of the spiders he set up to scan and gather superdude-related news has picked up a good one. Metahumans have been disappearing left and right. The good guys have been losing new recruits, possible recruits, and just unknown super kids. It just reeks of dastardly plans.

this club is totally rad-tastical, fellow youth! )
embiggest: (no)
[personal profile] embiggest
Kamala had barely gotten used to the whole 'superhero' thing before the so-called Crisis had happened and left her to try and police up Jersey City without any of the helpful, occasional visits from the big names across the river. IT had been weird. And hard. But it had mostly been the Inventor and his stupid robots and some street stuff. Muggers and people snatching handbags from innocent old ladies. Then, of course, things had to go and get really weird.

Jersey City had been picked as (naturally) the best spot for a new place they called STAR Labs. Kamala wasn't sure what exactly they did in there. What did did know is that it was a real pain in her butt. When before there had been few, if any super-villains making life annoying in Jersey now it seemed like they were popping up every week to try and break into the place and it seemed like things were left to her when it came to dealing with them. Things were already hard enough being a junior in high school and trying to avoid letting her parents in on the whole 'secret identity' thing, so having even more super-villain nonsense to deal with really wasn't what she needed right now.

And yet here she was, swinging giant fists at some annoying jerk calling himself Hydro-Man who was pretty much turning into a puddle every time Kamala took a swing.

"Could you maybe just, I dunno, stop doing that so I can clobber you?" She interjected between swings of giant fists. "I kind of have a history test to be studying for right now, so if we could just wrap this up soon-ish, that'd be great."

[AI]

2/27/15 11:48 pm
beetlebutt: (005)
[personal profile] beetlebutt
Jaime had been passed around to quite a bit of superheroes on the team. He was one of the more powerful people that had returned from the Crisis so they were trying to get him on the fast track to being a grown up hero. When he wasn't training with the Young Allies, he was running drills with the Defenders, or being mentored by older heroes.

Tonight he was paired up with Spider-Man (one of the older heroes he enjoyed hanging out with the most), and they were staking out a warehouse that was being used for a trafficking ring of some kind, waiting for the pickup to be made.

"My mom made us peanut butter sandwiches for our stake-out," he said quietly to Spider-Man, offering him one from the bag that'd been in a hidden compartment in the backpack part of his armor. "Want one?"
howaboutnoh: (noh vs the world)
[personal profile] howaboutnoh
Noh-var hated waking up in strange locations not knowing where he was. His life had become a string of such awakenings and misery usually followed not long after. He really ought to be used to it by now.

At least they'd left him his negabands and weaponry.

They'd also left him...another person? A teenage boy?

A Skrull?

Noh-varr nudged him unceremoniously with his foot.

"You. Skrull boy. Wake up. I need to see if you're useful or not."
iamaghostfearme: (002)
[personal profile] iamaghostfearme
The call came in over the Defenders secure commline. Danny wasn't a full blown Young Ally, especially now that he'd gone off the grid with the Thunderbolts, but he still tried to help the Defenders and Young Allies where he could. All his grassroots connections were useful and not many heroes that had come back yet from the Crisis had phasing powers.

Hence them giving him the comm.

Which he was very glad he had at the moment. He'd still been recovering from another fight and the other T-bolts were off on a mission and had warned him they'd be on radio silence.

Despite his injuries, when he saw a bank getting robbed by two supervillains, he'd jumped right in. He wasn't that hurt and they were a total joke.

Only problem was the bank wasn't the real target and they hadn't been alone.

So now, after a merry chase, he was crouching hidden in a warehouse as they tried to find him, wheezing.

"This - is Hollow. Need backup," he wheezed over the comms. "Warehouse - 9th and market - in Nu Nyc. Pinned - by supervillains. Need - epipen."

My, didn't that sound serious?

"Nobody's - allowed - to laugh."

Maybe not that serious.
beetlebutt: (012)
[personal profile] beetlebutt
Jaime's family had become surprisingly okay with him having an almost-was-a-future-evil-overlord in the house, but that was probably because they had one for a son, too. That was what the scarab had been made for, after all, and they were all about giving people chances. That was why Jaime himself was about giving people chances. That was how they'd raised him, seeing the good in people.

And they believed what Jaime said, they knew people like Luthor and Osborn were snakes, the types that could fool even some of the smartest, most well-meaning people. It was better, they decided, to welcome him. Jaime cared about him and that was enough.

So the political chithcat about how Luthor was evil and Osborn was a madman was kept to a minimum when he was over and they tried to their best to be welcoming. Genuinely welcoming. Even Paco and Brenda joined in, because maybe they wouldn't have trusted him on their own, but they trusted Jaime's trust.

So Nate had become a welcome a figure in Jaime's very crowded house. It really was an arrangement borne of necessity for them to even have a friendship. It wasn't like he could hang out at Avengers Tower and it wasn't like Nate was welcome at Defenders Tower.

Towers were lame hangout places anyway, right?

(Except for Titans Tower. Titans Tower was okay, it had a really nice foosball table.)

"He's the evil twin, I'm calling it," said Paco from where he sat on the couch with Brenda.

"But which one? There are like," Jaime counted on his fingers, "three evil twins so far." The scarab chirped in his head. "Oh, good point. Evil triplets, though. It might be evil triplets."

The scarab chirped again.

"...Okay, okay, I'll give you credit. Scarab wants me to let you know that he predicted it and not me. Why do you even care? You hate this show." He shook his head. "Except Javier mentioned being a fan of the JSA growing up so what if it's two sets of triplets from A-side and one from B-side? Or, like, one set of triplets from A-side, and two twins from B-side who maybe don't have another twin. So two of the triplets are evil, but only one or two of the twins or triplets are evil from the other side."

"My brain is melting. How are your brains not melting?" asked Brenda.

Telenovelas had gotten really weird after the Cataclysm. And that was why one of Jaime's favorite things to do with Nate (and sometimes Paco and Brenda who joined in) was trying to make sense of them. And laughing at them when they inevitably didn't make any sense at all.

"Nate," Bianca called from the kitchen, "did you want to stay for dinner?"

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All Bobs Must Die: The Musebox

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