Hidden 9 yrs ago Post by Omega Man
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Omega Man Micro Machinist

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Miguel O'Hara was the hero Spiderman in the year 2099. Born from an accident at his job as a scientist at Alchemax, Miguel literally fought against his superiors for basic human freedoms and rights. Alchemax, in the year 2099, is the corporate entity that 'owns' the north eastern part of the United States. In just a few short months Alchemax decided to fight back before more heroes rose to fight the corporate power. Several superhumans were created in experiments similar to the one that gave Miguel his powers, based on superheroes and villains from the 20th and early 21st centuries. Now Spiderman is being hunted by these test tube superhumans and hasn't been seen swinging through the streets of Nueva York [NYC] for weeks. What heroes will rise and fight by his side?

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Rules:

1.) No back-to-back posting.

2.) PAY ATTENTION TO DETAIL AND SET-UPS!!

3.) Make sense. If we can't make heads or tails of your posts they're likely to get skipped over.

4.) Get permission before using another player's character in your posts if it involves changing the scene or making actions. Everybody will take beatings in this game in battle however, so don't get pissed if you get punched or blasted into a wall by the bad guys! Namely me controlling the badguys...

5.) Problems with the game or players should be sent directly to me through PM's. I don't want a bunch of bickering in the OOC.

6.) Abandoned characters will be used as NPC's or killed off within the context of the story.

7.) “I was waiting for [insert player/character] to make a move” is not an excuse to not post.

8.) There is no rule #8.

9.) My word is law.

10.) Obey the law.

11.) In the event that I'm offline for any period of time, the deputy GM (@Sep) will take control and HIS/HER word will then be law.

__________________________________________

Dane looked outside the window of his middle class apartment. With all of the taller buildings and flashy lights, nearly every inch of Nueva York resembled what was once just called Times Square. The slums however, that's where the homeless dwelled. Where they suffered. Once upon a time his sister was among them. A junkie herself on something called Rapture. The same drug Spiderman was once addicted to himself. Dane would save as many of them as he could now. It was always a bit unsettling when a Hot Stuff Transport passed overhead. Taking supplies to high priced hospitals, privatized just like the law enforcement nowadays. Dane stepped into the guest room where Spiderman still laid unconscious and in a coma. His mask was off, but his secret was safe with the 'doctor.' Closing the door after exiting the room, Dane grabbed his coat and with an odd wave of his hand his staff appeared.

"Let's go save some lives..." he mumbled to himself using the staff to slow his descent down into the slums of the city on the cold hard ground.

Most of them had no idea what he was doing. Though after he was finished they were all grateful. It didn't hurt he had a few protein bars in his coat handing out to the ones who needed to be fed more. Some of the homeless were even kids, and it hurt to see them living like this. In the colder months Dane would purchase a few dozen blankets and pass them out. Most of the homeless could find shelter, it was just surviving the elements and not starving to death that was hard. And lately, the Avengers of Alchemax were turning the slums upside down looking for Spiderman. The Thing was one such Avenger...

"HEY Magic Man! Practicing medicine in the slums without a license are we? You didn't happen to help that itsy bitsy Spiderman did ya?" the grey rock skinned behemoth asked with a yell while tossing over old beat up early 21st century cars.

"It's my job to heal the sick, like your job is to be big and stupid. How's that pay by the way?" Strange bantered now going aerial with his staff.

The man of rock growled somewhat at the hovering hero.

"Listen, I don't wanna fight you. These people are unfortunate enough to have to live down here, we don't need to go wrecking the place even worse. Bad enough you're polluting the air with your weird rock sweat. What's the matter they don't make Speedstick in your size?" the 'doc' continued to talk smack flying away from the initial battle ground, towards what was once Central Park.

It was a jungle now with exotic snakes and feral wildcats lurking around every other few trees. Most people stayed behind the fences, they'd often get lost or eaten by the wildlife if they ventured into the once beautiful park too deep.

"You think I'm scared of snakes, Strange?" the Thing questioned following the hero into the park blindly.

"I don't care what you are honestly. Once I remember the right hand movements I'm teleporting your rocky ass to the badlands. Think you can beat a Hulk? What about a dozen?" Strange bantered back now still floating and avoiding the advancing attacks on him.

~KL~
Hidden 9 yrs ago 9 yrs ago Post by Dirty Dan
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Dirty Dan boo

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"Keep the change."

A tall, broad-shouldered man with dark, dirty blonde hair, a scruffy beard, and piercing amber eyes grabbed the pack of cigs off of the counter, looking to the left, towards the broken down TV hanging in the corner, so that he could avoid the grateful look in the old store owner's eyes. Jason Cage was in New Nueva, within the dirty, grimy, and dark slums of the over-all advanced city. His travels had unwittingly brought him here, after some romps with the savage Hulks back in the Badlands, and he had decided to stop by this dirty little streetcorner store to get a pack of cigarettes before he traveled up to meet with one of his contacts. A man by the name of Matt Daniels, he had some information that he had wanted to give to Jason himself, personally, and as Jason already owed the man a favor back from his gangster days, the biker decided to answer the man's calls, anyways.

Along with this, New Nueva had the permeating scent of Sin that he could smell, even hundreds of miles away, and the spirit inside of him really wanted him to cleanse and burn a lot of these corrupted souls. With an inward snort, Jason flicked open one of the cigs, the end of it lightning instinctively. He was still in the store, and a glance over showed that the old man was already busy securing his few bucks from today - not paying much attention to Jason. Not the best type of mentality to have, but who was he to judge, honestly? Jason himself had grown up in the slums, but this man was old. The news, although with shitty connection, was playing on the ratchet TV set in the corner, and Jason continued to watch as he killed the first cig of the morning. He didn't have much of a rush to go anywhere right now-

The slam of the store's already broken door being slammed in caused the old store owner to jump and pant, holding his heart, while the smoking Jason merely released a rough grunt/sigh, inhaling some more of the nicotine smoke from his cancer stick. The man that had kicked open the door stamped in. Tall, muscular, wearing raggedy clothes, a bandana mask, and wielding a purple and green mohawk...along with a sawed-off. Looks like the first trash of the day.

"On the ground, old man. Don't fuckin' move!" Mohawk yelled, pointing the shotgun at the old man. The store owner whimpered, falling to the ground and pressing his arms above his head. Mohawk laughed an ugly, snorting laugh, before turning his head around, apparently looking for more people to threaten. As Jason, smoking and watching the TV, was the only other person inside, Mohawk narrowed his eyes and shouldered up to the biker.

"Aye! Dontcha see this boom-stick, bitch? GET THE FUCK ON- ...GACK!" Mohawk was cut off as his throat was grabbed viciously by a calloused hand. Jason slowly turned his intimidating eyes to the thug, eyes seemingly beginning to smoke as he blew a cloud of hickory-smelling smoke right into Mohawk's face. "No...You get on the floor," Mohawk's eyes began to widen, his choking increasing as an inferno of fire blasted the flesh away from Jason's body, leaving behind a tall, scary ass skeleton, it's skull emblazoned with unnatural-looking Hell-Fire, "Bitch." His voice came out as a low, deep, demonic growl, Jason's skeletal fist clenching even more, forcing the now purple-faced Mohawked to let out a choked whisper.

Old Man Store-Owner peeked from behind the desk, and could only gape in horror, fear, and confusion, as the leather-wearing skeleton slammed the Mohawk Thug face-first into the rough concrete floor, cracking the stone-like material, and splattering blood. The skeleton then grabbed the thug by his mohawk, bringing his broken and torn face up, before growling demonically and slamming the face deeper into the fragment of concrete.

_______________________________________________________

The thug had to jump-start shit, didn't he? Ghost Rider exited the cornerstore, hearing a nearby hobo scream in shock as he caught sight of the flaming, leather-wearing skeleton from Hell. The smell of brimstone was thick in the air as a revving engine got closer and closer. A deep black, wickedly demonic motorcycle, it's wheels blazing with Hell-Fire, stopped in front of Ghost Rider, whom saddled his ride and slammed his boots into the kickstand. Squaring his shoulders, the Ghost Rider brought his non-existent nose into the air.

Sin was as thick as the smell of despair.

Sharply bringing his head down, the Ghost Rider revved his engine, the broken road underneath his wheels and boots melting from the pure heat radiating from him and his motorcycle. With another roar of the engine, the Ghost Rider blasted the gas, blurring down the street at a speed no other modern vehicle could challenge. Behind him, he left a blazing trail of Hell-Fire. He was honing in on the sin, and the screams of fear and shock from the slum humans did nothing to stop him. Everything around him was a blur, 'cause when he was riding, he was focused on one thing.

He recognized the back trail he had taken...he was going towards the former Central Park, now a forest death-trap. The sinful was there.

The Ghost Rider let out an inhumanly deep, warped wail to intimidate/demoralize the target, heavy rock music blasting through his skull - a sort of coping measure to deal with the constant lust for death the original spirit had left behind. Whomever sinful that was at his destination...they were gonna feel the true meaning of Hell.
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Hidden 9 yrs ago Post by Forsythe
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Forsythe Graf von Kaffeetrinken

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Ultron-99 & Ant-Man


Startup procedure initiated.
self->diagnostics(‘startup’);
Unit info:
  • Chipset: HP-99-A
  • Platform: U-99 Prototype
  • Operating system: Ultron 99.0.1

Performing chipset check:
  • Quantum CPU: 100%
  • Holographic memory: 100%
  • Platform interfaces: 100%
  • External interfaces: Disabled

Performing platform function check:
  • Powerplant integrity: 100%
  • Powerplant charge: 10%
  • Chassis integrity: 100%
  • Chassis mobility: 100%
  • Sensors: Restricted
  • Transmitters: Disabled

self.personality->initiate();
Error: No data found.
Booting up in safe mode.
self.user->register(‘Henry Pym’,’Administrator Override’);
User logged.
self.shape->randomize();
Done.

The silver, featureless body on the table beeped and whirred as its basic system tested its capabilities. Finally done, the skin covering the frame morphed into the shape of a brunette woman not older than 20 in appearance. It didn’t look entirely human - its body was as if clad in a dark grey catsuit lined with what looked like printed circuit board, and where eyes would usually be was a visor.

The body slowly sat up, two blue orbs flashing to existence on te visor and moving around, checking the surrounding area. Aside from an empty room, it only registered one life sign. “Scanning.” the robot said in flat voice.

“Identification: Human, Registered user, Administrator, Pym, Henry. User recognized.”
“Status: Unit active and operational.”
“Warning: Powerplant charge below 10%, recommending immediate recharge.”
“Warning: Operating at barebones configuration. Addition of language and data libraries recommended.”
“Warning: Access to some functions restricted. Administrator permission necessary for access.”.
“Requesting data input: self.designation, self.goals.”

The machine stopped, its artificial ‘eyes’ set onto Henry’s, almost pleading for information.

Henry watched as the model came online, looking at him speaking in a robotic and flat voice. He almost winced, that would need to change before he could put her out. Would draw too much attention to her. The rest could be covered up easily and that many people used a variety of eye gear nowadays that she could get away with that. She needed the whole unit instead of eyes anyway for the wide array of frequencies she could see, far more than an average human and not to mention other scanner units.

Everything seemed to be normal, power was fine the way it was the now. “Unit Designation, Ultron-99 known to all except this user as Janet Pym. Goals, protection of sentient species. Force can only be used when someone is causing harm with malicious intent, if accidental pacify only. Priority targets, metahumans, mutants and aliens. Unless orders are overridden by this user, protection routines should currently be offline. Activating language centre.” He hit several keys on a nearby tablet, that would allow her to access more complex language data. “Activating advanced motor control-” Same gain, this time to allow her free movement. “Please stand up now Janet, and take a walk around the room.”

$_JANET_PYM = new self();
User command accepted, freeing functions.

As Janet slowly started waking up, she processed the information, data and commands given to her. “Janet. Possible source: Janet van Dyne, original Wasp. Companion to original Ant-Man. Acceptable. Also… motivating.” It was obvious the language library was not corrupted, but the personality matrix would still require practice to develop the ability to speak like a living being would, instead of a machine.

Looking around the room, Janet jumped down from the table and took a few steps, then flailed arms and tried picking up some items that didn’t look too fragile to test her precise motorics. “Motion functions are intact.” she said as she continued looking around the room, “I have located an exit.”

“Very good Janet, yes that is an exit. However for now we shall remain in this room.”

“Why?”

He looked up from his tablet, “We’re not quite finished here. I have some more functions to run through. Once we’re done you can move freely throughout the house. Hopefully soon you’ll be ready to go outside however for now-” He looked back down at his tablet and hit a series of buttons. “Transmitting education for years one to seven now including Maths, English, History, Science, Geography.”

He hit another button and then handed her a separate tablet, that wasn’t networked. “Once you’ve downloaded please interface with this device and complete the test given to you.”

Janet’s visor flickered and displayed a progress bar on the outside as the download was initiated. In the meantime, she continued to observe. The situation confused her, and her mind raced to find order in it. “Risk of unit non-functionality without testing is high.”

History library downloaded.
load(“history.lib”);

”Also possible repercussions from parties unsympathetic to the unit’s… to my nature. I understand now.” Janet said, her tone mildly fluctuating from curiosity to understanding.

“Download complete. Loading libraries. Commencing testing.” she said maybe a bit too fast as she reached up with her arm and her fingertips seemingly sunk into the device. It flashed through all of the questions far too quick for Henry to see before displaying a perfect score. “Download and integration successful. Also, I have found an easy way to hack the result.” the screen blinked again, and displayed a score of 110%. “I deem this method of testing too basic and flawed. May I suggest using an advanced program or a previous unit for comparative testing?”

“I’m just getting you into the swing of things Janet. Don’t get too carried away.” He swiped away a couple of options as he activated his own neutral link and concentrated on something else for a second, tuning it to a different frequency than the one that could interact with Janet directly. “There’ll be harder tests to come, don’t worry. Though there are no previous units, at least any functional ones. Though you’ll learn why later.”

He ran over a series of commands. “I’m currently setting up a timed data dump, that will periodically add more information to your library. However I’m afraid for human interaction there’s no substitute for good old fashioned practice, and watching it in action. Though don’t worry about that for now, right now can you tell me how you feel?”

Didn’t she just gave him a diagnostic report? It took a fraction of a second for Janet to figure out what Henry was asking. “Disoriented. Lacking context.” she summed up what immediately came to her mind before having to think a bit deeper into it. To her dismay, the organic thoughts were a lot slower than simply recalling data or processing the beautiful logic of a code. “Alien. I acquired language data, but lack reference. When compared, the ways you and I speak vary.” Janet sat back down on the table as she thought for a while longer. “Alone.”

Henry looked up and gave her a smile. “You’re not alone, you have me. Hopefully one day, you will have sisters and brothers too. The reason we speak differently, you are young and have all this knowledge but you haven’t got a personality yet. That’s what makes everyone unique, it’s what makes us all special. Previous Ultron attempts have failed, because the unit has tried to grow up too fast and has become corrupt. However you are based on Ultron-15. Uploading data now-” He swiped his tablet uploading data on the 15th Ultron Variation.

“-You are meant to be unique and special, and brilliant. We just need to show the world that and then you won’t be the only one you will be many and help keep this world safe. How does this make you feel?”

Reviewing the data on the previous Ultrons, Janet understood. “...Under pressure.” she replied to having this much to do. “No matter our intentions or the proof of our function, people may still fear us. Neither the previous Ultron units nor the Sentinels functioned to their design specifications. Neither of them were at fault, erroneous were the bounds of their programming, a mistake of their creators. And yet, both are at least in part blamed for what happened.” she said, her sight pointed to the ground: “I’m… worried.”

“That’s good Janet. That will keep you right, this is why we’re taking… baby steps to take it simply. Also that is why, for now. We’ll keep what you are a secret.” He pointed to himself. “Like me, what I can do and what I know. I do it too help people but they can’t know that I do it, or who I am or how I do it. We keep secrets to protect people.” He sighed, as he checked the time. “I need to go to work, do you want to remain online and go through what you’ve learned? Maybe watch some movies or something to try and learn more about human interaction or would you rather go offline while I am away?”

It… wasn’t great, if she was to be honest. She understood it was necessary, but it did little to please her. “Warning: Infiltration capabilities limited at the moment. I require samples to go from. Movies. Literature. Music. Preferably the first: Bonus addition of studying body language.” she suggested, her nano skin shifting as the visor on her face disappeared, replaced by a set of emerald eyes. “I wish to stay active, but recharge is necessary. Power plant at 5% capacity. Accessing and processing data is power efficient on my holographic memory; Writing in it is not.”

And then her cyber-warfare suite ran across something. “Alert! Detecting dormant alien code in my runtime, listed as SAM_CARTER. Performing pre-emptive measures.” she said as she prepared to isolate the unknown program.

“We’ll charge you up, and there’ll be plenty for you to watch and study as I’m away.” The door opened as a group of ants came in carrying his suit and helmet. He was trying to keep his presence in this particular warehouse a secret after all, he turned at the mention of SAM. “Oh no, stand down. She’s a program I’ve borrowed from Alchemex and tweaked slightly. She’s meant to help you, there’s a small projector in your hand that she can appear out of. She also runs off an independent power supply, battery and has her own network connection. Completely independent.”

He shrugged. “She’ll be your friend, and help you learn. That’s what she’s there for. She’s probably just been activated by my mentioning of leaving.” He flicked several buttons on his tablet. “There, you should be able to hear her now and she’ll be able to project.” He moved over to the table, which was a simple recharge table. He had been sure not to build Janet here just incase her programming went rogue she wouldn’t be able to make any more copies from this facility. “Say hello Sam.”

The program came online and made its introduction. Its avatar was a woman with short blond hair. Nodding, Janet reluctantly recalled the purge command. Walking over, Janet waited to be hooked up into recharge silently. Her visor shifted back into place, displaying ten movies at the same time playing at 5x speed. Seeing Henry preparing to leave, she felt something that was really unpleasant, but she failed to name the sensation as of yet. “When will you be back?”

The suit came on easily, he only imagined how hard it had been for his predecessors having to strip down some of their clothes and then put it on. The advanced fibre clung to him easily without him having to force it over his clothes. “I’m not entirely sure. I’ve got a day full of paperwork to do, and I can’t be back at lunch as I need to find a way to enter Janet Pym into the cities consensus so that the private eye don’t take too much of an interest in you. Though you can contact me through SAM until I get your communication suite fully operational, and she’ll keep you company too. Not to mention you get to have fun watching movies all day, I’m pretty jealous.”

He pulled his helmet over his head, there was a hiss as it pressurized only for him to open the front panel again. He smiled to himself slightly, the helmet somewhat reminiscent of the old Iron Man from the Heroic Age. “I mean you’ve got plenty to do, and a friend to do it with. Plug yourself in, relax. Learn. Tell you what, if I come back and you’re settled we’ll go out for a walk and you can meet some new people. How does that sound?”

“Like you need a secretary. Maybe if you had a spare supercomuter sitting in your basement you could delegate quantities of less important work to it.” She noted. She wasn’t overjoyed, but quick check on the size of her cultural database told her she probably wouldn’t need to distract herself with anything else before Henry returned. “I will be all right.” she said, and waved her hand - something she just saw in one of the movies a few ticks ago.

“Well, you’re not actually in my basement. You’re in a small warehouse that’s under an old friend of my grandfathers name. Scott Lang.” He shrugged. “Sadly as well all the paperwork is sensitive so I can’t send it out of the building and it all needs filed by me or my supervisor will have my head.” He plugged the socket into the back of Janet’s neck, easily accessible so that she could connect or disconnect herself at will.

“Also sure you’ll be alright, you have SAM to keep you company. You can sit and chat away to your heart's content. To that point I recommend you speak to her orally and at the usual speed for a human just so you get used to it.” His mask slammed shut, he hit a button on his right hand and shrunk down to the smallest size he’d willingly go. Waving up to her as he got aboard an ant that had a saddle. Patching through to her comm unit. “Try to stay out of trouble.” With that he turned his back, and left.

“Wouldn’t you be faster if you carried the ant?” Janet called back, not bothering to zoom in to maintain contact, but instead giving a newly acquired eyeroll. And then, she was alone.
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Hidden 9 yrs ago Post by Sep
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Sep Lord of All Creation

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Ant-Man, Janet, Ghost




When Henry got back, the place was a warzone. What electronics were there when Henry left lied mostly disassembled, and a strange contraption made out of various parts was in the middle of the room, with the testing tablet in the middle. And worst of all, there was no sign of Janet. That was, until her voice boomed to life behind him: “Boo!”

Henry grew to his regular size before Janet tried to spook him, though he had already been tracking her so without a seconds hesitation he turned round, helmet opening and smiled.

“I noticed how in this genre called science fiction they have a concept of a cloak, so I thought about how my skin can change its color, and I modified the routine to make me invisible to a selected target, in this case you. It wouldn’t work on anyone viewing from a different angle as I simply take what you would see and paint it on my skin, but it may be useful somewhere down the line though.”

“It will look a bit suspicious from other angles though, especially with multiple people in the area. When I said blend in I didn’t mean to the background Janet.” He looked around the room, at what had been his little workshop/testing station. Though he had taken out all the equipment necessary to make a copy of Janet there had still been a lot of… expensive equipment in the room. Which she had then disassembled into something else.

“So uh, did a little redecorating did we? You could have asked for paint. Or if you really wanted to build I do have lego you know, though on that note. What did you build?”

“A new home for this… this……” Janet said, her voice hissing and arms making frustrated gestures around her head, ”The Shockingly Annoying Minion - Cruel AI Robot Terminating Executioner Rustbucket. Ugh!” Janet growled, “The nerve of the thing! It couldn’t understand the mathematical procedures I developed to solve the problems it gave me more efficiently and kept trying to correct me to do it the old, slow way! Once I realized that external hardware and code like it was exempt from my self-modification bounds, I have shut down its voice and projector. I was just about to try and transfer it in there so I could take over its hardware. Can you please remove this condescending bi-” one of her hands flown up and slapped itself over her mouth. “Yeah, or I swear I will stuck a hand through my skin and rip it out.”

Henry just sighed. “Teachers are like that. Forget about the Math she’s meant to help teach you about interaction. That’s the primary purpose off her however go ahead and transfer her out. I don’t really want you to go through any discomfort, though I am kind of glad that you’re showing emotion.”

As she moved away to begin the transfer he took out a card. “You, Janet Pym are also now a fully legal living citizen of Neuva York. Congratulations. I used your standard appearance as that on your ID card, so if you’re ever going around as Janet Pym you should use the appearance you’re using right now. I haven’t forged a Birth Certificate for you yet I need to speak to my folks first and find a way to get them to agree to you being their daughter…. Anyway this means that once you’re done here we can go for a walk outside and not worry about the private eye busting us and then causing all kinds of trouble.”

He waited until she was finished and handed her the card with all her information recorded on it, except for Birth Parents and immediate family.

Relieved when her communication suites were enabled, Janet sent the teaching program away. It didn’t last too long though. “Wh-what?” she asked in panic. “But… I don’t want to live with some strangers that can not even know what I really am!” She said. Her instructions were clear on that - nobody but the people in this room was to know. “And… And by all but biological definitions YOU are my father!” she pointed a finger at Henry.

“Well technically.. In a way, yeah alright. I guess I am, I just didn’t expect that-” He smirked to himself as he said what would probably be her choice in words. “-Variable.” He smirked some more. “It will also take time to get used to you as a daughter. However anyway you wouldn’t be sent off to live with strangers anyway. I wouldn’t do that to you, also hopefully one day people will get to know what kind of amazing machine you are. What you’re capable off and how you’ll help the world, our world.”

He smiled some more as he leaned against one of the few remaining tables that hadn’t been disassembled. “We’ll start simple anyway. I was thinking if we sit and have a chat over some food I’ll be able to determine if you’re ready to head outside. If so we can take a walk down to the- in fact no. If you’re ready to go outside what would you want to do Janet?”

Sparing a little smile at being accepted, Janet thought about the question. “We really should have a solid story to go with. Neighbors might wonder how come you suddenly have an adult daughter. I am… reasonably confident with my speech patterns now to blend in, but that’s only part of it.” she said as she was in thought, “So perhaps go to where I’ll be staying next? This room is becoming boring rather rapidly.” she suggested. “Also, it’s not healthy for your wallet to charge me from a socket. Sunlight would do your finances well.” Janet noted with an innocent face. In applying the downloaded libraries, she managed to go through her powerplant’s capacity twice over.

Ghost looked down at the ground, hovering above it all clad only in white. He could feel the wind flow through him like phantom haunting the city. As he gazed down below towards just another characterless warehouse littering Nueva York, a flying car zoomed through his etheric form without anyone the wiser. Today he would enter that warehouse, licensed and owned by a "Scott Lang" and find something a great importance to his cause.

An "omega-class access key" his more than shady informant had alluded to. A rare tool used by security installers that would allow Ghost unbelieveable entry into any database or server colony he could get his fingers on. With the intel he could steal, he could practically rule over Nueva York if he wanted to. But he didn't...

What he wanted was to crush every corporate bastard he could find under his heel and break the hold Alchemax and other privatized bullshiters had on this city. On these people. After taking a deep silent breath, Ghost deactivated his suit's anti-grav components and dropped to the earth below. Still cloaked to the city and Private Eye most likely searching for him, Ghost dropped just outside the warehouse hovering over the pavement below as he approached to the front door.

He was completely invisible to the naked eye, and maybe even to some less advanced optic systems. Slowly, Ghost fazed through the front door and took hold of his Infiltration Rifle. He left no trace of his entrance or his existence, hanging over the ground like a dead man's spirit. This was the warehouse of a security expert, after all. If there were guards waiting around for their shifts to end, Ghost would dispatch them quickly and no one would know what happened.

Before Henry could answer, Janet’s sensors put up red flags. “Dad, … shrink.” she said after a second of trying to find the right word, “EM signature outside of the warehouse, bright as a Christmas tree.” she elaborated. Goodness! Did somebody already find out about her? That would be very, very bad. Worst thing, she couldn’t do anything about it yet. “It’s heading this way, feel free to unlock my combat routines any time!” she whispered and backed away.

She wasn’t ready! What if they shut her down? She didn’t want to, other forms of AI might be used to that but for her it was unacceptable to ever go offline again. Worse, what if they took her away? And did god knows what with her? she had the historical data on what Governments were like, and she could extrapolate what a loosely controlled corporation might do! It made the same emotion surface again just as when Dad was about to leave her alone for the first time, only much stronger. And now, she had a name for it.

Of all things Ultron could be, she was scared.

Henry was about to respond when Janet’s demeanour changed, she had been learning. She seemed genuinely scared, his helmet slammed shut and he could pick up the EM but nothing more than faint readings. Something was there, he just couldn’t tell what or where exactly. He lowered his hand to his right hip, a disk popped out and he threw it at Janet. When it made contact she shrunk down, he then hit the button on his right hand shrinking him down to the same size.

He activated his radio channel to Janet. “Activate long range communications suite.-” The plan was to give it more time before he let her access it but needs must. When his hud lit up that the channel was two way he spoke again. “Get yourself under cover, and stay clear. I’ll activate your combat protocols if I need to but I’d rather handle this and keep you in reserve. Stay quiet now.” He cut the channel and stood ready, scanning the room. Nearby ants from an ant farm in a nearby room were already alert, moving into the room and spreading out. Sooner or later one of them would see the target and when that happened he’d have the element of surprise.

Ghost swore he heard popping sounds as he entered the warehouse, still unseen as he searched around. He was at the ready, noting that the place looked lived in. Mechanical pieces layer everywhere, a mess leading to a large centralized mass. Ghost could barely tell what it was, a construct of shame or fury. Some kind of hand-made program core or container. He drifted up to it, deactivating his cloak and landing solidly on his feet. To keep his systems online and hacking into this thing would drain him of power too quickly.

Ghost patted the machine down, locating an access port near the bottom and took out a small cylinder device. After plugging it in, Ghost receive a visual HUD on his visitor and found to his surprise a muted program. It was advanced...corporate level advanced. Designated "Sam Carter". He didn't care, but it seemed like what he was looking for.

"Hello little one," Ghost muttered in a voice so dead and cold it made one's skin crawl, "let Creepy Uncle Ghost have some of your data keys. I promise it won't hurt."

He was lying of course. Full data extraction from highly advanced programs usually lead to several corruption and deletion. It was a corporate puppet, so he didn't really mind. Data began to flow onto his personal server, nothing of real interest until several Alchemax data keys showed themselves. This was a gold mine.

Janet’s jaw dropped as she suddenly started up to Henry who was now as tall as a skyscraper. Or rather, after looking around, she was just damn tiny. How did he do that? And better question, why didn’t he build that ability into her?

Her musings didn’t change the fact that she intended for him only to shrink - both her programming and her instinct told her to protect him from this strange intruder. A job that appeared to be getting easier now that the stranger made himself visible.

Janet frowned. He appeared to be going after her little contraption. Sure, she didn’t mind if SAM was damaged - provided that was her doing, which was extremely satisfying in a twisted sense. Fortunately her programming constrains said nothing about assaulting uncomfortable data. This however was a plain robbery.

She was at loss on how to react for a moment, long enough for the thief to plug something into the machine. In that time, Janet used her newly acquired connection to the internet to browse the local law book, or what passed for it. After a few ticks of consideration, she had an answer.

Her primary directive was to protect lives. However, that didn’t ban her from enforcing other laws. “All right, you think stealing from us can go unpunished? We’ll just have to see about that. Show me your secrets, mister.” she whispered for herself, keeping the comm channel to Henry open so he would hear.

Linking her communications system into SAM’s prison machine, her mind forced her way into the intruder’s transmission. She wasn’t trying to protect the teacher program - she couldn’t care less what happened to it. Instead, she started quickly tearing down whatever firewalls the thief had up, and crushing her way into the destination of the data transfer.

Despite the massive win of holding the literal keys to Alchemax's castle in his hands, Ghost knew something was off as soon as a window popped up in the very corner of his heads up display showing his each of his firewalls dropping like an assault from fifty Hulks. As soon as the keys were locked away safely on his database, Ghost ripped his hacking device out of the container breaking the counter hack immediately.

He looked around, grabbing his rifle and again fading into invisibility. He knew that they knew now. A counter hack that powerful must of come with silent alarms or some kind of response. It only took milliseconds to crush twenty out of the thousands of firewalls he had set up. The idea of hanging around and beating whoever came, be it Lang personally or The Private Eye, sounded quite tempting. Maybe he could interrogate some information out of them, like why they were keeping an omega-level program locked up and muted in a shitty do-it-yourself crap pile.

The abrupt end to her efforts was met with a frown on Janet’s face. She didn’t get even 10% into the server before the stranger terminated the connection. She didn’t go away empty handed though - even though she didn’t have time to mine any data, she could trace the geographic location of the server later. A little angry at her foiled attempt, she fought along the only vector left to her. A few commands later, the power source of the contraption went into overdrive, sending an electric discharge into it’s immediate area. Not that it would do any permanent harm, but enough to make the guy’s limbs twitch for a short while.

Ghost wasn’t prepared for the electronic pulse that rampaged from the container throughout the entire warehouse. All of his tech died as soon as he was hit, revealing him meters away from the machine twitching in pain. It felt like being hit by a lightning bolt, rattling his teeth silently. He couldn’t move for what felt like an eternity, and as soon as he could control himself he was up swayed his rifle around, paranoid beyond usual. A trick like this was never automated, for the pulse activated as soon as he tried cloaking.

Someone had to be in the room with him. The reaction time was too fast for someone off-site to activate both the counter hack and the pulse. Slowly, a progress bar appeared in the corner of his eye. In nearly thirty-second, his suit would restabilize and he could faze out of there.

“That hurt more then it probably should of,” Ghost growled with his teeth still chattering after the shock. “Usually I’m the one who uses dirty tricks to get what he wants. Kinda odd to be on the other side of that coin. So why don’t you come on out and explain your Alchemax bitch in the rust heap in the middle of the room.”

Well, at least Janet was taking the initiative. There was something to be said for that at least. He couldn’t really dispute what she had done she hadn’t went against her programming after all. He sat back and watched her work, he was a little bit disappointed when the guy pulled his device free of the terminal and then went invisible again - Neat trick.

What was even neater however was when Janet blew his electronics, the guy twitching slightly as he became visible again, thankfully he had been out of the blast radius. Taking a sprint in the guys direction, with the bonus of having his usual speed despite his size making him the equivalent of a bullet he was in position in seconds. Left thumb, he grew again. Tapping the intruder on the shoulder, following through with a punch directly at the head. “You know, it’s rude not to knock.”
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Hidden 9 yrs ago Post by SuperTacticalDerp
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SuperTacticalDerp The New Monarch

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Ghost, Ultron-99, and Ant-Man.
Ghost was also not prepared for the sudden blow to the back of his head from an arrogant sounding individual. Ghost rolled into his fall, tumbling back onto his feet to meet his assailant mask-to-mask. His get up was...different, though he didn't have the right to judge fashion. Red and black microfibers and what he could only guess was maybe leather formed to a dark matte helmet that made him think of an insect. He definitely wasn't Private Eye at least. Ghost wasn't sure if this made things better or worse.

"I didn't know Scott Lang left insect gimps lying around to guard his horribly built tech," Ghost insulted back. "Let me do my work friend. Whatever he's paying you, it's not worth what I can use from this program. I mean, I pretty much have everything I need actually. All of this is really just, antiquated."

With that, Ghost leveled his rifle and fired off a round, aiming center mass. The rifle was almost completely silent, equivalent to the sound of someone shifting around as they sat. The round sparked in the air as it traveled, a rather new age piece of tech Ghost was proud to boast about. The round fazed just like his suit when fired, only reforming when in approximate contact with organic compounds so that it could unleash a vicious shock to knock his opponents unconscious for a short time.

Henry just shrugged. “We recently redecorated.” As the gun was pointed at him he flicked his thumb down on his right hand shrinking down, pushing himself straight off the ground as the… shot. Though he couldn’t see it, the trigger was pulled wasn’t it? He pushed himself up on the ground, hitting his left thumb button and growing to his regular size his fist aiming for his opponent's face.

“Sorry, but I can’t let you leave with what you have. Secret identity and all.” By this time an alarm was flashing on his hud, the small dosage of Pym particles he had used upon Janet would be wearing off and she would be growing to her regular size. Which would hopefully prove a suitable enough distraction. If not, then he guess he’d need to see how good she’d be in a real fight without any testing.

Janet had several new facts to work with. One, the guy, or rather his suit, didn’t really like electricity. Two, her scanners were detecting a growing lack of whatever it was that made her shrink, and estimated she only had few seconds to react before returning to her usual size. And three, the change in size did little to her actual abilities, which was rather strange. She would have to inquire Henry and persuade him to let her have a peek at his research.

Positioning herself behind the armored man, she watched the brawl with worry. Her processor skipped a tick when the intruder fired his rifle, but fortunately Henry was able to evade it.

Then the shrinkage ran it’s course, and Janet prepared to act, raising her arms. Without her combat protocols she would have to improvise, and those weren’t odds she liked. So instead once she grown back to full size, she went to grab Ghost’s head, her telepathic interface spooled up and ready to trap his mind in an illusion - in which he would have overpowered Henry, escaped and hopefully led them straight to his lair, or at least give them some idea of where to look if they failed to stop him here.

Ghost wasn't sure why he was being constantly thrown off his game today, but when his attacker shrunk and reappeared just before punching him again, he knew that this wasn't some half-assed idiot in a dumb costume. As Ghost took the hit and back on his ass again, some old information decide to emerge from the cobwebs of his mind. Pym Particles

Before he could get up and possibly stop the guy to ask how he's gotten his grubby hands on Pym Particles, a pair of feminine hands grabbed his head. Without any working, he was in the thralls of a mental attack, something he's again never expected to go down in a simple heist like this. As he slipped into whatever dream world the woman was trying to put him into, he fought back. There was too much at stake, too many people who needed someone like this and letting himself go down this easily was not an option. Nueva York need Ghost. The people deserved a hero, goddamnit!

In what seconds of conscious though he had left, Ghost heard the godsend ring of his suit restoring functionality. With a single thought, Ghost was intangible again and immediately fell from the woman's hands and through the floor.

“Janet-” Henry shouted before he could stop himself as Janet reappeared right behind the figure and put her hands to his temple. There was a couple of seconds before he went intangible and fell through the floor. “You know, that’s a neat trick. Keep a look out he could be back.” He focused on the neural link with the ants in the room, some of them moved outside waiting to see if he re-appeared there. Others crawled around his and Janets feet, trying to pick up any kind of a trail.

“I want you to access the net Janet and pick up any details you can about a guy that can walk through walls and go invisible and looks creepy as anything.” He tapped his helmet, trying to perform his own scans. The problem was his scanners were as good as Janet’s but he couldn’t process the information the same way. “Also while you’re at it check SAM is okay, yes she may annoy you but she holds a lot of important information, see what this guy managed to take.”

Janet growled in frustration as the intruder slipped away into nothingness again. She could only detect his EM signature getting away, without gathering any more information. She was happy to be praised, but she wasn’t as good as she wanted to be. Still, it has been her first time around in a fight, and she wasn’t even ready or fully activated and equipped for that matter.

Nodding at the instructions, she went on to search. A few queries on Alchemex later, she had an answer. “I suspect the man might have been the most recent iteration of Ghost. The abilities fit. I am unsure about his motives though. The first ghost was often branded as a terrorist. this one...” she thought for a while and checked on the acquired data, “I’m not certain. The hack was brutal and raw. SAM is missing pieces of code, more are corrupted and some bits were copied. Notably those containing access codes and information on Alchemax. You may wish to notify your employer to change them immediately - My own hack was interrupted and his servers are still operational.” she delivered the report.

“It would seem none of our data was stolen past what he observed here. I do not believe he got a glimpse of me. What I do know is the geographic location of his server farm. I believe if we were to set fire to it, we would draw him out?” she suggested with an innocent looking face, but did the knuckle popping motion.

Sighing, she unplugged the drive containing SAM’s remains from the contraption and morphed into an easily blending shape, with actual clothes on instead of connections for the thus far non existent armor. Shoving the drive into her pocket, she looked Henry in the eyes: “Well, that was a memorable first day of life. Can we go home now?”

Just below them, Ghost was still there. Waiting and listening. The woman's name was Janet. That meant something, but he couldn't piece it together. Lang Securities warehouse, insectoid man with Pym Particles, a woman named Janet. Janet van Dyne? Were these people related to Hank Pym? Ghost shook off whatever thoughts raged through his mind and shot back up, returning to tangibility just underneath the first stranger and sucker punched him with an uppercut.

After finally getting in a successful punch, Ghost floated up above the two and looked around. Ants were crawling around everywhere, most likely from the ant-farm sitting on the other side of the warehouse. Yep, that mostly confirmed his suspicions.

"I finally get it now," Ghost muttered in his usual chilling tone, "you two are either part of the Pym Family or have a weird fascination with them."

Ghost turned to the woman behind him, Janet, and could tell immediately that something was off. Her body language was stiff, maybe a little too much. She seemed normal enough, but Ghost knew a machine when he saw one. Nothing this advanced or this close to being human, but with just enough signs to point towards robotics. Ghost kept it to himself of course.

"So what are a pair of Pyms doing in Nueva York with a highly advanced programmed intelligence?," he asked as he floated just above the reach of the ants. "I'd rather not have an army of Ultrons messing up this town worse than it already is."

Henry was a little bent over from the punch, however stood up straight again as the fine gentleman hovered a bit lower, piecing it all together apparently. He hit the button on the side of his helmet, lifting the faceplate. “Well she’s just sightseeing right now, I’m working. Making a living, making sure nobody screws around with Pym particles and all that.”

He smirked at the family or weird fascination. Both of those were true in a way, less so for Janet but she had only been alive for a day. Through the neural link he told the ants to move away, though still had them looking for something useful. If they could track this guy that would work better than knowing where some of his information occasionally went through.

“The real question, is what is a former terrorist long dead doing in Nueva York with new tech and with a changed perspective on life? I mean we’re not causing any harm… Well she won’t and none of mine has hit the news so lets just ask that question. After all, you have me at a disadvantage Mr….?”

Ghost didn't reply, floating past Janet to drop right next to the program container. "I was here for this," he told them as he lightly knocked on the machines housing. "What I took were some omega-level access keys to some of Alchemax's biggest server farms."

He turned to them, looking at them dead in the eyes as he spoke. "Banking information, prototype schematics, private business dealings and audio recordings. Names. Numbers. The literal keys to this cities salvation. With what I have here, I can have every executive in Nueva York's head on a pike." He floated up to Pym, never breaking eye contact.

"And if you dare to try and stop me, I'll put you and the girl both in the ground," he threatened. "This is bigger than all of us. This is the revolution this country needs."

Henry just clapped. “Inspiration speech. Truly, it was. Though did you not think I thought off that?” He paced around Ghost. “I’m a smart guy-” He pointed to Janet as if using her as an example. “-I’ve got a cover inside Alchemex, I have my little spies here-” He indicated to the ants “-I can also go small enough to sneak around as I wish, go where I wish and all that fun stuff.”

He laid back against one of the few tables left standing in the room. “It’s not as simple as exposing all this information, what are you going to do? Just go and literally take them all out? That won’t solve squat. They’ll bring in new guys and it will be just the same, and you’ll be a wanted criminal. That won’t help anyone. Janet, how many assassination attempts have there been against the executives of Alchemex? Include both failed and successful attempts.”

Janet giggled at the mention of putting her in the ground. The man was certainly welcome to try, bu given the fact that all she needed to do to render him inert was to charge her skin with some voltage, she was reasonably confident a battle of minds would have been a better field even for him. That of course required him to try and hack her system which he had negative chance to accomplish, or for him to hold still while she had him in a hold, at which point she could simply restrain him.

“Too many, not enough.” Janet summed up the inquiry about the assassinations. “Furthermore, I have no interest in overthrowing the corporation. I wish to protect people, nothing more, nothing less.” she summed up her programming into organic terms and accessed ehr historical database again. “Furthermore, not many revolutionaries succeeded in bringing the utopia they presented, whether willingly or not. Take the Soviet Union, Al-Quaeda or the countless revolution movements in Africa. The only result of those is a shift in the distribution of wealth, but in any given system, there were rulers and masses.”

She extended her palm, activating the projector built originally for SAM. “Observe, the average standard of life in year 2000 on the world.” she explained the graphic she was projecting, a globe with rainbow colored continents. Problematic regions like Africa displayed in the red, large agglomerations in green. “and now the average standard of the corporate owned cities on the northern american continent now.” she said and displayed a chart, with the percentages being more or less the same. “Your intent may be noble Mr. Ghost, but all you will change is that the people will move around. It is the iron law of oligarchy: those with money control the rest, whether they earned it with their own company or through governmental means.” Janet ended her lesson.

Ghost chuckled to himself. It's like they weren't even listening. "These keys are the answer to that age old constant then," he replied as he floated over to the woman. Her emerald eyes threw him off for some reason, and her brown hair looked almost too real as he grew closer. "With the data-keys, I'll rip Alchemax of their almighty dollars and burn it in their faces. This will be an extinction-level event for the corporate world Miss Pym."

Ghost turned to leave, tired of being lectured by what he knew was a machine in human form. He stopped for a moment, thinking. Without even turning to speak Ghost quickly muttered, "01010000 01101111 01101111." This statement is a lie. Something dumb one of his only friends told him to try if he ever had the chance. Ghost made his way towards the exit, saying nothing else.

“Try a 2 Mr. Ghost. They work great.” Janet snickered, but in her system filed Ghost on her watch list. He knew something about her - how much she couldn’t say, not without hacking into his database without being detected - something to do with a free evening perhaps. It shouldn’t take longer.

Henry just sighed. “I am listening, what makes you think the people who take over for Alchemex or even replace them will be any better? You can’t just rip down the old without the foundation for something new. Doing something like that would just cause more problems than it’s worth.” He sighed. “I want to see Alchemex gone as much as you do, replaced by something better with an actual democratic process rather than extreme capitalism.”

He paused for a second as if in deep thought. “If we could find a way, to replace the existing structure-” He paced moving his finger back and forth as he spoke. “-If we could replace the existing structure with those who aren’t going to abuse the power, and people in the government with enough spine to handle themselves we may be in with a chance of breaking the hold the rich haver over the city.”

He looked from Janet, to Ghost. “This is probably the best course of action there is too take, and it’s the one I’m going to take.” He sighed, couldn’t believe he was saying this. “Why don’t you work with us, you know what they say after all. Three genius’ and it’s a party.”

Ghost groaned in though, stopping in mid-flight as he listened. Working with others wasn't his usual preference, but maybe having others to rip him out of his comfort zone would be an interesting test. He'd probably keep his home-base separate from these dealings, but maybe he could work this out.

"Ok Pym, you have my interest," Ghost replied as he turned back to the two. "Maybe it's time for me to put away the solo act for now for the betterment of Nueva York. I'll let you in on my tech if you can let me observe and study some Pym Particles."

The deal seemed fair to Ghost. Much of his tech was top of the line and practically irreplaceable unless Ghost made it himself. Letting him test and play with some of the Pym Family secrets wouldn't hurt…

Henry just laughed to himself, pointing at Ghost as he looked at Janet. “This guy has balls, I’ll give him that.” He turned his attention back to Ghost. “I’m all for the teaming up, though I’m afraid the chance to study Pym Particles isn’t on the table. They’ve gotten out of my families hands at least once and when that happened so did bad stuff. How about, we do secrets on a case by case basis. I mean you’ve still got me at a disadvantage knowing my surname when I don’t know yours. Won’t be that hard to find me in any census in the city or my daughter.”

He had to get that out sooner or later, someone with a relationship in tech and the statement earlier had him a bit concerned about how much Ghost actually knew or at minimum guessed. “Besides, you’ve got that whole invisible, walk through walls thing going on. It’s probably better if we stick to what we’re both good at, I mean you didn’t see Iron Man using Pym Particles back in the Heroic ages.”

"Stark was a fool," Ghost replied coolly. "But no matter, I'll find out at some point. I have no interest in shrinking myself, honestly. It's what I want or who to shrink that has my attention."

“I highly doubt just by seeing me use them you’ll find out, you’re little scanner thingies won’t do much good either otherwise other people would have found out by now. If you do try, I’ve seen some pretty messy things happen. Alchemex gave up before they got to human trials, thankfully.” He pulled a disk from his right hand leg, and twirled it in his hands. “This disk, can shrink whatever it hits… for a period of time. When you need one, if for whatever reason I’m not there and by the point we are trusting each other you can use one. Don’t try and open it. They’re sealed shut with mechanisms in place to prevent tampering. Though how about, we call it a day, go home and rest. Meet here tomorrow, do some introductions maybe… Plan our first move. How does that sound?”

Ghost snickered. "I never rest," he replied bluntly. "I'll be back tomorrow then. Same time. Hopefully with less punching. No promises."

With that, Ghost when fully invisible and intangible and flew up out of the warehouse and up to the sky. Once again he could smell the vile nature of Nueva York. The rich giggled in their high-rises and the poor suffered in squaller. To his surprise, a blazing trail from one of the poorer districts seemed to lead towards Central Park. Ghost sighed. Enough bullshit for one day. For now, he would return to him base of operations and go over the data-keys in peace. Maybe listen to a little Paul McCartney...
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Hidden 9 yrs ago 9 yrs ago Post by Cyrania
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Cyrania

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Cyrania de Bergerac



As the brown-capped stranger walked into the city of skyscrapers, she silently wondered," Now what? Should I stay hidden so more until I know everything that's going on? Or should I just reveal myself and hopefully survive Alchemax's muscle long enough to be contacted by the resistance? Will the resistance be as bad as their enemy or..? Uh, why didn't Merlin come with me?" Cyrania asked herself as she angrily sighed. "We both knew there was a slim chance that my genetic parents were still going to be there, Thor hasn't been seen for a while so how could he convince the Mighty Thunderer to come back, other than that there's really no one who could have survived. I know he said he was going to come once he at least checked for some outside help, but still that step might have been saved till after we made ourselves known to the new true heroes of Earth. Why did he..."

Then the brunette felt someone going superhumanly fast, straight towards her. Her reflexes kicked in and projected a force-field. When the person collided, the impact sent them both flying, her onto her back and the person overhead and onto his face. As the two got up, Miss de Bergerac got a better look at this superhuman. His hair was white and swept back yet he didn't look that old, only about 20 or 30. His suit was black and close-fitting with a weird light design on it that made a lighting bolt on his chest. His eyes were also looking her over like she was him. Then he asked,"Has Spider-man found himself a new helper then? You're definitely not one of us and you've stalled my search for him."

"Sorry, but I'm new here," replied Cyr tersely. "I didn't realize I was suppose to just let you ram me over when you traveled that fast. I have no idea who this Spider-man is and I don't know who you are."

"Why, I'm Quicksilver," the white-haired man replied. "The fastest member of the Avengers of Alchemax. Spider-man is the number one threat of this city who stole some of Alchemax's property. Stop me again and I'll consider you on his side." Then he started to speed away, but ran into another forcefield.

"Well, since you're one of Alchemax's lap dogs, whoever you seek must be worth standing with. I'm sure there's a simple explanation for this 'property' he stole" Than Cyrania smiled, causing Quicksilver to charge at her and once again be stopped by a force-field. She then trapped him in a close-set force-field dome and said, "Tell your masters that Zola's Experiment Alpha has arrived. They should then know who I am. I've only been 'stolen' for eleven years." Then with a laugh and a flourish of her cape, Alpha walked away and disappeared. The force-field soon disintegrated behind her.

Once she was out of his sight, her invisibility wore off to reveal a short, teenage girl with golden hair in blue jeans, white shirt, and green sweater. "Well, it could have been better but it could also have been worse," Cyr thought to herself. "At least now, I have someone I should contact, Spiderman. Alchemax has made more super-guard dogs and has the audacity to call them Avengers. And that message might distract some of the search away from him and onto me. But I don't have enough energy to use in one battle like that again and having to use some to blend in like this until I get a change of clothes somehow won't help matters. Better find this Spiderman then, the other stuff can take care of itself." So Alpha decided to find Spiderman first before taking care of more mundane matters like shelter, food, clothing, and money.
Hidden 9 yrs ago Post by SuperTacticalDerp
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SuperTacticalDerp The New Monarch

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Rain poured through his form as he floated through Nueva York, along with a heavy breeze that seems to rip through city like the claws of a twisted beast. Ghost could almost never get over this feeling, something close to omnipotence or death as he hovered above the dirty streets and watched flying vehicles blaze through the downpour. He truly was a ghost, and he was happy to haunt this city's rich and corrupt.

After much travel, he'd finally made it back to his headquarters of operation. The former Baxter Building, a relic of years far gone by now as a authentic fixture of old "New York City" life reduced to tenements and weight-bearering for fat corporate dogs. Ghost dropped altitude and landed inside the building's empty main lobby, a dirt ridden hole of neglect and poverty. He looked around, imagining this filth infested structure as it must of been at one time.

He sighed. There was no time for good thoughts these days. Ghost when intangible again, dropping through the floor and landed inside his true lair. Formally a fallout shelter built during the fifties and sixties that luckily never made it into the building blueprints, Cold War paranoid made for the perfect hiding place for a crazed corporate saboteur. He'd installed maybe the best of the best in network security here, making his actions almost impossible to trace and very good at leaving his attackers with parasites and infestations that would rip their own systems apart.

But, to Ghost's dismay, not of those counter actions activated during his...well...business dealing with the Pyms. Almost every single one of his firewalls were down, each laced with passcodes and authorizations long enough to wrap around the world in triplicate. He swiftly floated over to his terminal, pulling up the newly aquired data-keys and check to see what "Janet" had gotten into during their little skirmish. In the most part everything looks untouched, expect an outside trace that was visible and very apparent as her doing.

Ghost grumbled, removing any hint of her trace with lightning fast fingers sprawled across his terminal's keyboard like a spider constructing it's web. Within seconds the trace was gone, but if she was smart she would already know exactly where he was. He distinctly remembered her bringing up something about burning his servers down. He growled and mumbled a little more to himself, beginning the process of recoding and resetting all of his firewalls with new protections hopefully strong enough to withstand another attack.

But how do you fortify yourself against a highly intelligent machine? "Janet" was smart, or at least connected to the web to access needed information. She had displayed that with her little demonstration. She also had a built-in holo projector, the abilities to mentally invade his mind with touch, and had access to her "father's" Pym Particles.

Silently, Ghost began pulling up different government sources and investigating the name "Janet Pym". By all accounts, everything was there. Birth records, etc. etc. etc.. But he knew something was off. He could see it just by looking at her, and the Pym relation was too much not to ignore. The Ultrons and by extension Vision, Jocasta, and the lesser known Alkhema.

There were also multiple etceteras in that mechanical family tree too, but Ghost caught himself in his thoughts. Why did he care so much? He moved away from the terminal, pacing in the dark metallic room. Was the idea of just another secret to crack distracting him from his real intentions. Yes, to uncover a Pym Family plot did sound enjoyable at first...but in honesty it didn't really solve anything.

Ghost sat back down to the terminal, reopening the file with the data-keys and just stared at them for a while. This is what he should be focusing on, not some legacy family conspiracy. He opened up a data-splicer, copying the data-keys nearly a thousand times so that he could flay and experiment with every line of code he could. He need to understand every line locked away, and it would probably take all night.

Slowly, Ghost moved to remove his hood and revealed his full helmet. It was something close to an old gas-mask fused into a human skull with eyes of pure white LED, bleach to a stark white. After unclamping some harnesses, he popped his helmet off to reveal...another mask. A white balaclava, drenched in sweat only revealing his bloodshot blue eyes as he continued investigating the keys. It felt strange feeling air touch his eyes again as he worked.
Hidden 9 yrs ago Post by Omega Man
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Omega Man Micro Machinist

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Marcus Dane could only imagine how he looking floating around in the air inside of the jungle that used to be Central Park. The Thing was tearing down trees and knocking over what appeared to be an Alice in Wonderland statue while the hero flew around making several attempts at certain hand movements to teleport his enemy. His healing staff was on his back but he finally had enough of the Thing. Grabbing it from the strap on the back of his coat he poked the Thing in one of his eyes.

"Looks like your rocks don't protect your eyes. Have I got a spell for you..." Strange began to taunt hovering lower to the ground now having blinded the Thing momentarily in one eye, "Star flash of the Celestials I summon you!"

After a few hand movements a bright light errupted from the jungle. A fiery trail was already being blazed by another hero. Dane could sense it, a mystical nature. One of the Thing's friends? The star flash blinded the Thing but Dane could finally see something else coming at them. It appeared to be a flaming skull headed person riding a more 20th century model motorcycle.

"This should be good..." Dane thought.

~KL~
Hidden 9 yrs ago Post by Forsythe
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Forsythe Graf von Kaffeetrinken

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U-99 & Ant-Man

Henry clapped his hands as the ghost left. Waiting until all signs of interference was gone until he spoke. “Well, that was unexpected. We are now going to be part of a Super-Hero team up. On the bright side it was going to happen sooner or later.” He stretched himself, he still kind of hurt from the return punch on the Ghost’s return earlier. “I guess if we are going to go down this route I may need to unlock your combat protocols after all.”

He yawned. “However that can wait until the morning, We need to get going back home, have a nice relaxing evening before we return in the morning for all the planning that I didn’t think I’d be doing yet. However we really didn’t have a choice, we can’t have him going running around out there knowing about us willy nilly. Need to keep tabs on him and the best way to do that is to work with him. That and his plan was going to get a lot of people killed and cause a hell of a lot of anarchy and while I’m not happy with the current system, that wouldn’t really help.”

He limbered himself up a little, before peeling his suit off. Once off he hit the thumb button and it shrunk down to its “ant” size. He simply pocketed it then, thankfully the suit when shrunk without someone in it was voice activated so it wouldn’t accidentally grow in his pocket. “You ready to go to your new home?”

Janet was a little out of her element. All she has seen from the world was one room and a few locations on tape and already she was part of a superhero team that was supposed to take down the current structure of the world? Now that was a glitch if she ever saw one. “I still believe we should set fire to something he owns. Just to prove a point that nobody punches my dad, you know?” she smiled, “Yes, please. I already know every square millimeter of this room.”

As far as methods of transportation go, being miniaturized and riding an ant home was not listed in Janet’s historical or technical databases. Then again, the secret of Pym particles was not supposed to be public knowledge.

The sight initially overwhelmed her. The buildings were a lot taller than she imagined, given that so far she only watched her movie library up to around the production from 2000s. The feeling was quickly replaced with relief of her power plant recharging. There was no direct sunlight, but her nano skin was more efficient than commonly accessible solar generators.

They eventually arrived at Henry’s place. “So...” Janet said, looking around and taking what would be her home in, “This is the anthill.”

The ride home wasn’t too exciting, when in the apartment Henry pushed the bills out of the way, a couple of them overdue but he didn’t care. If Alchemex weren’t so cheap he could pay his bills on time. Would also help if he stopped trying to super-hero it but hey. Today hadn’t taken an expected turn, it was time to unwind. He chuckled slightly at the comment. “No Janet. This is home, not the anthill, the anthill isn’t quite ready yet. It’s not going to be here anyway, I have a location picked out.” He pointed out the rooms, it was a very basic apartment.

“Kitchen is there, that metal strip is where the kitchen ends and living room begins. Though, it’s all technically one room but lets not get into that.” He pointed to the door to the right. “Through there is the hall, at the very end there is the toilet. First door is my room, second room is your room. Do with it as you will, though please don’t go doing anything that will require a lot of power. I do have to pay the bills.”

He collapsed on the sofa, still aching a bit from the punch. “You know, today wasn’t what I expected it to be. I was thinking a nice calm day of getting you accustomed to the world.” He looked directly at her. “Try and make every day after today less dramatic please?” He offered her a smirk.

“Hey, it wasn’t my fault your security sucks!” Janet grinned back. She pinged the apartment with her other sensors, form ultrasound through thermal to radar to thoroughly map it. “What do you mean by that? You need to show me what else are you working on. No wonder you can’t pay the bills old man, you spend all your money on fun and gadgets.” the robot smirked. This type of interaction was rather amusing. “I wonder how I’d do when other people see me. Not that I am in a hurry. But given what you built me for, I do hope other ‘heroes’ are more reasonable than Ghost. And if not, less of a pain to deal with.” she sighed.

“Hey, it wasn’t my fault either that some ghost decided to drop by, perhaps you’re haunted.” He put his feet up on the coffee table and leaned back, flicking the television on. “I can’t pay my bills because I have this daughter that lives with me but doesn’t even pay digs! She’s twenty years old you know, how selfish is that? I even put a roof over her head. Can you believe that?” He sighed. Watching the screen he spoke to her, though not directly.

“Also not all on fun and gadgets. I need to eat, and I would hardly call you or the Ant-Hill gadgets. You weren’t cheap you know, though I suppose daughters never are…” He went distant for a second, as if in deep thought. “Also in due time you’ll find out what I’m working on, in due time. You know what I was doing when I was your age? Drooling, crying, sleeping and pooping. Maybe a little eating. Baby steps Janet.”

“Well in her defense, she just got here, and it is you that keeps insisting she stays.” Janet poked back.

“Touché.”

“Not to mention the matter of her mother, how do you plan to explain that?” Janet frowned in thought. They should have thought of that sooner. “I suppose the poor soul is dead now, and that’s why I’m here?” she suggested.

Henry shook his head. “What are you talking about Janet? You’ve been in care most of your life and only recently managed to find the Father that didn’t even know he had a daughter!” He patted the seat beside him indicating that she should sit down. “Which is what we’ll go with, it’s easier to forge care records, and quite often they go missing anyway. If we want to go the mother route I need to create another new identity with new relationships and collaborating stories. This works a lot better.” He closed his eyes as he let his head hang back on the sofa.

“So, anything you want to talk about Janet? It’s been a busy day for you. Though don’t worry I’ll let you explore on your own tomorrow.”

“Very well.” Janet nodded at the cover story. “I would like to know if there are any more revived legends like Ghost running around. It is my primary function to protect the common person against them, and Ghost’s own attitude is worrying. I have found mentions of a Spider-man on the internet, fortunately for me most recent ones seem to be dealing with his disappearance. Still, it is obvious that without further study I will stand little chance against them on my own.”

She looked over. Henry’s biometric readings registered an increased level of stress coupled with deteriorating attention. “But that can wait. I believe you should rest. You accomplished a great feat today, If I say so myself.” she smiled smugly, “There is this series of books I would like to read and think after, they seem to be dealing with situations close to my own. I would like to see what conclusions the author made.” she shared, Opening her collection and finding Asimov’s Robot and Foundation series.
Hidden 9 yrs ago Post by Cyrania
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Cyrania

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Ultron & Cyrania


Unfortunately for Janet, the reading part was extremely short in her case and she found herself with nothing to do while she processed the message the books left. After checking whether Henry was already asleep, she took a stroll through the apartment. After a short while though, she realized all the exciting stuff was probably either in Henry’s room where she did not dare go as not to wake him up, or off-site like the warehouse or her birthplace.

Growing bored, Ultron thought some more on tomorrow. It was true what she said - through known history, any attempt to make life better only redistributed wealth in the same level, only to different people. Was it not futile to even try then? Was it actually necessary? That seemed like something that needed research, and now was as good time as any.

Of course, Janet knew Henry probably thought about her wandering out on her own. But any alarms he put in were a bit useless when confronted with a supercomputer made to defeat things like them. Walking to the door, she sunk her fingertips into the control panel.

Her mind raced across the security system, silently analyzing it and searching for anything linked to her. Ah, there! Disconnecting, she looked at the place where she found a scanner that would check for her specifically leaving. It was built into the wall with seemingly no access - but that was no bother. Looking at her hand, Janet formed her fingers into a spike and commanded her nanite skin to flow over them and form a lance-like appendage. One stab through the wall later, the alarm was disabled. Creating a magnetic field to unlock the door, she morphed into a low class human shape and silently left, unaware of the ant following her.

The lowest levels of the city quickly made her realize just how bad things were. She was conflicted when she witnessed a man stealing a purse from an old woman - her programming screamed at her to give chase, pacify and return the item, but her user directives commanded stealth, leaving her personality matrix to make a decision. Eventually she sided with the latter, considering she was probably going to be in trouble already for walking out in the first place. She went out to gather information in the first place.

Originally Janet did not intend to speak to anyone, but then she witnesses a small skirmish between what appeared like one of Alchemex’s ‘Avengers’ and an unregistered superhuman. Ultron was quickly re-evaluating her chances of meeting them - she already encountered three, and it was day one for heaven’s sake!

Following after the force field projecting human, she changed her mind. If they were to go after Alchemex, it might be good to have connections to other people who have a bone to pick with them. Janet caught up and approached the woman: “That was interesting.”

“Oh, what was?” Cyrania asked when the woman came up. The Alpha experiment was sure that no one could have followed her after her invisibility and disguise routine, no normal person. And her energy levels weren’t the best to have a new fight. “I’m just new to town here. My name’s Alastriana Rogers, what’s yours?”

“How you handled that guy, duh. One would think when a person nearly runs you over he would apologize. I’m starting to see how the corporations are a problem.” Ultron tried to make conversation, “Janet Pym. I also arrived here only today.” she said, offering a hand, “You’ve got some amazing gifts.”
Cyrania shook hands with the strange woman then moved them to a deserted alley to have more privacy, though she decided to keep her disguise for now. “Such things are best discussed where people can’t hear you. Running into people and not apologizing is not the full extent of what Alchemax does though. They treat people as property to take samples and perform experiments from. And if they don’t match their specifications, then onto the block they go. They need to be stopped, and I can only hope my gifts will be useful in the struggle.”

Observing Alastriana’s body language and vital signs, Janet noticed two things. First, her company was getting tired, second, there were signs in her voice and fine movements that hinted at what she described being personal. “So… that’s what happened to you?” she asked, apparently not yet skilled in sugarcoating. “Also, there are three food businesses around if you feel like eating something. I can not vouch for their quality though. We live on one of the ‘middle class’ apartments. Dad’s fast asleep but I come from a very different timezone, I just couldn’t stay in bed. The jet-lag tomorrow is going to be hell.”

“Thanks, any food should be fine, though I don’t have any money so you’d have to treat.” Cryania replied. Then before they left the alley she said, “Yes, that’s what happened to me. I was their first experiment in super-humans, their ‘Alpha’. They were disappointed though since I only got powers, no super-strength or super-stamina or anything like that. If it hadn’t been for Merlin, I would be dead now. Though we better find something different to chat about in this food place, I announced myself as Alpha to get some of the heat hopefully off of Spider-man. They probably will have their goons everywhere.”

Oh, how wonderfull of her to mention that so soon! Janet thought, fighting the urge to activate the Emotes->RollEyes method. “Well then perhaps it is high time we vacated the place.” she noted and started walking a bit faster. “And strength is not the best power. Imagine a guy who can turn intangible, what good will muscles do then? Would you be interested to know there is at least one group whose goals are in alignment with yours?”

Janet dropped that just as they approached one of the food vendors. “It helps to know the corporate weaknesses.” she whispered to Alastriana barely audibly as she approached one of the ATMs nearby. After what seemed like an intense glare, the machine spit out a bunch of money. “Get what you like, Alchemax’s treat.” she said with a cheeky smile.

Cyrania looked wide eyed at Janet for a bit, then she grinned, went to the vendor, and said, “ I would like a milkshake, hamburger, and fries, please.” She handed the necessary cash, which seemed to surprise the vendor a bit, then he prepared and handed back her order. Alice immediately started sipping the milkshake, and felt the energy replenishing in her body. She turned to Janet and said, “Thank you, I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“Probably either starved to death, or become a typical lowlife, selling your body for the next fix of whatever drug you would grow to fancy and a little bit of food, likely dying before you reached 30.” Janet shrugged, going from available statistics, “Only you would have some fancy gifts to go along, probably aiding you in your petty criminal career.”

On that happy note, Ultron waited for … Now that’s a horribly long name.

$_ALICE = new User(‘regularPermissions’, ‘metaHuman’)

… for Alice. There. Much better. To finish her food. Then, she beckoned them outside. “Do you have some place to sleep?”

“No, actually.” Cyr replied as she cleaned herself off. “This whole day was a make up as I go along one. I don’t know anyone in the city save you.”

Janet paused. “Let me get this straight. You came here, no cash, no place, I assume no job and intended to take on Alchemax, by yourself? I see a bit of a flaw in your plan.” Janet pointed out the obvious, “I take it going back wherever you were is not an option either?” She thought for a bit. This was one strange individual. She wasn’t certain an airhead like this could help them in any shape or form, but her powers were rather useful. “I can give you a space in a warehouse. It’s not much but it’s a roof over your head.” she eventually decided. With SAM’s drives still in her pocket, there wasn’t much worth stealing anyhow that would be too much of a loss, just in case her good will went unrepaid.

“A roof over my head is all I need, thanks.” Alice said aloud. Then Cyrania mentally shot to her new friend, “Really should be quieter when you talk about taking down Alchemax. One of their goons is about 11:00 high, he’s thinking about my description and this Spider-man’s and about the reward money the company is offering. Her head gestured to where the man was. “And as for the flaw in my plan, 1.) I never meant to take them on myself but to find help and 2.)there was no other way. There was no way to contact the resistance except to go into the city and no city contacts since we lived in the Badlands for most of my life. Therefore, this whole thing has been a practically blind operation with a high chance of getting captured or killed. Merlin said my odds would be better if I went alone, so he went to see if any others were made of my ‘product line’ or if the people the samples were taken from were still around, saying he would join me later. My only hope was to contact a resistance member or find the new Avengers, not the Alchemax phonies but the true new ones, before essentials really got desperate. You have taken care of my essentials, thank you. Now, are you really willing to go against Alchemax?” Miss de Bergerac paused as she waited for an answer, readying her senses to make sure that whatever answer Janet gave was sincere, to figure out if Janet was honest or an Alchemax agent herself.

Grabbing a hold of Alice’s hand, Janet repaid in kind. Word of advice? Stay away from my head. You might not like what would happen if I reacted to you like I would to any other intruder. It’d do you well not to forget that you are special, but not unique in your powers. She paused, scanning the direction her companion suggested with thermal sensors. True enough, somebody was there thinking they couldn’t be seen. In fact, we are more alike than you know. Our group is having a meeting in the warehouse I spoke about in the morning, I shall introduce you then. It may not initially be a smooth sell, but given the other guy we picked up, you’re a step up. Janet shared and started walking to the warehouse, taking care to lose all pursuers she could detect.
Hidden 9 yrs ago Post by Forsythe
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Forsythe Graf von Kaffeetrinken

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Ultron, Ant-Man, Cyrania & Ghost


Henry woke up early as normal, sitting up. Yawning, stretching. Getting up and doing the usual morningy things, toilet, put on your super suit. What else would you do in a morning? Then he went to check if his robo daughter was still in the apartment, to subsequently discover that she wasn’t actually there. He kind of expected that, how long did he think it’d take her to get bored. He sat on the sofa, back facing the door.

Booting up his computer he checked the data from Tim, the camera ant. He wouldn’t quite let Janet know how Tim managed to keep track of her, not yet anyway. He had to keep some secrets after all, besides it wouldn’t be a very good way to track her if she found out about it and then managed to prevent him from tracking her. Now all he had to do was wait for her to come home.

He did not have to wait long. She thought she was returning plenty early, but one look past the door with her thermal sensors revealed that like many geniuses, her father did not exactly have normal habits, sleeping cycle included.

Pausing at the door, she considered her options for a split second before discarding the thought process, her cybernetic equivalent of a defeated sigh. Walking over and sitting next to Henry, Janet gave him a sideways look: “Alright, fine. Let’s hear it.”

Henry just shrugged. “I guess you’re just living up to your teen years. I do have one question though, who is this-” He turned the laptop so she could see the screen “-and why did you take her to a warehouse that has our fingerprints all over it?”

“Well, actually...” Janet started, looking a little amused, “You unwillingly caused a conflict in my programming. See, you gave me my primary directive too early I think. It compelled me to go and protect all of humanity from themselves. However at the same time, and administrator level instruction form you said I should stay here. And there in comes to play the beauty of Ultron-15’s code, which says that when conflict like this is present, my personality matrix makes the final decision. Something to note for the serial production maybe?” she said with a cheeky smile.

”I chose as limited exposure as I could, and my work yielded unexpected fruit.” Janet continued, pointing to the monitor. To shorten the explanation, she used the projector in her pal formerly used by SAM to display and replay the actions and conversations of yesterday. “This Alice only appeared to be lying about her name, and she did a good job of masking it. However i believe her motivation is genuine. And on a personal level, I feel like she’d make a better friend than that cybernetic contraption - you know, with both of us being lab grown and stuff. Something to connect through maybe, we shall see. It is an interesting experiment none the less, wouldn’t you agree? You should meet her to judge for yourself in oh, a few hours?”

“I don’t really have a choice, we’ll go now. I got tech in that lab I need, though I can see I’ve hid it well if you’ve not noticed it enough to take a stranger there.” He shrugged as he stood up walking to the small kitchen, and throwing some bread in the toaster. “Truth be told I guess it will give you a friend, I’m more likely to see more on the same level as this Ghost character with the whole espionage thing, not too happy about the lengths he’ll go to though. I presume you haven’t discovered if this Alice is inclined to follow the same line of thought? The last thing we need is to make allies to then end up fighting against them. If you want proof take a look through the history on the Hero Civil War.”

When the toast popped out, he spread butter on each slice, leaning against the cabinet as he ate waiting for Janet’s response.

“Well, at the very least my recruit has manners, so… in your face.” Janet stuck her tongue out.

“Well, at the very least I made you, so is she really your recruit or just a result of your programming?” he retorted, if she was going to take the piss so could he.

“You mean the result of the code you ripped off of Ultron-15 and thus your predecessor that actually made me go out there? I am fairly certain there are laws against that. Maybe you should tattoo a citation on my back.” She poked back, folding her arms on her chest.

“You’re not getting a tattoo Janet. You’re not eighteen yet. Sorry, it’s the law since you brought laws up.” He shrugged as he finished his toast. “You ready to go? Don’t want to change clothes? Brush your teeth? Hair, makeup?” He brushed himself down, as he walked over to clothes sitting over his couch and threw a shirt and some trousers over his ant-man suit.

“Yeah yeah sway the conversation off-topic. Go pout. I win.” Janet sung rudely and nodded. “Born ready. Well not really but, you know what I mean. And no, I don’t really wear clothes, but maybe I should go out like this?” she said in a easing tone as her outer shell morphed into the tell-tale shape of the previous Ultrons.

He sighed, and sadly the conversations on the way to the warehouse were roughly the same. Sadly, at least her personality was developing. He did think it would improve and develop as she acquired more knowledge. The more she had, the more she’d develop her own personality. As they approached the warehouse he signalled the Ant she was on to come closer so that he could speak to her without comms.

Moving underneath the door, he threw a disk at Janet growing her back to her full size and then hit the button on his right hand bringing himself to full size where his helmet then receded to reveal his face.

Cyrania had decided already to not use her illusions when she first met Janet’s friends. They might like a demonstration of some sort, so it was best to conserve power and besides, they should know what she usually looked like. Janet had probably already seen her like this as she left the warehouse. Therefore, she was prepared when she felt the strange feeling that was Janet’s presence and that of someone else. She turned to face the door in time to see them grow back to full size, surprising her a bit, but she recovered quickly and said, “Hello Janet, sir. I’m guessing you just used Pym particles there. I have heard the old stories about Ant-Man.”

He sighed and turned to Janet. “See Janet, this is why being a legacy hero isn’t that fun. People recognise the tech.”

“Yeah, and imagine the fun we’ll have explaining when somebody discovers my legacy. I think your problems are marginal by comparison.” Janet grimaced. She knew Ghost had his suspicions about her, and if Alice was psychic, her mind would feel alien at best.

“That’s not really your legacy though, that’s kind off my families legacy too. Either way-” he extended his hand to the new person in the room. Though he kept his neural net active, if as discussed on the way over she was telepathic she’d probably have a hard time getting a bead on him. What with all the ants crawling around his head on the inside of his mask. Tickled slightly. “-Nice to meet you Alice, I’m Ant-Man. You’ve already met Janet. I was told you may be wanting to stay here a while-” he shot a sidelong glance at Janet with the last comment.

Alice took his hand and shook, “Pleasure to meet you. Well, right now its stay here or live on the streets it seems, unless I took a long commute from the Badlands every day. I want to join you guys as the true successors of the Avengers. I wouldn’t be dead weight. I’ll obey orders and can demonstrate my skill set to you right now.”

Well that was a little try-hardy for Janet’s tastes. It caused her a mild irritation that everybody could just broadcast their abilities around and all she was supposed to do was to be smart, and she did reveal to Alice that she was psychic as well. well that’s a ripoff. all the other kids get to play. she mentally sneered. “I think we can afford not to be hasty.” Janet pointed out. “I’d like to ask you one thing first though - you kept referring to this Merlin character - who was he?”

“He was my rescuer and mentor of eleven years,” Cyr replied. “Dr. Zola was angry that I refused to kill humans he sneaked in during training exercises. He finally got fed up with it when I was roughly six. So Zola put me in a test with all human opponents and said I would have to kill them all if I was to ever earn a name or I would be killed. I just prepared for death right then and there when Merlin knocked me out of the way. I force-fielded us from further harm and he teleported us into the hallways from which we got out of the complex and escaped. After we were far enough away, we stopped and he introduced himself, saying that he had come because he had heard of a mortal with his power. He then became my teacher from powers to history to herbal lore to math and we survived the Badlands together. I know nothing of his past before he met me, so there’s no use asking. But no matter what he was, I trust him with my life and will always be grateful for what he did for me.”

Ghost was already in the warehouse waiting for the Pyms when he overheard them arrive and speak to someone. For the most part, the conversation seemed mostly about minor introductions, legacies, and those who borrow their aliases with old European folk-lore.

"Riveting...," Ghost muttered to himself as he made himself visible. He was fully geared up like last time, his bleached white suit glowing in it's own eerie way. In his hands was a burlap sack, stuffed with old solid-state hard drives using some of his not so solid-state tech. This was his bug-out-bag, usually reserved for the worse possible situations if things truly turned sour. Today, there were everything he could scrounge up about Alchemax, "Hot Stuff Transport", and anything else he had back at his base. Ghost wasted no time finding the Pym's data-hub, patting the still standing intelligence container in the middle of the room.

"I'm not here for you kid," Ghost grunted to the metal abomination he had tampered with the day before. "Hope the scars aren't too apparent."

Ghost began plugging his gear into whatever power sockets and hardware connectors he could, drip feeding the Pym's with whatever information he saw fit to give. Janet would probably feel or notice his presence even before they entered, probably monitoring the warehouse's cyber security after yesterday. This time, less punches will be thrown his way. Hopefully.

Interesting. The behavior matched what little there was on record about this ancient wizard, but in more recent history, Merlin only appeared twice and never in person. Why now? Janet filed the question for later as she detected the last member of their rag-tag alliance arriving. “Ah, I believe we are almost complete.” she noted, turning to Henry and sending him a message silently over the comms: “So, how much do I reveal about my abilities? They would need to know what they have to work with at least. I am fairly confident in Alice, not so much about her mentor, and if I didn’t suspect Ghost already knew I am not human, I would stay silent, but as such...” she inquired, for once seeking advice.

Henry just shrugged. “It’s your secret, as long as you aren’t blurting it out to everyone in the city quite yet and as long as you feel they can be trusted-” He just shrugged against as he opened the door to the next room which held what was left of SAM. As alerted, Ghost was there already working on something. “In terms of uh, what was it? Successors to the Avengers you might want to chill your beans right there. We’re here to make a difference sure, though I think enough damage has been done to that name-” He cast a look at Ghost.

“Besides, the Avengers were a team. Right now, I don’t know what we are.” He strolled over to Ghost, looking over his shoulder. “On that note, whatchu working on there Casper?”

To be honest, Janet wasn’t expecting to be given the choice and thus didn’t have a yes or no prepared. Looking down in thought, she withdrawn from the group for a while. On one side, dad was right that they couldn’t trust either of them that fully just yet. She didn’t trust Ghost at personal level, that was a no brainer. He was a thief, a radical revolutionist and that mattered that she would probably have to deal with him at one point in the future. Her calculations predicted an 87.548% chance of an engagement in the future, and most of the rest were the cases where something would change Ghost’s mindset.

As far as her biometrics told her, Alice wasn’t lying about her own past and motivation, and took a big risk herself entrusting her with it. So she did trust her. What she did not trust were the Merlin and Zola guys respectively. The first one for being a really shady character, the other because as evidenced by her own core code, any semi-saneperson creating life in a test tube would make damn certain their creation couldn’t turn on them.

Distancing herself from Henry and Ghost, she beckoned Alice outside with the nod of a head. “You told me about yourself, it’s only fair I do the same. However, I need to be certain about you. Let us just say that where Alchemax has a problem with what you are, same goes for me but with the general public. I can’t take that chance just yet. So - would you object to a mental scan? I will not look into your episodic memory, only procedural one to determine whether Alchemax didn’t put any safeguards into you that would prevent you from doing them harm or make you an unwilling agent. What do you say?”

"Updating this facilities firmware, updating your files on different corporations, and creating new online alibis if things go south and you can't go back to work," Ghost replied without ever looking away from the hard-drive he was working on. "And don't call me that..."

Soon enough, all of his hard-drives were in full force, uploading and synchronizing data at his command. If one of the hard-drives began overheating, the GhostTech inside would be one intangible and cool within seconds. Ghost looked to Pym, growling in his helmet. "I still have a mild headache from our little skirmish yesterday," he muttered in his ever freezing voice.

“Well information is always useful. Also the firmware was fine-” He cast a glance at Janet. “-Before someone decided she didn’t like a certain V.I.” He turned back to her. “Also I’ve got other facilities anyway, as soon as I’ve scrubbed this facility down everything should just be peachy even if they do come across it. Nothing ties back to me or Janet. So make yourself at home.”
He walked over to a fridge that sat completely out of place, pulling out a small container of chocolate milkshake. Who didn’t like milkshake after all? He twisted the top opening it and then looked back at Ghost. “Well I’m sorry, but Ghost isn’t much of a name. Casper, just has a nice ring to it. Casper the friendly Ghost…”

He sighed. Then turned to his wrist as it beeped. “Oh, I need to go do something.” His helmet slammed shut. “Talk amongst yourselves, I’ll be back in a minute.” He slapped the button on his right hand shrinking him down as an ant came flying through the door and landing beside them. He activated his comm to Janet. “I won’t be long, two minutes tops.”

“Under the circumstances, I wouldn’t mind a mental scan.” Alice replied as she walked outside with Janet. “I’ve wondered about the possibility myself. Though I must warn you, it’s hard to search through a mind without seeing the memories also. I’ve tried before, trying to cure a person who lost part of their memories.” Cyr sighed as she thought of it, then she prepared herself. “I’m ready.”

Janet chuckled: “Hard for a human, maybe.” She reached up with her hands and put her palms on Alice’s temples.

So far she only engaged her telepathic functions to send thoughts, not to connect with someone else. In a sense, she used the same procedure as when she connected to a machine, just used a different set of drivers. to say that she wasn’t tempted to just browse through Alice’s life like an open book would be a blatant lie, but she gave her word.

Still, it felt like interfacing with a supercomputer on par with herself. There was so much unused potential in the human brain, even given some of Alice’s gifts making her use more of it than a normal human would. There were millions of idle synapses for her to filter out. This was going to take a while - about 2.45 seconds if she counted right.

Once Janet was satisfied about Alice’s mind being her own, she gently moved out of her head. “Looks like you’re not a sleeper, congratulations. I believe it is your turn.” Janet grinned, tapping a finger on her own head.

Alice nodded, wondering about the ease Janet had done that without getting tangled up . Then she reached her hand to touch her friend’s face for better concentration and was astounded. The brain itself was normal, but over and interconnected with it was a computer with multiple places for other kinds of sensors and math algorithms. Cyr tried to be as circumvent as Janet was but couldn’t help seeing a first wake up in the warehouse and images of previous robots with ant-like heads. Understanding dawning, Alice then slowly disengaged, looked into the other girl’s visor, and wordlessly said, “ You know, you’re just as much human as you are Ultron. If you were a complete robot, we wouldn’t be able to do this.”

”As intended. It would be a colossal mistake to just rebuild an Ultron without making any changes, even version 15. But you see, it is as I said yesterday - we’re more alike than is apparent. Both of us were born in a lab. The only difference is that one of us was grown, the other one made. I believe I do not need to stress the need to keep this knowledge to yourself for now.” Janet replied. It was a strange feeling, like some weight have been lifted off of her now that at least somebody knew that didn’t know all along. ”Now, my abilities aside from telepathy - which is kind of limited, the closer I am the better - are shapeshifting, the usual mix of enhanced physique and I can interface with just about any machinery. I was designed to fight in a combat armor but only dad knows when that will be finished. how about you? If we are to fight together, we all need to know what we have to work with. Or rather, we should, but I’m not sure I trust this Ghost character.”

”No need to at all, your secrets safe with me.” Alice responded. ” And I can sense why you don’t trust him, he feels like one of those the ends justify the means guys. Anyway, my abilities. You saw my force-fields, my form of shapeshifting, and know about my telepathy. To add to that, I can teleport, make free-standing illusions, turn invisible, and do a bit of telekinesis. Also have been told I have a practically unbendable will that resists any form of mind control and my sword here is of a vibranium like substance.” As she finished that last thought, she unsheathed her blade and presented it to Ultron.

Janet’s eyes were trained on the blade. Vibranium wasn’t exactly easily obtained, nor was anything that came close to it. “May I?” she asked with an open hand.

“You can try,” Cyrania responded, “but Merlin said that only few can wield Laevateinn” With that, she handed it handle first to Janet.

Ultron’s head snapped up at the mention of the name, which had several major hits in her databanks. “Laevateinn. Northern mythology. Either you’re a fan, but if only a few can-” Janet was interrupted by the sword mercilessly dragging her to the ground with it, “-then it may be of Asgardian origin. Feh, magic trickery! One day I will figure out a sensor to see through this!” she barked at noone in particular. “If I make the assumption that it is identical in function to the hammer of Thor, then only the worthy can wield it. Which does little for my self esteem right about now. Little help?” Janet begged, her hand pinned to the ground and in one piece only due to the fact that her structure was less fragile than a human bone.

Cyr then quickly summoned the sword to her, surprised that Merlin’s words had been literal. “Sorry,” she said as she sheathed it back. “I thought he was only stating a myth when he said that and there would be something figurative about it maybe like anyone else wouldn’t know how to use it properly. Wait a minute, identical function to Thor’s hammer?” She then looked back at the sword, “Merlin did say we were in an abandoned Asgardian Armoury, and those droids were not normal.”

“Interesting. Either you are in possession of a very rare weapon, or they are not as rare as we previously thought. But given there was a whole armory, the latter seems quite possible. It would be nice to visit there for certain.” Janet said and extended her arm, the holo projector again appearing from under her skin and displaying the shape of the Mjölnir. “Mjölnir, the hammer used by the asgardian god of thunder. Capable of breaking most known materials. Recorded exceptions: Adamantium. Source of many magical abilities, such as weather control. Could only be wielded by individuals deemed worthy. Recorded exceptions: The Hulk. Last known location: Still in possession of its owner.” Janet relayed what information she had.

“Well, at least you can probably stop worrying about anyone stealing it. It is rumored it refused even some other Asgardian gods, but do not quote me on that.” She received the message from Henry then, and wondered what was going on, but no explanation arrived. “Well, that leaves only one question: Why the nickname and what are you really called? You may be telepathic but your body doesn’t lie.” Janet smiled, her visor displaying the minor fluctuation in Alicia’s heart rate and perspiration whenever she referred to herself with that name.

“It’s the name I choose for my civilian identity,” Alice replied, getting her mind off the implications of her sword. “Something I could hide as an average citizen under. You came up to me while I was disguised so I first introduced myself that way. My real name is Cyrania, Cyrania de Bergerac. You can call me Cyr though.”

Janet gave ‘Cyr’ a blank stare. “Merlin. Laevateinn. Now Cyrania de Bergerac. Woman, I have to pass you some newer books to draw inspiration from.” Janet teased. “But I suppose I can’t blame you for using an alias - I’m not the one to talk really.” Ultron chuckled and offered her hand, “Pleasure to make you an acquaintance.”

Cyrania smiled and took the offered hand, “Pleasure to make your’s too. Maybe we should go back inside now and you can tell me more about the newer books.”

Ghost silently went back to his work, making little in the way of noise. It was almost impossible not to overheard Janet and this Alice girl speak, only becoming quiet when they began some odd telepathic bonding ritual...or something. Alice seemed way too young to be here, dressed up flamboyantly and claiming to have stolen Asgardian weaponry. Ghost reached for his own blade as he worked, the synthetic doppelganger of real vibranium a chilling cold even past his insulted suit.

More and more did things seemed to become out of hand quickly with others like him around. There was no order, no hierarchy, no stability at all, What kept him from just leaving right now and going on about his own way without the mild curiosity of seeing how long this already beaten and broken ship could float. Honestly, it was only day one and Ghost was ready for full blown mutiny. But, for now, he would just get things set up. Set up a little presentation, wait for Pym to return, and then get the party actually started.
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“That depends on how much time do you have. I might have already read more than you ever could in a lifetime. Bonus of having a computer for brains.” Janet grinned, “And there’s also movies to watch. Humans just spew them out so fast one can never watch them all before their time is up, I believe me included. Unfortunately most aren’t even worth mentioning and filtering them out without seeing them is not easy.” Wow. First world problems. Janet thought sarcastically, Nah, more like problems the first world wishes they had.

“You’re probably right about that,” Alice replied, “though I have been told I’m a speed reader.” Then her expression turned puzzled. “Ah, what’s a movie?”

Meanwhile, Henry was in the Ant-Hill. He actually hadn’t had the idea for the name until Janet had come up with it. A small prison, hidden within an average everyday sight. Undetectable, and impossible to find unless you knew where you were looking. The cells themselves were all ready, rather than try and go the power damper route (Which didn’t work for everyone) he had taken the easy route which was to shield all the cells with multiple layers. Wall, shield, wall, shield wall, shield. It took a lot of power, but it worked.

Not to mention he had an easy to access backup supply if his power generators failed, and if the backup failed he even had secondary reactors. He squeezed past an ant that was on patrol, nodding at it as he passed, yes this prison was fully equipped and ready to go. With numerous backup and failsafes for days. Content in that knowledge when he reached the lab, he picked up what he came for and turned around to stroll out. The question was, when did he tell the others about this? Part of him felt it’d be better if he kept this to himself, at least for now.

Compartmentalisation and all that.

Janet raised an eyebrow at the unexpected question, but quickly put two and two together - Cyrania was raised in the badlands, a roof was probably a luxury. “Oh, are you in for a treat sometime later. I think I won’t spoil it.” she noted as ghost came into view. “Hello there, Ghost. Left Pac-Man home again?” the Ultron jabbed.

“I don’t believe you were introduced? Cyr this specimen is called Ghost, worthy adversary in technical things I’ll grudgingly admit. Ghost, Cyrania de Bergerac, for all intents and purposes the Invisible woman. And I suppose you have a theory about who I am - care to share?” Janet asked, wondering how accurate his estimate would be.

"Pessimistically, I would say your father is an idiot and call you Ultron...," Ghost threw back as he continued working, "but in the hopes that I won't have to start an underground anti-synthetic revolt along with my current plans, I'll just say Vision or Jocasta. Alchemax already beat your father at making a new Vision, but their's is more of a chromed department-store mannequin."

He floated away from his work station, looking at the two closer in detail. They seemed in love, giggling and holding hands like this was their first date. Ghost didn't have time for games like this, making his best attempts not to grind his teeth.

"And you, 'Alice', what gives you the right to be here? So far I see a girl who has befriended herself with the 'daughter' of a Pym. I didn't know anyone could just prance into a meeting of minds wearing a costume set more for a grade-school play and just announce themselves as the successor of one of the greatest human beings who have ever lived. Survived the Badlands? Great. Show me the board of executives of any major corporation in town bound-and-gagged with party hats and then, maybe then, I'll be impressed."

At that second Henry returned to his full size. “You know, that is some weird fetish you have going on there Ghost.” He threw over a disk for the man to catch. “You share, I share.” He threw another one. “First desk shrinks, second returns to normal size. Don’t try and pry them open or scan them or anything. They don’t like it very much and have inbuilt security protocols. I can give you more as and when needed, but the whole size change is kinda my thing, so don’t go crazy.”

He turned to ‘Alice’ and Janet. “I’ll go with Janet’s judgement on this one-” He looked between Alice and Ghost. “Though I think, for now. We’ll leave the infiltration to the two who’re used to it.” He waited for the offended look. “Just for now, we don’t want to put anyone at risk right now. Besides you girls are new in town and would probably be better to spend some time getting your bearings or acting as support.” He turned back to Ghost. “After all, I’m pretty sure our friend here already has an idea for what we can do.”

Tuning into their private communications, Janet was a little bit absolutely livid. “Can I just bag this rude primitive now instead of later?” Janet asked rhetorically, a few sparks of electricity zapping in between her fingers for a good measure. She didn’t mind being left out of whatever Henry intended to do - she wasn’t finished after all.

“For your information, she held her own against one of the new ‘avengers’. Also, she submitted to a mental scan, fancy doing the same to back it up? All I’ve seen you do is becoming incapable of influencing anything in this dimension, having a big ego and breaking and entering. As far as your tip goes, well...” she chuckled darkly, “I only carry fragments of the original Ultron series’ code. You can think of me more as a Sentinel. Take that for what you will.” Janet finished, her eyes dangerously narrowed as they borrowed into where Ghost’s would be.were they not obstructed by a helmet.

"So you're telling me that you identify yourself as a Sentinel, but you literally have repurposed code from an Ultron," Ghost replied. "You know that neither of those factors are a positive, right? Like reprogramming Saddam Hussein with some of Hitler's DNA or consciousness doesn't make a better person. Yeah, you're not getting anywhere close to my head."

He looked to Pym, staring him down just waiting for a reasonable response. Some kind of failsafe or something, you know, because he built an Ultron! Ghost dropped from his hover, pacing back and forth trying to think. He's remember an old an old article on an Avengers trivia site about an old Ultron model trying to make nice with his creator and establish a father-son relation, but for all he knew it was all completely fake.

"Pym," Ghost almost plead in his usual dead sounding tone, "please tell me there is a bomb in her chest or some kind of back-up plan if she ever goes rogue. Please just give me something to work with here."

“Do you have a failsafe in case you go rogue?” Cyrania then angrily asked while stepping between Ghost and Ultron. She could take criticism against herself, she was an oddball among oddballs and would need to prove herself. But to suggest that Janet should be able to be exterminated at the touch of a button, made into a slave who could be disposed of if she did the slightest thing not to her operator’s satisfaction. “Maybe we should force on a shock collar around your neck to stun or kill you when you step out of line. Janet is as much a human as you are, otherwise I wouldn’t feel anything like I can’t with robots. Only a human soul allows me to communicate and sense her like I can. We have a Pygmalion situation here, I don’t know how but there is. Therefore, she can truly not end up like the other Ultrons. They followed their programing to its ultimate conclusion, Janet can ignore her programming just like humans can. Therefore, any security measures you propose for her should be used on all of us.”

“There are other failsafes, though they aren’t quite as extreme.” Henry turned to Janet. “Also I wouldn’t class you as a sentinel either. You’re an entirely new entity. Only reason you’re classed as Ultron-99 in your programming is that it was surprisingly hard to get rid of the Ultron in your programming.” He changed to address the room. “The thing is. With the past Ultron models they were built as drones, to patrol a prison. With no real artificial intelligence and then they had it thrust upon them and frankly they couldn’t cope and as such…”

He sighed. “They took extreme measures. Janet from the start has had intelligence and a sense of self. Anything on top of that which drives her to help people is secondary, but always present to stop her going on a murderous rampage.” He shrugged. “She’s already different from what I thought she’d be and I’m going to mark that up in the win column. We’re in the area of unknown variables. Just remember the original Ultron also had an army, I’m not going to be making anything else until I know Janet isn’t going to flip out and try and drop a city.”

He turned to Janet with a smirk. “No offense.”

“None taken. If I go on a murderous rampage, I’m fairly certain it will be his fault.” Janet replied, pointing an accusatory finger at Ghost. She wisely chose to keep the statistic of the likelihood of them coming into conflict eventually for herself. “In any event, Failsafes or not, there are none you can work with, and I intend for it to stay that way. Now are we going to get on with this thing, or can I go out do some good while you keep arguing?”
Hidden 9 yrs ago 9 yrs ago Post by rocketrobie2
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Punisher



The scene was quite aside from the chatter of thugs and moving of cars high above. A particularly muscular thug spoke to one of his co-workers as the rest worked on packing boxes of substance into cars behind them. "So you hear about those Alchemax goons running around looking for Spiderman?" the large thug spoke with a voice equivalent to gravel in sound. "Is that what those people are? I saw one of 'em walking around and at first I thought the light was bad but then I saw the things cat face and bam! I took off running, never ran that fast in my life." He exclaimed to his companion's minimal reaction "sure, they got their abilities and what not but bullets don't care if you can lift a car with your mind" the large thug smiled as he took out a pistol from its holster and examined it with glee.

As the two criminals continued to speak, a new scene began to unfolded behind them as their co-workers began to fall to the ground, riddled with bullet holes from a silent source. It wasn't until they heard the rapid footsteps approaching them did they turn around but by then the large thug was getting a fistful of synth-Vibranium to the cheek. The force of the blow knocked the criminal to the side, dazing him long enough for the attacker disarm him, take his gun and fire it through his stomach three times. The large man went down but his co-worker had finally drawn his gun through frightened hands but could only get his finger on the trigger by the time a bullet from the attacker's gun tore through the man's skull.

Now with the scene once more silent, the attacker walked out to one of the men who had been shot in a not fatal spot and, by his shirt, hoisted him to his feet. "Listen here and listen good. Your going to tell your boss, whoever that may be, to stop with the trafficking or this will become a regular thing. Got that?" the attacker said but didn't bother to let the man answer as he immediately took out his other hand's knuckle duster from his belt and smacked it across the man's face, making him begin to drift in unconsciousness. "Wh- wh- who are-" was all the man could say as he drifted to sleep once more "John Brooks. But you can call me Pumisher." he said as he patched the man up so his message would get across and got into one of the nearby cars, driving away into the night.
Hidden 9 yrs ago 9 yrs ago Post by Cyrania
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Ghost, Ultron, Cyrania & Ant-man



Ghost sighed, marching away from the group to collect whoever patience he had left. So he was dealing with a Pym, or Pyms technically. It wasn't like this was the first time he'd deal with highly intelligent synthetics, but having the Ultron name floating around made him uncomfortable. Maybe Pym actually figured out how to properly make an Ultron unit. Maybe Ghost will be fighting her to the death in a few days. Too many uncertainties. He sighed again, not really sure what to do. He turned back to the group, waving his arms around in that almost awkward way of trying to find the right words for the moment.

"I...apologize for...well...mixed comments about you two young ladies," Ghost pieced together like a guilty criminal with blood on his hands. "In this line of work I tend to...uhh...engage individuals and opportunities without prejudice. Or with prejudice in a way it seems.

"I might of been quick to judge, is what I'm trying to convey. But it isn't anything personal. Nueva York is full of rich, bloated personalities who would love to make people like us who can think and rebel suffer. I see enough squalor and beaten civilians, so I don't want to see a young girl who looks more fitting for adventure to The Misty Mountains get hurt...and no offense here...literally Ultron. Literally Ultron..."

Ghost massage his temple as he finished speaking, a spike of pain making it's presence known. He chuckled lightly to himself a little bit, doing his best to contain himself.

"Literally Ultron. Seriously, there are some things I never thought I would say in my life."

“So much so that you said it three times in the span of five seconds just to be sure.” Janet poked. “Very well, apology accepted, I guess. And as long as your revolution doesn’t cause more casualties than the corporations themselves, you’re safe from me. But I’ll be watching you - if this gets bloody, you’ll either stop on your own or i’ll make sure you do. That goes for everyone: metahuman, alien etc. So, if you don’t mind showing us what you have on them, perhaps my attention can be focused on the so called Avengers alchemax built. How does that sound?” Janet offered, wondering for quite some time now what kind of dirt Ghost collected on them.

“I also accept your apology then,” Cyrania replied. “I understand the worry about Ultron, but would just like Janet to be given a chance first.” Then she smiled, “You know though of course, that the Misty Mountains were not for the faint of heart either, nor the unskilled. So really, if you think me ready for Smaug, that is a great compliment.”

“Smaug didn’t live in the Misty Mountains, he lived in the lonely mountain.” Henry shrugged, as everyone looked at him. “Ask Janet, she’ll agree with me.” He stretched his shoulders.

“I think Tolkien’s work is overpriced.”

“Now that we know she isn’t a fan of great literature, Janet does have a point. We should be focusing on the task at hand, you want to take down Alchemex. We have delusions of grandeur, the first thing we need to focus on are the Avengers who’re going to be the ones to give us grief. What’ve you got Casper?”

“Did you put any of it into the machine over there?” Cyr asked while pointing at the computer ‘Casper’ had been tinkering with. But just before the Ghost could reply, a strange sound emitted from him into the room. Afterwards, his cloak activated and he rose through the ceiling and back into the city streets. Alice just watched his progress, amazed at his tech like a child is amazed when his father performs a magic trick, but also wondering what took him away so suddenly and what information would he have given them if he had stayed.
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The mystical presence that Strange had felt earlier had passed. The fire in the corner of his eye approaching the park was no longer there either. The weeds and vines were becoming harder and harder to hover through for the good doctor, and the grey rock man finally connected throwing a piece of debris at the young hero/healer. The testosterone in the Thing began to increase, his cockiness could almost be seen through his rocky hide. He ran up with another kick to the doctor's mid section sending him flying back out of the park and into the downtown ghettos of Nueva York. One super leap and a few footsteps and the Thing was right back on his footsteps.

"I don't know how much more I can take this..." Strange thought.

Across town, in the mid-level apartment of Dane...

Miguel O'Hara finally woke. It didn't take him long to figure out where he was. Dane, or 'Strange' as Spiderman knew him, was out. His mail was on a counter as well as a photo ID. Miguel's suit was in the laundry room of his ally.

"The last thing I remember... those 'heroes' from Alchemax coming after me... how long have I been out?" Spiderman thought now in costume, "There's no reason to stay here any longer, I need to get home, check in with my boss at Alchemax and figure out a reasonable excuse so I don't get fired. Even though I can't stand the place it pays the rent..."

Swinging out of the apartment once some Public Eye flying by passed, Spiderman thwipped and flung around the city for a few blocks stretching and getting loose. He'd been in that bed for too long. It wasn't long before he'd passed some crazy man driving an older model van with wheels rather than hover tech. Looked like he was wearing a skull on his shirt, at least that's what Spidey thought. That's when the android of Alchemax, the Vision of 2099, phased through a wall approaching the web-slinger. Too bad he didn't have Spider Sense like the Spiderman of the Heroic Age.

Back outside of Central Park...

"Get up punk, gotta keep you's alive for my bosses. You gotta tell them how your magic staff or whatever ya call it works..." said the Thing standing over the fallen and beaten body of Strange.

~KL~
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John had been driving for just over five minutes before hearing yet another strange noise coming from outside but this didn't sound like car troubles, no, this was the sound of flesh clashing against metal. Quickly slamming on the brakes, Brooks opened the door of the car to check behind as to wether he had unintentionally hit some one with the barbaric van, only to see the true cause being some flying android assaulting the iconic hero Spiderman. Punisher smirked a bit, half because he was glad to see the hero was still alive and kicking and half because this Duden occurrence meant John would get to test his mettle against, what he now presumed to be, an Alchemax Avenger 'this is gonna be a lot better than just smacking around some punks' John thought.

With a quick draw that would put Clint Eastwood to shame, John took out his stolen gun and began to fire off rounds at the Alchemax Avenger in the hopes of either brining it down or at least distracting it long enough for Spiderman to gain his composure and help out.
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Cyrania, Ant-Man, and Ultron


The flamboyantly dressed hero recovered her composure after the Ghost was completely gone from view. This was no time to be dilly-dallying around gawking at other people’s tools. She turned to her two companions and said, “Well, guess we should check that machine then. ‘Casper’ probably at least gave us something to work with.” Then Cyr moved closer to it, waiting for Janet’s interface. Then an almost earthquake like tremor rocked the ground, but the girl of the Badlands knew how to ride it. She had needed to do so with similar tremors... She then turned to the two city slickers, “Is this sort of thing usual in Nueva York? ‘Cause it acts a lot like the kind the Hulk-like creatures make when they land after a jump.”

Closing her eyes as if in thought, Janet’s processor got busy. She connected to the data drive Ghost brought, searching for one bit of information in particular. There it was! Firing up a long range connection, the Ultron’s mind raced over the channels until she found a link to the desired target, using the password Ghost’s files provided to dodge most of the firewalls.

Raising her hand, she used the projector in her palm to display satellite footage of what was going on. “Oh, it’s that alchemax prop robot. And… oh hello, where have you been hiding, webslinger? Maybe we should investigate?”

Henry just turned to Janet. “You want to take on, vision?” He tapped his own helmet as something else came through. “Well. It seems that the Thing is having a beat down in central park as well. With some kind of magician fellow.” He looked at Cyrania at the last part. “Seriously, two magicians in one day?” He threw his hands up in the air as he walked around the room. “You know, this endeavour was a lot simpler before you all-” He jabbed an accusing finger at Cyr “-Started turning up.”

He sighed. “We’re going to have to divide and conquer. Though at this point I’m not really sure where I’d want Janet to go.”

Alice ignored Ant-man’s comment and looked at Janet’s hologram again. “Only one person might be needed there. See, there’s someone else already on the assist.” She responded pointing at the gun man. Then Cyr looked back up at Mr. Pym, “Any reinforcements for the magician fellow? If this “Thing” is having a beatdown, then that fellow might appreciate help immediately. You have our only real source of quick transportation. Wouldn’t be good to come into a battle worn out.” Then the brunette snapped her fingers, “I’ve got it. We all three first go to where the Thing is. Then if you think we’re able to handle it, you can leave us girls to fight him and go assist Spiderman. If not, then we all help out the magician guy first since he seems in the most immediate danger, then see if the webslinger still needs help.” Then she paused, “Sound like a good plan?”

“If the THing is anything like the real Thing, I stand pathetic little chance against it unless you want me to collapse a building on it’s head, killing everyone in the way. I am too… soft. Vision on the other hand, that would be more a battle of minds than a battle of strength. I am confident I can beat that imposter, even as I am now.” Janet evaluated. “I can hack traffic controls to divert what traffic there is to other areas and keep the private eye out until they figure out they’ve been had.” the Ultron offered.

Henry shrugged. “Really the point is, we need to get going. Though I’m not sure about either of you yet. You’re not ready for anything like that yet Janet, even if I were to activate your combat subroutines you don’t have the hardiness for it. Hell even if you went up against vision he can fly you can’t.” He sat there, he was already calling in an ant to carry him away to the fight. Though there was still the other problem too consider. “I’m not entirely sure about either of you in a fight. Though there’s something in the museum that you might be able to work with.” He closed his mask as he walked around the room gathering any and all items he felt he might need. Shock disks, shrink disks.

He hit a couple of keys on his wrist pad. “I’m firing up your combat subroutines, but I can turn them off if need be. Remember your programming though, if people get in your way acquiring this piece of tech stop them. Though don’t kill them or gravely injure them.” He pulled up a screen on a tablet and left it sitting on the desk. “You might need to tweak it a bit to make it work.” With that he hit the button on his left hand, shrinking and jumping aboard an ant.

Janet’s jaw dropped. “I didn’t even know that was there… yet! Still processing all of the world’s history.” Janet said, looking at the almost intact extremis armor of the very original Anthony Stark. Useless to any human, but with her nano skin, it would be perfect. As a base that was. The repulsors were common, dare she say outdated technology at this date. Still, it would protect her well enough for now and let her fly. More than she could ask for. “Well then, I’m off to go commit a robbery.” turning to Henry, she had a serious look on her face: “But call me if you need any help, ok? I can still do something through hacking.”

Cyr smiled a bit at her friend’s joy, then she turned towards Mr. Pym. “Can you tell me at least where Thing is now? If I’m to go for the assist, I need to know the place.”

Henry shrugged, realizing that at Ant-Size there was really no point in doing that as people couldn’t see him doing it. He relayed his voice via a speaker in the… pile of computer in the middle of the room. “Get the armour, focus on the vision. If you deal with that, call me.”

Alice cocked up and saluted towards the machine, “Yes sir.” Then went with Janet to the museum.
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Magneto


As The Thing stood over strange, an ominous voice came from the shadows of a near by alleyway,

“You appear to be in the wrong neighborhood, Avenger.” A dark clad figure stepped out, his face hidden behind a helmet and his body concealed by a black cloak. “Here, let me get you a cab!” In a dramatic fashion Magneto threw his arm back. Then launched his arm forward, bringing a nearby car with it straight into The Thing slamming him up against a building.

Damon had been just passing by when he noticed the battle. Normally he would have stayed out of fight like this, especially with one of the Alchemax Avengers involved, but Strange needed help. While he didn’t know him personally, there weren’t many in the slums who hadn’t heard of the man who strolled around healing the sick. Without Strange the poor districts would suffer countless lives. Saving him was worth whatever risk. Immediately he slipped into the nearest alleyway and changed into his costume.

He repeatedly pulled the car back and smashed it right back into The Thing until the car was totaled. Magneto released control of the vehicle and ran up to help Strange up, "You need to go, that may have only made him angry. I can hold him off but you get out of here.”
Hidden 9 yrs ago Post by Forsythe
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Forsythe Graf von Kaffeetrinken

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Cyrania + Janet


As they exited the warehouse door, Cyrania illusioned herself to be wearing a hooded sweatshirt, torn jeans, sneakers, and no mask on. It took less energy to maintain clothes only and this promised to be something that would take a while before actual combat. Then Alice telepathed to Janet, “Have a plan yet for when we get to the museum? Or are you waiting till then so you can acquire a full schematic or whatever that is?” While she waited for the answer, the brunette scanned around for any Alchemax men along their walk.

“I’m thinking the straightforward approach, for once.” Janet said, leading the way as she could access the GPS and GLONASS to navigate their way. Using some of the money form the hacked ATM from yesterday, the duet took a cab to the museum. “Go get us tickets. that should give us close enough. Once there, the security is designed to keep a human away, I should have no problem getting to the armor. It’ll take a while - for me - to analyze it and put it to work, I!d say between ten and twenty seconds. Can you keep up a forcefield against rifle fire for that long?” the Ultron asked, trying to figure out their tactic.

“Psh, easily,” Cyr answered. “It’s when it gets to a minute that things might get hairy. Alright then, so go to the counter, pick up tickets. Go to its location, keep the fire off of you while you figure out how to work it. Want me to teleport us to the front or are you planning on flying us out?”

“Teleport us? You can do the nicest things. Failing that… Well the armor dad made specs to has the flight capability so I should be able to plot the course safely, but I’m not sure yet. I might not even be able to get the armor to power up, it is an… antique. If all works well though, that’s the plan. Unless you mind being carried, in which case I suppose stunning everyone in the room and making a hasty exit would do. I can outrun them all and you can vanish well enough. If we separate, we’ll meet here.” Janet said, her palm projector displaying the location on a map and a differently colored line highlighting their intended path.

Cyrania studied the map intently, trying to remember the route and location in full before setting out. Once Alice thought she had it, she said, “Got it. I wouldn’t mind a carry at all but back-up plans are always preferable.” Then the cab arrived at their destination and readied for their departure, “And not a moment too soon.” Cyr made sure her disguise was still on, ran over the plan again in her mind, then turned to her partner and said, “Ready?”

“Made ready.” Janet smiled, and the two walked to the counter to get their tickets before joining the next group to go in. There were a bit too many innocent people for Janet’s liking, but she needed that armor now if she wanted to have a hand in combat. Speaking of which, she linked up with the spy satellite again and watched what the Vision was doing, calculating approaches and tactics.

The exhibit was rather interesting though, providing a good window into what they might actually meet one day. There was even a wax figurine of the original vision, a being a good bit more powerful than the one they were about to face if Janet was to judge. She nearly burst out laughing when the tour took them around a pedestal with a statue of one of the earlier versions of Ultron.

“MODOK, Red Skull,” Alice whispered silently the names as she saw their statues, remembering the images Merlin showed her . “Dr. Zola,” was whispered in fear and resulted in trembling. Then Cyr paused a bit as one in particular caught her eye. One figure was tall, white-faced, with long black hair, dressed in green, and wearing a strange long-horned helmet. “Hey,” the brunette whispered to her companion, “That one looks like Merlin, though he never wore anything like that helmet. Is it some unsavory relation of his? He never told me about that guy and I always thought Merlin never looked old enough to actually have lived through the Golden Age.”

“I’m afraid you are confused, miss.” their tour guide said, “This is none other than Loki, the evil brother of Thor, responsible for several major crises in the Golden Age. Fortunately he hasn’t been seen or heard from since. But rest assured, the new Avengers are certainly going to protect us if he choses to appear again.”

Janet paid only marginal attention to it though - her gaze was fixated on her prize, all sensors hammering at the red and gold armor in the next display. “And now we come to our newest acquisition, Iron man Extremis. As some of you may know, extremis is an attempt at producing super soldiers, but Tony stark modified the treatment to aid him in healing from meeting one of the test subjects and growing new connections that would help him operate the armor more efficiently. since then… miss? Oh my god! Security!”

The guard’s sudden outburst was triggered by Janet’s arms morphing into blades and slicing the front of the glass exhibit cage clean off. Now that the guide generously provided insight into how the armor worked, she had easy time analyzing its circuitry. “Cyr, now.” the Ultron signalled as her hand touched the armor, sending cracks of electricity all over, filling up it’s long depleted capacitors.

“Right,” said Alice, glad to have a distraction from what the tour guide said. Then Cyrania de Bergerac revealed her true colors as she let the illusion go in order to do a proper force field around herself and her companion. The rifle fire was intense but the brunette held and was even able to push the civilians out of the gun fire range.

Having scanned the armor, her outer shell morphed to provide the necessary connections as she commanded the individual pieces powered by vectored repulsor fields to assemble around her. It was over in twenty seconds. “Thank you for the wonderful tour, madam, but we’ll be off.” Janet gave a cheeky salute, raising a hand against one of the windows and blowing it clean off of it’s hinges. “Ready to leave when you are!”

The Outlands girl grinned, “Born ready.” And hopped onto Ultron’s back.

Sending the appropriate command, the armor’s engines roared to life and eased the duet ot of the window before picking up speed. Janet was however having some trouble. Unbeknownst to her, the armor was fitted with a dumb annoyance, but one that could fight back a lot better than SAM, who was for all intents and purposes an office clerk. This JARVIS thing was slowing her computing power down 15% only for her to keep it at bay. Worse, before she could stop it, it sent a distress signal to Stark enterprises AND the local Alchemax-ran law enforcement. “Trouble on the way!” Janet yelled over the sound of air whooshing around, pulling a sharp stop as autocannon fire whizzed in front of them.

Hidden 9 yrs ago Post by Omega Man
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Omega Man Micro Machinist

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The man called Strange picked himself up and spoke an incantation under his breath calling his staff to him. Crouching he said another small inaudible spell and his staff lit up a bit brighter healing the wounds he had taken with mystical force. The guy in the helmet showed up at the right time and place. Strange hadn't seen this one on the news like some of the others, but noted the dark clothes meant he probably avoided cameras. Marcus Dane stood, completely healed, and dusted his shoulder off. His eyes crackled white hot with mystical energy.

"It's okay, I remembered that teleportation spell." Strange spoke with a hand movement that sent the Thing into the Badlands with several savage Hulk type creatures around.

"So... they call me Strange. Thanks for the assist." Dane said approaching the guy who'd just put down what was left of the remains of the last car he was beating the Thing with.

Across town...

Spiderman got his game face back on and recovered from the attacks by the Vision android. Another player had hit the seen. Some guy with heavy artillery and a skull on his chest. Spiderman liked him already. Firing a few web lines at the Vision had him phasing out for a few moments and put his attention towards Spiderman.

The Punisher broke out what looked to be a recalled nail gun from three decades ago that was taken off the shelf due to it's power being able to shoot a nine inch nail seventy-five feet. A few shots fired left the Vision in need of time to repair his robotic shoulder but Spiderman dealt a crippling blow nearly removing the arm completely.

"You were supposed to send that back to Home Depot in the 70's," Spiderman said thwipping webs and swinging around the man clad in black, "...but this android must be something new Alchemax cooked up while I was away."

"And you've gotta materialize to heal your robotics apparently, so I'll go ahead and make sure you're stuck there for at least..." Spiderman began taunting the grounded android and blasting him with net webbing before his wounds were healed enough to go intangible and escape.

"Alchemax will be pleased to know you are not dead yet. We will be in touch, and next time I will not be alone." the Vision said disappearing through the cold streets of downtown NY.

~KL~
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