Tony is already in the hallway, trying to dial out.

"Hello? Operator?

"Hello Mister Stark. I've examined your blueprints. Quite...impressive. But useless to you now."

"DOOM! Why bring all these innocent people into this?"

"You too must be punished. The Fantastic Four trespassed. You used the bounty of my land without permission and gave it to your toy soldier. Your little toy will be your undoing!

Doom begins to laugh maniacally.

*click*

Tony throws the phone down the hallway.

"DAMMIT!

[puppeted by GM]

Mary's been wincing for a while, but now she covers her ears and shrieks in pain.

"THE SHIELD! The whole building is VIBRATING and the Captain's SHIELD is reacting to it! It's going to..."

She faints across the table, trembling from her overloaded senses.

Reed holds her head steady and folds a silk napkin in her mouth.

"Of course. It's clear now. Captain America's shield is now a literal time bomb. He's going to make the vibranium in the shield explode!"

Rand tosses his drink aside as stands in front of the screen.

"VON DOOM! I challenge your claim to the Savage Lands! My parents were from the Rand expedition that crashed in the Savage Lands years before your machines came!

"The Rand expedition? PREPOSTEROUS!"

"What's preposterous is you never sending a human being to place a flag on Antarctic soil for you! One of the FIRST THINGS my father did after he bound his wounds was plant the Union Jack on the highest mountain in the Savage Lands!

"Irrelevant. The ROXXON corporation has landed in the territory at my behest and represents my interests."

"You know what happened to your corporate shills! The ones that didn't escape with Kravinov were eaten by beasts or slain by the humans who settled there centuries ago!"

"No human primitives can survive in the Savage Lands!"

"Again you underestimate the human spirit!"

Rand pulls off his jacket and rips off his shirt. As he bears his muscular and scarred torso he displays a necklace made of dinosaur teeth.

"So you collected some trinkets! That alone is not proof!"

"You need proof, do you?"

He puts his fingers in his mouth and whistles loudly and whistles. "ZABU!"

There's the sound of dishes and glasses being dropped in the hallway as a saber-tooth tiger bounds in, leaping across the tables to crouch at Rand's side.

"My father united the warring tribes...human and non-human...that drove away your corporations! He became their Chief...their KA-ZAR...a title which I have inherited! The Richards are welcome in my lands! YOU are not! The base of the world is under my management by the grace of King George! Unless you wish a war with the United Kingdom you will abandon your claim!"

His iron gauntlet clenches into a fist.

"A fascinating twist of fate, to be certain. I would have loved to challenge you for the title in the field of honor, one head of state to another...but it is too late. The trap is already set. You and your oversized cat shall perish. And your King...and every other ruler...shall one day bow to me..."

The projection blinks out.

Bruce removes the napkin from his lap and tosses it onto the table.

"Excuse me," he says by way of apology to Karla, before running over to Reed Richards' table.

"Dr. Richards, we should try to dampen the sound waves around Captain America's shield until we can figure something else out. A large quantity of fabric, or insulated rubber. Any ideas?"

'God damn it,' Karla mouthed silently, as the shocking situation unfolded, and the impending doom of all gathered here was articulated by a man who looked like the arch-villain of a Grimms' fairy tale.   The monarch of Latveria-?   She'd heard some stories, but had thought they were just that.

What was this-?   Why contract security if this was the plan all along?

It didn't matter.   She glanced toward Dr. Banner, saying nothing, as he sped off to try and contrive a solution with Richards.     She stared several moments as the blond man spoke his challenge, made his display, then whistled in his sabre tooth tiger.

This is *insane!*   Don't need my professional training to see that!


Karla got up, thinking quickly.   Others might be trapped, she had a means of egress...or should have, unless whatever was going on with the building would prevent that.     No time like now to find out.

She turned to go --  and found that her conscience -- the small amount she did have -- was pulling at her.

"Dr. Banner!   If you want another option, then meet me over there," she pointed, "Quickly!"   She didn't linger to see what he'd do.   Karla made her way over to an open expanse of wall.   Once there, she focused her will, and to anyone paying attention, her body took on a different tone - almost as if she were bathed in moonlight.  Just vaguely translucent.

She tried the wall with a hand, to see if she might pass through it, as usual...

[Private to GM: attempting my intangibility on the wall, to see if it works]

Hearing Karla's voice, Bruce looks to Richards, shrugs, and moves to join Karla, not slowing even as he gapes at the saber-toothed tiger.

"What's the pl--" he begins, then stops himself as he sees the light play off of her skin. "Ah," he finishes. Et tu, he muses silently, and waits to see what happens next.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 20:55, Tue 12 Mar 2019.

A sharp pain brought Mary back to her senses. Nearby a silk napkin lay, but it must have slipped from her mouth. She had bitten into the side of her mouth. She turned to spit out a mess of blood. Her ears were bleeding to, but it would get much worse if she couldn't keep her shit together.

"The vibranium of the shield... it's pure... the whole thing has a uniform... resonance frequency."

Mary put a hand to her head, but it didn't help with the ringing.

"But this is still... has to be taking... a lot of energy... Has to be a generator... some kind of amplifier... We have to find the device... or cut the power..."

"And get that shield to... the top floor... Reduce the killing area..."

Reed was a smart guy. He's figure it out. Send the shield to the top floor and get the people to the bottom. It might help. Mary didn't know what kind of potential energy a shield of vibranium had. But she wasn't going to worry about that. Instead she tried to focus on the frequencies most people couldn't hear, the ones that sparked and crackled with the passing of electricity. She had to find the source of the resonance or she had to find the power supply for the device broadcasting the resonance. This attack required electricity... a lot of it. If she could just find where that juice was coming from.

And here I thought this shindig was a dud, Peter thought to himself when Doom’s presentation began. Of course it was a deathtrap but even he was impressed by how venturous the madman was being by making enemies out of so many prominent figures. Stark and the Fantastics alone were enough that most would never want to cross but to add the likes of Captain America as well as every other person with powers here. Either man was insane as he looked or was completely confident this plan would be the end of everyone. At the moment he was leaning towards the latter since nothing here had tripped off his Spider-Sense, which was troubling to say the least.

He made a mental note that when he escaped from here to track down the woman who invited him to this party. Even if she did not know he was a vigilante she was still the one responsible for being here and he intended to make sure she would fully regret her actions. It also meant he would have to survive this but with so many capable people there had to be a solution to this problem. For now he took a couple more pictures, first of Doom on the screen followed by some of the party goers such as Rand and the giant feline that came roaring into the room as well as the woman whose body took on a translucent quality.

He stowed the camera away for the time being, knowing there would be other opportunities later on.  Out into the hallway was his next move or would have been if not for what he heard someone else say about trying to find the device causing all the problems. He recognized the lady, Mary and he turned to address her since she sounded like she had some clue as to what was going on. “Sorry Miss, but how are we supposed to find something like that?”

The shower of sparks that flies and the shot of pain from the first touch causes her to jerk her hand back.

Karla watches Susan obfuscate the shield, and on a hunch she immediately tries again. She passes through the wall to find a glowing dagger hovering inches from her face, and the strange foursome trying to break in while she's breaking out.

[Karla is now in the Outside the Hotel thread]
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:13, Wed 13 Mar 2019.

Reed looks around the room, then sighs. He pulls off his tuxedo jacket and folds it on the table then undoes his bow tie.

"I suppose we're past the point of formalities. At least I have a chance to test my unstable molecular polymer fabric in the field!"

The room gasps as Reed's body begins to distort. His torso widens and stretches like taffy as he starts to wrap himself around the shield.

His features begin to distort and ripple.

"REED!"

Susan leaps forward, trying to pull him off. She grabs the shield with one hand where it's still exposed and it seems to vanish. Reed collapses in a half-melted state to the floor.

"I've made the shield invisible and broken the feedback loop between the cage and shield. The bomb's not defused, but it's reset. I don't know how long I can keep this up, so you need to find a way out of this cage!"

She looks down at her husband.

"The unstable molecules were adapting to both your stretching abilities and the vibrations! You would have sped up the explosion! Now please keep it quiet, I need to concentrate..."

She seems to pantomime wrapping her arms around the shield and shuts her eyes.

Seeing Karla pass directly through the wall, Bruce takes a deep breath and sighs, "What's the worst that could happen?" After all, he was already trapped in a room with super-powered beings at the whim of a madman threatening to blow everyone up.

Exhaling, he attempts to follow the lovely woman to...wherever it was she'd gone.

Not surprisingly, he bumps into the wall.

Unfortunately gamma irradiation does not confer phasing abilities.

Roberto after hearing what happened on the phone lines decides to head towards Reed Richards. Well, Tough luck. Hey Reed Richards when I get out of here, do you know of a means to contact. Dr. Doom? It might be worthwhile to do so. Roberto asks Reed Richards.

Reed Richards is slowly piecing his cellular structure back together and can't be bothered.

"You and me both," Ben grunts from the table behind him.

"If I ever get my big rocky mitts on that tin-pot dictator I'll mortalize 'im!"

Well, Thank you for your time. Roberto decides to investigate the area, and see if he can find anything that could be of some use if not. He'll go to the bar, and make sure he's properly drunk before the bombs detonated.

Bruce rubs his nose and scowls. Karla had instructed him to follow her, then had cut out without providing a means for him to do so. Or did she mean for him to wait here for her? And what about Reed Richards?

The scientist turned to see what Richards had made of himself, and widened his eyes.

"Is everyone here some kind of super-powered freak?" he wondered aloud. On the one hand, it made him feel a bit less self-conscious about his own condition; on the other, he was worried about what would happen should the Hulk decide to come out and play in a room full of titans.

"Karla?" he called into the space where Karla had stepped. "Can you hear me?"

[Private to Bruce Banner: The frustration, the anger, is beginning to rise within you...]

This building is at least a century old, made of solid masonry. No mere human could S M A S H ! that wall...

A reply was never given to Peter’s question or at least one he heard for he suddenly felt compelled to leave the room. It was as if someone was leading him by a thread in a way and the more they pulled the less he could ignore it. HIs eyes shifted to the kitchen and he felt the sensation grow stronger. HIs feet began to move as his expression changed to one of determination at learning what was going on here. Whatever this was had a direct line to him and he knew of only one being that had such a connection. Maybe it was leading him to the kitchen or maybe it was a warning. No matter the case he was going to find out. He pushed the door open to the kitchen and stepped inside.

There’s several workers holding hands in a cirlcle, tears in their eyes as they pray loudly to Jesus. The tingle rises, the door to the deep freezer beckoning.

Peter barely gave the hotel employees a glance before he continued to move. He could not blame them for asking for someone to save them and hopefully their prayers would be answered. For him he was going to keep following this insistent sensation within his mind. Maybe he was going crazy or this was a symptom from the bite he received in the battle with the bipedal lizards. Whatever it was he was not going to be deterred until he had his answers, the reporter within him would not allow him to walk away. He pulled open the freezer door slowly then took a peak to see what the compartment held.

You open the door to a fog of ice vapor. Among the blocks of ice, hanging cuts of meat and boxes of food broken and scattered, lies a body.

One of the staff it seems, still in his white apron, his neck obviously broken.

“Damn it,” Peter swore under his breath then looked back at the people in the prayer circle. “Hey, can one of you get it together long enough to go tell everyone we have a murderer running around? Do any of you know who this stiff is?” He waited for one of them to acknowledge him just so no one would think he was the one responsible for the death. Once that was done he moved closer to the body and examined it as well as the crime scene. While he was not a detective he still knew enough to look for clues and hopefully some sign as to why this happened or more importantly, who committed this crime.

One of the petitioners looks up.

"We all gon' die anyway. Dat was Charley. He was new in town. We din' know much about 'im, Suh. No 'scuse me I gotta talk to Jesus 'bout my next event."

He looks down again and groans out snippets of Gospel choir with the others.

Her hand smarted from that release of energy, but she'd live --  it had worked!

She passed back through to this inside, grabbed Banner's arm, said "Don't resist!"  and pulled him through with her.

Now that Sue Richards was keeping the shield from vibrating Mary's headache lessened. But she was still no closer to finding the source of the cage. She needed some distance.

"Johnny, would you do a lady a favor and burn a hole through the floor here? As you might expect, stairs and I don't get along real well."