"No... That can't be," Danny mutters, shaking his head in disbelief. The problems had only started once they left their place in time, hadn't they? Kang had to be lying, or trying to trick the heroes.

But what if there was some grain of truth to it? If this world truly could be saved by the heroes' absence from the timeline, the answer of what they all must do would be obvious.

Misty... Luke... Colleen... Jessica, Matt, and all the others...

Would he ever-- could he ever-- see them again?

Kang's words are all at once shocking and confusing and threatening -- unsurprising for a man who has made his nefarious career on mind-games but as unpredictable as the events of time. The multitudes of truth and lies and warnings and threats -- or the correct and incorrect interpretations of all and none -- can be overwhelming, perhaps far too overwhelming for some.

"Are my words too much?" Kang says. "The greatest threat to your very existences... and perhaps, even quite possibly, not even by hand? Is the realization too much?"

For some assembled, it could be. Some of the heroes have been paralyzed into inaction nearly since the time they arrived, however long -- or short -- that they have been here.

Mental attack on Shang-Chi, Venom, Taskmaster, Storm, Machine Man (-4dX for multiple targets):
Solo d10
Ever-present Time-Traveler    d8
One Step Ahead    d12
(-d6 from Doom Pool)
Psyche Master    d10

Kang rolls 10,3,10,8 using d10,d8,d12,d10 ((10,3,10,8)).

Total: 18, Effect: d12

Physical powers and Menace Specialty unavailable for reaction roll

Doom Pool: 3d6, 3d8 -4dX -d6 = d8

Reaction Needed: Shang-Chi, Venom, Taskmaster, Storm, Machine Man
Next Action: any (except She-Hulk) (new round)

Venom just stares towards Kang, "Sorry, what were you saying?"


OOC:
Team d6
Unrelenting Savage d4 +1pp
Menance Expert d8

Total: 9
ED: d4
PP: +1 PP Total: 1pp

14:45, Today: Venom rolled 1,2,7 using d6,d4,d8 ((1,2,7)).

This message was last edited by the player at 18:47, Mon 14 June 2021.

Bishop has already proven he was willing to sacrifice himself by traveling to the past in order to change the future, a mission, if successful, would have erased him out of existence (or so, at least he believed).  He wasn't inclined to repeat it, since it felt like pointless posturing.  But if it would help spare the torment of incessive questioning from the rest of the heroes, then he was begrudgingly willing to share it again.

"Kang. We've been through this.  I traveled from the future willing to sacrifice my life.  That ain't good enough for you?"

Venom takes d12 Emotional Stress; incapacitated from making dice pool actions

As Venom is left stunned, possibly forever more, Kang breezes past the symbiote to draw nearer to Bishop. As he gets closer to the group, a smattering of things become apparent. One, that he leaves no shadow on the sterile, white floor. Apparently he would walk on air, if there was such in this place. The introspective heroes may have realized by now that their frozen bodies have not had need to breathe. "'Good enough'?" Kang mocks, his voice raising above the calmness he has frequently shown. "What is the travel of one who has made a stinted hop of a journey to the one whose maps now lead the way for infinity?" Bishop can see Kang's eyes widen in intensity. "You feel your intentions have been sufficient to save anyone? That you have made more than the ripple that even the most insignificant pedestrian has made?" Bishop may also be the only one who can see that Kang is vibrating at his edges, with intensity picking up as his voice rises even more. "If you knew you were now standing on the precipice of the greatest, most significant occurrence of yours or any time, would you even -- "

Kang blips, shifting halfway across the room in a pixelated blur, suddenly calm, with his hands behind his back: " -- To tell you your future, by one who can see. And tell the place you yourselves hold within -- "

Then back again, now closer to Bishop, his face pulled tight by ferocity. " -- And would you? Is it a pitiable denial of fear or a lack of actual care for those below you or an imbecilic certainty that heroes will win again? When you finally lose, how grand a loss must you suffer to leave a world devoid of life? How much can you ever admit is your doing?"

"Are you out of your mind?" Hank demanded of Kang. He was so furious that if the self-styled 'Master of Time' hadn't been keeping him immobile, Hank's hands would be at his garishly-attired throat. "How much can we ever admit is our doing? My doing? I built Ultron, for god's sake. I take blame for crap that hasn't even happened yet."

He took a deep breath and released it. Fury would do nobody any good right now.

"GET. TO. YOUR. POINT."

Danny listens on as some of his allies chastise their captor, sympathizing with their anger but perhaps doubting its effectiveness. After all, Kang has already shown himself to be indifferent to their emotions. Like it or not, Danny knows they're only going to get out of this through the power of persuasion: logical arguments, sound reasoning, and practiced negotiation.

Maybe backed up by the soothing effects of Chi hypnosis.

Attempt to subtly influence Kang using Chi, as a mental attack.

Team d6
Mesmerizing Window into Space d4 (Distracting) (+1 PP)
Mystic Expert 2d8 (Doubled from Scene SFX)
Iron Fist's Mental Stress d12 (-1 PP)
Kang's Mental Stress d12

22:15, Today: Iron Fist rolled 1,2,7,5,6,11 using 1d6,1d4,1d8,1d8,1d12,1d12 with rolls of 1,2,7,5,6,11.  Iron Fist trying his hand at a Jedi mind trick, to make Kang consider releasing the group.

Spending my last PP to add a 3rd die to the total.

Total: 24
Effect: d8
Opportunities: 2
PP's: 0

"Kang. If you brought us here to have us killed, you'd have it done by now. The fact that you've gone through all this trouble to find us clearly means you need our help. So for God's sake, man, let us help! Whatever personal stake you've got in all of this-- whatever you need us to do to set things right, if that's even possible-- we're here to help you. But we can't do it as your prisoners. If you let us free, you can trust us not to turn on you. Betrayal isn't how we-- well, most of us-- operate."

If Taskmaster takes offense at that last part, then so be it. As for the Iron Fist, he keeps his focus on the time-lord, reaching out with his Chi and trying to soothe Kang's state of mind. As he does so, he also has to fight down the despair in his own heart at the thought that he is never going to see his loved ones again. That he and his friends might fail, and see their world lost forever.

That's it, you blue-faced bastard, look into my eyes... I can do this!

From rolling my own d12 of stress, I automatically stress myself out. If it takes Kang with me, it was worth it.

Next Action: Anyone
This message was last edited by the player at 06:11, Mon 05 July 2021.

Add d8 to Doom Pool from Iron Fist's Opportunities

Defend from Iron Fist's mental attack, Total: 24, Effect: d8:
Solo    d10
No Place So Quiet (no distractions)    d8
Psyche Master    2d8
Iron Fist mental stress    d12

Kang rolled 4,2,2,3,2 using d10,d8,d8,d8,d12 ((4,2,2,3,2)).

Total: 7, Effect: d12

Doom Pool: d8 +d8 = d6,d8

A PP to Iron Fist for (soundly) defeating Kang.

Kang stands. Motionless. Before Iron Fist, facing the hero. A glance turns to a look. A look turns to a gaze. Time passes. Or doesn't. Instead of Kang blurring or blipping or disappearing to reappear or phasing in and out of this reality, his form is solid and still. An expenditure of time can depend on the perception of he or she or it who observes it. Since time moves at eternally equal speed, it is up to who it is moving through to decide how long it has happened. In a moment buried by eternity, now is that. On a body frozen, Kang's arm moves in half an arc, finally to stop.

Then as still as Kang was only a moment or moments before, he blurs -- horizontally then vertically then horizontally -- and appears on the other side of the circle of hanging bodies, nearer to Yellowjacket.

“The point’?” Kang scoffs. “Must every detail of your existence be so clearly delineated and fed to you like an infant that will grow to have no effect on the world around him?” Kang’s voice cools, appropriate to nothing but his own whims. “What if ‘the point’ was your very presence here? What if 'the point' was to remove you from your timeline such to destroy it? Or... to improve it?” In the middle of the circle of immobile heroes, Kang leans back on his heels, clearly in his zone. “Could you suppose that the catastrophe arose from your absence? Or if a benefit was from your absence? Would you still wish to go back? Would it be better or worse to be returned to the moment of catastrophe? Or to know that you missed it entirely? Even from there, would you still think you had the chance to save your precious world? Or could you live the rest of your short lives knowing that you missed it? What if -- "

Then he disappears in a blur, and when he reappears near to Iron Fist again, as animated as he was only a moment or moments before, he is still. Except for his arm, which starts again like it has the original momentum behind it, arcing toward Iron Fist in front of him. Kang's entire form moves, not just in bodily movement, but the entire mass of himself, going forward in sputtering degrees but leaving a trail behind him like he is moving as fast as light. The trail spreads, behind and in front, stretching to and away from the form in a straight line, reaching back to the mesmerizing window into blank space in the middle of the chamber and the hanging circle of paralyzed combatants. In the middle of the blur Kang is only slightly more cohesive, save for the arm coming down toward Danny Rand, ending in a fist with an index finger thrust from it, pointing at the immortal Iron Fist. Only the martial artist can see the time-conqueror's face forming speech, and would be close enough to hear even whispers coming from it, if there were any words to glean. Instead, Kang's silent face twists inward to a furious snarl, his eyes fiery, his mask shifting to a deeper, purple hue in rage, the rest of his form becoming more translucent then brighter, increasingly blinding to anyone who can happen to view the transcendence, slowly and eventually blurring and stretching and pulling and expanding.

To white.

Time goes by. As it ever has.

Then Kang is standing in the middle of the circle of heroes, perhaps like he began. He makes no sound and looks to his side instead of at anyone. His body is fully formed, and for as long as anyone can see him he is solid, with no blipping or twitching or blurring, stable for longer from that point than back to as long as anyone has been here, as if nothing is happening to him or from him or around him. If his quiet form is not peaceful, it is at rest.

To his side, what he has been looking at, is a small, red circle. It is a button. Kang presses it.

Kang presses the button... and nothing. The room, the blankness of the walls, the window into space -- everything freezes. If Kang had been there, he would have frozen. Was Kang there? Nothing exists where he might have been standing, but looking at the spot is only looking through it, and the sides around them, and the top and bottom, pulling in to cover where he might have been, not stretching to collapse with motion but as eyesight narrows in a futile attempt to discern a presence, until the mind turns inward, a turn into the slowest spiral, a dizzying pulling upward motion matched exactly with a fall downward into and through the window below, meeting in the middle to leave floating, as before, but now possibly able to move, except that there is nothing around to push against to mark any movement, no air, no atmosphere, no space in all the empty space. An enormous blind spot that takes an entire field of vision.

The only thing you can see is inside your mind’s eye, a recall of memories. Anything that has happened in your lifetime still resides as ever in your mind, but new images wash up into colors as vivid as anything you have ever seen. Pictures coalesce in front of you, murky then sharp then either, like the flashes of memory before lulling to sleep or violently losing consciousness, but slowly, like you have all the time to look at them:
Captain America, with a contraption attached to his back. The device radiates energy and his mouth is pulled wide in an agonizing scream.
A white-haired man with a purple cape and the planet Earth behind him through a window. He looks grim but not aggressive.
A man wearing a skull-mask outside a futuristic jail cell, with two men in costumes leaving the cell and passing by him.
Iron Man, with his helmet busted to reveal the face of an unconscious Tony Stark, armor nearly destroyed, bound and strung from above by lethal electrical cables. Then another Iron Man flying up to him. Then another. Then another.
A skyscraper that appears only long enough for the upper half of it to explode.
An armored figure walking through enough fire for it to conceal all of them save for a cape.

[8 blank lines suppressed]

Then either it goes black or your consciousness drops out like the physical sensations of your body falling and separating and flowing through space but it’s only a feeling since you have nothing to gauge it, yet your disembodied mind goes forward, though a place either toward or away from oblivion, but from where you are it does not matter. This feeling of floating or even flying is not unfamiliar, but once you even realize that you have enough consciousness to realize anything, there is resistance below the feet you find you suddenly have, and the awareness of gravity comes just before it crushes you into the ground below and you have to catch yourself from falling. The next feeling to come back is smell, all too powerful from the acrid stench of pollution, having been so present in your life that it’s a familiar memory when, smelling it again, you realize how awful it is in the first place. Then the noise: HONK!

The world -- back in the world -- struggles to swim back in to focus around you, and few would be able to tolerate the sudden overstimulation: people and cars and trucks and people and walking people and honking and the noise and the noise and the noise. Yet all of it is still. There are minor movements but nothing is flying at you. There is no immediate need to defend. There are lights overhead: green, red, yellow, then they switch, then they switch again. Yet more noise as you regain any further perception: HONK! HONK! HONK!

You’re standing in the middle of an intersection in downtown Manhattan.

She-Hulk blinks then ducks, from nothing. She looks around frantically at the heroes assembled in the middle of the busy, criss-crossing streets. “Everyone! Is everyone okay?! Is everyone here?!”

She quickly gets a reply, though not a real answer: “Hey! Outta the way!” from somewhere outside the intersection. For the moment the stillness holds, but the noise continues, as it ever does.

(All Physical Stress is eliminated.
Any Mental or Emotional Stress can be stepped down for the cost of 1 PP or XP.
Any Mental or Emotional Stress can be stepped up to earn 1 PP (with the standard maximum of 5).
A combination of both of the above can be used.
No Stress can go over d12.
Any Stress stepped up from 0 starts at d6. Any Stress stepped down from d6 goes to 0.
Please post what you would like to do, as well as if you want to pass on it.)

"Will I dream, Father?"

"That's a good question, X-51. To dream is to imply some sort of autonomous consciousness. Should you happen to find yourself in a dormant state, your security protocols and maintenance subroutines would continue functioning which could very easily replicate a kind or sort of dream-like state."

"What if I die, Father?...can I die?"

"Could your positronic brain be formatted and erased?...or your power core go critical and fail? Yes, X-51, much like a human experiencing heart failure or a brain aneurism. However, unlike an organic lifeform, you could remain in such a state for extensive periods and still be brought back online as long as your core programming remained intact."

"...and if my positronic brain were wiped?"

"Tabla rasa, X-51...a clean slate, so to speak...devoid of any experiences prior to such a wipe..."

***

X-51 reels from the sudden jarring temporal distortion as his internal clocks overclock to compensate for the glaring disparities of prior existing space-time.

"Danger, Ms. Walters...Temporal Anomaly...Kang...and...we should probably get out of the intersection." states the mystifying Machine-Man as he strides over to the nearby sidewalk on extensible legs. "Attempting to discern current position along the space-time continuum..." continues X-51 as he begins to tap into radio waves and scan media for the current existing time and date.

X-51 will start the scene with D6 Mental Stress as a portion of his positronic brain is tasked to make sense of seemingly senseless. X-51 would also like to spend an action using his D10 Cybernetic Senses to accurately identify the time and date of the localized environment they (X-51, Ms. Walters, others) are co-currently experiencing as well as run a search program for The Star-Spangled Avenger - Captain America, whose life may very well be in jeopardy.

PP: 1
This message was last edited by the player at 20:09, Sat 25 Dec 2021.

Bishop head throbbed.  Travelling backward and forward in time (and again, and again), all within the span of the last few days(?) left him disoriented.  Which year was it?  What was he even doing here?

The mission.  Remember the mission

The blasted noise made it harder to concentrate.  He needs to find somewhere quiet.  To think...

He squinted, then wobbled through the intersection, using the cars for support as he ventured down the street

HONK!!

"Hey, I'm walking here!" Yellowjacket shouted, waving his hand at the cab driver who'd just blown his horn. It was unlike him, but he wasn't feeling one hundred percent himself.

He shrank himself down and flew off to the side of the street.

[Stepping back Mental Stress to d10.]

HONK

Venom instinctively shot a webbing line to a nearby building to stick to, "Oh my. This smells so good....many more minions here! But where is our plucky young sidekick that wants to but never becomes a love interest? "


OOC:
Losing 1 xp to roll mental stress to a d10

Did... Did I do it?

The last thing Danny had seen was Kang's furious expression as he'd mouthed something only the martial artist could observe. The Iron Fist had, like his companions, demanded the conqueror release them. And when Kang had proven... difficult... Danny had, on a whim, tried to influence their captor's mind using the power of his Chi. Had it worked? Or had his words simply pushed the frustrated villain too far, causing him to release them out of exasperation?

There would be time enough to find out later. For now, Danny clutches at his head in pain from his latest time-jump. His reflexes, however remarkable most of the time, are now so dulled he can barely react to the sudden traffic. And neither, apparently, can the drivers account for his startling arrival. He gets clipped-- lightly-- by a passing car and goes down, dazed but unhurt.

"Anyone... catch the number... on that plate?"

Spending the PP I got from stressing out Kang to step back my Mental Stress to d10.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:22, Tue 21 Dec 2021.

"If I could feel my fingers I'd cross them in hopes that he doesn't mean me," Spidey says as he leaps over Venom and out of the street to stick upside-down to the bottom of the streetlight overhead. "But if we're all here and not missing any limbs, then all's well that ends well, right? Surely I'm not the only one who could use some time off from being gone for so long. How long were we gone?"

Machine-Man adjusts his oversized monocle for a surrogate eye and replies to Spider-Man, "Approximately four days from the moment we experienced the first space-time anomaly at the underground SHIELD bunker at the behest of Captain America when Bishop blasted an unknown target, Spider-Man." X-51 pauses momentarily before adding, "There seems to be a problem, though...my preliminary scan of this particular place in space-time has no data referencing the Star-Spangled Avenger."

PP: 1

"What are you saying?" Hank asked Machine Man. "Did Kang return us to a timeline with no Captain America? What else is missing?"

"There is a 0.166666666666667% chance I could be in err..." X-51 replies to Yellowjacket offhandedly as a rudimentary antennae extends upward from his shoulder. "I am not operating at 100% efficiency, but even at my current, albeit rudimentary, state...not extrapolating any data and/or reference regarding Captain Rogers is, at the very least, somewhat disconcerting. Attempting to extend search parameters..."

"Surely there's something there," Spider-Man says amid the car-honks. "We didn't go back in time."

"Well, what I mean by data...," Machine-Man replies to Spider-Man as one of his fingertips blossoms into an miniature dish which he affixes to his shoulder-antennae, "I mean information that can be useful in regarding his current location and overall state of well-being. Specifics are unusually scant for one whose identity is publicly known...and that is saying a lot compared to how much data I have already screened, like the tabloid article about a young woman claiming to have his love-child. I am fairly certain that information is erroneous..."

"Yeah, we've all been there," Danny mutters to Machine Man, dusting himself off as he gets to his feet. "Let me guess, the National Enquirer?"

Stepping carefully out of traffic, he adds:

"Well, if we don't know where Cap is, how about we find someone who does? SHIELD keeps tabs on everyone. We should find out what they know."

PP's: 0
This message was last edited by the player at 21:51, Wed 05 Jan 2022.

Venom raises a hand, "This may be crazy, Which is kind of our thing, anyway...how about just ask one of the nice people on the street, maybe read the cover of a newspaper?"

"Newspapers. Sometimes I forget that they still exist." The obvious idea, and it had to come from Venom, of all people. Hank sighed as he shrank to insect size and flew down the block towards a nearby newspaper stand. He re-enlarged to take a newspaper off the nearest stack and drop a dollar on the counter.

The first thing he did was check the date.

Yellowjacket has to fly a ways to find a newspaper stand.

The intersection stays clear. There are plenty of cars waiting to cross and continue on their ways but they're sitting still, deadlocked. There are still plenty of horns honking, especially at the heroes who haven't cleared out, but since no one is going anywhere, it seems as if they're doing it just to have something to do. If there are plenty of citizens who are grumbling about being here, it seems to have little to do with heroes obstructing their paths.

"If we remember Cap," Spider-Man says, then, pointing at the people mulling around you, "and they remember Cap," with the sudden and collective realization that there are a lot of people wearing red, white & blue and holding shields and wearing cheap masks "then he probably still exists." Spidey looks out at people on the sidewalks, many of them headed east, more dressed in American patriotic garb then street-clothes. "Hey, what day is it, anyway?"

Pym finds the date on one of the few printed newspapers: July 4, the same year and shortly after the transference explosion happened in the underground S.H.I.E.L.D. bunker that took you to the future (and various points beyond).

(A cursory look at the surroundings shows you're at the intersection of W. 55th & 6th, in the heart of Manhattan: https://tinyurl.com/36anh4dt. [The location could be important but not in relation to Trump Tower.])

Bishop wasn't quite used to the concept of traffic. There were a lot less people in his future, the roads weren't serviceable, and you wouldn't really want to be caught in the open even if they were.  Foul language he did understand quite well, however, and resisting the urge to punch the nitwit's lights out, he found his way into the sidewalk, together with the masses dressed up in blue, white, and red.

Admittedly, Bishop wasn't the smartest of the bunch.  But sometimes the simplest approach could pay the most dividends.

"Hey.  Where y'all going?"  he stopped to ask one of the men in the Captain's uniform