Issue Eleven: The Revenge Of Kang

Benni runs right past the grenades as they explode around her, completely unaffected by them and tries to do a charging attack on Punisher. Her face determined as she watches Centennial try something to help protect him from the grenades.

combat

Best the police can tell, the "victim" was in the midst of an armed robbery attempt. The Punisher happened to be in the store at the time and prevented the robbery as only the Punisher would. The victim is at least stable now, and being transported to a local hospital under police guard.

Meanwhile...in the sewer...

Centennial Man manages to place a telekinetic wall between himself and the hurled grenades. Benni, meanwhile, charges right past, seemingly looking to drop seven feet of Hawaiian-Italian payback on the Punisher.

Benni slams into him, feeling the now satisfying crunch of what was probably a rib (not hers), and knocks him to the ground, stunned.

The last thing he sees before fading to black is probably Benni and Centennial Man standing over him with their fists cocked back.

Several seconds later, the pair emerges from the manhole cover with Punisher's unconscious body in tow and an absolutely horrible stench in their wake.

Blackbird's still topside, waiting for his damn maps. He makes a memo to look into preloading that sort of thing into his HUD and waves at the two before flying on down.

"Nice work, you two. Did he give you any more trouble?"

Benni has Centennial carry the injured Punisher out of the sewers with his telekinetic ability, figuring that will be a smoother way to be carried and less likely to aggravate the Punisher's injury.

"We got him." The tall woman calls out as they approach the others, "I might have broken one of his ribs." Benni blushes and shrugs sheepishly at Blackbird because part of her thinks he deserves it, but that is an unkind thought. "Not much trouble, just another one of us grenades." She watches as the police take custody of Punisher and chuckles at some of the wise cracks about the smell.

Benni makes an effort to stand back a bit from people, as she catches a whiff of the sewer smell she carried out with her and wonders how hard it is going to be to get the smell off of her outfit as she tries to breathe as little as possible until she gets a bathe.

Benni listens to the police explain what they think happened, "Was there any bystanders that witnessed what happened? Was the store even open?" Benni wonders as she checks to see what times the place is open, feeling there is something more going on.

Benni gets a confirming response to both queries. After a quick debrief with the officer in charge, Benni feels a little more confident that she hasn't missed something.

Until someone asks "didn't Punisher have a van?"

A quick check of the neighborhood reveals no such suspicious vehicles, so it must be somewhere else...didn't EnergyStar say when she was kidnapped that Punisher had a driver?

Oh, well, perhaps it is a mystery better handled by the police once he regains consciousness.

The heroes, fresh from another victory (although not all of them are smelling quite fresh), are back at Avengers Tower within the hour and find themselves greeted by MinuteMan shortly after their arrival.

"I heard the report - nice work, guys...uh...and lady...why don't you take a couple moments to freshen up and meet me in the conference room upstairs. We have a visitor."

With MinuteMan's cryptic statement peaking your curiosity, you quickly take care of business and head up to the conference room. MinuteMan, Blue Marvel, and Jericho Tesla are already present, as is a fourth gentleman some of you recognize...
"Good morning", the man in the eye patch grunts as you enter. "I have a little problem I could use your team's assistance with. It has to do with a little piece of garbage your friend, the litterer here, discarded." Nick motions to Jericho when he makes the 'litterer' remark.

"I need a team to test some equipment. For reasons I'm not at liberty to discuss until I get your acceptance, I believe you are the best team for this little project."

"Nick never steered us wrong in the past", MinuteMan says glancing between the group of you. Turning his head towards Nick and speaking in a confident and deliberate manner, he adds "I assume he doesn't mean to start now".

Nick returns the icy stare. After a brief pause, Nick adds "project may only be a week or two at most. It will be at a SHIELD facility here in New York. So, can I get a 'we're in' so I can give you the details and drop all this cloak-and-dagger crap?"

Benni arches in eyebrow as Minuteman greets them at the door with announcement that they have a visitor and a meeting as soon as they are all cleaned. She rolls her eyes as Minuteman tries to subtle hint to her and Centennial that they need to take a shower immediately to get rid of the sewer smell.

She walks smoothly to her room, stretching out her long legs to eat up ground faster, without any extra effort. As soon as she closes her door she walks into her shower and turns the heat all the way up to scalding, which feels mildly warm to her practically invulnerable body and just steps in with her uniform on. She doesn't want to put her uniform into the clothes hamper until at least the smell has been washed mostly away. While in the scalding water, she strips off her outfit and uses her strawberry scented body wash lavishly. She has no concern in ruining her outfit, because Janet Van Dyne made the outfit very durable to have a chance for it to survive the things she will jump into as part of her duties for the Avengers. And then spends over 30 minutes washing, lathering, conditioning her mane of long hair with strawberry scented shampoo and conditioner. After she is finished with her shower, she wrings out her outfit and then puts it aside to be taken to be steamed cleaned later. She takes her super hot, heavy duty hair dryer and fans the hot air over her wet hair for 10 minutes to dry it out. Getting dressed for the meeting, she puts on tight jeans and a light, yellow silk scoop necked blouse and then heads to the meeting room.

Benni's interest is definitely piqued and with Minuteman's nod of approve for Nick, she leans forward, "Sure, I am in. I have been on plenty of secret government research, so I know the drill." She shrugs off the cloak and dagger crap.

Benni leans back with a thoughtful look in her eyes, "But I suspect that this is is about Orphu tech."

"I'm in!" Centennial Man blurts out. He seems to be wearing a clean and a slightly different bodysuit. Still form-fitting and with the trademark three white Adidas stripes running down it, he sports a solid purple suit instead of the black one. Perhaps he tries to color coordinate so that he can better match with the Taskmaster's shield that hangs from his back. "Provided that you're not a pirate and I don't have to scrub decks."

After arriving at HQ in his Silver Hawk hero disguise He will head straight to the meeting room after quickly grabbing something to eat. He does not need a shower and should have more then enough time to do this in. When he makes it to the meeting room first among the team that was on the mission he has one of those Multi form conflicts he is famous for. Ah Nicolas it is good to see you again old chum. So what brings you back to the city of good neighbors I assume another job You really need to consider taking a vacation friend. After a few moments of odd silence he will realize he is currently in the wrong form.

(ooc wops that would be some karma for breaking the fourth wall My bad.ooc)

He will quickly change forms into to the much more known between them at least Agent X. Later during the meeting Agent X will say I am more than willing to say yes to this it will at least be interesting.

Blackbird doesn't need any prep time, and he's the first to make it to the conference room. Eyeing the eyepatched individual who, by reputation at least, has to be a high-ranker, he offers a handshake and a, "Blackbird," but then goes to lean against a wall to wait for the rest of the group.

His eyebrows go up at Jericho being called a litterer, but he nods at the final offer. "I'm game."

Nick gives CM the single-squinty-dismissive-eye-stare for an awkward moment before Christopher and Blackbird add their agreement as well.

"Ms. Ricci is correct", Nick responds. "Your time-displaced friend here, Mr. Tesla, arrived in the present through the use of an Orphu time machine the Nazis had captured back in the 1940s. The machine was rediscovered by Tesla, Marvel Boy, whom Blue Marvel was pattered after, and the Communist Red Skull impersonator back in the 1950s. In order to keep it from falling into the Skull's hands, Tesla piloted it here. It wound up off the coast of NYC and Tesla swam ashore as the vessel sank."

"Expositionexpositionexposition...", MinuteMan can be heard mumbling.

"Well, SHIELD's managed to recover the vehicle and since Tesla's the only man known alive who's piloted the thing, Blue Marvel's predecessor is the only other person known to have seen it before we recovered it, MinuteMan has previous time travel experience, and the Avengers' North team already has a time machine based on Orphu technology, we figur'd you folks'd be the best candidates for trying to make sense out of how the thing's supposed ta work."

Fast forward five days.

For the last five days you've been giving the S.H.I.E.L.D. time machine a real workout, traveling to and from some of history's most noteworthy events in order to test the machine's guidance system. The navigation systems are labelled in some alien tongue with approximate German and English translations recorded next to each.

You are returning to your proper place and time from another pleasant jaunt in the time machine. Outside the machine's viewports, you can see the odd combination of colored lights that make up the temporal vortex, the strange region of timelessness that the time machine passes through while it is between destinations.

Suddenly, the time capsule begins to groan and wheeze, a sound it's never made before. This might be trouble!

Whoever would like to be the daring (or crazy enough) person to volunteer to be piloting this thing at this moment in time (does that phrase even apply?), give me eight Agility FEATs, please! If there are two characters whose Agility scores are within a rank of each other that want to co-pilot, I only need rolls from the higher Agility character at +1CS.