Marvel: Enter Mount Wundagore!

Back to superheroes for the third and final Act! Here's last time.

Our heroes swoop in towards Mount Wundagore, and the weather immediately turns against them. Snow and blinding hail kicks up, and it's all Maria and Bucky can do to keep the quinjet level. But they break through the weather and see the cave entrance that Spidey saw in his vision - and three figures waiting for them.

Two of them are the huge rock monsters that Spidey saw before, but the third is a more normal-sized human with a long cloak. They can't quite make out other features, but they see the figure move their arms and then a beam of magical energies streaks towards them! Maria takes evasive action, and then has to do it again as the rock-monsters hurl boulders at the jet. But Maria is a hell of a pilot, and the quinjet turns around and lands. The back opens, and the heroes exit the plane into battle!

The figure, horribly, turns out to be Doctor Stephen strange, whom we last saw back here. But his flesh is pale and sallow, his eyes and milky, and he looks, well, dead. "Necromancy," mutters Magnus. "Don't see that every day."

Bucky takes up a position by the plane and gets the attention of the rock-monsters, who tromp over towards him, fists raised. Maria runs and slides past Strange, and sees into the cave. She sees carvings on the walls that make her eyes itch, and a huge stone slab that's clearly meant for sacrifice. Wanda Maximoff hovers above it in the lotus position, and behind her, the bas-relief of the Scarlet Witch. She doesn't acknowledge Maria or the situation out front.

Spidey tries out his brand-new taser-webs at Strange, but the amulet around Strange's neck opens and Spidey sees into eternity. A good grounding in science and a generally strong mind keep him from going mad, but it's a near thing. Magnus, now able to teleport more freely as the Null-Dimension Cloak keeps him unobserved, appears behind Strange and attempts to magic him away, but Strange counters the spell. Maria lashes out her whips at Strange, but doesn't realize Magnus is in the way (since he's invisible) and he gets a brief jolt - but more to the point, is made visible for a moment. 

Strange turns and the amulet on his chest opens again, and Magnus is silhouetted in blue for a second...but he blows sand in the amulet's eye and forces it to close before his Cloak and be compromised. The rock monsters close on Bucky and one of them throws a punch; Bucky blocks it with his metal arm, but the other one punches him in the back! Bucky grits his teeth (and moves his stress die to the doom pool), and punches the other one, cracking its chest, and trusting the team to have his back. And they do - Spidey, realizing that Strange is more a Magnus problem, fires a bunch of webs and yanks the other rock-monster back. 

Strange casts a spell and the shadows on the ground reach up and grab the heroes, worming into the cracks in their souls - all except Magnus. His cloak just sucks up the shadow and devours it. Maria unleashes her electro-whips and lashes Strange's arms, and Magnus follows up with a splash of holy water that melts his flesh. Spidey yeets the rock-monster off the cliff, and Bucky punches the other one again, cracking it further, but it raises up its arms and pounds him into the ground - he blocks with his metal arm but this thing is far too strong. Bucky picks himself up, wipes the blood from his nose, and throws one more punch, crumbling the rock-monster into chunks. 

Meanwhile, Maria tries to up the voltage on Strange and put him down, Magnus fires an energy weapon from somewhere in his Hat, and Spidey just swings over and punches him, but physical attacks don't bother the zombie. Bucky even pulls his head off, but it floats back up and reattaches itself. His cloak detaches and tries to wrap around Maria's face, but she dodges. 

And then something changes. Purple, flaking patches appear under Strange's dead eyes, and he speaks in a voice that echoes in all four heroes' heads. They feel the owner of that voice seeing them, and then Strange's head falls off, his body collapses, and from the depths of the cave, the heroes hear the clack of Wanda's shoes on the stone. 

They have the Scarlet Witch's attention. 

Marvel: End of Act Two

Last night we finally played Marvel again! Here's last time, from way the fuck back in May. Quick session, since all we really needed to do was a bit of prep and wrap-up for Act II.

Our heroes have arrived in Siberia, in an old HYDRA base that was once used to to train a group of Winter Soldiers. They were then put into cryo-sleep against the day HYDRA needed them, but then HYDRA fell, and since Tony Stark vanished in 2012, Zemo never hatched his plan to lure Iron Man and Captain America here, and they died in stasis. The base itself still works, however.

After eating some MREs of questionable heritage ("freeze-dried...borscht?"), they discuss what to do and how to do it. Maria points out that electric shock seems to work pretty well, in controlled doses, for snapping people out of Wanda's control, and figures maybe she can do something with her taser rods to make them more powerful (but not so powerful that they run the risk of, like, killing someone). She also thinks about a Faraday cage, but one that could disrupt Wanda's influence, and both of these seem like worthwhile endeavors.

Peter chugs a bunch of soda from the facility ("this is really caffeinated!" "I'm pretty sure it's just pure amphetamines.") and gets to work designing the cage and how it will install into the quinjet. Bucky builds it the specifications (with Maria's help), and Magnus infuses it with the magic it'll need. All four of them then get to work in a montage set to some lovely orchestral music (it's not a needle-drop since this isn't a James Gunn movie) installing it into the quinjet.

That done, they take a moment to relax, and Magnus pokes Peter. "Hey, that sense you've got. Some kind of...precog? Danger sense?"

"Yeah. Happens right before something bad, gives me chills, makes the hair on my arms stand up."

"OK, cool. Suppose we could amplify that? Like, so it's sensitive enough to find someone dangerous anywhere in the world?"

Spidey is game. He sits down as Magnus weaves some magic around him, and then casts his Peter-tingle 'pon the winds.

He follows the feeling of danger up and out, his consciousness flying southwest. He's not used to trying to go straight towards the sensed danger, but he fights through it, and eventually winds up at the base of a huge, black mountain. He finds a cave in the side, near the top, flies past two immense stone creatures, and there he finds Wanda, sitting in a meditative position, hovering, eyes shut, fingers stained black...

...but behind her is a bas-relief that makes his blood run cold. It's her, hair streaming out behind her, arcane symbols all around. The Scarlet Witch Ascendant. 

And that's where they're going - next time! 

Marvel: Avengers, Assembled!

Well, it's been quite a while, but here we are again!

Our heroes flee from the Power Broker's building and head back to their base of operations (the old Justin Hammer warehouse). Spider-Man hits up the vending machines, which, amazingly, still have some food in them ("this is real dry"). Bucky and Maria hit Hammer's office; Maria hopes maybe there's a computer system she can tap into and see if this place has anything useful, but it's looking like it's been abandoned for too long. Magnus goes to the main storage area, draws a pentagram on the ground, and starts trying to call up some extradimensional help. He's annoyed.

They haven't been at this too long, however, when a set of gigantic fingers puncture the roof and rip it right off the building! A giant man (hey, that's catchy) wearing a red-and-grey suit stands outside the building, and as he finishes ripping the building off, two men fly in. One is wearing green power armor, the other has mechanical wings.

The first one swoops in on Magnus and fires a sonic weapon, but Magnus rolls out of the way. The other man swoops in and fires a pair of automatic pistols at him, and Magnus pulls up his arm to shield himself, but he's definitely under pressure. 

And it gets worse! Magnus turns and sees a red-haired woman step out of the shadows. He recognizes her (from New York) - Natasha - but notes that her eyes have purple, crackly textures around them. She lashes out and Magnus blocks the shot, but his runed suit flickers purple. She's trying to affect him magically - that's not good!

Spidey leaps out of the break room and fires webs at Natasha, but she flips up onto the metal shelving unit and snaps into a low fighting stance (or "pose," if you like). Magnus calls up holy fire gouts from the floor, hoping to direct them to burn out the magic that this Wanda person is obviously using to control these people. Bucky emerges from the office and punches the shelving, hoping to knock Natasha off her pins, but she notices and lands safely. And then Bucky hears a familiar spanng and a colorful disc flies at him. He ducks just in time, and his best friend steps out of the shadows and catches it - but he has the same purple crackly stuff around his eyes. 

"You know this isn't gonna go well for you, Steve," mutters Bucky.

"Who the hell is Steve?" he replies.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man's danger sense tingles, and suddenly a woman in a grey/silver suit appears from nowhere and blasts him with some kind of energy weapon on her wrists! He staggers backwards, convulsing. Maria sprints across the room and starts up a forklift, and crashes into the shelves, tipping them and knocking Natasha back. The heroes are badly outnumbered, here.

Steve and Bucky fight, but neither can get much of an upper hand. The giant guy shrinks down to a more normal size and fires a tiny disc from his wrist; it strikes the forklift and Maria jumps clear as it shrinks to the size of a Hot Wheels toy. War Machine swoops in and aims a kick at Maria, but she rolls and tries to hit him somewhere vulnerable with her taser rod, but there's no obvious target. 

Magnus pulls two vials of pink liquid from his hat, tosses one to Spidey, and quaffs the other. Both of them feel their injuries start to heal. The woman with the wrist blasters disappears, but Spidey realizes that she's just shrinking (and growing wings!); she returns to normal size and socks Magnus, and then shrinks down again. Spidey leaps on that opportunity and webs her to the wall. Natasha slides across the floor and aims her electrical widow's bite at Magnus, but his suit absorbs it (but is more purple than red, now, which Spidey points out). 

The guy with wings lands on a ledge and taps on a wrist display, and a bunch of rockets launch from his pack! They strike the ground near all of the characters; Magnus rolls, Bucky whips up his arm to shield himself, but Maria and Spidey catch some shrapnel. Maria tries to zap War Machine again and fails, but does manage to duck under his follow-up swing. 

Magnus pulls out a black cloak covered in eyes and...mouths from his hat (the Null-Dimensional Cloak d12), hoping to shield himself from whatever magic Wanda is using to pinpoint him. Falcon drops a filter over his purple crackly eyes and goes looking for him, and Magnus can feel it weakening his invisibility. Bucky manages to land a kick and then a follow-up blow to Steve, knocking him into the debris. "Stay down!" "I can do thi-"

Just then the building is bombarded with gunfire and explosives. A wall collapses, and a bunch of men in tactical gear, led by the white-hot form of Aldrich Killian, roll in. The heroes seize on the chaos, though, and escape severally, and then meet back up at the quinjet and get the hell out of Madripoor.

Maria puts the jet on autopilot. "Well," she says, "going to ground isn't working. I think we need to do something-"

"Find Wanda and kill her," grumbles Magnus. His cloak happily eats a power bar he found. 

"Does that cloak have...never mind, I don't want to know," says Bucky. "Head north. I can get us somewhere we can rest, and it's far enough away from Wanda that at least if she's gonna send Avengers after us, she'll have to send them."

The quinjet lands in Siberia, and Bucky opens a set of blast doors into an old HYDRA facility. It's cold, the tech is old, but it's remote and defensible. The heroes settle down and rest, licking their wounds, and Magnus meditates and purges the dimensional markers on him. But they all know it's probably a matter of time before Wanda finds them, and they're going to need to find her - and perhaps get some help. 

But who would help them? Bucky notes that they're just a quick quinjet ride away from a prison that holds another super-soldier, Alexei Shostakov, the so-called Red Guardian. He'd be good muscle, but is that what they need? 

We'll find out...next time!

Marvel: Grab Your Umbrella When Chaos Reigns

It's a pun, you dumb gopher. 

Anyway, our heroes have been mind-controlled and captured by the Power Broker, who is apparently a woman called Melina, not, as was previously believed, Aldrich Killian. They each come to in various stages of "capture."

Magnus has been stripped to his boxers and is strapped to an upright table. No one else is in the room, but he's clearly being observed because he can't teleport. Maria is strapped into a chair being prepared for interrogation by three Widows. Spider-Man is strapped down on a surgical table, a team of doctors about to start harvesting tissue. Killian is in the room, generally backseat doctoring, while Melina is nearby messing with a tablet. 

Bucky is in a room, on a bench, staring at a wall. No one has told him to do anything different.

Maria, recall, had managed to crack her Chemical Behavioral Modification with Magnus' help, and wriggles her bonds loose. One of the Widows gives her an order to stay still and leans in to re-secure her, but she resists the order, head-butts the Widow, and kicks her legs out from under her. The other two Widows attack - one swoops in with a taser, but Maria disarms her and zaps her, and then as the last one goes for the alarm, kicks her off-balance and takes her out. 

Maria re-arms herself and gets the door open, slipping out into the shadowy hallways...

Meanwhile, Spidey starts to panic. They're arguing whether to start with lymph or blood (Killian is disappointed to realize that his web-shooters are mechanical, not organic), but Spidey manages to channel that fear into strength and snaps his bonds. He leaps to the ceiling and Melina hits a button her tablet, and Spidey feels his muscles start to lock up - but then he fights through it!

Melina backs out of the room and tells Killian to find her when this punk is unconscious or dead, and Killian throws punches and then fire. Spidey, however, is way too quick, dodges every shot, kicks Killian into the floor (which causes enough damage to the room that a bin pops open and reveals his web-shooters!). Spidey webs Killian to the wall and hot-wires the door open as he starts to burn through it.

Magnus is annoyed. The power of the multiverse at his fingertips, but these people manage to capture him? He focuses and calls on a pact with an extradimensional being he made a long time ago, whispering one request to fulfill their bargain: chaos.

At first, nothing. And then from somewhere in the facility, Magnus hears a scream, and suddenly he's unobserved again. He teleports out of the restraints and out into the hall. Something's going wrong - the lights are flickering and he can hear people running around in a panic. A guy in surgical scrubs runs around the corner and Magnus grabs him by the neck. "Where's my stuff?" he growls, being as intimidating as a guy in his boxers can be. The guy sputters a little and Magus threatens him with being folded into the fourth dimension, and the guy breaks and points Magnus toward the lab down the hall.

Magnus runs toward the lab, but spots someone hiding in the shadows. Fortunately, Maria figures out who he is (pretty easy, given his garb) before tasing him. They talk briefly and then hear Spidey calling for them. They split up - Magnus goes to get his stuff and Maria goes to find Spidey.

Maria finds Spidey coming out of the door. She shuts it and fries the controls with her taser, and a moment later the door starts to heat up - Killian. They get the hell out of there; neither wants to fight Killian. Then they'd have to listen to him.

Spidey and Maria find a control room, figuring they can orient themselves and find Bucky. But the room is darkened, the lights are flickering, and there's some kind of black ichor all over the walls...covering the bodies of the two techs who were monitoring the camera feeds. They enter the room, cautiously, but the ooze slides off the walls and lunges at Maria!

She dodges and zaps it with her taser, and Spider-Man flips over it, lands on the console, and starts calling up schematics. Maria dodges out of the way of the stuff, and yells "turn on the sprinklers!" Spidey does, water cascades down, and Maria shocks the stuff again, dissipating it. Maria finds a map of the facility and realizes that Bucky is in a cell on the next floor down. She opens the doors, and she and Spidey run off to find the others.

Bucky, for his part, notes the open door, but does nothing. 

Magnus, now wet and glistening (we decided that since Stephen Amell plays Magnus this is pure fan service) finds the lab - door's open, and the sprinklers aren't on in here. There are multiple tables with all kinds of machinery and gear laid out, some of which doesn't look consistent with the tech on this world. Magnus notes that, but he's really more interested in the guy on the other side of the room.

In front of the guy is Magnus' runed suit, and the guy is poking at it with various tools, probably trying to figure out how to activate it. Magnus strides across the room and the guy looks up, curiously. "You've got one chance to live," Magnus says. "Give me my suit and the rest of my stuff, and get out of here, or I kill you in ways that don't even exist yet."

"Um." The guy gives him a once-over. "But you're just..." he gestures to Magnus' apparent lack of anything threatening. 

"OK, then." Magnus moves, and the guy slides his hands into some mechanical controls on his table. Two apparent piles of junk rise up into robotic turrets, and Magnus finds himself under automatic rifle fire!

Magnus dives towards the guy, under the line of fire, and finds his hat on a shelf under his table. "Oh, now you're screwed." He reaches into his hat to pull out a comically large mallet...but can't. Something is still watching. Maybe the cosmic being he called on earlier? Whatever it is, it's interfering with his powers.

The tinkerer (hey, that's catchy) realigns the guns, and Magnus decides that this isn't worth his while. He backflips out of the room, taking a few scratches and nicks on the way, and plops the hat on his head. 

He runs down the hall and meets up with Maria and Spidey, and the three of them find a stairway to Bucky's room. They try to get him to move ("ready to comply"), but figure they'd better crack the conditioning first. Maria has Spidey web him up and then shocks him with her taser, and somewhere in Bucky's head the thought occurs that they normally give him a bite-guard for this...and then he comes to. 

"Sorry," says Maria. "Had to snap you out of it."

"My head feels...full," mutters Bucky. Clearly he's still not entirely out of it. Meanwhile, Magnus pulls his suit out of his hat and puts it on; the Tinkerer looks away for a moment and looks back to an empty table. He shrugs; he wasn't really getting anywhere anyway.

The facility is still going haywire, and Maria notes that this kind of chaos probably got Wanda's attention - meaning she's probably on the way. They could confront her here? Bucky votes for leaving. They have a safehouse to fall back to, and he's not feeling 100% anyway. 

They find an elevator shaft and pull it open. Bucky slides down using his arm as a brace, Spidey just crawls with Maria on his back, and Magnus pulls a feather out of his hat and drops. (Bucky watches: "Is he..." Maria: "I'm sure he knows what he's doing.") 

The four of them land on the elevator, Bucky punches through it, and they drop into the cab and then out into the lobby. As they're leaving, a TV monitor kicks on and Killian's smug-ass face greets them. "OK, well, thanks for dropping by..."

Magnus considers whether his request for chaos is going to result in something eating the building. He hopes so.

"I'd say you've got about half an hour before some old friends drop in," says Killian, and the TV kicks off.

The heroes get out onto the street, and start heading back to base. They aren't entirely sure what's happening next, but out here they're a little exposed. 

Marvel: Raspberry Scented Mind Control

Back to Madripoor! Here's last time.

Our heroes are sitting in the office of Aldrich Killian, now also known as the Power Broker, apparently. The smarm is thick. 

Killian asks what the characters are looking for; they come bearing information about Wanda Maximoff (namely that she's alive). Maria, speaking for the group, is cagey, and Killian is happy to keep talking. He says that Dreykov, the former head of the Red Room, brainwashed Wanda and forced her to kill her own brother. This did not end well for him; she kind of snapped and destroyed his flying fortress (with him in it!) and it crashed somewhere in the wilds of Siberia, apparently killing Wanda, though now Killian is learning that isn't the case. Maria notes that Wanda seems to be infiltrating whatever she comes across, mind-controlling superpowered individuals. She's not sure what Wanda's endgame is, but Magnus is of the opinion that if left unchecked, Wanda could very well destroy this world.

As they're talking, Magnus notices a slight scent of raspberry from a little air freshener kind of thing. It's starting to give him a headache. 

They keep talking. Killian asks what they're looking for, Maria says maybe some papers ("that's easy, you can get that on the streets") but also some help finding Wanda. Killian says he's happy to help with that, and turn his considerable tech towards finding her. Maria opens the floor for barter, and Killian's initial ask is blood and tissue samples from Spider-Man and some demonstration of magic from Magnus. Killian hits a button on a remote and shows footage from cell phones and security cameras of the heroes' exploits in Malibu - they got from New York to California in minutes, and that's tech Killian would love. 

Spidey is not, of course, interested in providing such an invasive favor, and Killian says it's fine, make a counteroffer! He notes that he could even the playing field for Maria - after all, the other three people she's running with clearly have some superpowers, and he could arrange that for her. He's got access to super-soldier serum (which Maria is hesitant about), but also...he holds up a hand and his fingers glow white-hot. "All kinds of options," he says.

At this point, Magnus notices him idly start an executive desk toy clacking away, and the other three watch it, their eyes moving rhythmically back and forth. 

Magnus looks at Killian and gives him one chance to free the others before things get messy. Killian just cracks that slimy smile he has, and the intercom in the room flips on. Magnus wastes no time - he pulls a gun out of his hat and blasts Killian in the face, knocking him back into the wall. 

The other three - Bucky, Spidey, and Maria, stand up, and a voice from the intercom says something in Russian. They reply in Russian as well ("ready to comply"), and the voice, a woman's, tells them to incapacitate the magician. Spider-Man shoots a bunch of webs at Magnus, but Magnus backflips away. Bucky throws a punch, but Magnus blocks, and Maria grabs a fire extinguisher and blasts it at his face. He pulls a little ball with a face out of his hat, and it sucks up the foam and falls inert to the floor.

Killian stands up, his broken face knitting, his flesh starting to glow. His shirt and coat burn off, revealing washboard abs and black dragon tattoos on his chest.

(This is probably meant as an intimidation tactic, but Magnus is hard to scare.)

Magnus pulls a small, black hexagon from his hat and slaps it on his back, and it extends into Exosuit d12. At this point, a door opens and two toughs in black - but heat-glowing like Killian - enter the room. One goes low, one goes high, and they punch Magnus, damaging the suit (d10). A panel on the wall opens, holding Maria's gear, a couple of guns, and Bucky's arm. Bucky reattaches his arm, grabs a gun, and fires at Magnus, but can't get through the magic shields. Maria follows that cue and slides across the floor, trying to hit Magnus with her taser rod, but isn't able to get around the suit.

Spider-Man shoots more webs, trying to get Magnus' hat away, but the webs bank off the runic shield. Killian swings a fiery punch at him, and Magnus produces a glowy blue stone and freezes his hand (Killian shakes off the rime angrily). Magnus chortles and bats away a chair flung across the room by Bucky, and pulls an airhorn from his hat, hoping to break the mind control. He blasts it at Maria, and the mind control cracks a little.

The Extremis soldiers go in for another attempt to break the exosuit, but Magus soaks it up and laughs. "Is that really the bes-" 

At this point, Bucky punches him in the head with his metal arm and knocks him into a wall. Magnus slumps, unconscious, and the voice on the intercom gives a cue. Bucky and Spidey collapse, and Maria does, too, figuring she'd better follow suit and bide her time.

Killian works his jaw and regrows a tooth, and the Extremis soldiers power down. A door slides open, and a woman in a black body suit with tight braids walks in. 

She orders that Magnus be stripped of everything - clearly his power comes from his gear and she doesn't want to give him any options. She points to Bucky and Spidey in turn. "Him we sell. Him we study. Tissue, blood samples, everything. I want to know how his powers work." She points to Maria. "She probably knows things worth knowing. We squeeze her like sponge, then we get rid of her." 

Killian nods and lets the others get to work. "Right, Melina."

Marvel: The Power Broker

Last night was played some Marvel, entering Act II of this phase of Magnus' Multiversal Journey. Here's last time.

Our heroes are on a quinjet, heading for the island nation of Madripoor. Maria Hill takes the jet into Madripoorian airspace without a problem, and finds the skeleton of a mall that was never completed that has enough room to land (there's a rusted sign on the chain-link fence that says "COMING SOON - AVONGERS MALL!"). 

The heroes take a moment to breathe and make a plan. They need a base of operations, but they also need to find Wanda without her finding them. Maria notes that Madripoor is nominally a representative democracy, but in fact organized crime runs the country. In the last few years, the crime world in the country has been consolidated by an unseen figure known only as the Power Broker (Magnus: "Dumb name." Bucky: "Rack up enough of a body count and the name doesn't matter."). 

They decide that Peter, Magnus, and Bucky will go and try and find a place to camp and use as a base, while Maria will go and try and get a line on the Power Broker. They leave the mall site and find themselves in a pretty deserted area - streetlights are out, very little foot traffic, and it's pretty eerie. 

Maria heads into Low Town and looks for a business acting as a front. Her tradecraft serves her well; she finds a noodle restaurant whose clientele looks pretty exclusively "henchmen." She goes in to buy noodles, and everyone kind of stares at her. She asks the woman at the counter where she can find a guide for this city, someone who can get her to someone who can do business. The woman tells her to sit down and eat her noodles, and about an hour later a man with a long braid, broad shoulders, and lots of tats comes in and gets her.

Braid-guy puts her in the back of a car where another henchman is pointing a gun at her. He puts a hood on her, and they drive around for a while (they fail to get her lost, however). They lead her, still hooded, into a building near the bridge to High Town, up a flight of stairs, and sit her down on a couch. A woman's voice with a light British accent tells her that if she takes off the hood and things go badly, she isn't going to be leaving, but Maria accepts the risk. Braid pulls off the hood, and Maria finds herself looking at an older woman.

Maria tells her that she has information about an existential threat to the Power Broker and is willing to trade said info for some assistance. The woman, Selby, has Maria put her fingers on a tablet to run her prints, but nothing comes up - she's a cipher (recall that she wiped her info previously). That's enough to convince Selby that this person has something to say, and says that if she's going to put this up the chain she needs a little more detail. 

"Scarlet," says Maria. 

"Scarlet? Fever? O'Hara?"  

"Witch."

Selby says that the Scarlet Witch is dead, but Maria corrects her - Wanda Maximoff is very much alive and extremely dangerous. Selby says that she'll take this higher and gives Maria a burner, and her thugs take her back to the noodle shop (hooded, not that it matters).

Meanwhile, the other three head closer to the wharf; Bucky figures that's a good place to find a disused warehouse. There's more foot traffic here, some guys playing dice on the corner, other guys loading stuff into warehouses, but they find a medium-sized place with a rusty chain on the outer door. No lights, doesn't look in use, and getting closer they see why. A rusted sign on the door says "Hammer Industries." Justin Hammer is still in prison. 

Bucky breaks the lock and they make their way in. They find that the place is in pretty good repair. There's nothing in the warehouse proper, that's been picked clean, but there are interior rooms where they can use the lights without being noticed. The power works, there's a locker room with a shower, and there's even a vending machine with preservative-laden food. 

Spidey gets on a computer and tries to find information on the Power Broker, but the searches take him to some pretty dark places on the web and he backs out. He goes and takes a shower and pops some aspirin to help with his aching muscles, and Magnus conjures a little cartoon heart in a jar to fix up his injures. He also pulls out what he calls a "dimensional veil generator," a gadget that throws up magical static and should keep Wanda from finding them, at least while they're in the building. 

Maria returns and updates everyone, and they dig in and relax. The next day Bucky goes out to buy them some clothes. Maria gets on a computer and looks into what SHIELD is doing. She finds that they're dumping resources into finding Bucky, Spidey, and her. Spidey's aunt and a couple of his friends have been arrested (Maria decides not to tell him this just now). Magnus is mentioned, described as an "unknown enhanced individual," but it's clear that the dogs are out for all four of them. Also, there's mention of some kind of national address later today...

Maria relates most of this to the others. She also gets a call on the burner from Selby - there's a meeting tonight. Selby confirms how many are coming, and tells Maria to be at the noodle place. And then they all settle down to watch this address.

The address turns out to be from Steve Rogers ("Shit," says Bucky). He shows pictures of Bucky, Spidey, and Magnus, and informs the world that Bucky, the Winter Soldier, appears to have been reactivated as an enemy asset. He doesn't know if this "magician" is responsible, but seems to be involved. He doesn't know if Spider-Man is working with him deliberately or is being forced, but does note that he's familiar with Spidey's work and knows that New York thinks of him as a protector. He appeals to the world to stay away from Bucky, but to report any of these people. As the press conference ends, the heroes notice a red flicker in his eyes. "Damn, not Steve," says Bucky. "He hits hard."

Maria asks if Magnus can come up with a way to detect Wanda's magic, so as to know if someone is under her control. He says he probably could, but needs a sample of her magic so he can calibrate such a detector. She asks him to work on it, but for now they need to go to their meeting.

They go to the noodle shop and eat, and a while later two SUVs roll up. The heroes are separated, but not hooded, and driven across the bridge to High Town. They arrive at a high-rise and are put in an elevator, which opens at a very high floor, but with a barred grate in front of them. 

Braid appears with a cart and takes weapons from them - Maria's guns and taser rod, Bucky's guns and knives and his arm, and Magnus tosses in a gun just to fit in. The cage opens and they're shown into an opulent office. Someone sits in a high-backed chair with their back to them, but they're more interested in the tech.

There's a next-gen computer setup on the desk. Bucky looks for exits and only sees the one they came in, but with this kind of tech there's probably security he's not seeing. He's also somewhat concerned that, whoever this is, they don't feel the need for security. That means this "Power Broker" is either an idiot (unlikely) or a badass. 

They all sit down and Braid offers them drinks. At this point, the person in the chair swivels around and greets them. 

"Hi. My name is Aldrich Killian."

Marvel: WE ARE THE IRON LEGION

Yesterday we're back in an MCU spinoff. Off we go! Here's last time.

Our heroes stumble down the hall to one of this facility's many break rooms to have some tea and talk this through. Spidey reports that he's never had dreams like this before, certainly never dreams that he tried to attack. The others figure that Wanda is screwing with him, but then Magnus notes the he thought Strange's spell covered this? Bucky suggests that if Strange is dead, his magic may have died with him, though Maria is still unwilling to accept that he's dead. 

Magnus pulls a monocle out of his hat and peers through it at the others. They all have blue symbols around their heads, indicating that the anti-mind-control spell is still intact. Maybe Wanda found a workaround through dreams? Was it used on Spidey for a reason, or was he the only one with an "open" enough mind to allow it? (Mechanically, he's the only one with any emotional stress.)

Magnus roots around in the hat and finds a Dreamcatcher d10 to give to Peter. Bucky and Maria also consider pharmaceutical solutions, maybe something with a paralytic to keep him from doing things in his sleep (whereupon Spidey enthusiastically takes the dreamcatcher). Bucky goes into another room to start doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations for dosage, not that he's really qualified for that, while Maria goes to the storeroom to see what drugs are on hand. Magnus and Spider-Man remain in the break room, chatting.

The lights flicker. (Maria: "That can't be good.") The PA kicks on. "We are the Iron Legion! Do not be alarmed! We are the Iron Legion! We will assist you shortly!"

And true to their word, a horde of robots appears, breaking into teams of four and attacking the heroes!

One group burst into the room where Maria is working and fires their repulsors at her, but she dives and ducks and avoids it. She finds a console and frantically tries to shut down the robots and manages to send a kill code through. One robot collapses, but someone is actively fighting her for control. There's someone else in the system - in the building?

A bunch of robots burst into the break room and attempt to subdue Magnus and Spidey, but Spidey is mostly untouchable. He backflips over one and yanks out some important-looking components, and the robot collapses. Magnus pulls an EMP device out of his hat and tosses it, dropping one robot, but they're apparently too well shield for it to work on all of them. 

Two squads of robots converge on Bucky, but he shields himself with his arm and then smashes one robot with another. The assault continues, though, with more and more robots charging in, and Bucky's arm gives out momentarily. He takes a repulsor blast and falls to one knee, surrounded and Overwhelmed d8. 

Maria dives out of the room she's in and into another, shutting the reinforced door (Barricade d8). But then another squad appears behind her! ("Damn it, Tony, how many of these did you make?") She dodges their fire again and jams her taser rob into the console, overloads the system, and two more robots fall. 

Another group of robots bursts in the wall behind Spidey and zap him, knocking him down. He leaps to his feet and webs one to a wall. Magnus grabs a stopwatch out of his hat and activates it, speeding him up (Accelerated d10). He then pulls what looks like a screwdriver with a battery taped to it from his hat and jams it in the necks of the three robots still menacing him and Spidey.  

Bucky rallies and smashes more robots, and Spidey swings over to the room he's in and webs a whole squad of them down! Bucky grabs a robot and hurls it into another group, and Magnus follows Spidey, figuring he'll take a few more out...but something grabs the back of his shirt and slams him onto the ground. The wind knocked out of him, he looks around...but sees, and senses, no one.

Maria realizes that although the heroes are holding their own, the robots will eventually overwhelm them. She finds another console and preps the quinjet, creating a Safe Escape d8 for the heroes. She yells at them to get moving, and they abandon the facility.

Once airborne and out of reach, for the moment, they talk about where to go. Camp Lehigh? Too obvious. Nick Fury? Don't know if he's compromised. Magnus notes that he's got a house-in-a-box, but everyone's a little squeamish about magical solutions. They need to go somewhere not affiliated with the Avengers and non-magical. Maybe somewhere on the wrong side of the law...

Maria hits it - Madripoor. You can get anything there, and it's a good place to disappear. Bucky notes, though, that they can't keep playing defense. Wanda will get to them eventually. 

"Oh, don't worry," says Magnus. "I'm gonna fix these fractured ribs, and then I'm gonna find Wanda and throw her into a black hole." 

While the others might not necessarily agree with Magnus' proposed solution, they're all in agreement: They need to find, and stop, Wanda Maximoff. 

END OF ACT I

Post-Credits Scene: Back in the facility, just after the quinjet leaves, a man in a red-and-grey suit appears, seemingly from nowhere. His helmet retracts, and Scott Lang's normally kind eyes glow red and hard as he communes with Wanda. He shrinks down again, leaps on the back of an ant, and flies off. 

He does not bother to name the ant.

Marvel: Good Ol' Fashioned Bank Robbery

After nearly a month, here we are back in supers-land! 

Recall that last time, the heroes had left New York for Kamar-Taj, and then left Kamar-Taj for Malibu. They emerge from the portal into an alley in Malibu, and can smell sea air and hear people. Maria pokes her head out of the alley and sees they are between a bank and a candy shop. Ahead of her, a street and then a concrete divider, and beyond that, beach.

The rest of them step out onto the sidewalk, and Maria starts thinking about how to get everyone to the decommissioned Stark/SHIELD facility she knows about. Bucky glances down the road to the bank. "I think I shot someone there once."

Magnus just nods. Peter gets kind of wide-eyed, but then something else catches his attention - a sedan rolling down the street towards the bank with four people in it. Nothing overtly suspicious, but it's making his spidey-senses tingle...

He points this out, and the heroes see the people in the car pull masks down over their faces (Bucky: "Are you kidding me? Now?"). They pull around a corner and jump out, guns drawn, ordering the security guards from the armored car outside the bank to "GET ON THE GROUND!"

Maria, still hoping to avoid this exposing them, runs into the candy shop and tells them to call 911. Peter ducks back into the alley and changes into his costume, while Magnus kind of looks at the others ("Are we hero-ing?"). 

Bucky runs up and kicks the back tire of the getaway car, folding it in on itself and disabling the vehicle. He kicks it harder than he means, though, and the whole car shifts, and the thieves turn. Bucky realizes how easy it would be to kill these dummies, and he winds up Pulling Punches d8. 

Magnus comes up behind him and pulls a Whompin' Big Hammer d10 out of his jacket, and brandishes it menacingly at the thieves. The thieves respond by shooting at both of them, but Bucky easily deflects with his arm and Magnus' Runed Suit absorbs the bullets. 

At this point, Spider-Man lands on the roof of the bank and webs one of the thieves, yanking him up and immobilizing him ("No withdrawals for you today!"). Maria, back in the alley, uses her taser rod and a bit of technical know-how to set off the alarm in the bank, adding Alarmed d8 to the proceedings. 

Spidey jumps down onto the armored truck and tries to get the security guards to get up, but they stick to their training. He webs another of the thieves the floor, though. Bucky holds out his hand to a third thief and tells her to hand over the gun and get out of here, and, clearly the mastermind of the group, she does. Magnus says "say goodbye to your kneecaps!" and swings the hammer, but misjudges how big it is and hits the wall. The thief backs up and points his gun at a guard, yelling for the heroes to back off...but Maria, by now across the street over the divider, shoots him in the leg and he falls over.

The police arrive and start rounding up the thieves. Bucky gets the hell out of the way before someone recognizes him, and Spidey, not wanting to answer questions, swings across the street to land with Maria and Bucky near the beach. Magnus just starts walking away, but the police tell him to stay put - they need a statement. Magnus nods, probably planning on just leaving, but then things get weird.

Peter's senses tingle again. Turning around, he sees three humanoid creatures, glass skeletons with sand swirling around them, rise up out of the beach. Three more, these made of driftwood and seaweed, lurch out of the ocean. Magnus glances up and sees three more, these made of tar and roof shingles, drop off the bank roof and attack him!

They paw at him, maybe trying to immobilize him? He's not sure. All he knows is that when they touch him, he feels something watching him, and that feeling only half goes away. He thinks he hears a voice whisper "Magnus"...

The driftwood-creatures lurch over the beach, fall over the concrete divider into heaps, and then reform and keep lurching toward Magnus. Spidey leaps across the street to help, while Maria kicks one of the sand-creatures in the chest and shatters it. Bucky smashes the other two with his metal arm, and they obligingly fall apart.

Spidey grabs Magnus and leaps to the candy shop roof. Magnus pulls a vial of green liquid out of his coat and says "Can you throw this on target?" He tosses it up into the air, Spidey webs it and smashes it into the constructs, and the whole area burst into Greek Fire d10!

The driftwood-creatures are burned almost immediately. Bucky charges in, picks up a tar-creature, and uses it to push the other two into the fire, where they melt. But the fire is burning out of control! Magnus, figuring his work is about done here, pulls a doorknob out of his pocket and opens a trap door in the roof. "Come on, Spidey."

But Spider-Man can't ignore the fire burning out of control, and doesn't follow Magnus down. He leaps off the roof and webs a fire hydrant, pulling it open and spreading water everywhere. Unfortunately, he remembers too late that Greek Fire is basically napalm and it doesn't get extinguished by water. The fire spreads and the candy store starts to burn.

Maria grabs a fire extinguisher and puts some of it out, enough for anyone left in the store to run, while Bucky makes short work of the last construct. The heroes flee, all in separate directions. Magnus winds up eating a shaved ice a few blocks away. Maria gets on a bus and heads toward the SHIELD facility. Bucky ducks out of sight, avoids cameras, grabs a hat from a thrift store, and emerges to find Spider-Man sitting on a light post. 

Spidey changes back into his street clothes and the two of them head out. Bucky brings them to a HYDRA Cache he knows about - it's all covered in dust and grime, but there's some cash and a change of clothes, and it's a safe place to rest. 

Maria gets off the bus and finds the facility, easily bypassing the security at the front. She walks in as the system boots up ("welc - WELCOME - welcome"), and then tries to get a sense of how the land lays. 

It's not great. Whatever remains of SHIELD has been told by the Avengers that Maria Hill, with the help of Spider-Man and an unknown individual in a tuxedo, broke the Winter Soldier out of containment and went on the run and have been implicated in the death of Stephen Strange. Strange's death hasn't been reported by the mainstream media, so Maria is hopeful that he's not actually dead, but she's out in the cold and the most powerful people she knows are compromised. She notes, too, that the weirdo with the mustache "news" site dailybugle.net is screaming about Spider-Man, as usual ("just moments after Spider-Man helped to free notorious terrorist James "the Winter Soldier" Barnes, another Spider-Freak, this time in sunny Malibu, assisted gun-toting criminals in attacking and burning a city block! This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Spider-Cult that I have been warning about!"). 

"DON'T FORGET TO LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE!"

Maria sighs, and decides it's not safe to stay connected to SHIELD in any way. She smashes her watch, severs all ties, and goes rogue (which, coincidentally, completes her Coming in from the Cold milestone). She then takes stock of what they have available here.

The answer is "not much;" this place was decommissioned after Stark vanished. But there's a gen-1 quinjet in the motor pool, though it'll need some love before it's ready to fly. She goes out to a nearby taco truck and buys a lot of food, and then goes back and gets to work.

Magnus, meanwhile, finishes his shaved ice and makes his way across town to the facility. The door is locked, of course, but he just teleports to the other side of the wall into a nondescript-looking waiting room. The desk in the room sinks into the floor and two humanoid robots slide up into the room. 

"Attention! You are an unauthorized visitor! We are the Iron Legion! Do not be alarmed! Please state your name!"

"Um...Magnus the Magnificent?"

"'Magnus the Magnificent?' is not an authorized visitor!" The robots raise their fists. "We are the Iron Legion! Do not be alarmed! Please place your hands on your-"

At this point the Maria cancels the alarm and the robots slip back into the floor. "Why didn't you just use the doorbell?"

"There's a doorbell?"

BING-BONG. 

Maria lets Peter and Bucky in, and everyone has tacos (Pete: "Oh, tacos. Is there a more perfect food?" Magnus: "Well, if you want to be pedantic..." Bucky: "We don't.").

Everyone is beat, so they decide to get some sleep. Bucky takes first watch. He's got tar in his arm anyway, so he takes it off to clean it.

A few hours later, Peter wakes up. He's back in high school. The halls are dark, but familiar, and he hears glass breaking, kids yelling...and MJ scream. He runs down the hall, turns a corner, and sees Adrian Toomes, the Vulture, holding MJ up by the neck. "Hey, Pete. Told you I'd see you again."

Bucky, still cleaning his arm, see Pete come around the corner, looking terrified. "Hey, kid. What's up?"

Pete screams "MJ! No!" and fires webs. Toomes ducks out of the way, and then swings his bladed wing at his face. Pete dodges easily, but then feels a tingle from behind him! He leaps out of the way, just in time to avoid the powered gauntlet of the Shocker!

Bucky swings his arm like a club, but it's like trying to hit wind. Maria appears in the doorway behind them and tries to tase Spidey to stun him, but he leaps out of the way. Bucky throws his arm and bonks Spidey in the head, and Maria manages to land the taser, shocking Spidey out of it.

"Guys, what happened?" 

"You tell me!" says Bucky. "And I just cleaned my arm, and now there's all this web stuff in it!" 

"Sorry!" Spidey grabs the arm and starts pulling webs out of the joints. Maria goes to make some tea so they can figure out what the hell just happened. 

Marvel: Attack on the Sanctum!

Back in the weird miasma of multiversal mayhem! Here's last time.

Our heroes are in the Sanctum Sanctorum in New York. Bucky is standing in a hallway staring intently at a painting until he's told to do something else. Periodically he feels something pass him. He doesn't look. This place is well out of his experience.

Magnus the Magnificent finds a quiet corner and pulls a selection of bow ties out of his hat. He selects a red one and puts it on; red runes crackle to life around him. That oughta help protect him from witch-magic!

Maria Hill likewise finds a quiet corner and starts arranging dead drops - one for Nick Fury. One for her team. One for her neighbor to make sure to feed her cat. (That one is less a "dead drop" than a "text.")

Spider-Man wanders the trophy room marveling at the weird artifacts. Many of them are behind glass, but some are just out on shelves. One seems to be some kind of big metal...restraint harness? Spidey moves on and reaches for what looks like a music box. 

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," says a voice. 

"Who's that?" Spidey peers at the music box. "Where are you?"

"Turn around."

Spidey turns, and there's a tall, light-skinned black man standing there, wearing the same kind of weird robey things that Strange does, but his are green. He's also wearing a cloak with a hood. "Probably better you don't touch anything." 

"Sorry," says Spidey. "I'm Spider-Man."

The man nods. "You can call me Mordo." The man's gaze is unsettling. "Why are you here?"

Spider-Man proceeds to tell him the whole story, who he's here with, what Strange is doing for them. Mordo nods, and then steps in a little closer. 

"I think it's probably better if you go." 

Spider-Man shifts a little. "Well, as soon as we're ready, we're all going to-"

"No, that's not what I mean." The eyes take up Spider-Man's entire brain. "I think you should go, now, before this gets worse. It will. People who stand up beside Stephen Strange often end up dead, and this really isn't your fight."

"Well, I think...I mean, I'm..." Spidey tries to find his footing in this conversation, but his mouth goes dry. Fortunately Maria enters the room. 

"Hey, kid. You ready to go?" Mordo turns to her. "Oh, who are you?"

"Mordo."

"Really?"

Mordo smiles. "You could call me 'Your Excellency' if you really wanted to."

"I don't."

"Me neither, if I'm honest."

Maria feels the tension here, but isn't quite sure why. "I think we'd better go find Strange." 

Mordo gets a strange look on his face, and then...vanishes. Maria looks at Spider-Man, figuring his danger-detecting sense might give a clue as to whether Mordo is still here. Spidey is tensed, and Maria figures it's probably time to check on Strange. She pulls Spidey out into the hall where Bucky is standing, and yanks on a bell pull. A young woman in a maroon robe appears from around a corner. "Yes?"

"Where's Strange?"

"In the library, working-"

"WHERE IS THE LIBRARY?"

"What's wrong?"

"There was a man in the library. Wearing green. Said his name was Mordo-"

At this the apprentice's eyes get wide and she turns and runs. Maria, Spidey, and Bucky follow, past the room where Magnus was waiting ("hey, guys, what...OK, we're running"). They all run down a hall and the apprentice shoulders open a door. The sounds of gunfire and chaos spill out.

The others rush into the room. Bookshelves are knocked over and there are bullet holes in the walls. Strange is slumped against the far wall, bleeding. Mordo stands in front of him holding a quarterstaff, but Natasha and Yelena are flanking him, both armed!

Spider-Man flips out a web and disarms Natasha. Bucky and Maria flank the women, using the bookshelves as cover. Strange gestures and a gold shimmer appears around him; Mordo strikes with his staff and breaks it, and Yelena shoots him in the chest. 

Magnus steps into the stacks and teleports to Strange's side, and pours a red liquid into his mouth. The bullet wounds heal and he gasps. Mordo grimaces and strikes out with his staff, which breaks into three sections held together by crackling energy. It sweeps through the room - Bucky deflects with his arm, Spidey nimbly backflips over it, Magnus' runes deflect it, but it catches Maria and knocks her back. 

Magnus pulls a big gun out of his hat and fires at Mordo, but Mordo steps into the air, his boots making contact with glowing circles of magic and letting him dodge. Natasha fires a widow's bite at Magnus, but his runes absorb it, and Spidey fires a barrage of webs at Natasha and puts her against a wall. Bucky pops out of the stacks and yanks Yelena's gun out of her hand. She sweeps up a book and strikes at Bucky's throat, but he deflects the shot ("Really?"). Uncharacteristically, Yelena does not have a snappy retort.

Maria runs over to Natasha and zaps her with her taser rod - not enough to hurt, just hoping to shock her out of whatever the hell is going on. Natasha regains lucidity and tells Maria to get everyone away from here, and take the back door. 

Maria yells over her shoulder: "Get Strange, we are leaving." 

Magnus pulls a lei out of his hat and throws it to Spider-Man. "Put this on the green guy!" Spidey obligingly swings over Mordo's head and drops the lei around his neck, and he vanishes. ("Where'd he go?" "Hawai'i.") Bucky yeets Yelena into a wall and picks up the fallen sorcerer, and they all head down a hallway.

They hear gunfire and screams from elsewhere, and Spidey looks over his shoulder. "I'll catch up. I've gotta-"

Maria cuts him off. "No. Out the door. We are all staying together. Go." Spider-Man, still a little emotionally wrecked from his conversation with Mordo, obeys, but hears his aunt's voice in his head asking when he'll be home. 

Spidey feels danger and warns them before a barrage of gunfire roars out - widows! Spidey swings in and flips webs around, yanking the guns out of their hands. Magnus tosses a little wind-up sheep that explodes into sleep gas, and Maria lays down covering fire that forces the ones that stay away back away from the door. Bucky just charges in and socks one, and the heroes burst out the door into an alley behind the Sanctum.

Strange comes to as they're talking about where to go. "Put me down," he says. He barely manages to stand. "We need to get out of here." Explosions ring out behind them. 

"I think the 'Sanctum' needs a new name," says Spidey. Strange gives him a look, and then waves his fingers in a circle and opens a portal. 

"Where's this go?" asks Bucky. 

"What's the difference?" says Maria. "We'll know when we get there." She shoves Bucky and they go through. Strange goes to follow, but then falls forward with an arrow in his back. The portal closes, and the heroes find themselves...

...in some kind of temple? There are a bunch of people wearing red and orange robes, training in making sparkly circles. A few people are sparring. One of the groups is apparently being led by a big green minotaur (Spidey stares, Magnus shurgs. "Seen weirder."). A Chinese man walks up to them. "You're friends of Stephen? Where is he?"

Maria explains the situation as best she can, and the man - Wong - says that if the New York Sanctum has fallen and/or Stephen is dead, that's what's known as a Big Problem. They mention Wanda, and he's able to offer a little more information. He saw Wanda get sucked into the Dark Dimension along with Kaecilius and his other zealots. What he doesn't know is how Wanda got out again. Doing so would mean that either Wanda convinced Dormammu to let her go or she found a way to get out by herself, and either one is not good. 

He tells them to go to a small, square building and rest a bit, while he tries to figure what's happening.

They go into said building and talk a little, trying to decide where to go. Maria suggests Malibu - maybe one of the old Stark facilities might have some resources and be off the grid enough to reconnoiter. Magnus says maybe they should just track Wanda down and confront her - he's not interested in staying in this universe forever and that's gonna have to happen sooner or later. Bucky suggests maybe an old HYDRA base, but Maria's not thrilled about that idea. Spidey doesn't have much to contribute - he pretty much just knows New York.

Wong enters and tells them that the New York Sanctum suffered heavy losses (but is notably mum on Strange's fate). He notes that if Wanda has compromised Natasha, she might have compromised the other Avengers, so it's probably best if the characters draw on people or resources without that connection. Bucky notes that if Strange got hit with an arrow, then Hawkeye might be involved, which supports that "the Avengers are compromised" conclusion. In the end, they decide to go to Malibu (Maria calls up a Google street view so Wong can open a portal). 

Wong gives them some street clothes (including an official Avongers shirt for Bucky, which delights him). Spidey takes off his mask ("I trust you guys"), and the four of them step through a portal into an alley in Malibu, California. 

Marvel: Gargantos Attacks!

PREVIOUSLY ON...THIS GAME: THIS.

Our heroes - Magnus, Spider-Man, Bucky, Natasha, and Yelena - are on a rooftop in Manhattan as something large, loud, and invisible smashes its way towards them! It lashes out! Smash!

Magnus can't see it, but he's good enough at mystical sensing to dodge. Spider-Man relies on his Peter tingle and flips out of the way, and Natasha watches him and rolls the direction he does. Bucky puts up his metal arm and takes the blow, but Yelena gets caught by surprise and knocked backward ("OW, what the hell was that?"). 

Spidey flips a bunch of webs at it to try and make it visible, but it just rips them off. Bucky runs up and punches at it, and Yelena and Natasha both empty their pistols at it (to no effect). Magnus tosses a little blue globe at it and yells "Cover your eyes!", but the creature deflects it and it bursts harmlessly in the sky, making a cloud of blue paint.

Bucky winds up and punches it again, but again can't get a good angle (also his Superhuman Strength is still down). But then a jet of water erupts from behind them! Maria Hill emerges from a stairwell, using the rooftop's firehose (you know, like in Die Hard) and sloshes the thing. It's not visible, but it's Wet, so some dust clings to it and makes hitting it easier. ("Anybody got some glitter?") Magnus pulls an RPG out of his hat and fires it, but the creature deflects it. Natasha, however, fires a widow's bite and the thing glimmers with electricity for a second.

The creature wraps Magnus up in an invisible tentacle. Spidey jumps on it and tries to pull Magnus free, but the thing is too strong. Bucky punches the damn thing again and feels something give, and draws back a metal fist covered in purple goo. Maria cuts the supports on a billboard and drops it on the thing, which crushes it. It flickers and becomes visible:

Like this, but deader

The heroes take a moment and a breath. Maria looks at Bucky and asks if he's going to get back in the box; Bucky replies "no." Maria tenses, Natasha says that they needs his help, and just before things get unpleasant, there's a sizzling sound behind them. A big sparkly circle appears, and a man in blue with a long red cloak steps - nay, floats - out. Maria recognizes him: Dr. Stephen Strange. "I'm afraid I have to agree with Ms. Romanoff here," he says.

He invites everyone through a portal to "someplace safe," but when they step through, they note that Natasha and Yelena have not joined them. Strange mutters something about them having bigger issues, but then launches into an explanation. He introduces himself (Bucky confirms that his name really is "Stephen Strange" and that's not an alias; Maria notes that it makes his publications easy to find) and explains that the creature they fought was an interdimensional errand boy, acting on some powerful being's behalf. He gestures and the heroes see a magical recreation of their battle with the monster, but this time with the creature visible. Occasionally, red, glowing runes appear along its tentacles. "That's witchcraft," he says, "and I've only ever known one witch powerful enough to summon something like this. And she's supposed to be dead."

"You're kidding," says Maria.

"Huh?" says Bucky.

Strange nods. "Wanda Maximoff." 

Magnus rubs his temples. "Does she have like a red motif going? Because something pulled me out of the multiversal between spaces and dropped me here, and it had red glowing eyes."

"That's her," says Strange, "and if she can reach into the multiversal membrane things are worse than I thought."

Strange explains that beings who can physically travel the multiverse are extremely rare ("I've never met one - oh, wait, no, met a five-year-old the other day" says Magnus). Wanda apparently wants Magnus, and it's not hard to deduce that his nigh-unique ability is why. 

"Go back to the 'she's dead' part?" says Spidey.

"Right, sorry. Bit of explanation." A few years ago, he says, Wanda appeared in Sokovia with her brother Pietro, and fought the Avengers as they tried to take down the last of HYDRA. They fell off the grid after that, but then Wanda popped up in Kamar-Taj a little before Strange got there. Unfortunately, she fell in with a zealot named Kaecilius, and the two of them (and Kaecilius' other disciples) tried to bring the Dark Dimension here. Strange stopped them ("with the help of two very talented masters of the mystic arts"), and Wanda was sucked into the Dark Dimension along with the zealots.

"So she's not necessarily dead?" says Maria.

"When last I saw her," says Strange, "it very much looked like 'dead' was the next step. But no, I did not see her die. I don't know how she got out of the Dark Dimension, but it does seem like she's back, and she's after you."

"Yeah, I get that a lot," says Magnus.

"Does what happened with Ingrid have anything to do with this?" asks Maria. "She kind of turned on us and her eyes glowed red."

"Almost certainly," says Strange. "And that reminds me." He gestures, and all four of their eyes flicker blue for a second. They feel a cool, refreshing bath for their minds. Bucky winces. "Warn me before you mess with my brain?"

"I'm trying to keep her from messing with your brain," replies Strange. "Just a prophylactic spell." He also warns them against dimensional travel. "Obviously Wanda has some reach into other realities. I don't know if my protective spell would travel with you if you left this one. I think our best bet is to confront her here." 

Spidey pipes up. "Could you maybe do a spell to keep her from finding Magnus?"

Strange nods. "Alter the Shield of the Seraphim...yes, I think so. I need to do some research. Rest up, look around, and if you go to touch something and your instincts tell you not to...please listen to your instincts."

He leaves. Maria pops a couple of aspirin and chugs some water, still recovering from Natasha's widow bite. Magnus offers to find her a healing salve or something, but she declines. "Don't know you that well."

Spidey goes looking around and touches absolutely everything. Surely that won't have consequences...NEXT TIME!

Super Cortex What If Giant-Sized First Issue!

That's a rather jumbled title, I grant. 

Our next installment in Magnus' Multiversal Journey takes us into the Marvel Cinematic Universe! A little more fan-fic'y than I usually roll, but it's a world that all the players are familiar with. The original intent was to use the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game (which I've run before), but then I read Cortex Prime and decided to basically reverse engineer MHR using that. That allowed for some little tweaks, stuff like Crisis Pools and adding a new form of stress (Dimensional), stuff like that.  

So, in (very) brief: Earth 10763 is a spinoff of What If...Iron Man Crashed Into the Grandmaster (Magnus basically branches any reality he winds up in). Tony Stark didn't fall out of the wormhole after the Battle of New York, and so things progressed from there: No Tony means no ULTRON, no ULTRON means no destruction of Sokovia City and therefore Zemo never lost his family, so no Sokovia Accords. SHIELD still fell, Dormammu still nearly came to Earth but was stopped by Dr. Strange, there's a lot more work and "what-if"-ing that went into this but I'm not typing it all out. No Thanos, no Blip, that's potentially important. 

We saw Magnus the Magnificent arrive in New York last time. He drops down to street level to get a frappuccino, while his new acquaintance Spider-Man swings off following the sound of emergency vehicles. But let's rewind a little.

On the this particular day, an unassuming truck is heading across New York from Avengers Tower (still the base of the titular team; no ULTRON, so it was never destroyed, and the compound upstate was never refitted into the new base) to LaGuardia Airport. Driving the truck is one Maria Hill, former second-in-command to Nick Fury, now effectively the director of what remains of SHIELD (Agents of SHIELD isn't canon, fight me). Riding with her is a young agent named Ingrid, and a car behind the truck contains several more agents. Everyone is on edge - in the back of that truck, imprisoned in a transparent, cube-shaped cell with his arms immobilized, is James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes, the infamous Winter Soldier.

(Side note: Bucky escaped into the world after the fall of SHIELD, but in this universe was never drawn out of hiding by the assassination of King T'Chaka, since that never happened. Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson tracked him down some time ago, and they and the Avengers have been working on breaking his brainwashing ever since. It's...going OK, but no one's ready for him to be free just yet, least of all Bucky.)

The truck stops at a red light, and the back doors open. Bucky sees a figure wearing an army coat and a hat pulled down low slip in and shut the doors behind them. The figure puts a small, round device on the door and taps a button, and the restraints holding him in place snap open. 

"What's this?"

The figure taps the device. "Damn. It was supposed to open the doors, too." The person pulls off the cap to reveal a cascade of red hair - Bucky recognizes this persona as Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow. 

(Side note: The Sokovia Accords never happened, so Natasha never went on the run. She's still an active Avenger. This is, shall we say, a strange turn of events.)

"What's going on?" Bucky asks.

Nat glances behind her. "I don't have a lot of time to explain. We need your help."

"This is bad?"

"Potentially really bad." 

Bucky nods, stands up, squares his hips, and punches the door with his metal arm. The door buckles, the glass spiderwebs, the whole truck shakes...

Up in the cab, Maria and Ingrid feel the shaking. They glance at the monitor that displays the back of the truck, but it just shows Bucky locked in his cell. "Right," mutters Maria. "Pull over."

Ingrid complies, and Maria gets out, signalling to the other agents to spread out ("Copy."). Inside the truck, Natasha gets the device working and it opens the doors, freeing Bucky. Maria opens the back doors of the truck. "Oh, come on."

Nat smiles. "Sorry, Maria." Maria draws her taser rod and signals her agents to get In Position (d6). "Stand down," she says. "And we'll figure this out."

Natasha hesitates, probably not because she so much concerned about beating Maria and her agents in a fight but because she doesn't want to. "OK," she says, but not to Maria.

A shot rings out from high above them, and one of the agents collapses in pain. A voice over Natasha's comms speaks in a Russian accent: "Come on, let's get out of here. Is boring."

At this precise moment, Spider-Man swings into the scene! He sizes up the situation quickly, and all he sees is a bunch of people pointing guns at Black Widow, whom he knows as an Avenger! He deftly fires webs at the agents, yanking guns out of their hands (Disarmed d12). Maria wheels around ("the hell?") and Natasha fires a widow's bite at her. She stumbles (Shocked), and Bucky, not at all wishing to escalate this already tense situation, starts to head into an alley to disappear.

Maria speaks into her comms: "Ingrid!" Ingrid slides out of the passenger seat and fires a shot at Bucky. It's not a bullet (PG-13!), but a non-lethal round. It doesn't much matter, because he blocks the shot with his arm, but he's been effectively stopped from leaving.

At this point, Magnus wanders around the corner, finishing his coffee. He glances up and sees Spider-Man yanking guns out of the hands of dudes in blue-black uniforms who are menacing a guy with a metal arm, and chooses a side very quicky (from Magnus' perspective, it was less than an hour ago that a bunch of uniformed thugs were threatening his friends, so he's not well-disposed to trigger-happy LEOs right now). He teleports into the alley behind Ingrid and whips out a huge magnet from his hat, yanking the gun right out of her hand. 

Ingrid turns and sees him, and her eyes get wide (and maybe glow red, just for a second?). She rushes him, trying to pull off that signature Widow move where she wraps her legs around his neck and puts him on the ground, but Magnus is braced for it. He rolls with the hit and slams her on her back.

Spidey flips over and lands on the truck, and yells down to Natasha. "Hey, is tall, dark, and scary with you? You want me to get him out of here?"

"Yes please!," she replies, and Spider-Man fires a web, yanking Bucky into the arm by his arm. The two of them swing away - Maria is still zapped, the agents are in disarray, and Ingrid is preoccupied with standing up. Natasha goes to leave, and Maria pulls herself up and hits her with a taser rod. "No you don't!"

A shot rings out and something whacks Maria in the neck. She drops, ears ringing, and Natasha jogs off down the street. Once she's out of sight, she's gone. Magnus, noting that the action seems to be about done, tosses down a smoke bomb and teleports away, leaving Maria feeling a little humiliated and more than a little confused.

On a rooftop a few blocks away, Spider-Man lands and drops Bucky off. "That was crazy! What's going on?" Bucky shrugs. 

A woman pulls herself over the edge of the building. She's wearing a cool vest with a lot of pockets and sports short, dyed-blonde hair. A moment later, a door opens and Natasha emerges, a little out of breath. "You're out of shape," says the blond woman. 

"Screw you," pants Natasha. "Stairs." 

Magnus steps out from around a corner and tosses Nat a bottle of water. "Here you go." 

"Where'd you come from?" Magnus doesn't bother trying to answer that one. Bucky takes all of this in stride. Spidey waves. 

"You know him?" asks Natasha. 

"We just met," says Spidey. "He was falling, I caught him."

 "OK," says Natasha. She opens the water. "This is just water, right?"

"As long as H2 and O make water in this universe, yup." 

"Huh?"

"You are like a magician?" asks the blond woman. "You have a rabbit in the hat?"

"Yeah," says Magnus. "I have lots of things in here, it's a pocket dimension." He pulls a baseball bat out of the hat.

"That's cool," she says. "You're like the...strange doctor? Except he has better cape."

"His cape flies," adds Spidey.

"Yes! I don't know how that works."

"What am I doing here?" Bucky asks.

"Right," says Nat. "So here's the thing. You got your brainwashing from HYDRA, I got mine from the Red Room. A couple years ago, my sister," she nods to the blond woman "and I took the whole thing down, and since then we've been trying to free the other Widows. They're embedded all over the world, finding them took some time." She pauses to drink. "But now the brainwashing has gotten...stronger. Weirder. Our stuff to free them isn't working."

"You think it's HYDRA-related?"

"Not necessarily, but the HYDRA stuff is different, might give us a road map to breaking it. I heard a rumor about a facility in Siberia?"

Bucky frowns. "Yeah." 

"So it's not ideal, but we need your help, and we need to keep this unofficial for now."

"That why all this," adds Yelena.

"OK, sure." 

Natasha looks at Magnus and Spidey. "You guys probably just broke a bunch of laws, and I can't ask you to help out, but-"

"Eh, laws," says Magnus. "I'm in."

"Yeah, me too!" says Spidey. "I mean, I can help."  

 Meanwhile, back at the truck, Maria is getting bandaged up a little. "What the hell," she mutters. She glances behind her and sees Ingrid staring into the alley, and hears her murmuring to herself. "You OK?"

Ingrid snaps out of it. "Yeah. Sorry. Might have gotten hit harder than I thought. What do you want me to do?"

"Call central, tell them what's happening, we might need more backup."

"Got it."

Ingrid gets in the cab, and Maria notices that while she's picked up the radio and is talking, she hasn't depressed the button, and she's staring at the rear-view. Maria opens the door and Ingrid turns her head, and Maria sees her eyes glow red, just for a moment, leaving a trace of light...

"Yeah, nope." She tases her, and motions to the other agents. "She's compromised. I don't know how, but we're gonna keep her in custody for now." And then Maria hears glass breaking and crunching noises. A few blocks over, she sees a building suddenly develop furrows, as though something long and cylindrical was smashing into it. "Now what?"

On top of the building, the others are talking about disguises. Bucky asks if they can grab something to eat on the way to the airport. "Sure," says Yelena. "There's a great shwarma place right down the road."

And then the edge of the building crumbles, and something lets out a roar, something like a combination of a lion, a loud hiss, and an elephant's trumpet - but they can't see anything.

"Invisible chimera," says Magnus. "That's new." 

Wearing the Cape: ADAAB

All DSA Agents Are Bastards, you see. Here's last time.

Our heroes are in Cooley's Gulch, Texas, teaching DeCarlo Stone how to control his powers. They wake up in the morning and Magnus pulls various foodstuffs out of his hat (Levee doesn't eat the hat-eggs; she's particular about knowing what animal her food comes from). That done, they get to work teaching DeCarlo to focus on pulling particular things out of his hat. 

Styx channels the ghost of a preschool teacher and sets up some Engaging Stations to help DeCarlo with focus and visualizations, and Magnus actually teaches the lesson. A couple of hours later, they think DeCarlo has it! They head into the nearest town (which isn't really "near") and get some pizza. They leave Wing Diesel back at the Gulch, just to avoid having to pack him into the trailer.

DeMarcus asks Levee what the next step is. She says that they'll need to practice for a while, but then they'll go back to New Orleans and reveal DeCarlo to the world. If he's visible and famous, it'll be harder for the DSA to disappear him (or "recruit" him, which is functionally the same thing). That's a gamble, yeah, but it's about the only play that have. It also becomes irrelevant very quickly.

As they're eating their pizza, they notice the counter girl answer the phone, go pale, and run out the back. The heroes turn, and see four figures approaching the restaurant, and a bunch of armed dudes in uniforms spreading out through town. 

Toby and Levee go out to meet them - they recognize the one in the lead, wearing a slick, white, plastic-y costume - Wireless. The three people flanking him, though, they don't recognize. One is a cowboy wearing chaps, four six-guns, and holding a length of rope (Toby whimpers a little in spite of himself). One is a normal-looking man, maybe even a little on the shrimpy side, but as he approaches he gestures to the ground around him and pulls up thousands of little rocks, forming a huge shell around him. The third is a woman in a white bodysuit with blue spiral patterns, including a blue spiral instead of a face. "Hypnotist," mutters Magnus.

Wireless informs them that he has warrants for all of them from the DSA, but he's really only interested in DeMarcus and DeCarlo Stone. Levee asks to see the warrant and he taps his wrist and sends it to her. She's seen warrants like this before; it's not a "you're charged with a crime" so much as "we're bringing you in because we think you're dangerous and/or useful."

Toby pulls out his phone and starts livestreaming, and both he and Levee remind Wireless that DeCarlo is a child. Wireless, fed up, nods to Spiral, and the spiral on her face starts to spin. Levee, Toby all feel their minds slow down, but they manage to shake it off. Wireless taps his wrist again, shutting down the internet in the area and creating a Dead Zone, and Magnus comes out and joins them. He tosses a peace symbol from his hat to create a Zone of Peace, hoping to prevent violence. Levee calls water from a hydrant and covers the windows of the pizza joint, creating Opaque Water to shield Styx while she gets the Stones out the back.

(It occurred to us, at this point, that they were Styx and Stones. You're welcome.)

Styx runs out the back and breaks into a pizza delivery truck. The DSA goons start surrounding it, pointing guns and shouting. The rock-covered guy, Diamond, steps in and lifts a fist to swing on Magnus, but apparently can't get past the Zone of Peace and lowers it. 

Toby yells at Wireless, trying to shame him and the other DSA, but Wireless isn't having. Toby also mentally calls to Wing Diesel. The cowboy, Wrangler, turns and Watches the Skies - he's apparently there for the dragon.

But then things get a little more intense. DeCarlo, looking out of the car window at the men pointing guns at him and his father, cries out "this isn't fair". Styx feels his power activate, and the streets of this town crack and split, creating Fissures. Wireless walks over to the truck and activates some kind of force field under it, making it Unstable. Meanwhile, Spiral stares(?) at Magnus, tries to shut his mind down, and Diamond calls up more rocks and holds Levee, Toby, and Magnus from the waist down.

Magnus reaches into his hat and pulls out a rune that cancels powers and pushes through the rocks, pressing the rune to Spiral. It shuts down her powers and she sits down, heavily, rocking back and forth. Wing Diesel appears and lands on the roof, and Wrangler tosses his rope around the dragon's neck. 

But at this point, Styx channels the teacher again and gets DeCarlo to focus. "Think about your bedroom," she says. "Focus on that, and then take us there." (She doesn't know it, but she's playing right into DeCarlo's Getting the Hang of This stunt.) DeCarlo opens a portal into what looks like his room, and he, his father, and Styx tumble through it. The portal closes after them.

Back in Texas, Wireless realizes they've gone and waves his hand. "They're gone! Pack it up!" Diamond helps Spiral up, the goons fall back to their trucks, and Toby looks at Wrangler and says "call me?" Wrangler tips his hat and shows his wedding ring. "You're about five years too late, pardner." 

With the threat over, the three heroes convene. They ask Magnus where DeCarlo went, but Magnus doesn't know - one thing Magnus can't do reliably is get back to any particular universe, and tracking someone through the multiverse is really beyond his capability. "So they're...gone?" Toby asks. Magnus says that they might be somewhere better, but Levee isn't looking forward to telling DeCarlo's grandmother.

Meanwhile, Styx, DeCarlo, and DeMarcus fall into a bedroom. It looks a lot like DeCarlo's, but the room isn't wrong - the window's on the wrong wall. They go out into the apartment, and again, it's similar, but not the same (but is fortunately empty). They go out onto the streets of New Orleans, and everything looks very much like the world they know. Styx talks to a ghost, and he confirms it's New Orleans, and it's 2024. So how, then, is this universe different? The three of them start walking down the street, exploring this new world.

Toby and Levee start heading back to Cooley's Gulch to pack up. Magnus decides he's had about enough of this world, and steps into the multiversal membrane. He once again flies space-time, looking through infinite planes...and then feels something grab him. "That's new."

He sees a woman's face, a woman with glowing red eyes, but doesn't have time to figure it out before he breaks into a new universe. A bright blue sky, a familiar skyline...and once again, he's in the middle of the damn air. He folds his arms and plummets ("just once I'd like to appear on a roof or something"), but from behind him he hears "Whoa! I got you!" and someone catches him.

The person who catches him seems to be swinging on a rope. He's wearing a blue hoodie, red sweats, a red hood, and goggles. "Where'd you come from?"

"Another universe," answers Magnus. 

"You a superhero or something?"

"I try." They swing up to a building and land. "You on a field trip, kid?"

"I'm not a kid!" He pulls himself up to his full height. "I'm Spider-Man."

"OK." Magnus looks around, annoyed, and still wondering what brought him here.

"You're just lucky I was in Queens today," says Spider-Man. Magnus pulls an umbrella out of his hat and jumps off the building, floating to the ground. "Whoa! Wait, that is not how physics works!"

"Not here," answers Magnus. "So is this what you do, swing around and catch people?"

"Yeah, I guess. I mean I'm not really up for Avengers-level threats."

"Avengers? God, that's dumb. What are they avenging?"

Spider-Man pauses. "You know, I'm not sure. Aliens invaded a few years back. I was just a kid. But they stopped that invasion, maybe that's what they were avenging." Sirens sound in the distance. "Oh, I should check that out. See you around!"

Magnus lands. "Yeah."

Next time: Into Earth 10763! 

Wearing the Cape: Cooley's Gulch

Into the exciting world of superheroics once again! Here's last time. (Brief session because one of our players was abducted by aliens mid-session. Not really, but that's more exciting than what actually happened.)

The heroes load up Wing Diesel into the back of Junior's trailer (he fits nicely, even if it seems like he should be too big) and drive out to Texas. Levee has a friend out there - one Waylon Crowe - who bought a ghost town intending to turn it into a tourist attraction. It didn't work out so well (like a lot of Waylon's get-rich-quick schemes), and now it's just kind of collected dust and lizards, but it'll make a nice training camp.

They pull in and Waylon shows them around. There's no power, but there's a generator, no running water, but plenty of bottled water, and there's a Piggly Wiggly a few miles up the road. He asks how long they're likely to be here and what they're doing, and then gets in his truck and heads off.

The heroes set up and get to work. The way they figure it, they have four broad lessons for DeCarlo: teaching him to conquer his fear, explaining the multiverse, teaching him to focus and visualize, and teaching him to pull what he wants out of his portals. 

They start with teaching him to overcome and control his fear, figuring that's the first and principle danger of his powers. Levee gets some construction paper and markers and starts working with some art therapy, and it goes OK, but the town is Eerily Quiet and there's a lull in conversation and a scary gust of wind just as he's drawing something, and it gets him anxious. Styx talks him down before he summons anything by accident, and they take a little break and reconnoiter. 

They have DeMarcus hang close, and Toby has Wing Diesel provide some Dragon Support, while Levee grabs some water from the water tower and shapes it into things that DeCarlo describes, moving from "scary" to "silly". It takes a while, but he manages to get his fears under control and come up with some strategies for working through it.

Next, Magnus tries to explain the multiverse. Levee advises him to think about how baby Magnus came to understand it, but Magnus thinks that's not a great idea - he left his own universe by accident and couldn't find his way back for years. (It put me in mind of The Time Traveler's Wife, actually.) Anyway, Magnus grabs some sheets of paper of similar, but not identical, color, and points out how they're all the same shape and thickness, but they gradually shift in color until one is completely different from another. It takes a while, but DeCarlo gets it.

By this point, DeCarlo is Tired and Distracted, so everyone takes a break and runs around to get the wiggles out. They have a camp-out in the afternoon; Magnus pulls a bunch of stuff from his hat to make an Awesome Campsite, and that evening they start working on helping him visualize. 

Magnus asks if he's got a favorite book; DeCarlo names Where the Wild Things Are. Magnus says that he's actually met Max, he's a good kid, and DeCarlo is a little struck to realize that the characters in a book might be real in some other reality. He, Magnus, and Styx work with his visualization skills and eventually manage to pull Max' wolf suit out of nowhere.

By this point, it's late. DeCarlo still has work to do, but he's making progress. We'll see what tomorrow brings!