Electra

"All good things," Paige assured Starlight, following her husband into the kitchen at a far more leisurely pace. "But I only know a little bit. Did you grow up in Freedom City?" She pulled two glasses from a cupboard, dispensed ice into them from the spout on the freezer door. "Richard and I both come from Freedom City, but we left for a quite awhile after the invasion and when the kids were young. The weather is nicer in California, but you do get to miss the City. No place quite like it." She held up a glass to Starlight. "What's your pleasure? For soda I've only got ginger ale and Squirt, but Richard got himself one of those crazy machines that lets you make whatever kind you like, so we could always experiment with that."

Wander blinked as though coming out of a trance, studied the blood dripping off her batless hand for a moment. "Yeah," she murmured, then looked up and said more loudly, "Yeah, let's get a move on, fast as we can. No point in trying to be stealthy at this point. They know we're coming, and they know what we can do. If they had any sense, they'd beat a retreat now, but we're gonna have to fight our way through. Let's see if we can avoid a two-front battle." With Eknu at her heels and the rest of her squad stringing along behind her, Wander set a quick (for normal folks) pace around the worst of the debris and through the canyon. "Redbird, can you see anything?"

Paige hurried in from the kitchen, pulling off an oven mitt and tucking it under her arm so she could give Starlight a friendly wave. "I'm so glad you could make it. I'm Paige, we talked on the phone last week." Paige Cline looked to be in her mid-thirties, her brown hair cut in a stylishly messy bob, her blue jeans and green knit top protected by an apron covered with multicolored child-sized paint handprints. "Come on in, we've got soda and ice water and fruit juice in the kitchen, and I'm just about to chase Richard outside to make the burgers. Will couldn't make it tonight, some kind of school thing going on, but Holly will be down as soon as she smells hamburgers. How have you been?"

Holly finally pulled open her bedroom door, her face still pouty, but the worst of the stormclouds seeming past. "Hawaiian pizza, on the crunchy crust," she told Errant very definitely, practically daring him to argue. "It's the best kind there is. And you're gonna help me with the makeup?" she asked Thaelia, studying the Atlantean princess closely. "And no more fighting or getting mad at each other?" That was obviously the important point, and completely nonnegotiable. She still had her iPod clutched in her hand, maybe having forgotten it with all the distractions.

Paige grimaced. ~Disturbing, but I see where you're coming from. Serial killer pathology often starts with the neighborhood pets. I'll keep an 'ear' out while I'm in the area as well. This looks like such a nice, calm area, but I guess you never can tell what might be underneath. Maybe we should convince them to move into the family village~ she thought, half to herself, but easily carrying over the mental link to another strong telepath. She refocused her attention on the Scarab. ~You're welcome to come with me if you like, ask your questions to the family. The little girl isn't a telepath but she is a telekinetic, and getting them introduced to people in the hero community might make the family more comfortable with their daughter's potential.~

Erin backed up two instinctive steps when she saw an unfamiliar person in the house, one hand reaching for her bat before her brain caught up and reminded her of who this stranger was and why he had a right to be in her home. It still didn't make any sense, but she dropped her hand and relaxed her posture a touch. "Mr. Hunter," she replied, because she didn't know what else to call him and "Ted" seemed way too familiar. She was grateful that she'd decided against the quick ocean dip and coming home dripping wet. "I really wasn't expecting to see you here. Trevor didn't mention you had a visit planned." From what she knew from Trevor, Ted never planned any visits to Freedom City at all. "Where is he?"

Paige blinked a few times at the very bizarre sensation of a hundred-person chorus in her head- not painful, but a little deafening- and adjusted herself to mental communication. It probably made more sense if the Scarab was trying to be inconspicuous. ~It's a pleasure to meet you as well,~ she replied with a pleasant smile. ~I encountered your predecessor once, but it's unlikely that the meeting made much of an impression. I really admire the work you've done in Freedom City over the years. Do you have some evil in particular that you're looking to turn up near here? I'm meeting a candidate for Nicholson here, and I wouldn't like to see her or her family endangered.~

Paige hesitated with her finger hovering over the doorbell when she felt a strange little bump against the corner of her consciousness. For a moment she thought it was Holly trying to get her attention, but the indefinable flavor was different, not entirely foreign, but certainly not her daughter. Something was trying to change her mind, very subtly. Turning away from the door, Paige walked back down the front walk towards the street, looking around for anything that might have caused the disturbance. Three houses down, she caught sight of someone else coming up the sidewalk, someone who didn't fit the neighborhood at all. "Scarab?" she asked, closing a little more of the distance between them. "What are you doing here?"

Paige attempts a will save vs Scarab's concealment: she succeeds

"A friend," Gina called out into the web of cables, switching to vocal French without so much as missing a beat. "I want to help you. I know you've been alone in here for a very long time. My name is... Miss A," she continued after a moment's hesitation. "I see you've been working on a new creation, it's very beautiful. Can you tell me more about it?" As she spoke, she studied the cobwebs, wondering if there was some way through or around them that did not risk damaging or enraging the ancient computer system. "Can you tell me your name?"

"I know how you feel," Stesha agreed with a smile. "Phantom and I were best friends back in the day, before she and her family moved away to one of the less welcoming dimensions. She gave me the whole primer on alternate dimensions and timelines, but I'm not sure everything was exactly accurate. More than enough to give me a headache, anyway! And I don't know anything at all about time travel, except that it wasn't really supposed to work the way it did for that bug world. Somebody had already come along and messed it up and we made it right, but we broke a lot of eggs in the process. I didn't even know it was time travel!" she protested, the hint of a wail in her voice. "It looked like a dimensional portal into a weird basement, by the time we realized it was like 1925, it was too late to not change things, even if we'd wanted to." She sighed. "Anyway, you've met the kids, and some of the adults are going to be in having lunch. Do you eat food? Special for today is macaroni bake, I think, that's pretty good food. We grow lots of wheat here, and the cows give the milk for the cheese. We have a lot of pasta around here." She led the way into the cafeteria, where several dozen adults and older teenagers were eating lunch at crude plank tables on tree-stump stools. The plates, cups and silverware were the sort of extremely cheap plastic and thin metal common in institutions and the napkins looked like they might be homemade, but the air was full of good cooking smells and nobody was going hungry.

Miss A let out her breath in a sigh and sat down in one of the conference table's plushy chairs. "Decades, then? It has been theorized that time moves differently in certain alternate dimensions, but I've never spoken to anyone who chose to homestead in one. I assume one of your powers is at least limited immortality, then." This was obviously a rhetorical question, not needing an answer. "Here it's been four years, which is a very long time as one counts news cycles and averted apocalypses, but not that long in terms of gathering a historical perspective on events." She steepled her fingers, touching the ends of her impeccable french-tipped nails together. "What do you know about what happened to Dr. Archeville?"

Monday, April 13, 2015 10:30 AM Earth It was a Monday morning when Erin made it back to Earth, nearly six full weeks after she'd taken off for her first space adventure since her Curator-enforced vacation. She blasted in out of a clear blue sky, her life-support suit holding in both her oxygen supply and her wildly triumphant shout as she and Redbird made their re-entry at white-hot speeds. As soon as they dropped enough altitude for there to be atmosphere, she pulled off her helmet and drew in a deep lungful of air. "God, it's so good to be home!" she crowed. "Space is nuts. Let's leave it to the aliens for awhile," she suggested to her AI companion as they arced towards the familiar skyline of Freedom City. She was half-tempted to dive off the motorcycle at twenty-thousand feet and splash down in the Great Bay, wash away the grime of a month and a half without a proper water bath. Sonic cleaners did an adequate job of keeping dirt and smell at bay, but she never truly felt clean after using one. That would wait, though. Instead, she steered the motorcycle northward, towards home. "I guess maybe we should've called ahead," she decided. "He'll probably be in school at this hour. But that just means we can surprise him when he gets back." In just a few minutes they were touching down on the smooth paved roundabout in front of Hunter Manor, which was currently picturesque with a full spread of carefully tended flowerbeds and green lawn. Erin took another moment to enjoy solid Earth beneath her feet, then vaulted the front steps to go in the front door. "Hello, I'm home!"

Miss Americana just stared at Lynn for a moment, looking dumbfounded behind her veneer of calm composure. She shook it off quickly. "The amount varied greatly because it was based on the damages and injuries suffered during Dr. Archeville's unfortunate possession and the fallout resulting from it. The unexhausted portion of the fund is managed by our legal division now, so you'd have to speak with them if you'd like to file a claim for your losses. I can give you a number to call." She turned away for a moment, facing the large abstract painting that took up much of one wall, took a deep breath and cracked her knuckles once. "But it doesn't sound like that's what you came here looking for," she finally pointed out, looking back to Lynn with her polite blandness firmly in place. "I assume there was something you wanted, to make you come try out your keycard after all these years?"

For a long few seconds, Erin just stood and stared as new little disasters piled up around her. Aquaria the frog girl. Mark's completely inappropriate idea of Christmas presents. The houseful of people in the basement probably wondering what the yelling was about. Jessie hiding in the closet upstairs. The rest of the Liberty League god-knew-where, getting up to god-knew-what. She was tempted, extremely tempted, to go and evict Jessie from the closet just so she could hide there herself. She grabbed her own elbows and hugged them to her chest, looking helplessly to Roger and Clarissa as though they could solve any of this ridiculous mess. Somewhat to Erin's surprise, Clarissa smiled at her and rose to the challenge. “It's very nice to meet you, Aquaria. I'm glad to hear Jessie has such a good friend at school. We like our house, though sometimes it seems very big now that Erin Keeley is off at school and Megan is so busy. It's nice to be able to gather everyone together for the holiday.†Meanwhile Roger looked outside as well, his eyes widening at the sight of the snow construct. “That's... that's something all right,†he managed. “The neighbors definitely won't be able to keep up with that. And the kids will probably be thrilled.†While the Whites graciously smoothed things over, Erin managed to regroup and get ahold of herself. There were no terrible noises coming from upstairs yet, and Mark and Nina could probably continue to amuse themselves relatively harmlessly for a couple more minutes before finding trouble. “We should... we should probably get out of your hair,†she offered to her erstwhile parents, trying her hardest to move towards the door without actually engaging any of her muscles to do so. “I'll try and pry Jessie loose upstairs...†“We'd still like to talk to her,†Clarissa reminded Erin. “Even if we aren't family in the strictest sense, you have to understand that we feel a connection. It doesn't sound like she's entirely well...†“She's not,†Erin said flatly. “She's... it's hard to explain. I didn't realize how lucky I was, despite everything that happened to me, until I met her. She's my bad road not taken the same way as I am for your Erin, but even worse. You know how things happened on my world, and how eventually I ended up coming to Prime. Jessie ended up on Anti-Earth instead, which is like a world where everything and everyone who was good is just as evil as they ever were good, and the bad guys are in charge of pretty much everything. They saw she was damaged and afraid, saw that she could fight really well, so they made her into a weapon.†Erin rubbed her forehead. “They had a psychic who got into her head and destroyed her memories, turned them bad or wrong so that she couldn't tell what was even real anymore, then set her to just... to just massacre people they didn't like. She was like a bogeyman and they kept her in a box when they weren't using her, and most of the time she didn't even understand what was going on.†Erin turned away from both of them, turned away from Trevor and Aquaria, so that the only safe place to look was out the kitchen window, into the dark and snowy replica of the yard her dad had looked into before he shot himself. “When we rescued her three years ago, she was practically feral. She could barely talk, barely remember her own name, and any little disturbance could trigger her to have flashbacks of these manufactured memories that would make her attack anyone around her. I had to arrest her and have her put into Blackstone, the super-prison, because it was the only place safe enough to keep her. She might have had to stay there forever, but we had a psychic too, and she stepped in to help. She, we... there wasn't anything left to save in most of Jessie's memories. They were too warped or damaged or just gone. It took months and months, but Psyche ended up wiping the slate clean, taking it all out and replacing it with the best copy we could get.†She touched her forehead again. “So Jessie has fifteen years of my memories, three years of her own memories of being on Prime, and almost four years of nothing at all. She gets confused easily. But it was enough to let her start to heal and get her out of prison. She's doing well now, and she might even get out of Project Freedom eventually. But she's never going to be entirely well.†The silence was deafening, broken only by Aquaria's soft voice in the next room as she spoke to the little girl, and the faint noise of home movies downstairs. Erin gave Trevor a helpless look. “I think it's time to start getting the team back to Freedom City. Can you get Mark to collect the others and get everybody home? We'll be ready to come along in just a few minutes.â€

Miss A narrowed her eyes upon seeing that Lynn had somehow regained possession of the card that had already caused so much trouble, but other than a brief baleful glance towards the door the security guards had gone through, she did not comment on it. Instead she put on some sort of lightweight metallic-mesh glove and picked up the card, turning it over in her hands and studying it. "Dr. Archeville gave you this?" she asked thoughtfully. "Well, that would explain a lot, actually. It was obviously a trap. Nothing that happened just now was coincidental or accidental, it was all programmed specifically. If you ever came to ArcheTech and used that card, it would cause a lot of suspicious noise and fuss, shut down a number of nonessential systems for no reason, and alert whoever was in the top office that Grimalkin was attempting to access the building." She looked again to Grimalkin. "As for him bankrolling the Interceptors, this is the first I've heard of it. The Compensatory Fund laid out money to them in 2011 in compensation for lost property and personal effects due to the destruction of their headquarters, but they never mentioned being ArcheTech employees or contractors." The look she gave Grim suggested she found the story about as plausible as if she'd said she'd found Santa Claus fighting aliens on her front lawn: not outside the realm of possibility, but requiring a lot more evidence to take seriously.

"I imagine she knows quite a bit," came a new voice from the door. "About powers, anyway, and perhaps about Archetech as well." Miss A walked into the room as though she owned it, which was probably fair, giving the security guards a nod of dismissal. She looked ever-so-slightly less put together than usual, wearing a white blouse and burgundy skirt without the necessary blazer to complete the look, and with her golden hair up in a quick ponytail rather than its usual neat bun or loose waves. "Grimalkin, it's quite a surprise to see you here," she told Lynn, her smile beautiful and edged as a snowflake. "Conventional wisdom has it that you left the city years ago. Mind telling me how you got my receptionist to nearly FUBAR the entire mainframe? And perhaps why, as well?"

The security guard relaxed ever so slightly when Seahawk arrived on the scene, but didn't so much as twitch an eyelash away from his careful observation of the diminutive detainee. "She came in acting suspiciously approximately ten minutes ago," he reported crisply, "then approached the reception desk and was able to bamboozle them into running some sort of bogus security card. It had a virus in it that disrupted lights, computers and communications through the entire building. Miss Americana is aware of the situation, but is working to reverse the damage before she deals with the culprit." The other security guard nodded his assent to this version of events.

"Stay together," Wander told her squad, "fight defensively. And for god's sake, don't shoot me." With that she was on the move, running up the side of the canyon wall and over the heads of the defending troops before launching herself headfirst into the biggest crowd of antibodies she could find. The close-quarters fighting was not quite what she was used to, and many of the niceties she'd developed through years of training just didn't apply. This was raw, dirty, fight-for-your-life-against-overwhelming-numbers stuff, and it took her right back to the beginning of her career. It was not a very comfortable place to be. Still, ripping off heads and shattering spines was as effective for antibodies as it was for zombies, and soon she stood in the middle of a grotesque field of twitching, bleeding antibodies, clutching her bat and looking for the next thing to fight.

"We live in Port Regal, near the Nicholson School," Paige replied, giving her the address. Starlight knew the neighborhood a little, it had never seemed like anything out of the ordinary, for all there was very little trouble that seemed to take place there. That would make sense, if a bunch of superheroes had decided to set up camp in the brownstone duplexes and townhouses. "We're the ones with the out of control zinnias up and down the front walk, though hopefully my son will have mowed the lawn by then and we won't be the little house in the prairie grass by then." She chuckled. "Don't worry about bringing anything but yourself. Do you prefer chocolate or fruit flavors for desserts?"

Kelsey wasn't even paying attention to Lynn at this point, being fully involved with squeaking in distress and batting at the computer keyboard as though it were a person who'd fallen unconscious. Within seconds, though, Lynn found herself surrounded by a pair of large security guards who looked more than able to take her into custody if necessary. "Miss, would you please come with us," one of them said, gesturing toward an unmarked door near the reception desk. Nearly all the lights in the lobby were off or flickering by now, though the exhibits themselves had not turned off, nor had the climate control or automatic doors. The second guard gathered up all the things Lynn had dropped on the counter, examining them before tucking them into a clear plastic bag. Everyone in the lobby, including a large group of elementary school students on a field trip, seemed to be staring straight at the discomfited heroine.

The receptionist's smile faltered, a single furrow marring his smooth brow as he stared at her. "Miss Americana is the CEO of ArcheTech," he told Lynn, sounding a little as though she'd gone on a White House tour and asked who the President was. "But I'm afraid she's extremely busy. I could take down your name and contact information and pass it along to her assistant..." A second brow-furrow joined the first when she proffered the magnetic card. He took it, holding it between finger and thumb and turning it over warily. "Kelsey," he called, summoning one of the other two receptionists, "have you ever seen a card like this before?" Kelsey, who was also wearing a blue ArcheTech dress shirt and an earpiece, but who had brilliant magenta hair to go with it, studied the card as well. "It looks like a hotel keycard," she observed, glancing over at Lynn. She leaned in and whispered to her associate, "Is she trying to pick you up, Jase?" The first receptionist, apparently Jase, colored from hairline to neck. "No!" he hissed back, just loud enough that Lynn could still hear. "I mean... I don't think so. She wanted to talk to Dr. Archeville, and then she wanted to talk to 'whoever's in charge,' and gave me this key like I'm supposed to do something with it. Do you think she's a time traveler?" This drew a frown from Kelsey as well. "I don't know, she looks kind of old-fashioned maybe?" she whispered back. "I don't know if we've even got anything that can read a card like this. Why don't you call up and see if you can get one of the staff supers to come down in case things get weird, and I'll try to run it." Jase nodded and scampered away with obvious relief, while Kelsey took up the job of smiling with great professional pleasantness at Grim. "I'm sorry, your card isn't compatible with our current security systems, but I can try to run it through the computer and see if it does anything." She moved to a POS computer down at the end of the reception desk, where they seemed set up to handle overflow from the gift shop when necessary. She swiped the keycard through the credit-card slot, looking pleased that she'd found the one computer at the desk that would read a magnetic strip. The computer beeped. Then it hummed. Then it emitted a low groaning noise and turned itself off, followed by the bank of lights above it and to judge by the muted feedback whine and Kelsey's grimace, the receptionists' cute little earpieces. More lights began flickering off, bank by bank, across the lobby.

The receptionist nearest her, an attractive young man in his mid-twenties wearing an ArcheTech-branded dress shirt and an earpiece, gave her a quizzical smile. "I'm sorry, Ms. Epstein, but Dr. Archeville retired in 2011. If you'd like to learn more about his life and vision for ArcheTech, you can visit the Archeville Room at the end of Corridor 2. There's an interactive exhibit on the founding of ArcheTech, as well as several mementos from his superheroing career and the first video message he recorded for the ArcheTech Science Museum." He gestured helpfully to the signs directing Lynn to Corridor 2, as well as other locations on the expansive open-to-the-public first floor, then continued smiling at her, obviously expecting her to go away.

There were times, Paige decided, when it just didn't pay to be a hero with a public identity and a flexible schedule. She felt awkward going out to try and sell people on Nicholson when her own child was barely a year into the program, but volunteering for the school had seemed like such a good way to meet people and keep an eye on Holly's progress. It was her own damn fault for checking the "anything" box for the "how do you want to volunteer?" question. Next time she'd be more specific. She'd been told the Howards already had a full set of school literature to look over, so instead Paige had a phone full of pictures of the third grade in action, field trips she'd chaperoned and parties she'd helped supervise. Little enough ammunition, but hopefully it would provide a starting point, and then she could assess the emotional temperature and play the rest by ear. Simple, right? She fired off a quick text message to Will, reminding him to pick up Holly from soccer if this meeting went past 11:30, added a couple more items to her shopping list for the dinner with Starlight tomorrow, then tucked her phone into her purse and went to ring the doorbell.

"How about Sunday evening around six?" Paige suggested, sounding like the sort of person who arranged to have dinner with people all the time, like it wasn't even a big deal. "The weather's supposed to be nice all weekend, Richard will get the grill going and we'll barbecue. We haven't used our backyard nearly as much as I'd like since we moved in here, even though it's a superhero neighborhood. Do you have any allergies or special dietary needs?" she asked. "We can always grill up some portobellas if you're not a meat-eater." It was hard to say what Richard might have told her about Starlight, but her voice held neither censure nor pity.