Electra
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Fleur's face was soft with sympathy as she regarded the tall hero. "It's not something that can be solved all in one night," she advised him, "but there are people who can help you. The League psychologists deal with far more than what crops up in normal practice, think of the people and the situations they have to cope with! It couldn't hurt to at least talk to someone, tell them about your headaches and what causes them, how they make you feel. Worst case scenario, they can't do anything and you're no worse off than now, right?" She looked back to Frost. "Henry Griffin has living first or second generation descendants, doesn't he? Do you know where any of them are? Even if we don't have any genetic material of the man himself, a DNA test on Titan and the descendants could confirm whether they're all in the same family. It would be a place to start."
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"Okay, then," Caelyn agreed with a sharp nod. She did not seem excited, nor afraid, just resolute. Settled on a course of action, and determined to live up to obligations much too heavy for a seven-year-old to carry. "We've gotta go inside now. Recess is over and it's time for math. We'll get behind if we're not there." She hesitated for a second. "Um, if you send a care package, could it maybe have toys in it? Like real toys, Barbies and Legos and Squiddy-Widdy and stuff?" Micah nodded vigorous agreement. "And candy?" he suggested. "Chocolate?" Both children looked over as the teacher called to them, summoning them to the schoolhouse.
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"Do you have cartoons?" Micah asked curiously. "And Sugar Bombs cereal, and bikes to ride on sidewalks? I had a blue bike with a horn and a bell, and it had training wheels but I almost didn't need them. But it's gone now cause of the bugs..." He trailed off, looking stricken all over again. "You can't think about that stuff," Caelyn reminded him sternly, pulling the little boy into a fierce hug. "Don't think about what's gone, none of that stuff matters anymore. We just have to forget it and think about everything happening now." She rested her cheek on Micah's head and looked at Lucy with old, tired eyes. "We have to stay with the group. If some of them are going, we'll go too. But we don't go places by ourselves." That was obviously part of the aforementioned promise, judging by the stubborn set to her mouth.
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Fleur's attention sharpened at the man's appearance and accent, but she covered it well, giving a frankly admiring look to the man's physique before favoring him with another brilliant smile. "Oh wow, are you from Dakana?" she asked excitedly, bouncing up and down a little on her toes. "I have always wanted to go there, I've heard it's beautiful! And they say the coffee is amazing, and the stuff that gets imported to the United States just isn't the same, do you think that's true?" She hastily pulled herself back together, blushing a little. "Sorry, I got totally off-track there. I'm looking for a school that's supposed to be around here, I think it's called Espardos, but my phone died and I'm totally lost. Do you maybe know any place like that around here?"
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Fleur uses Well-Informed to get a Gather Information check on the Man in the Tan Jacket. Skill mastery nets her a 31.
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"Works for me," Stesha agreed, tossing on her windbreaker and tugging up the hood to hide her distinctive hair. She took a look at Mara's schematics to get the look and location of their intruder, then nodded. "Okay, back in a couple minutes. You be good, baby, play nice," she instructed Ammy, who was too busy to notice her mother was off to work. With a quick touch to the flowers in her hair Stesha disappeared, reappearing moments later a block away and around the corner. She rounded the corner at a brisk walk, only to start looking around in confusion and growing dismay at the buildings as she passed them. She brightened up immediately upon seeing the loitering man, hurrying towards him as though drawn by a magnet. "Oh, hi!" she called cheerily, "excuse me, do you happen to live around here?"
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Wander bit her lip to avoid saying she'd been trying to stand at the midpoint of his leap, figuring it was better he think her especially intuitive than for her to belittle his leaping distance. "You can try measuring your standing jump as well," she suggested. "I know the crossbar on the goal post is 10 feet off the ground, and the tops of the post are thirty feet. Not as good a marker, but we can ballpark it anyway." She paused, cocked her head. "No pun intended. If your jumping is anything like mine, I jump about a quarter as high as I can jump long with a running start. You'll probably get somewhere in the middle of the goal posts, I guess?" She walked over towards the end zone again.
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The two children exchanged an inscrutable look for a moment before both of them turned their attention back to Lucy. "Are we all gonna go?" Caelyn asked, and there was a thread of interest running through the great caution in her voice. "Mr. Daniels and Josie and Pop-pop..." "And Renee-an-Ben-an-Tessa-an-Libby!" Micah put in quickly, running the names together into one long rush. "...and all of us?" Caelyn finished. "We have to stay with the group. We promised." The set of her chin suggested that this promise was not something to be trifled with. "They all want to go back to Freedom City. They don't like it here cause it's got no modern 'veniences."
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"It's not so bad," she agreed, "unless you drastically underestimate yourself and smack into the side of a building or something. You want to give it a try? The yards are marked over by the sidelines, so we won't even need a tape measure unless you really get your legs under you. Go back by the touchdown line over there and get a little running start. Careful of the uprights!" She herself backed away to the edge of the field, standing on the thirty yard line so she could get a good view of however far he leapt. "Whenever you're ready, just go ahead."
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Wander ignored the antics of her troops, confident that they would at least watch each others' backs if things went down. It certainly was no skin off her nose if these supposedly tough-as-nails space troopers wanted to reenact her junior year of high school. She had bigger things to worry about right now, like the fact that the entire situation was screaming "trap" to her. "This gorge isn't natural," she commented, loudly enough for the other group leaders to hear her. "Something dug it out, like a giant scoop. There had to be a reason for it. We should spread out," she urged. "One squad after another in a line, in case something goes wrong." She made no move to remove her squad from the front, somebody had to go first, after all.
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Stesha grinned and waved a hand. "Oooh, me, I'll do it! Put a little fear into anybody who might be casing the joint." The small green-haired woman smacked a fist against her palm and probably could not have looked less intimidating if she'd been trying. "Or, alternatively," she offered cheerfully, "I'll go strike up a conversation with them and see if they've got any good reason for their loitering, or if they're as statistically improbable as they seem. If we cause a ruckus for no reason, all we'll do is draw attention to ourselves. Somebody else may want to get to a higher vantage point and make sure they don't call out reinforcements or something like that."
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Wander suspects a trap! Knowledge: Tactics : 14 Notice: (Skill Mastery) 25
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"Oh, I'm not the fastest in the city or anything, not by a long shot, but I get around," she told him, an easy confidence in her voice that suggested she was used to talking powers with other heroes. I got a boost from the Furions a couple years ago, long weird story there, and now when I really get going I can hit about a thousand miles an hour. That's an estimate, it's kinda hard to judge really precisely, but close enough. I can run up walls and over water so long as I don't stop and think about what I'm doing." Her smirk there said that there was probably another story behind that, likely one that had ended in an unintended bath. "Have you had a chance to gauge what your foot speed is, your jumping power, stuff like that?"
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Wander moved one shoulder in a shrug. "I'm not on bad terms with them," she told him, "but they don't know me that well either. When Midnight and I go working together, we usually use zipties and leave the bad guys for the police to find, along with whatever evidence they've got on them. Which is another way to work it, but better if you're working with somebody, since otherwise it can be chancy trying to cuff somebody. I've worked with the police, but I'd be surprised if they had feelings about me one way or the other. But the police in Freedom City don't really give heroes a hard time these days. I haven't heard of anybody who's gotten in trouble with them who wasn't causing some kind of outrageous public nuisance."
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Her eyes widened enough to show that she was willing to consider that an actual possibility before she caught on that he was joking. She pursed her lips. "Very funny. It's better if you go to the cops, and usually they'll work with you if you don't want to risk compromising your secret identitty, but some heroes find it hard to trust them. If you do find somebody who you can't just beat up but don't want to let go, you can always try contacting the Freedom League. They've got a branch in town here, so the response is pretty fast, and they know more about superheroes and supervillains than just about anybody else. But for the street-level crime, a beatdown does tend to deter folks."
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"However you want to do it," Erin replied with a shrug. She figured she could always mention a new hero in the neighborhood to Ellie next time she dropped in on Mara at work. "So what do you do when you catch a bad guy?" she queried. "You a beat 'em up and let 'em go type, or have you been taking them to the police?" At this point she was mostly satisfied that Wildcat probably wouldn't get himself in too much trouble out heroing, and he obviously preferred the lone-defender-of-the-night model of hero work. She could probably cut him loose in good conscience, all things considered.
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Outside the building, Miss Americana sat in a comfortable office chair at the little command center the dispossessed scientists had set up and watched Terrifica enter the building. As soon as the other heroine was inside, Miss A closed her eyes and projected herself, seeking first the familiar technological signal of the ArcheTech laptop deep inside the facility. She hoped it would be easier to gain a toehold there and follow it back into the much less familiar, far more primitive computer signatures of the facility itself. She just hoped she could get through before Terrifica had a chance to run into any trouble IRL.
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"Lots of heroes do have Wikipedia articles, and it's weird," Wander replied, "so you can start there, but a lot of the ones with Wikipedia articles don't go out patrolling that much, you know? The local hero fans are hungrier, they're a lot more interested in every hero or villain they can spot or get a picture of. There are some websites that have pretty extensive directories that aren't tabloids, people just run them because they want to. I don't know much about them because I try and stay away from that sort of thing," she admitted. "So much of the time it feels like I'm just running around the city for my health, it's weird to think that there are people watching. But it's a resource." She rubbed her thumb and forefinger over her lips for a few moments, thinking . "In the West End, you're most likely to meet up with the Interceptors, that's Jack of all Blades, Jill O'Cure, Geckoman, Willow, and maybe a couple others. They're good people, pretty laid back most of the time. If you want I can probably get you a contact number for them, you can meet some of them and see who you're rubbing shoulders with over there."
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"Well, one way is to do what I did, hop on the roof with them and see what happens, but I don't recommend that until you've been at the game for awhile. It can get a little dangerous." Wander considered the question for a moment. "I guess the best way to do it is to learn as much as you can about the who's who in Freedom City, what the heroes and villains look like. Most anybody who's hanging out on a rooftop and isn't just catching a breeze or a smoke is going to be wearing a costume, and the costume can give you an idea of what you're dealing with. The hero news on TV and the tabloid magazines are obnoxious and badly informed, but they usually manage to match costumes to codenames and tell you who's on what side. That and a pair of binoculars should help you out." Wander tensed for a moment as a figure appeared on top of the wall on the other side of the field, then relaxed when whoever it was hopped down and began jogging for the dorms. A late night teen hero, home to get sleep before tomorrow's classes. "You can also just keep an eye on them for awhile and see what they do. If they're going rooftop to rooftop and just looking around, it's probably patrol. Villains pretty much don't do patrol, that's a hero thing. Have you been sticking mostly to the West End?"
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That was distracting enough to have both children fascinated for a moment, Micah poking curiously at Lucy's sleeve to see if the repair was just an illusion. "My mommy got hurt real bad and she died. She had blood on her clothes," he informed Lucy, his eyes wide and sad. "There was bad bugs and they stung people with their mouths and we had to run away. But we walked through the big flower and came here and the bugs here are good and they don't hurt anybody but I'm still scared of them," he confided. "They're real big." "What did you want to talk to us about, then?" Caelyn asked. She was playing tough, but there was a sheen of tears in her eyes from Micah's reminiscence.
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"We're sitting pretty down here," Stesha agreed, beginning to unpack and arrange the bags of snacks that Chris had brought. "The girls are having a good time playing, so Eden's not worrying at all. We've got plenty of snack food, and in a little bit, we can start putting together some food. How are you doing?" she asked Ellie. "If you need a break or a rest at any point, I can spell you for a few minutes. I haven't got your training, but I can probably hold down the fort for a few minutes," she offered. "You want some coffee, water? Does Min need anything?"
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Both children gasped at the sight of Lucy's eyes, but they were tough kids and neither of them bolted just yet. Caelyn wrapped her arm protectively around Micah and stared into the attorney's blank black eye sockets. "What do you want from us?" she demanded. "You can't make us go anywhere." "Do you got powers?" Micah unexpectedly piped up. "Like Miss Fleur, she can make plants grow and she can disappear and come out of flowers and trees? She gots weird hair like you got weird eyes. Can you do that stuff?"
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Wander laughed. "I have met so many alternate versions of myself, if we all got together, we could field a baseball team. Just the versions of me living on Earth Prime could play in a three-on-three basketball tournament. And no," she preempted the next obvious question, "that's not really a normal thing to happen to superheroes. I think it's part being friends with a world-class reality warper, and maybe part because I'm not from this dimension myself, weird dimensional things happen more often." She shrugged. "Gender-switched Wander was one of the first alternates of myself I met. He was really... well, I don't get really along with most other versions of myself, but he was probably the worst. "Meeting dimensional doubles is weird," she explained, "because you look at them and in a lot of ways they're you. So all the bad things people say to themselves, all that insecurity and doubt? It's suddenly projecting outward onto some other person. So if you're the most self-satisfied, confident person in the world, you'll love most of your alternate doubles, occasionally literally, but otherwise you'll need to sort out your issues. Oh, and if you're ever running around Freedom City and see another me but with short, blonde hair, that's Singularity. Try not to sneak up on her."
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"Four years of high school crammed into two years and two summers," she confirmed, following his gaze around campus but not seeing anything to be concerned about. "It was pretty intense, but that was just me. In a lot of ways I guess it was probably like regular boarding high school, roommates, cafeteria food, field trips, classes. But you also got classes like fight tactics and hero ethics and seminars on temporal mechanics, and speakers who came in to discuss the benefits and risks of a public identity. And then there was powers training. So much powers training." She groaned a little just thinking about it. "Alone, in pairs, with your team, in the simulator, in the field. They really wanted us ready by the time we graduated. And if you didn't get your homework done because you'd been sucked into an alternate universe and had to deal with a flipped-gender version of yourself and no copy of the book you were supposed to read, it wasn't even an excuse." That memory brought a slight chuckle. "On the other hand, they did relax curfew for people who went patrolling, and that was handy."
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"I can give a pep talk when I have to," she told him with a rueful smile. "I learned from the best. But you deserve to know the truth before you're in too deep. The highs are high and the lows are very low. Ask any ten heroes what you asked me and you'll get different answers from all of them. But none of us would quit, because after a certain point you just can't. You've seen too much and know too much to be happy just living a safe life and leaving the work to others." She shook her head and waved off his apology. "It was my idea, remember? You remind me of me when I started out. You've got a lot of talent and strength, you'll do well once you learn to control it. You might think you'll never help save the world, but I do the same things you do, hit and jump and run, and I can't even count how many times I've been in on saving it in the past five years. You never know where you're going to end up. I just hope I've maybe helped a little." She rubbed the back of her neck. "I'm not really much of a teacher."