Electra
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The superhero (second superhero) in Lucy's office rose when she came in, giving Lucy a smile and extending her hand. "Good afternoon, Miss Harker. I'm Fleur de Joie, we spoke on the phone?" Fleur was wearing her familiar uniform today, green pants and shirt with brown boots and a brown hooded cowl over top, though she'd foregone the mask today. "I have some legal issues that have come up with a charitable project I've been working on, and honestly I don't really know where to begin with them. I asked around, and someone mentioned you as a superhero who is also an attorney, so I was hoping you might have a better understanding of situations where the normal Earth laws tend to fall short. And travel off-planet if need be, I kind of suspect many regular lawyers might be reluctant to take a field trip like that." She chuckled.
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Hologram will attempt to counter the wave with her Enhanced Mind Control. She gets a 28
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Stesha had a problem. Actually, Stesha had a lot of problems, some of which would work themselves out with time, some of which she would have to entrust to other people, and some of which she would deal with herself. But at the moment she had two problems she didn't know what to do with, and there was really only one solution. She needed a lawyer. It wasn't as though Stesha had never used a lawyer before. She'd gone to one of the League's attorneys just a few months ago to help her with the messy and unpleasant business that was even the simplest and most drama-free of divorces. She'd tried to do it herself, but had needed the help when it turned out that the court had problems figuring out jurisdiction when neither of the involved parties made their primary home on the planet. The briskly efficient League attorney had done some kind of legal wizardry involving domicile and precedent and degrees of contact, and it had all worked out in the end, but she kind of never wanted to see that lawyer again, friendly and professional though he'd been. She needed another lawyer. A little asking around in the hero community netted her a good possibility. Lucy Harker was not exactly an average lawyer, being a superhero on the side, but she had her own office on the West End and was open for business. Stesha hoped that, being a superhero and all, she'd be flexible enough to help deal with her two unusual problems, or at least point her in the right direction. She called and made an appointment for Fleur de Joie, then set herself to gathering documents. Lots of documents.
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Stesha began feeling a bit less wobbly as the undamaged parts of her hair began to turn green again, and after a minute or two she was able to regain her feet. "Just a little detour through a near-hell dimension on the way home," she told Gabe with a rueful smile, "not much fun, but a nap and a haircut and I'll be fine. Everything here seems... different. A lot different! I had no idea we were going to rewrite the past when we jumped in that portal, and then by the time we knew, it was way too late. But it seems mostly good?" she ventured, looking at the decidedly less-destroyed city. "People don't even seem to remember what happened. Except... oh no." Her flower portal opened a little more reluctantly than usual, but in just a moment she had a door to her holding area on Sanctuary.. Opening it wide, she called through, "Um, hello, yes! What's the last thing you all remember before I sent you to my safe place?"
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"Thanks, Redbird." Erin took a moment to catch her breath and wipe a bit of turret-gun oil from her face before hopping onto the saddle of the flying motorcycle. "Now we just need to find a couple ways to top that and we'll have cemented the Terran reputation for being crazy badasses. But I think we're not going to have a lot of time to plan, now they know we're here. Let's get to the landing site." The pair sped over the ground to the cleared space where the troops were disembarking. "Squad Four, on me!" Erin called out, landing the Nightryde but not dismounting. "All right, all of you pair off. Teams of two, I don't care who's with who. That's how you're going to work this op, watching each others' backs. Stay low to the ground, stay close to me when you can, and don't lose your partners, got it? We're going to be clearing the way for the other squads, so you're going to get a good workout with those guns. And try not to shoot me, either," she added belatedly.
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"I don't know," Fleur frowned and shook her head, stepping back a few paces. "Just a familiar face, maybe." She wiped the pollen from her fingers with a handkerchief, then looked up at all the imposing granite figures. "It's quiet here," she observed, turning a circle in the middle of her field of flowers. "But I guess it's late here, what is it, three, four in the morning? Most people don't visit at this hour. You said there was some other problem too, over the phone?" she asked Frost, her voice lacking the impatience it might have had under other circumstances.
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The silence stretched for a minute, broken only by the faint sounds of talking and laughter from downstairs. Erin forced herself not to try and pick out voices, family members she hadn't seen in years. Clarissa picked up a bright poinsettia napkin and wiped her eyes, Roger cleared his throat. "Can we at least get a chance to properly meet her?" "it depends, Erin admitted. "She's kind of upset. We had a couple of hard fights before we came here, and then seeing everything and everybody, it was kind of too much?" "You fought about coming here?" Clarissa asked. Erin sighed. "Not fights like arguments, fights like fighting for our lives," she clarified. "There's bad stuff going on, dangerous stuff all over. The West Coast superteams are already deployed dealing with other situations, but there are enough student heroes and loner-types in Freedom City to defend it for awhile against most things, so when the robots started spewing out all over Seattle, the Liberty League came to help. The other members are all around somwhere," Erin waved a vague hand that could've included the house, the neighborhood or the entire city. "Jessie decided on her own to come here while we were doing mop-up. I don't know that she was ready. Maybe if Erin and Erik can pry her out of the closet, she'll come down."
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"She's wearing an orange jumpsuit," Roger observed quietly. "And some kind of blinking monitor. Is she dangerous?" Erin's smile was positively grim. "No more dangerous than I was when I lived here," she promised dryly. "You don't need to worry about it, she's not going to hurt anybody here. When Jessie got to Prime, she needed a lot more help than Claremont could give her, plus she was already almost too old. She's in Project Freedom now," Erin explained, once again deftly editing out the stay in prison, "it's like a halfway house for metahumans who aren't quite ready to make it on their own yet, for whatever reason. But she's going to graduate soon, she's done very well. They wouldn't release her if she were dangerous." "You said you were in high school when all this happened?" Clarissa pressed, seeming to shake off a bit of her earlier shock. "Why didn't you tell us?" "Erin thought... we both thought it would be better not to," Erin replied, falling on her sword with barely a grimace. "There wasn't really anything you could've done to help her, and we didn't want you to feel guilty, or- or obligated in some way. I'm the one who decided to bring her here, I can take care of her." "It's not a question of obligation!" Clarissa burst out, her eyes flashing in a way Erin knew meant somebody was in trouble. "She's our daughter and we deserve to know what's going on!" "No," Erin replied quietly, taking her hand from Trevor's before she risked crushing it and folding her arms tight to her chest. "She isn't your daughter. I'm not your daughter. Our parents are dead, and nothing can change that. You're Erin Keeley's parents and she's lucky to have you, and I'm very grateful for the months you let me stay at your house, and for all the kindness you've shown me, but you're not my parents any more than Erin Keeley and I are the same person. Jumping universes changes everything, but it doesn't bring back the dead. Jessie was in bad shape when we brought her to Prime. Seeing you, maybe even just knowing about you, it would've destroyed her. I mean, you saw how hard it is just to be here now."
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Erin reached back and grabbed hold of Trevor's hand, holding it with such precisely controlled gentleness that her fingers shook slightly with the strain of it. "Um, well you know how we talked with Dr. Franklin when I came to live with you guys, about universal splits and parallel dimensions and alternate realities and stuff? Like how I happened because something happened to split the universe, and your Erin and I had been the same person, but then we weren't anymore, we were two people in two universes? Jessie's sort of the same way, she and I were the same, but then there was a split, only she got taken out of her universe by some really bad people and her universe collapsed, so she doesn't exactly have a home universe anymore." Roger and Clarissa both stared at Erin, trying to parse that slightly rambling explanation. "But then how did she get here?" Clarissa asked tentatively, as though she weren't even sure what question she wanted to ask. "Um, okay, that's kind of a long story." Erin threw a helpless glance back toward Trevor, but made a game effort. "See, back when i was in high school, there was this reality controller who was interested in my team for reasons. He wanted to see if good was smarter than evil, so he took us and he switched us with our counterparts on Anti-Earth, which is like Earth Prime except everybody who's good here is evil there and vice versa. But I'm not from Earth Prime, and neither was my counterpart there, that was Jessie, so she wasn't exactly evil like the rest of them. But they hurt her, kept her in prison and made her fight for them." Erin deliberately elided over huge chunks of Jessie's story there, it was not hers to tell. "So some of my friends and I went back when we got the chance and rescued her and brought her to Prime, because she hasn't got anywhere else to go. I got some people to vouch for her so she could get into programs and stuff." There was a beat of silence. "Um, unless you meant "how did she get here tonight," in which case the answer is Edge teleported us out here to fight the giant monster trying to rise in the bay and its monster minions.We're not staying long, but she, um, she really wanted to see the house and you guys. But I think it was too much all at once."
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"All right all of you, stick together!" Erin commanded her troops in a yell over the rush of air from the opened doors. "And don't jump till you get to the landing zone! Watch each others' backs, and I'll catch up with you! Redbird! Meet me at the turret!" With that, she backed up to the wall, got herself a good running start, and the moment the ship tilted just enough in its evasive maneuvers, launched herself out the opened troop doors and towards the turret. Gravity must have been similar to Earth on this planet, since the feeling of arcing through the air was familiar and easy. As she flew, she turned her body like a diver, folding first in half, then straightening her body so her feet were pointed right at the gun emplacement. She crashed into it with a shriek of rending metal, pounding the thing into uselessness with nothing more than her gloves and boots.
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All right, Wander is going to make a running long jump with her Leaping to cover the distance between herself and the tower. She will orient herself in such a way that she makes an All-Out Charging Power Attack against it with her feet of fury! That drops her defense obscenely low for the rest of the round, but it allows her to roll 1d20+14 and get a 21. Looking for Autofire damage as well.
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"I think I should be able to do something for the pain," Fleur began, only to break off when Comrade Frost spoke. She stared at him, startled by the emotion, then looked around at the place where they stood. Even in the dark the statues were visible, each one lit by its own halogen spotlight so they stood like brilliant sentinels in the lonely night. Suddenly things clicked into place for Stesha, the place, the date, an anniversary everyone knew but often forgot on the day unless reminded, and she felt an unexpected welling of sympathy for her erstwhile teammate. "The Allies of Freedom," she said softly. "They were your friends, weren't they. I'm sorry." She raised a hand, and suddenly all over the grassy field flowers began to bloom, thousands of them, roses, tulips, lilies, poppies. The memories of a thousand old memorial bouquets rose from the soil and waved quietly in the nighttime air. Fleur took a deep breath and unclipped her flashlight from her belt, thumbing it on and moving it in Titan's direction. "May I?" She centered the beam on his midsection so as not to blind him while getting a look at his face. "He seems familiar," she said uncertainly. "But not like anyone I know. Like someone I saw in a photo?" Lowering the flashlight, she stepped towards Titan and brushed pollen-smeared fingers lightly over his forehead. "This should help a little."
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"I saw a baby that just got borned at home," Ammy told Eden soberly. "His face was all red and smooshed, and he said 'WAH-WAH-WAH!'" This last bit was at the top of her lungs to demonstrate, and earned her a quick "Inside voice, Ammy!" from her mother. "They putted a diaper on him and rolled a blanket up on him and his mommy fed him with-" "Ammy!" Stesha interrupted. "Why don't you go over to our coats and get Eden the present we brought for her?" As Ammy scrambled up from her seat, Stesha turned back to Erik. "I'm sure Ellie has things under control, but maybe you can help me boil some water down here and gather another set of clean linens? I'm willing to bet that when you're a little calmer and more relaxed, Min will be happy to have you up there with her. She needs you to be an emotional anchor when you're up there, so now's the time to get out all the wobblies." She leaned in and gave him a hug, surrounding him briefly in the scent of flowers and green grass. "You're going to meet your daughter in just a few hours. It's a wonderful day."
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Fleur misses the save by 1 and takes a bruise
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There was a soft rustle like the wind moving through plants, and suddenly a struggling dandelion near one of the statues burst into life as though viewed in time-lapse photography. It unfurled a half-dozen new leaves and bloomed a brilliant yellow flower... then proceeded to grow, and grow, and grow. When the weed was nearly six feet tall, the flower tilted sideways and yawned open to emit Fleur de Joie in her trademark brown cowl and green uniform, the logo of the Freedom League emblazoned proudly on her sleeve. She looked around for a moment to get her bearings, then pushed her hood back. Stesha looked much like she normally did, except that her hair was braided down tonight in one long plait down her back, rather than the intricate loops or braided bun she tended to favor. She glanced to Frost to make sure she was in the right place, then gave Titan a reassuring smile. "Hi, I'm Fleur de Joie. Are you hurt? I can help you."
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Stesha bit back the urge to remark that she knew at least those Russian words, but any snarkiness was swept away by his next words. No matter how uncomfortable he made her personally, he was a competent hero and wouldn't call her in on an emergency for anything frivolous. "I'm on my way," she told him simply, directing her phone to locate his, then call up a satellite image that would let her find a good plant. While it did that, she hastily dumped out her cocoa and tossed on her costume, then called the next emergency babysitter on her list, one of Ammy's teacher's at the creche. A quick flower portal had Ammy sent to Homewood, still asleep in her bed and unaware of being moved. Honestly, Stesha didn't know how hero parents without teleportation managed. Picking up her phone again, she touched the flowers in her hair and disappeared.
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Frost's phone rang through, then did a rather unusual buzzy-clicky-beepy sound, perhaps whatever equipment Fleur used to route her cell phone interdimensionally. It rang again, then again, before finally connecting. A world and half a world away, Stesha curled on her couch with a mug of hot cocoa and her photo albums, paging through them listlessly while Ammy slept peacefully in the next room. She'd strictly limited her hours of self-pity to times after Ammy was in bed and she was not on call anywhere, and no more than one really self-indulgent wallow per week, maximum. She knew it would probably be better for her to call a friend, or make arrangements to talk with a League psychologist, but the idea of having to explain everything was exhausting. At least the brief tabloid flurry seemed to be winding down, there just wan't that much to report on a no-fault divorce completely lacking in juicy details. Derrick's secret identity was as compromised as hers now, but somehow she didn't see that as being an issue anytime soon or possibly ever. And once she moved their Earth home into the DuTemps building, hopefully the last of the paparazzi would give up as well. At least they couldn't find her here. She was looking through the photos of Ammy's birth and just starting to get a good brood going when suddenly her phone began to chime with the strident tones of a League call. For a scant moment she wanted to ignore it. She wasn't on call tonight and if the world was ending again, she almost didn't want to know. But that wasn't how she handled things. She blew out a quick sigh, then picked up the phone, all business. "This is Fleur de Joie. How can I help?"
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Erin sighed, stuffing her hands into the pocket of her sweatshirt. That had gone about as well as she probably should've expected. She really wasn't cut out for the mentoring thing. And honestly she didn't know if she was right and Tona just didn't want to believe it, or if maybe there was something wrong with Erin herself that she couldn't just share everything she was and had been with her friends. She couldn't tell if she'd been any consolation at all. "Yeah, I'd better get going too, got work in a little while. I'll come back and pick up the book some other time. It was good talking to you again, take care of yourself."
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ic It's Not Mooching If We're Friends First
Electra replied to TheAbsurdist's topic in The Realms Beyond
"No, we're definitely in the deep end and treading water," Stesha agreed with a rueful smile. "But when Blue Jay showed up at the other end of my portal and instead of a thousand refugees there were ten thousand, what was I going to say? First ones through can stay? Pick one in ten to live and the rest stay behind to die?" She shook her head. "It seems like a lot when I'm thinking logistics, but knowing that ten thousand is all that's left of an entire world is shocking. And they didn't have it easy even before the end. Neither did the people who are native to this world, who were trying to eke a living from the ruins before I got here. They all deserve better than what they got." She perched herself on a rock near the edge of the cliff, looking up at the pretty blue sky over Sanctuary. Over to the east, where the ruins of Freedom City still stood, the sky was darker with pollutants and smog that never quite settled down, but here she'd coaxed the trees into clearing the air quite vigorously, until she'd almost had trouble breathing herself for all the carbon dioxide they'd scrubbed out of it. "I have some lawyer friends I can talk to who can work up whatever kind of paperwork you need," she told him. "I'm trying to get Sanctuary registered as a non-profit refugee organization, but there's a lot of red tape involved, and I'm sure you can understand why. Would you like the grand tour?" -
"Well that's just freaking wonderful," Fleur muttered as her feet left the ground and her stomach headed for her esophagus at around the same time. She swallowed hard a few times and pulled the LED flashlight from her belt, thumbing it on as she tried to orient herself in the room. When she was sure she wasn't going to vomit and that the air was still good, she briskly opened another portal flower to swallow up the bound prisoners. "You're all luckier than I am," she muttered venemously as the last one disappeared. "A nice break in a warm place on Earth with gravity and everything. The wages of sin these days..." Still muttering to herself, she hand-over-handed one of her own vines to the wall, then pushed off, heading as best she could towards the last group she'd seen on the monitors before leaving command. Her flashlight cut a single bright beam through the darkened corridors and she made fairly good time, till she blapped face-first into a door that did not open to her approach. Saying a few words she definitely would not have wanted Ammy to hear, she shone her light around, looking for some kind of manual release. There was one, right on the side of the doorframe, next to the giant claw marks. Stesha stiffened and looked around, bracing for another fight.
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Fleur will stuff all the captured antibodies in her dimensional pocket and begin floating towards the next pocket of enemies. She will go as far as the door to the next level.
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"College is a good idea too, a lot of Claremont students go that way," Erin agreed. "But school and I never got along that well anyway, and the idea of another four years of studying was kind of horrifying." Erin smiled at the memory. "Besides, I needed the money. It's all worked out pretty well so far. I think whatever you wind up doing, you'll be able to make it work for you. You're strong." She tidied up her own place and picked up the receipt the waitress had dropped off. "You ready to head back? Lunchtime's about over and you probably have some stuff to do this afternoon."
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ic It's Not Mooching If We're Friends First
Electra replied to TheAbsurdist's topic in The Realms Beyond
Stesha drew in a long breath and sorted out what exactly she wanted to say, tamping down frustration and focusing on points of common ground, just like she'd learned in her negotiating seminars from the League. "The end goal is certainly for them to be self-sufficient, and I welcome anything that will help with that goal. My point is, though, that at this point agriculture is under control and well-plotted, so the priority is less than some of the other needs I was mentioning to you," she told him. "Supplies are the most urgent, we've gotten through the winter but it was by the skin of our teeth at some points." She smiled a little. "I doubt any of us who divide our time between Sanctuary and Earth have more than half our original wardrobes after what we gave away. I've got a handful of kids just out of college with their teaching certificates working as primary teachers, found them through UNISON, They're great, but getting some more experienced teachers with more diverse topics would be very helpful, and of course doctors and engineers who can teach." She looked down over the little village, taking a moment to wave at a couple of people who'd spotted her on her perch. "We will be very grateful for anything you can provide," she told Asad, not looking away from her charges. "Believe me, I understand that the need is great. You're not the only person I'm going to be approaching for help. And I understand that you have far more managerial and business experience than I do. It might look to you like our organization is slapdash and that you could do a better job." She shrugged one shoulder wryly, turning to look at him. "Maybe you could. Lord knows I sort of fell into the job by accident. But Sanctuary is my baby, and I feel a great responsibility to make sure that both the world and the people and creatures I've promised to take care of are safe and secure. Before we go any further, I would like you to spell out exactly what plans you have for Sanctuary as part of your justifying the budget to your company. You talked about some kind of experimental disaster remediation earlier?" -
With the girls happily sharing crayons and butcher paper for the moment, Stesha rose from her seat and walked over to Erik. She interrupted his pacing by waiting for him at the turn, then putting her hands on his shoulders. "Everything's going to be just fine," she reminded him soothingly. "Min's as healthy as can be, right at term, and with a couple of top-notch healing types on hand. And anybody who is foolish enough try to crash this party is going to get a very rude surprise. I've already been in touch with all the trees outside, and the lawn. If they somehow escape Steve's notice, they're still unlikely to make the front door. Why don't you sit down for a minute?" she suggested. "You're going to want all your energy once the action really gets started."
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Miss A jolted a bit at the question, but quickly calmed herself back to impassivity, her eyes focused downward on her arm and not going anywhere near meeting Jill's gaze. "I'm doing fine," she assured Jill in a low voice. "I can do this as long as necessary to evacuate the dome. You don't need to worry about doing first aid on me, I won't need it." She snorted a little. "Even if I did, your girlfriend would be the more qualified to render it. There'll be plenty of people here who need medical attention, I'm sure. That blast into the dome was pretty severe, even though you managed to keep it from depressurizing. Caradoc?" she called out, activating her radio with her working hand, "how are you doing in there?"