Electra
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Gina made a surprised eep noise and locked her legs around his waist as he stood, giggling a bit nervously. Sitting on his lap made her uneasy, but she had to admit she liked it when he picked her up like she weighed nothing every once in awhile. Draping her arms over his shoulders, she leaned in and rubbed her nose lightly against his."I can think of all kinds of good ways to change the subject that don't involve talking," she assured him. Sending a mental command to Emerson to put everything away, she turned her very formidable intelligence towards making her lover forget everything that had ever bothered him. Maybe neither of them could fix the other, but at least they could make it better for awhile.
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"That's the reason most heroes here have secret identities, it lets them lead mostly-normal lives while still letting people enjoy their fascination with heroes. And the attention can get to be way too much sometimes, especially if the tabloids get involved." A look of great distaste crossed Stesha's face for a moment. "But for the most part it's harmless, and I think it's actually good for people. When you see superheroes on the news, it's mostly for good stuff, for rescues and good deeds and saved days. Pretty much everything else you see on the news is horrible. Being able to see heroes in action, or watch them on TV or read about them, it makes people feel safe. Like maybe if next time it's them in trouble, someone will be there looking out for them." She laughed. "I completely understand where you're coming from with the adulation being really uncomfortable sometimes. But I guess I try to remember that it's not really about me, it's about them and how it makes them feel. Makes it easier to cope sometimes. But hey, if you ever need to get away from it all, you're welcome to spend a weekend on Sanctuary. We don't even have reporters!"
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"Yes, but it's probably best to have a belt-and-suspenders approach to the problem anyway," Miss A replied. "Being able to mentally interface with the computer is useful, but it also leaves me more vulnerable to certain types of attack. If you are working simultaneously from a terminal, we should be able to divide its attention long enough to disable any wifi or satellite connections. Once that's done, we can work on understanding who VI is and what it wants, hopefully with an eye toward ending the lockdown." She stood and cracked her knuckles, heading for the door. "Ready to try a little retro hacking?"
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Erin and Jessie walked slowly towards the kitchen, both listening to the noise of footsteps coming up the stairs. Erin, who had done all this before, braced herself slightly and managed a smile as Clarissa and Roger White entered the kitchen, Jessie just stared blankly. "Keeley Erin, this is such a surprise!" Clarissa began warmly, "we didn't know you were going to make it out here for Christmas!" Clarissa's face showed the slight uncertainty that she always had when dealing with her daughter's double, but she was obviously doing her best. "And Trevor as well!" Roger added, taking his cues from his wife, if just a bit too boisterously. "We've seen some pictures of the two of you in the newspapers this past year, looks like they're keeping you busy in Freedom City!" "Yes, it's so good to see you again, Trevor," Clarissa chimed in, then looked back to Erin and Jessie, who was inching almost imperceptibly backwards. "And you have another friend as- oh." She broke off as she got a good look at Jessie's face, seeing past the blond hair and hunched posture. "Oh." She looked back to Erin Prime, her eyes wide. Erin Prime raked her fingers through her nicely curled hair and shrugged uneasily. "Sorry, Mom, I probably should've told you before. There's, um, there's another one." Roger took a closer look at Jessie as well, his mouth falling open slightly. "How?" he asked, his voice slightly croaky. "How could this have happened again? When?" Jessie endured the scrutiny for a few moments, wilting further and further, till finally she could take no more. "YOU'RE NOT REAL!" she shrieked, then turned and raced up the stairs to the second floor, far faster than the merely human Erin Prime could've managed. Erin started to follow her up the stairs, but Erin Prime stopped her. "You know the story way better than I do," she pointed out in a low voice. "You talk to them and I'll go talk to the other one." "Jessie," Erin reminded her, folding her arms. "And that is a terrible idea." "No, it is a great idea," Erin Prime maintained through clenched teeth, "because it will also give me a couple minutes to talk with my fiance and explain why there are suddenly two superhero doubles of me showing up that I never mentioned to him before. Anyway, if she's anything like, you know, she'll be in the back of my closet and I just have to peel her out of there." She looked to her boyfriend, gave him a smile that was just a trifle manic. "Come on Erik, we can go give Jessie a little moral support." Erin glowered after Erin Prime as the latter escaped to the relative safely of the upstairs, but let her go. Jessie was very rarely violent anymore, and the likeliest outcome would be Erin Prime simply failing to pull her out of the closet that Erin herself had taken shelter in a time or two during her brief stay here. She raked a hand through her thawing, sopping hair and faced down the doppelgangers of her parents.
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Gina kissed him back, running her hands over his bare scalp, tracing the lines of his scars with her fingers as though she were following a topographical map. "I don't want things to be different either," she agreed, "not in any of the ways that count. Which is a big change for me." She smiled and kissed him again, then rested her forehead against his. "I'm sorry that her being here hurts you. You're right that it doesn't seem fair, when she knowingly collaborated to hurt and kill so many people. Nothing can ever make up for that. I guess somebody must think there's something salvageable in her, but I don't know. No matter what, she's not going to have a chance to hurt anybody else."
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Stesha nodded. "Yeah, I definitely understand that. It's easy to let your perspective get skewed, especially when there's a lot going on in your life. Amaryllis helps me with that, she knows that her issues are always the most important ones, no matter what else is going on, and she reminds me." She chuckled, while Ammy nodded vigorously in assent. "But around here, I think people make a big deal of superheroes because the city is very dangerous, much more so than most cities. They learned what happened when they didn't have the heroes to defend them, and it wasn't pretty, but even when they hated their heroes and chased them away, the heroes came back and saved them when it looked like everything was lost. People don't forget that." Stesha scooped up another bite of ice cream. "And the metahumans are what makes Freedom City so unique," she pointed out with a grin. "It's great for tourism."
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Miss Americana was still huddled protectively over her damaged arm, but she looked over her shoulder to tell Dragonfly, "I have some, ah, sensitive equipment in the dome that would be damaged if it gets depressurized, but I think Caradoc is taking care of it for me. I don't know about any other specific cases, but the Farsiders probably have some protocols in place?" The link between her internal batteries and the device she'd hooked up remained steady and strong, but the power fluctuations caused by its varying energy demands were playing merry hell with her internal gyroscopes. Rather than risk falling, she carefully knelt down next to Jill, knees together and bottom sitting comfortably on her heels. "I can keep this up for awhile," she assured the medic quietly, "though my arm's not going to be worth much for awhile afterwards. You still okay?"
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Wander goes on 17
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"Whatever they did here was very wrong," Miss A agreed somberly, "but we can't jump to conclusions as to what happened to Mr. Otetshima. He could very well have been used as the biological brain matter for VI's construction, but he also may have been used in some other capacity. He may have been an early technopath who they drafted into the construction, or been used in another capacity entirely. Whoever he was, whatever was done to him, he may well be our hook in communicating with VI and bringing this standoff to an end." She ran a handheld scanner over the papers to preserve them electronically before returning them to their folder and their drawer. "Time is definitely a factor in our plans, we don't know how long we have before VI starts to understand the internet and can begin breaking the wireless lockdown. But if there is any way to preserve the intelligence in the system, I think we should make our very best effort. Do you have any ability to communicate with machines?"
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She was quiet for a minute, staring into her cup as though she expected to find answers in its depths. "You're right," she finally murmured. "Thank you. I know this can't exactly be easy for you with... everything." Everything encompassed a lot of things, the battle they'd just lived through, his church's views on divorce, his own collapsed relationships. "You're a good friend. I'm lucky to have all of you." She rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand, disrupting the crown of wilted daisies that still wreathed her green hair. "I think... I think Sanctuary is okay for tonight. Everyone should be able to manage okay for the evening. I'm going to sit on my couch and eat popcorn and binge-watch the Harry Potter movies." She looked up, gave him a faint smile. "Want to hang out awhile?"
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"Being able to cook like you do seems like a pretty fantastic power to me," Stesha countered with a grin, even as she licked her spoon. "I can do basic stuff, but most of our meals at home come from boxes or freezer bags. I didn't even get an oven in our place till last year, and that's mostly for things like the cookies you slice off a roll of dough and bake. Everybody's got their talents. Mine definitely tend more towards the great outdoors. And so do yours, right, kiddo?" She smiled indulgently at Ammy, who was finally slowing down after consuming two-thirds of her sugary treat. "Maybe somebody ought to teach you to cook." "I wanna make ice cream!" Amaryllis informed them with great enthusiasm. "We can cook ice cream in the freezer and make it pink and everybody at my school can eat it! And ice cream sandwich, ice cream pizza, ice cream milk..." She grinned as Stesha laughed. "Sounds like the makings of an ice cream headache!" Stesha told her, then turned to Maybelle. "Honestly, don't go belittling yourself because of what anybody else is doing or can do. There are people whose powers put mine to shame, and I can't start comparing myself to them or I start feeling all inadequate, and even they probably can't do everything they'd like to do sometimes. But I do mean it on the Auric thing. There's no reason to face off with him alone when you have friends to help."
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ic It's Not Mooching If We're Friends First
Electra replied to TheAbsurdist's topic in The Realms Beyond
"I think you may underestimate my ability to provide," Stesha replied, just a little coolly. She folded her arms and fell back half a pace as he worked out his numbers, still watching him closely. "And our sanitation needs are one of our lesser worries, there are enough toilets, sinks and showers to go around, they're just all communal." As with the sod houses, digging out latrines and setting up natural showers and pools had been made much easier with the help of a geokinetic in residence. It had resulted in some nonstandard, but still effective, sanitary arrangements around the three villages. "We definitely could use another doctor, especially one who is willing to train people without medical degrees, and the supplies to set up another clinic. As it stands, if someone gets sick or injured, we have to call one of the giant bees to carry them to Homewood. But I think I need to understand more about the explanations you're going to be using to get these resources, and what it's going to mean for Sanctuary." -
"It's all right to wish things were different" she assured him, stroking his cheek with her fingertips. "It doesn't matter if it does any good, sometimes it just feels good to be able to say it." The awkward position was starting to make her legs fall asleep, so with only slight reluctance she shifted to sit on his lap instead of on her own chair. "We can keep an eye on the Annihilist, figure out who's got control of her and make sure she doesn't get out of hand. If she's got some trick up her sleeve, we'll stop her. But you don't have to see her or interact with her or even hear about her if you don't want to." She chuckled. "Why do you think I bothered making all these contacts in the first place, if not to farm out some of the unpleasant hero work?"
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Gina leaned forward and cupped his scarred face in her hands, looking into his eyes. "She's nothing, do you hear me?" she told him, quietly but fiercely. "What she remembers, what she did in the Terminus, it doesn't matter, because she is nothing compared to who you are. You were victimized and you overcame it, you were lost and you found yourself, you were alone and you saved me from being lonely. All she did was run away from her own evil and seek shelter in a place where people weren't going to turn her away." She moved in closer, nearly kneeling on his lap so that their foreheads almost touched. "Of course the heroes took her in, she had nowhere else to go and she'd probably just cause trouble if they let her free. We treat even our psychotics humanely because it's a luxury we have here. But she has a long, long way to go if she ever hopes to be any more than a prisoner in exile, and she will never, ever come close to being the kind of person you are."
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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 shook her head, looking a little bit lost. "I'm sorry, I'm really not equipped for a lot of legal and business talk. I was a florist before I took up full-time superheroing, and I kinda just change the channel when the business news comes on most nights," she admitted. "Can you break it down into smaller pieces we can talk about? I mean, I don't know what you mean when you say agricultural support and ecological reclamation, exactly. I've got a pretty good handle on the agriculture for right now, that's something I can do without much problem. And the reclaimed area gets a bit bigger all the time, it's almost to the point of being self-sustaining around the edges, at least in the less blighted places. But the people here don't have enough clothes, or proper beds, and there aren't enough animals to go around. The entire planet has one doctor, one nurse and one midwife, and they are volunteers. The children don't have enough books in their schoolroom, and there's no way for any of them to go to college. This fall and winter has been all about subsistence, but I want better lives for them." She pushed her hood back, looking around at her oasis. "As far as what you want from us... you want your companies to have a look at the dead parts of the world? Or to set up something permanent there? What would that look like?" -
Gina scooted her chair around the table till her knees brushed Steve's. It wasn't entirely without risk, being so close to Steve when he was very angry; even without meaning to, his strength could be dangerous. It was also a little strange to see him angry, even with everything he'd been through, or maybe because of it, he was far more prone to depression than rage. "So you've seen this Tarva, and you remember her from the Terminus?" she asked carefully, not wanting to be mistaken. "She was there when you were turned into an Omegadrone?"
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"Mmmm," Gina contemplated this for a minute, playing for time with another bite of her dinner. "I've never heard of an Annihilist switching sides before," she admitted. "They're nothing if not committed. But it sounds like she did us a solid with that nanite construction site. I read some reports on the early phases of that project, nasty stuff." She sipped her iced coffee. "It could mean she's really changed her ways, or it could be that she's working for some anti-nanite faction in the Terminus. Annihilists aren't great at the long game, but they can play it. Is she in protective custody at DuTemps?"
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Gina put down her half-eaten fajita and looked at Steve with surprise. Partially because of the content of his words and partially because he was talking at all. Trying to have a conversation with him had become a worrisome exercise in frustration lately, but she'd hoped he was just working something through on his own time. She could hardly point fingers at anybody else for having weird social issues, and at least she'd mostly stopped worrying that his periods of silent brooding were her fault. It was just a thing he did. "The DuTemps building, that's the one with the weird castle-thing on top, right? And there's an Annihilist?" she asked. "Have you told anybody?"
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Fleur is restricted by the fact that the station has almost no plant life except that which she creates herself, don't know if you'd count that? She is basically unable to teleport to any place she hasn't been and can't use her ESP.
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Erin Prime tried to be the first one inside the house but Jessie was just that much faster and stronger, nipping around the native Erin and bolting inside like a cat getting out of the rain. It didn't matter much though, since the second she was inside she froze, staring numbly around at the brightly decorated living room and the colored lights running up the railing of the stairs. "It's not the same," she mumbled, gripping her hands together so tightly that the knuckles went white. "It's all smaller. And the big wire picture frame is gone. It's supposed to be- it's not- everything..." she trailed off, beginning to tremble slightly all over. Despite her many misgivings, Erin edged around the others and went over to Jessie, wrapping her arms around the shaking shoulders, subtly pinning her when the move prompted an instinctive attack reaction. "It's okay," she murmured into Jessie's ear. "It's been eight years and things are different here. You'll get used to it. It's not really your house, it just looks like it. Breathe. Again. You know how to do it. You're going to scare them if they see you like this." After a minute, Jessie took a couple of breaths that were more like gasps and nodded at Erin, who released her. In the meantime, Erin Prime took a look around and breathed a quick sigh of relief. "Everyone else is still down the basement, watching the old home movies," she reported. "Erik just came up because he gets news alerts on his phone. Let me do this." She headed down the hall to the kitchen, opened the basement door and yelled down, "Mom, Dad, can you come up a minute? Keeley and her friends stopped by for a visit!"
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Gina's Search check is a 37 She has Comprehend enough to read, write and speak all languages, and Quickness 6 limited to mental tasks, so let's see what we can do with this set of filing cabinets!
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Stesha raised her mug of water in acknowledgement of the toast. "Those were the days," she agreed. "Sometimes i really miss the days when my biggest responsibility was the flowers for the next party and I faced off against enemies like The Beekeeper. I thought if I had a little more control, a little more power, everything would be easier, but it always just gets harder. I used to have time to go out and have fun with Taylor and Moira and Derrick, and now she's an interdimensional guardians and she's a goddess and he's... he's just gone." She pursed her lips tight and swallowed, unwilling to start crying again just yet. "I'm happy that I have Sanctuary and I am glad that I can help people, but I'm... I don't know. Just tapped out, I guess. I was going to pick up Ammy on my way back from the Lighthouse, but I couldn't even do that. I wish he was here, and now I'm probably never going to see him again."
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"I don't know Sunny Day Real Estate," Holly admitted shamefacedly. "But I can find some online and download it... after I do the math problem," she added in a mutter. "And I'd like chicken and pineapple, please." Hooking her feet around the legs of the kitchen stool, she leaned forward and, with several pauses for erasing and starting over, worked her way through the problem and, thankfully, managed to arrive at the correct answer. "There, done!" she told the sitters with some pride, pushing away from the table. "Music time!" She raced away from the table and up the stairs with a speed that suggested she may have inherited just a bit more than eye color from her father.
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ic It's Not Mooching If We're Friends First
Electra replied to TheAbsurdist's topic in The Realms Beyond
"Perfect! Right this way, then." The knothole-door yawned open again, and Stesha escorted Amir through with one light hand on his elbow. They came out in another very parklike area, but this one had no paved paths, and no sounds of city life droning behind the birdcalls and wind in the trees. "This is Sanctuary," Stesha explained, leading the way up a gentle slope to a clearing on the top of the hill. "It's an alternate dimension Earth, about four sheaves over in the great big bundle of near-Prime realities. Most of the life on Earth in this dimension was destroyed nearly a century ago by a destructive war fought with alien technology. I came across it five years ago and began rehabilitating the landscape, largely as a way to practice my powers. I built an oasis of sorts, a small area where live can thrive in the middle of all the blasted land. Then I realized that there were still people living here." They'd obviously arrived near the top of the hill already, since the height they were at offered a panoramic view of Stesha's "project." Far off in the distance, the sky was a smoggy gray, the horizon dotted with the shattered hulks of destroyed buildings. Everything nearby, though, was green and thriving, from the forest at their backs to the neatly laid-out patches of crop and garden dotting the plain below them, to what seemed to be a giant field of giant wildflowers (or some trick of perspective) off to the southwest. Just below them, a tidily-organized little village was spread out, sod houses surrounding a central square of prefab buildings, with solar panels and a windmill running power into the largest structures. Dozens of people were out and about today, working the fields, weeding the gardens, washing, mending, and tending to the few visible children. "This is Mayberry, it's the largest village on Sanctuary right now," Stesha explained. "It has a little more than five thousand people, all of them refugees from the Terminus. Springfield, the second-largest, is a few miles west of here and has almost as many people, refugees again. Both of these villages are less than a year old, we threw them together in a hurry when the need arose. There's another village, Homewood, to the northeast, that's older and more established, with about three hundred people. That's where the descendants of the survivors of this world live, for the most part. When I agreed to take on the refugees, I thought there was only going to be a thousand of them, but there was no way we could turn them away. We've been making do." -
ic It's Not Mooching If We're Friends First
Electra replied to TheAbsurdist's topic in The Realms Beyond
"Call me Stesha," the heroine invited. "I understand how valuable your time is, that's why I appreciate you coming out to meet me here so much. I have a charitable effort that I and some other heroes have been working on for several years now, but at this point our costs are in danger of swamping us. Earlier this year, the base of people we're serving expanded tenfold, and the infrastructure isn't quite keeping up. I was told by several people that you're interested in philanthropic causes, and I hoped I could give you, well, my pitch, as it were." She gave him another bright smile. "Sorry, I'm not really used to this sort of thing. If you have a half-hour you can spare, I'd like to show you what we're doing."