Electra
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ic Dropping in... (Seahawk & Mirror w/Miss A)
Electra replied to The Sailor's topic in Freedom City Stories
Only a minute later, Seahawk received a return text message from Miss A. OMW stay where you are. Sure enough, just minutes later, while the sirens were still far away but getting closer, Miss Americana landed in front of the diner and took a look around. She hadn't taken time to change into her costume, so was still wearing maroon slacks and a navy blazer over a white blouse and looking quite like a CEO, if CEOs flew without planes and visited truck stops. After taking a second to get her bearings, she walked inside. "Seahawk? We lost your beacon signal more than an hour ago. What happened? Are you all right?" -
Paige passed her hand through one of the pixels, curious to see what it might do, but other than a slight tingle of static electricity in her hand, it was intangible and immobile. "Nothing here gives me much of an appetite," she agreed. "At best, it's probably half paste and fixative spray, at worst... well, nothing you'd want to eat, judging by everything we've seen so far." She raised her scissors in one hand, holding them like a dagger as she took a step towards the kitchen and opened her mind... only to recoil instantly in horror, stumbling backwards into Richard as her body tried to escape what her mind had seen. "Something in there," she reported. "Can't exactly see it, but its thoughts are full of murder." She shuddered. "Really gleeful murder."
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Wander hung onto her landing strap with one hand, more for something to do than to keep her balance on the deck of the spaceship. Before this week, she'd only ever been on a spaceship twice in her life, and they were both very different from this. It looked like she was the only Earth human on board, not that it was too surprising, but from the muttering Redbird had helpfully translated into her ear, they thought she was some kind of monster. That was okay, she figured, better if they were a little scared of her, might help keep a little of the posturing down when she tried to lead them into battle. This wasn't exactly what she'd expected when she'd decided to head into space to help shut down the Communion once and for all. She wasn't sure exactly what she'd expected, but it had probably involved more laser battles and fewer weird-smelling troop decks. She and Trevor had decided to go together after the situation on-planet had calmed down, but then Travis had fallen ill, and Trevor obviously needed to stay close by. So she'd taken Redbird instead, in Redbird's NightRyde form, the two of them blasting off into space and heading for the nearest Coalition gathering point. Redbird had made a few complaints about Erin's comparative lack of fast-twitch muscle fibers (whatever those were, Erin thought she was more than fast enough for most purposes), but they'd gotten along pretty well so far. And without the earpiece communicator connecting her with Redbird even here, she wouldn't be able to tell what anybody was saying. At the Coalition base, it had been harder than she thought to get signed up to help, and even then they'd dumped her in with a bunch of grunts with no training and a sergeant-type lizardy guy trying to whip them into shape with insults and calisthenics-based punishments. Some things, she guessed, really were universal. She'd put up with this treatment for half a morning before obliterating her training dummy with one well-placed kick and asking the sergeant-type what else he had. After that she'd gone one-on-one to spar with a couple of far more skilled (and far politer) soldiers, then demonstrated her running speed and jumping height. It had caused some minor consternation, but eventually had been passed of as, as Redbird put it "Terrans are really weird." Then they'd given her this assignment and kicked her onto the ship, possibly just to be rid of her. She'd been able to get Redbird on as well, but the cycle had to travel in the cargo hold. Erin kind of wished she were there too. Instead she passed the time by looking around, trying to identify some of the races she'd learned about in school. Since she hadn't taken Dark Star's seminar in junior year, there weren't many of them. One of the other commanders was definitely a Lor, because he looked like an Earth-human but had the uniform. One of them looked like a surprisingly attractive cross between a human and a Smurf, she had no idea what he was. The other one... well she might possibly be a robot with an electronic monkey tail, but Erin didn't even feel qualified to make a guess. But if she were going into battle with them, somebody probably better have a plan. "So," she began, looking at the other three, "do we have any information about the setup where we're going? What kind of defenses they've got?" From the little speaker on her jawbone, Redbird helpfully translated for those who did not speak English. Which was everyone.
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Steve's dropping of the topic was rewarded by an almost-instant relaxing of Gina's attitude and posture. She smiled at him for real this time, even as she got up to put plastic wrap over her plate. "That sounds perfect," she told him, and dropped a kiss on the smooth top of his head as she walked by. Once her back was to him and her face hidden by the refrigerator, she sighed. "Maybe some other time," she offered. "When it's, you know, warmer and nicer out, and we won't have to get all bundled up. Once the weather gets warm, the ivy on the fences will grow again, it'll be like a little hedge maze. It'll be nice."
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"I'm sure you're very strong," Stesha reassured her, "and getting more skilled with your powers all the time. I just want you to feel like you can call upon other heroes without feeling as though you're putting anyone into deadly danger. And even if it is dangerous, most of us are used to taking risks for the greater good." She smiled just a little. "Some of us are immortal, which helps quite a bit on the danger front. The thing about personal nemeses is that they're tailoring themselves to you, your strengths, your weaknesses, planning attacks that will be especially tough on you. Bringing a friend or two along to a fight, that can short out their entire plan. And they hate that." She chuckled. "Done!" Ammy caroled suddenly. She pointed to the empty place on her plate where chicken nuggets had once resided, and the few stray crumbs of broccoli still on the plate. "Ice cream time!" "I think you're right!" Stesha agreed. "It is time for ice cream!"
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Erin blinked as she took another bite of her sandwich, only belatedly realizing that this might be an awkward topic. Normally she tuned out when Aquaria began ranting about Atlanteans, the same as she did when Jessie started waxing enthusiastic over how many colors of colored pencils there were, but she knew there was bad blood there from way back. "Oh, ah, she's probably nobody you would know," she told Thaelia, "she's the roommate of my dimensional doppelganger over at Project Freedom, her name is Aquaria and she's a Deep One. Does anybody at school still talk about the time we switched places with our Anti-Earth doppelgangers?" she went on, just a little hastily. "That was a really weird experience for everybody. I think my double ate like five gallons of ice cream."
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Fleur succeeds! Barely!
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Fleur ran as fast as she could through the empty corridors of the Lighthouse, but even though she was gasping for air by the time she arrived on the deck where the nearest boarding party had landed, they were already beginning to split up and move out. "I don't suppose..." she gasped, "we could get... a short time out? Compensate...for super-high oxygen... level? No?" If nothing else, her words did draw the attention of every Antibody. As they began coming towards her, she launched a handful of seeds at the group on her left. Vines sprung out like snakes released from a can of peanuts, wrapping around and entangling all but one of that group. Hastily she grabbed another handful, spun halfway around, and tossed it at the other group. Every one of them was captured. Stesha breathed a sigh of relief that was hard to make out through the panting. "I gotta start jogging..."
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Surging (canceling fatigue with an HP) and doing a second round of snares, using her Shapeable as much as possible to catch the largest number of antibodies
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Fleur will use her move action to get to the bad guys! She will use her standard action to snare the heck out of these guys (hopefully)! That's an area effect Snare 15, so I believe that is a DC 25 Reflex to avoid.
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The little parade of Erins stopped on the front stoop as Trevor pulled up, Erin looking flustered, Jessie stoic, and Erin Prime as though she were just waiting for the next disaster to come crashing down. Erin put up her hand and waved weakly in return, using all her willpower to keep from throwing in one of their "please save me" secret hand signals. "Oh, you brought your boyfriend too," Erin Prime observed in a voice that was just a bit too chipper. "I didn't realize you two were still together." "Yeah, we've been living together for the past couple of years," Erin replied, narrowing her eyes slightly. "He lives in a mansion, you know, so there's plenty of room for both of us to have lots of space." Erin Prime gave Erin a look so identical it was actually a little disturbing. "Well, that was lucky, you managed to solve all your problems at once..." "Can we go inside now?" Jessie demanded, stepping physically between her two counterparts in a show of great bravery or extreme obliviousness. "Everyone is in there! They're all waiting for us!" Erin sighed. "Yeah, let's do this." She beckoned to Trevor. "Come on in, don't want to miss all the fun!"
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"Sorry to hear that," Erin said sympathetically, wiping a bit of mayonnaise from her lips. The sandwiches were as good as she remembered, and she made a note to visit more often when she was out patrolling. "But maybe you can at least visit, if you have to go back to living down there. You said it was an hour and a half away? That's not too bad for a weekend or something." She took a sip of her drink. "I only really know one other person who comes from underwater, and she lives in Freedom City pretty much full time now, but it seems like if you can get the thing with your family sorted out you might be able to part-time in both places. You could study what surface-dwellers know about the ocean."
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The squeals of displeasure at this possibility were enough to shut down any more conversation, but Stesha gave Min and Erik both a grateful smile as she went to pour cocoa from the large carafe keeping hot in the kitchen. "He was just teasing, sweetheart, there's enough for everyone! You know how Uncle Erik likes to tease you." In short order the girls had lukewarm cocoa mixed with milk and marshmallows, while the adults had mugs of the hot liquid, made from powder but still palatable. "You know, Min," Stesha began, leaning against one counter and idly stirring her cocoa, "you're welcome to come and stay here for longer if you like. You too, Erik, and your family as well, you're always welcome, but I was thinking that it might make things easier for you, or more pleasant, maybe?" She waved a hand to indicate everything surrounding them. "The earth never truly goes dormant here because we need the crops all year long. I don't know, does it feel different to you?"
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"That's just because you don't know about Google Earth," she retorted, with just the faintest hint of a smile. "Ain't no place outdoors where Big Brother can;t watch you. Come on, what's this really about?" she demanded. "You don't have to drag me outdoors just to get me out of the house, you know I can go out when I need to. Look, didn't I just go to the moon a month ago?" Her voice took on a slight whine. "I spend all day mentally out of the house, it's not weird to want to stay inside and relax when I get home."
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"I do understand that," Erin insisted. "Does it sound like I'm asking you to feel sorry for what you did? I'm not. But you understand why people are worried about you, right? Marquez can be a jackass, but he's a competent psychologist under the layers of smarm and smile." She hopped up to sit on a ledge next to the sidewalk, ignoring the snow that immediately started melting into her pants. "When I killed Friendly, it was the right thing to do, but the reasons were all tangled up, and I think it's probably the same way with you because we both did it for the same reason. Yeah, it was because he had to be stopped, but it was just as much because he had destroyed everything that was important to me and he never lost a minute's sleep over it. He didn't even care. I spend years thinking about it, and when I finally saw him face to face, the rage... it was unspeakable." She rolled her shoulders in an uncomfortable shrug, not quite looking at anything in particular. "I did what needed to be done, but I would've done it anyway, even if there was no way he could ever hurt another person. Because he deserved it. It took me a long time to untangle those motivations, and to have any kind of faith that I could feel one without the other."
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Amaryllis sighed at the pronouncement, but picked up one of the broccoli florets on her plate and ate it in neat small bites. Stesha was just as glad her daughter hadn't shown any ability to disintegrate vegetation yet, it was hard enough getting her to eat her vegetables anyway. She took another bite of her noodles, savoring the buttery taste. "Multiplicity, is that the name of the villain?" she asked. "I don't think I've heard of them before. But with a name like that, sounds like it'd be only fair to bring a little backup to a fight. And some of us are extremely hard to hurt, so don't you worry about that." She smiled, only a tiny bit smug. "You're an adult and a hero, nobody's going to tell you how to fight your battles. But don't think you haven't got options."
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She frowned at him. "I'll eat it later," she said defensively, giving her plate a nudge away with one finger just to be difficult. And it was almost certainly true; Gina had no trouble eating, she just didn't want anyone seeing her do it. She'd made a deliberate effort to get over it because she knew it bothered Steve and meals were one of the few couply things they could do together, but if he was going to start talking about outside, all bets were off. "Maybe I don't want to look at the stars," she challenged. "Maybe I just don't want to freeze my ass off staring at smog and satellites. What's wrong with a little brain-numbing television after a long day?"
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Erin didn't flinch at the poke, instead reaching up and grabbing Tona's hand very carefully by the wrist. "Of course he did!" she responded, her voice much quieter but no less intense. "He deserved to die and nobody mourned his death, and it's very likely that the world is a better place because he's gone. But it's not about him, Tona! It's about you, and about the kind of code you have to follow if you want to live your life as a superhero and not let it break you." She let go of Tona's hand, ran her own through her hair. "There are terrible people out there, even just here on Earth Prime, and you're going to run into them a lot. Some of them will have done things that are so bad that they deserve to die, and even that won't balance the scales. But no matter how clear that is, it's not our job to hand out that kind of justice. You try and take that kind of responsibility on yourself and it'll drag you down, till you don't even know what's right and wrong anymore. And you'll stop being a hero. I'm not sorry for what I did, because if I hadn't, nobody else would've been able to stop him. But I won't do it again. I can't."
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"You shouldn't, we only looked today, I didn't have to do any deprogramming," Paige assured him. "The deprogramming can cause those headaches. If you do feel a little achy, take a couple of tylenol and lay down in a dim room to let your mind rest and you'll be fine." She slid the papers back into the folder and closed it. "Visualizing your mind as a place takes concentration and practice, usually with meditation. I can help you wilth it as part of your shielding training, but itll also need a lot of work on your part. If you want to get an idea of how it works, do some research on mind palaces. It's the same idea but much more subconscious, your ideas and concepts translate themselves into places and things."
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"I killed Physician Friendly," Erin told her, her voice oddly conversational for the subject matter, almost meditative. "I don't know if you've heard that part of the story before. It was just before the fight with Omega. We were standing in the ruins of my world, and he was the one who had caused all of it. He wanted to show it off to us, like it was some big accomplishment. Right as he was starting to boast, I took my bat and I drove it through his skull. I ended up having a bunch more counseling because of it, and I was afraid later of how my friends would react, but it had to be done. I couldn't save my world, but I could stop him from doing it to anybody else. When you killed the Steam General, was it to stop him, or was it for vengeance?"
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All three young women looked at each other for a second, before Erin and Erin Prime began hastily demurring. "Oh no, we have to get-" "I'm sure Keeley and Jessie have a lot of work we don't want to-" "Yes, that would be nice," Jessie said loudly, overwhelming the other two. "I'm nearly frozen, and my throat is dry. And I want to see." She set her chin and glared at her counterparts, daring them to object. Erin sighed. "Did you tell your folks?" she murmured to Erin Prime. "Of course not!" Erin Prime snapped, her voice equally low. "They had enough guilt over one extra kid they couldn't take care of, you think another one would help?" Erin flinched at that, but shook it off to shrug with assumed nonchalance. "Well, this should be extra fun, then. Unless you wanna explain to your boyfriend why you won't have us in the house." Erin Prime glared. "He's my fiance," she reminded Erin. "And you can come in, just try not to make everything horribly awkward, okay? Couldn't you have called first?" "I wasn't going to come at all," Erin snapped, still barely whispering. "I know how welcome I am at family gatherings. But she had to see for herself." There was silence for a moment as Erin Prime rubbed her face with one hand. When she raised her head, she was smiling, if a bit falsely. "Well, what are we waiting for? It's freezing out here." Sliding her fingers through Eric's, she headed back towards the house. Erin fell in behind, walking close to Jessie. "Can you keep it together in there?" she whispered. "it's not going to be easy." "I don't know," Jessie replied solemnly. "But I have to see."
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Erin was silent for a minute, letting Tona pull herself together while she looked up at the sky. There was a superhero flying overhead, just a dot against the white clouds and too far away to tell who. Given the time of day, probably someone commuting to work to avoid the traffic. While she waited, she contemplated what to say and how to say it. Finally she turned her head to look at Tona as they walked. "Do you think he was still dangerous at the moment you took him out?" she asked mildly.
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Paige nodded, drawing back to give him back his privacy and stretching to relieve the painful crick in her spine. Barely half an hour had passed, but that was still a long time to hold perfectly still. "Whenever you're ready, then. But wherever they are, I'm sure they're healthy and safe. It's good that you remember them, but don't be afraid to go on with your life and leave the past behind." She picked up the folder she'd brought in with his paperwork and began making notations, marking that she'd scanned Alek and found him still on a path of recovery, with no hidden triggers or lingering damage from his ordeal. "Do you have any questions about what we just did?"
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Gina filled her plate and brought it to the table as well, though she made no move to touch it. Instead she looked out the large bay window at the backyard, neatly maintained by an outdoor Emerson despite being barren and flattened by this year's profusion of snow. "The grass is not exactly grassy right now," she pointed out. "More like spread a blanket on the mud. And there's nothing interesting going on tonight anyway. Pretty much all the Communion debris is done falling already."
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"Yeah, Claremont's nice that way." Their food arrived, and Erin took a moment to spread coleslaw over her fish sandwich. "But even once you get out in the world, most people just don't pay that much attention. They may notice that you do unusual things, or wear unusual clothes, but unless it actually gets in their way, they mostly don't care. It seems lonely, but it's actually kind of relaxing. You just have to learn the list of things normal people do to get along with their neighbors, and then you're fine. Are you going to stick around after graduation?"