Electra
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"Keep us apprised, Seahawk," Miss A responded. "I can be out to back you up within five minutes if necessary." At first, there was no sign at all of the disturbance ArcheTech had picked up, just miles of cold gray-blue ocean with the shoreline in the distance, marked with the forbidding blocky outline of Blackstone just beyond the coast. Then Seahawk spotted a flash of color in the waves, white and red and orange, then more gray blue. As she approached, she could see it was a small boat, probably a recreational sailboat, its mast snapped off and trailing in the water, its hull listing badly to starboard. On the deck were three figures in orange lifejackets, who looked to be frantically bailing.
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She nodded once, still studying him with narrowed eyes, like she was seeing all his weak spots and tucking them away for later. The long, slim baton she carried was still loose in her hand, though, so she didn't seem ready to hit him quite yet. In the light, her close-fitting costume was purple and black, with a black domino mask covering her eyes. The bat itself was silver and seemed to glow faintly with its own light, drawing the eye. Despite all that she was quite young, no more than very early twenties if that. "Wander," she replied, brisk but not exactly unfriendly. "It's a pretty terrible night to be out on patrol. They say we'll probably have more snow before dawn." She shrugged one shoulder. "Most of the work on nights like this is herding the homeless people off the streets."
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~I know,~ she reassured him, squeezing his fingers lightly. ~Don't worry about me, I can protect myself. Everything you're feeling is normal, everything you're doing here is good, natural. Shutting these memories away gave you time to heal and become strong. You're so much stronger now than you used to be, Alek, can you feel it? You have the power now, not the memories.~ Paige looked around the dreamscape and steadied herself, imagined confidence, steadfastness, implacable courage. She was a television show host, not a psychologist, but she was a psychic and a hero and a mother, and she wanted very much to help the traumatized little boy who was no longer little. ~If I am sad or angry, you know it's not at you, but on your behalf, for what was done to you. You're not going to be overwhelmed by the memories, your control is too strong for that. But if something happens, if anything becomes too much, I'll help you,~ she promised. ~Show me.~
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"I'll give you a little time to settle in," Miss A told her, "but then I'm definitely going to tap you for a couple of projects. I need someone with an intuitive talent for robotics backing me up on some of the ideas I've got cooking, somebody who can take a ball and run with it. Judging by the work of yours I've seen, you'll be able to do it, with a little time and training." She grinned, and it was a real grin, not an office-professional smile. "I'm not really difficult to work with, people just have to keep up! You go on down to the second floor and hang a right out of the elevator, and HR is the first set of double doors. " She extended a hand to Alex. "Welcome to ArcheTech."
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Wander hastily backed up to keep out of the light, but she was starting to feel kind of sorry for the guy, supervillain or not. Things did not seem to be working out the way he'd planned. In any case, he seemed prepared to hunker down for awhile, and she had stuff to do tonight, so she decided to press the issue. With a neat flip over the fire escape rail, Wander dropped into the alley with a soft thud of sneakers meeting gritty concrete. She stood on the edge of the pool of light, bat held at her side ready, but not raised. "Kind of a cold night to be out," she said conversationally, taking the opportunity to get a good look at the guy and his costume. "I don't think I've seen you around before. Are you planning to cause trouble?"
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Even with her excellent hearing, Wander could only make out most of the one-sided conversation the man on the street was having. She suspected there was a radio or bluetooth headset under that smooth white mask, letting him talk with a handler or sidekick. Hell, maybe with his wife, to judge by the tone of voice he was using. Mostly he was complaining about the cold, and that she could understand. It was no fit night for hero nor villain. When he stepped into the alleyway, she decided to get a better look, climbing headfirst down a drainpipe down the side of the building, pausing again on a second-floor fire escape balcony. He didn't seem very dangerous, but then again, neither did she on first glance.
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~Your Boss Lady is a wise woman,~ Paige replied, this time her words filtering right into Alek's head. She closed her eyes and took a long breath, sliding her consciousness into his mind with barely a ripple. If he hadn't known what she was doing, it might have been entirely imperceptible. ~Just relax,~ she encouraged him, ~you're doing great.~ Paige "opened" her inner eye and took a moment to gather herself before allowing herself to take in the totality of Alek's mind. It was chaotic, fast-paced, frenetic, hardly holding onto a thought longer than it took to look at it and toss it away again. Very much like Will's mind, she thought affectionately, very teenage boy. There was darkness, of course, much more so than with her son, anger and fear, grief for a childhood he'd been denied, rage at so many different things. He still had a lot of emotions to work through. Even that, though, was natural. What she did not see were the jagged edges of psychosis or the smooth, slippery walls of sociopathy, signs that his pain had festered into something dangerous. ~When you're ready,~ she thought to him again, still projecting peace, safety, approval. ~Show me where it hurts.~
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It was a quiet night in Freedom City, probably because it persisted in being so damn cold, Wander decided as she bounced from rooftop to rooftop on an aimless path through the downtown. Even the criminals were staying indoors until the snow melted and the temperatures came a little closer to merely freezing. Even with her incredible resilience, the combination of cold and speed was starting to chap her lips and fingers. She slowed as she came to Wading Way, where a few people were still out on the streets. A voice caught her attention and she followed it, peering down from a three-story rooftop to the street below. Definitely someone out and about tonight, and to judge by the blank mask, jaunty suit, and cane, he probably wasn't just trying to get home from work. Some kind of super, and the costume said supervillain to her mind. Still, he wasn't doing anything _wrong_ just yet. She hung back and followed from above, wondering where he was going.
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"It's nice to meet you," Stesha replied. "I'm Stesha... Madison," she added with just a slight stumble, "and this is Amaryllis. I know Grimalkin, and I've heard of Fast-Forward, though I haven't met him yet. I watch the show, though," she admitted with a little laugh. "The reenactment bits are really funny. You were around for the Incursion, then?" She shook her head a little. "That was scary stuff. I was up on the Lighthouse fighting the Communion boarding parties, not exactly my cup of tea. We were very lucky to come off so lightly from all that." Now that the statue was gone, Amaryllis was concentrating more on her food, shredding her chicken nugget into particulate matter and eating a fraction of a bite at a time with her fork. "I can fight monsters," she announced. "I fight them with plants." "Not yet," Stesha told her firmly, "but someday you will. What brought you to Freedom City?" she asked Maybelle.
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Amaryllis gave the statue a poke with her finger, then giggled. "Look Mommy, like Uncle Tarrant!" She'd have continued examining the statue and possibly attempted to climb it, but a significant look from Stesha had her subsiding back into her seat and picking up a chicken nugget. The vine she'd been playing with had retreated to her arm right now, coiling on her forearm like an elaborate bracelet. "That's impressive work," Stesha told Maybelle with a smile, "though I think you may be right about your cooking being better. I don't think we've met in uniform yet, have we?" She searched her mind, but couldn't recall anyone with powers quite like this that she'd seen recently while working. "I don't spend as much time in Freedom City as I used to."
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Paige's lips quirked at that. "You'll let it pass over and through you, and when it's gone, only you will remain. It's a good thing to remember." Psychic etiquette was one thing, but the mother in her could not feel those cries and not reach out. She projected peace and tranquility to him, a safe and protected place where nothing could hurt him. "You've come so far already from the boy I worked with five years ago. You should be very proud of yourself.There's no magic cure to make the nightmares go away, but here's another little step." She extended her hands to him, flat, palms-up, waiting for him. "Whenever you're ready."
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"Glad you're enjoying yourself," came Miss A's amused voice. "That's actually something like a fourth generation prototype, but it's the first one up for serious stress-testing. So far, everything's green across the board. Why don't you try taking it up to..." There was a moment of noise over the radio, background voices interrupting whatever Miss A had been about to say. She came back on a moment later, sounding curious but not particularly worried. "NX, it looks like our satellite telemetry is picking up an unusual reading about five miles south-southwest of your position. It may be nothing, just a boat, but it's near Lonely Point and we keep a lookout in case someone's trying to approach the prison. Want to go see what's up?"
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"Oh good," Stesha chuckled, "because I ordered that too. Couldn't convince Miss Chicken Nuggets over there, but she'll probably eat some as well." Stesha seemed unbothered by the company, and Amaryllis regarded Maybelle with undisguised curiosity, quite ignoring the thin green vine curling around her own hands like some tame garter snake. She reached out a dainty finger to poke at Maybelle's fork, but was stopped by a cautionary noise from her mother. "Not polite," Stesha reminded her daughter indulgently. "If you're curious, you should ask." Amaryllis huffed, but pulled her hand away. "Do you have a magic fork?"
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Miss A snapped back to life with a gasp, flailing in a very uncharacteristic way for a moment before regaining control of herself. She looked at the dome with eyes still a bit wider than normal, but things seemed to be under control there, for a very loose sort of definition of the term. It didn't look like the dome was in immediate danger of collapse, anyway. "I hate space," she muttered under her breath. "Every time I go to space it just sucks so much. Never going to space again." With that, she extended her hands, fingers pointed out, and shot red-white-and-blue pain at the nearest enemy... whatever it was. She didn't care, she was just pleased by the new scorchmarks it was now sporting on its hull.
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"I kind of got the impression it was a special order," Erin replied with a shrug. "Easier to do with a bookseller he knows, maybe?" She wasn't terribly concerned about it, though she did hope the book was actually going to be there. The mention of being busy did get a quick grin from her. "I keep busy enough," she assured Tona. "I run security at Halloman Advanced Experts, one of the supertech companies. Lot of late hours, but they give me a flexible schedule when I need to go do, you know," she waved a hand, "all the hero stuff. This is my morning off. Summers asked me to do one of those mentorship things, working with a student who has similar powers to mine, giving her advice and helping her train some. You still doing the hero work?" She looked at Tona, still bouncing from foot to foot. "Do you, ah, need to keep running?" she asked, bouncing on her feet to indicate she was willing to continue the conversation on the move. "Or go inside where it's warmer?"
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Erin nodded. "Yeah, it's weird when part of a team graduates and the rest stays behind. But if you're lucky, you'll pick up some good younger students and you can teach them all the stuff you've learned about working in a team. But even if the team doesn't stick together, that doesn't mean you can't work with your friends. If they stay in the city and keep doing hero work, you'll probably run into them all the time anyhow. Neireid's your cousin, right? I sort-of knew her, or we went to school together anyhow. Next Gen and Young Freedom weren't exactly on good terms in those days." She grinned in rueful remembrance. "But Neireid was one of the good ones, worked hard."
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Erin took advantage of the shadows to press her hand flat against her face and shake her head, now that it was too late to do anything else. At least she'd used her new name, at least she'd remembered the cousin thing, but that was still scant consolation when up against the idea of facing the White family on... Her thoughts skipped for a moment as she remembered the date, remembered what they'd been doing before the alarm went off, remembered what would be happening inside that warm and brightly-lit house. She pressed her hands against her stomach as unaccustomed nausea churned. She couldn't do this. Couldn't be here for this. Not to watch a Christmas from the outside, not to let Jessie do that to herself either. It was too cruel. Taking a deep breath, Erin pulled herself together and forced her hands to her sides, donned the smile she wore when she wanted to fake her way out of extra counseling back at school. "Hey Jess, I was looking for you," she began easily, strolling up to the pair in the driveway. "Everybody's getting ready to head back, and we don't want to miss our ride. I thought we said we weren't going to stop by since we didn't tell, ah, Aunt Clarissa that we were coming." If her hands were clenched into tight fists at her sides, well, nobody could tell in the dark. "I had to see for myself." Jessie's voice was low, her eyes too wide as she stared at the house. "It looks the same. Why does it look just the same?" Erin forced an uneasy laugh. "Well, I guess nobody's decided to paint it since last time we were here," she replied, darting a sideways glance at the now rather confused-looking guy in the driveway. "Which is okay, because it looks totally fine!" She started to give Jessie a "please don't talk anymore, ever" glare, but was brought up short by the lonely misery in her double's eyes. "Look..." she murmured, then couldn't think of a damn thing to say. "Uh,I hate to interrupt," said Driveway Guy awkwardly, "and I don't even know if this is a rude question or not, but are you guys superheroes?" Erin and Jessie both looked down at themselves, sodden uniforms and sheathed weapons, then back up to Driveway Guy. Jessie's quiet "no" was entirely covered by Erin's much louder, "Actually yeah, we are. We're with the Liberty League based out of Freedom City. But it's nice to visit our, you know, really distant relations when we're in town."
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"That's good to hear, NX," came Miss Americana's calm voice over the radio. "I'll pass that on to the design team. Are you ready to begin the curve tests?" The next few minutes were spent making wide, very precisely defined loops over the water, using the HUD for guidance. It wasn't the most exciting work, downright tedious compared to the more entertaining things that could be done with a body-mounted flight suit, but they were the bread and butter of a test pilot of any aircraft. Miss A was full of questions on engine pull, gravitational adjustments, whether the suit needed a better internal heater, all the questions that would determine the next generation of suit. "Having fun yet?" she finally asked, a smile in her voice.
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"Running an errand for Summers," Erin replied with a half-smile, waving the slip of paper in her hand for explanation. "There's this reference book on..." She read off the page, "The Metaphysics of Metahumanity, that I guess he ordered here awhile ago. I was down on campus and he asked if I'd run by. He must have forgotten the hours though, cause he told me I could pick it up in the morning." She shrugged, "I'll just have to come back. What about you, are these your srtomping grounds now?"
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Miss A will shoot lasers at Ball 5! Her roll is terrible! Spending an HP from her many complications of being disembodied and scared out of her wits to be far from home. She gets a 24 DC 33 toughness save if that hits
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"You look good," Miss A said with a nod, moving over to monitor one of the diagnostic computers herself. If necessary, she could be in the air to catch Seahawk in seconds, but she had enough faith in the technology to not stand poised and ready for it to happen. "Keep an eye on the HUD for any warning lights, and take it slow to start. There's plenty of time later for fancy maneuvering." She grinned, putting her tongue in her cheek.. "And try not to buzz HAX airspace, they hate that."
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"Thank you so much, it looks delicious. Though, ah, I didn't mean to deprive someone else of their dinner?" Since Maybelle had already left the table, there seemed to be nothing to be done except to eat the soup anyway. Which was just as well, since it smelled fantastic. Stesha didn't technically need to eat food as long as the weather was sunny, but on a cold and dreary day, hot soup was the perfect appetizer. Amaryllis was fascinated by the bread bowl, ripping off little bits and dipping it in the cheesy soup, in between rattling off an ongoing monologue about all the things she and her friends did at the creche that day. Stesha didn't catch all of it, but she gathered that it was some game that involved both hiding and tagging, and possibly jumping off chairs as well. By the time the soup was almost gone, Ammy was getting restless from sitting. Stesha began to amuse her by flicking seeds across the table and growing them into flowers before the little girl could slap her hands down on them. It wasn't something Stesha probably would've done in public a year ago, but she really had no secret identity to protect anymore. Nobody was going to miss that they were different, might as well have some fun with it, right?
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"You'll be in civvies today unless something goes really pear-shaped," Miss A assured her, walking around Naomi once to check her straps and the fit of the suit. "I want you doing everything you can to keep your reactions within human tolerances." She smiled a little. "No letting yourself pass out on the turns just because you'll come back if you die, got it? That's two million dollars of experimental technology you're strapped into, and I'd like to get it back to the ground safely!" The scientists didn't take long to get themselves organized with their diagnostic tools and equipment, and soon the entire group were heading up to the flat roof of the square frustum that was the ArcheTech building. Miss A walked to the edge of the helipad painted there, looking down over the slanted wall of the building. "Sometimes," she confessed quietly to Naomi, "I just want to plop myself down and slide all the way down the side of the building like it's the world's biggest, fastest sled hill."
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Even after her promotion, it wasn't usual for Naomi to be called in to ArcheTech headquarters, but at least the summons had become a less unnerving thing. She'd come in several times already for meetings with the Human Flight research group, getting her measurements taken, explaining exactly how she felt when exposed to various flight conditions and g-forces. They'd made all kinds of interested humming noises and gone off to their drawing boards, promising they'd get back to her. And they had, hence the meeting today. Miss Americana was waiting for her when she disembarked on the tenth floor, already wearing a clean new labcoat over her russet slacks and cadet blue blouse. "Hello Naomi, nice to see you again," she greeted the test pilot cheerfully. "Ready to try out the new rig?"
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Amaryllis scrambled into her chair while Stesha tucked away their winter things (and if they vanished under the table instead of just sitting in a pile, who would be the wiser?), then they both smiled at the waitress. Between the hat she'd been wearing and the warm humidity of the restaurant, Ammy's green curls were a disorderly cloud around her head, barely tamed by a rather unseasonable live-dandelion crown. "Was that the chef?" Stesha asked Clara, glancing over towards the kitchen door. "She seems really nice. Um, let's see, how about we start off with a water for me, a milk for her, and can we get one of those ham and cheese soups in a bread bowl? That sounds amazing."