Electra
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Wander pitched in to help wash off the afflicted citizens, not wanting to expose any of her less invulnerable teammates to the risk of contamination. It was rather gratifying to see how quickly the compulsion wore off, and she quickly set about helping people back to their homes before they caught their death of cold. Trying to play it safe, she kept her face down and tilted out of the uncertain light, and although a couple people may have looked at her twice, there were no more awkward Kathy-type moments. It wasn't until Wander recalled the moment with Kathy that she remembered to look around for Singularity... who was nowhere to be found. Singularity wanted to help, she really did. And for awhile she managed it, washing people off alongside her double, dragging or sometimes carrying them back into their houses. But when most of the people were taken care of and the danger seemed past, it was hard not to look around. Hard not to remember. She'd walked and ridden her bike down these streets so many times, it was practically instinct to find her feet taking her away from the little clot of heroes on the wet street, towards someplace warmer and friendlier. The lights were on as she approached, and for a few moments it was easy (even easier than usual) to just forget everything that had happened and know she was home.
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Paige gets a terrible roll on her save, spending an HP to reroll. She makes the save, barely.
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"Oh, I think there are a lot of reasons to fret," Fleur fumed, but recovered her good sense enough to drop her voice, at least. "I suppose stopping the insect invasion is a good thing, or at least I hope it is. But we still ruined peoples' lives, erased peoples' lives! There's a reason we're not supposed to tamper with history if we find ourselves flung into the past, and now we've changed everything and we're stuck here-" She cut herself off abruptly, face going pale. "We're stuck here," she repeated, her voice no more than a murmur now. "Mitya, how are we supposed to get home? My portals don't work to travel through time!"
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Fleur gave a fractional nod to her companions on the command deck as the last Antibody fell down, then glanced to the screens. "These guys might end up being the least of our worries. Better get them locked down quick." A wave of her hand, and the vine tangle sprouted an enormous chrysanthemum head twice the size of a golf umbrella. It fell on the bound invaders like a big powder puff and suddenly they were in the room no longer. "There's more nearby." She took off, racing for the emergency stairs and off to the next fight.
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Fleur will pocket her collection of bound and helpless Antibodies, thereby clearing the command deck for the moment. She will then take off as fast as her little legs will carry her to reach the next nearest group of bad guys!
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Holly studied Thaelia with wide eyes (blue like her father's), then took the princess' hand and shook it. "It's nice to meet you." Thaelia could feel a slight brush across the surface of her mind, almost like a tickle as their fingers touched. "Careful," Paige cautioned her daughter with a half-smile. "I know it's easy to slip, but best behavior tonight." Ignoring Holly's pout for the moment, she turned to Richard. "Your hair looks fine. Very distinguished," she teased, then backed quickly out of reach before he could retaliate. "There's a whole list of phone numbers on the kitchen counter, all the emergency numbers, our cell phones, the neighbors, the Freedom League. Our neighbor across the street is with the FBI, he'll be home around midnight and promised to drive past and make sure everything is still quiet." "Can Gwen come over, mom?" Holly interjected suddenly, reminded again of her best friend. "No, Gwen's grounded for making an illusion of her history test to fool Mr. Mattis, remember? You'll see her at school Monday." There was renewed pouting, which Paige also ignored. "You guys can help yourselves to the fridge and the pantry if pizza isn't enough, but Holly gets no dessert till after her homework is done. Hmm, let's see.. oh, the wifi password is 'SUPERCRIME,' and if the phone rings you can answer it, but if it starts whooping like an alarm, just let it go. We should be home no later than 4am, and it's totally fine if you sack out on the couches, just make sure the alarm system is armed. Did you have any questions before we head out?"
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"Thanks for that," Stesha's grin was rueful but at least it was there as she opened the door and let them into the much warmer room. "But if it needs done, I can handle it myself. I'm not the girl I was back then." Leaning out the door, she called "Ammy! Eden! Come get some cocoa!," then turned back to her friends. "I just... the work he's doing is important, and I know that," she admitted quietly. "But I didn't think it was going to be like this. And I don't know how much longer I can live this way. Amaryllis deserves more. I deserve more. But it makes me feel like a fool, like I should've known better when he disappeared for so long before the wedding." She folded her mittened hands and looked down at them. "And if I do anything at this point, it's like I've failed because I'm not hero enough to wait for him."
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Paige answered the door with a smile, ushering the teens inside. "Elias, Thaelia, so nice to see you. We really appreciate you coming over to look after Holly tonight." The Cline house, like most of the homes in the Nicholson Family Village, was fairly spacious for a home in Port Regal where most of the homes tended towards post-war two-bedroom boxy affairs. When the school had bought up and renovated the neighborhood surrounding its campus, it had ensured that families of all sizes could move in with no difficulty. The Clines had only been in the city a year, but they'd made themselves at home. The front door opened into the living room, where comfortable-looking couches and chairs faced a large flat-screened TV, and several bookshelves were entirely full of DVDs. A set of stairs across from the door led up into the second floor, with the wall along the whole ascent covered with baby and childhood pictures of Will and Holly, family pictures obviously dating back into the nineties, and group shots with what seemed to be various casts and crews, to judge by the lights and equipment. Beyond the stairs, the room opened up into a kitchen and dining area. The whole place was clean, if slightly cluttered around the edges, with the perfume smell and slight humidity of somewhere where people were preparing for an evening out. "Elias, you remember Holly," Paige introduced, leading them into the kitchen where Holly and Richard were waiting. "Thaelia, I'm not sure whether you two have met before? And this is Richard, Holly and Will's dad."
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Temporarily ignoring the people she'd just saved, Fleur stalked towards Comrade Frost, her remaining vines coiling around her feet like a nest of snakes. "So what you're saying is that we went back in time and we completely ERASED the entire world we were just in? And all the people who were still alive and needed our help are just what, gone now?" Her eyes widened even further as she clapped a hand over her mouth. "I have two dozen refugees on Sanctuary waiting to be able to go home! What am I supposed to tell them?" The vines did not go so far as to actually begin swarming Frost's legs, but they were pooling around his shoes in a rather menacing fashion.
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Hologram will use her Enhanced Instant-Command Mind Control to attempt to get hold of Antibody 2 and turn him on Antibody 3..That's a Perception attack and a DC 22 will save.
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I'll send Wander into space, she should go there voluntarily every once in awhile, just to prove she can! And if you need a telepath for something, Hologram is available.
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Inside the Cline house, the atmosphere was controlled chaos, hardly unusual, though with a more sophisticated edge tonight. Paige was already dressed for the evening, in a garnet Zac Posen halter dress and four-inch heels, an outfit she didn't even like to contemplate the cost of despite picking it up secondhand from an LA friend. With her short hair styled into a chic wave and her makeup expertly applied, she was red carpet ready. Just in case, you know, the photographers and reporters were interested in a couple of minor celebrities and minor superheroes attached to a documentary that was a long shot to win a prize even at the Independent Spirit Awards. She calculated it at about a fifty-fifty shot, depending on who else was attending and whether the more well-known attendees were feeling gregarious. Richard, of course, always made time for the press. "Holly?" she called up the stairs, "come on downstairs, we're going to be leaving soon. There's casserole leftovers in the fridge, and fruits and carrots in the crisper if you get hungry. Did you finish your homework?" "Almost," Holly replied as she descended the stairs, choosing inexplicably to bump down on her butt instead of descending like a normal human being. "You look pretty, Mom! Can I try on your shoes?" "Not right now, maybe later. Did you do the math?" "Almost. Can I try on your makeup while you're gone?" "No. Does 'almost' mean "I've started it," or "I've almost thought about starting it but then I didn't?" Holly tried on her most angelic smile. "I looked at the problems and thought about them in my head!" "Try thinking about them on the paper, that's how you get credit for it." Paige kissed her on the forehead, leaving a faint lip-print. "Now I want you to be good tonight for the babysitters, okay? These are Will's friends, so we'll hear about any crazy shenanigans." That got Paige a roll of the eyes. "I'm almost eleven, Mom. I don't even need a babysitter. Gwen's dad lets her stay home alone after school." "Gwen's dad lets her stay alone for half an hour after school in the daytime, with us across the street and the Jacobis next door keeping an eye on her," Paige retorted. "Gwen's dad does not have to worry about a rogue supervillain trying to steal his daughter the minute his back is turned! Give me a break, kiddo, I'm still getting over the heart attack from last time!" Holly frowned. "That wasn't my fault." "It wasn't anybody's fault," Paige soothed. "And once we catch Dr. Psion, I'll feel a lot better about letting you out of my sight. But we have to be careful right now, okay? So be good for the babysitters, and go to bed when they say, and we'll be home when you wake up."
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"Lots of paperwork," Miss A confirmed with a smile. "Reams of it, it's really pretty daunting. We have a large legal department here, and I feel it's important to keep them busy and out of trouble. Luckily, after looking at your background check and your references, plus what I heard from the phone interview, I was pretty sure I was going to hire you, so it's all ready for you to get started on down in Human Resources. You'll work your starting date out with them," she continued easily, shucking her labcoat and checking her watch. Underneath the coat she wore a tailored business suit, designer and obviously expensive, in shades of burgundy and navy. "I've got a few minutes yet, I can show you to your lab space downstairs. You'll have your own office and storage area, and a lab you'll share with two other roboticists I just hired from MIT. If you prefer to work in your workshop, you can certainly do that, but if you're into the whole collaboration thing, you're probably going to want to work here most days. We don't count hours here, but we expect productivity. If you're working in the labs till 3am one night, I don't want you in at 9 the next morning unless the project is that hot." She gave Alex a conspiratorial grin. "I really haven't had any trouble getting engineers to work enough hours. Getting them to stop is usually the problem."
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Miss A's lips quirked in a half-smile at the mention of the monkey butler. "You would, I think, have gotten along well with our founder before his unfortunate possession experience," she told Alex. "He had a robot gorilla butler in his home, one that spoke several languages, I believe. I'd love to take a look at your prototypes sometime." With an ease that belied what the torso alone must have weighed, she hefted the robot upright and pressed a button at the nape of its neck. It hummed to life and walked off to a phone booth-sized charging unit set into one wall. "Your reasons for wanting to work here make perfect sense," she continued, even as she began to methodically sort her tools back into a capacious and ruthlessly organized toolbox. "Mentorship and collaboration are an important focus here at ArcheTech, and most of our labs are shared for that reason. You'll also have access to cutting edge technology for both programming and manufacture, and a project budget to pursue your own interests besides any programs that you are assigned to. While you are working here, any inventions you develop in collaboration will be patented by ArcheTech and you will receive a percentage of whatever profits result. Inventions you develop on your own will be jointly managed between yourself and ArcheTech, which means you will have a substantial say in what happens to them, but not the only say. "The initial starting contract for an alternative program engineer, that's engineers who don't come to us through the usual educational or career paths, is for one year, so both sides have a chance to evaluate whether it's going to work out." Miss A named a salary that was more than Alex would've seen in three years in her current job. "That also includes a competitive benefits package, three weeks paid vacation, a stipend for hero work that some of our alternative hires take advantage of, and discounts on ArcheTech products and services when ordered through the company. At the end of the year, there will be an evaluation process, and unless things have gone horribly wrong somewhere, or you decide you want nothing to do with us anymore, you'll be offered an ongoing contract with salary increase commensurate to you work. Are you interested?" The entire time she'd been rattling off information, Miss A was still putting her tools away, but now she looked up and studied Alex with great interest, waiting for her answer.
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"Very nicely done," Miss A said with a nod, keeping an eye on the robot as it settled itself into power-save mode on the shelf. "That's excellent work, especially for being done without specialized tools." She picked up a microfiber rag and wiped a few spots of grease off her hands, then set it aside and closed the front panel on the robot she'd been tinkering with. "What other sorts of projects have you worked on recently? And what are you interested in doing as a part of ArcheTech?"
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Miss A took the robot and held it with careful competence, turning it this way and that to examine its features. "Very elegant," she complimented, "not overly complex, but streamlined to do what it needs to with very little fuss or wasted energy." She picked up a blunt silicone probe and nudged the wheels, then the arms. "It looks like you custom made some of these parts. At the shop where you're working currently?" She set the robot down on the floor, in a relatively clear area. "Can I see him in action? Though not the taser, if you please."
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Fleur's eyes widened as she looked at Daniels. "1927?" she repeated, taking another hard look at the technology around them, at the clothes on the people they'd just fought and rescued. "FROST!" she yelled suddenly. "I thought you said this was going to take us to some kind of hellish insect dimension! Not to the past! What did we just do to these people? Did we change history? Or spin off another alternate history?" She shook her head. "Time travel stuff is just the absolute worst. I did not need this today."
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"Well, not everyone considers basic service robots simple," Miss A countered with a grin, leaning over to check the reading on the thermocouple. "In your average lab, just getting a humanoid robot up and running would be pretty good work. But you're right that this is supposed to be a little more than that. The kids down at the desk have been asking for a little technological backup for when things get busy, so they aren't directing traffic, answering phones and leading tour groups all at the same time. This guy here," she indicated the robot with her elbow, "is hopefully gonna hit that AI sweet spot where he's smart enough to give a tour to fifth graders, but not smart enough to go evil and try to take over the world." She chuckled, soldered one last connection, and pulled her hand out of the robot to offer it to Alex. "It's nice to meet you, by the way. I understand this is one of your specialty areas?"
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Wander and Singularity rejoined the group a minute later, both of them soaking wet from the fire hydrant they'd washed off in, but nether one shivering yet. Wander was dragging her double by the hand, while Singularity held onto a heavy grocery bag marked with a hardware store logo and stared at the ever-growing crowd of people who'd left their homes to find out what all the commotion was about. Wander, by contrast, didn't look around at all, refusing to allow herself to be distracted and wishing she hadn't taken off her mask. "Okay, we got the stuff on our list," she told Midnight, after giving the kid and the cookie and odd look. "Let's get these people fixed up and get out of here."
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"Come on in!" a pleasant female voice called from around a bank of monitors. "Sorry, I meant to be ready for you, but I've got my hands a little full at the moment." As Alex rounded the monitors, she found Miss Americana wrist-deep in the chassis of a silver-colored humanoid robot, the lights sparking from within suggesting she was micro-soldering. Alex had seen the charismatic CEO on television before, hardly anybody in Freedom City had not, but her effect in person was much more pronounced. Even with a slightly-scorched white lab coat covering her clothes and wearing goggles that magnified her eyes several times, Miss A was strikingly beautiful, with a presence that seemed to fill the room. From the look of her, if any grease dared to creep under Miss A's fingernails, it would immediately slide back out again, ashamed of itself. "Come on," Miss A muttered at the circuit board she was working on, "now you're just being stubborn, give me a break..." A closer examination revealed that she didn't actually have a soldering iron in her hand, but instead appeared to be soldering with small, precise laser beams from her fingers. "Miss Dunham, or may I call you Alex? Would you mind digging a thermocouple out of that drawer behind you and helping me test this connection? I think the coolant system has an irregularity in the thermostat, but I haven't pinned it down yet."
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"Yes of course, one moment," The receptionist typed on air, then gave Alex another polite smile and a printed temporary badge on a lanyard. "Thank you Ms. Durham, Miss Americana is waiting for you in Robotics Lab 2 on Level 11. Please follow the arrows." As Alex watched, a series of glowing green arrows appeared on the wall, directing her to the second elevator in the bank. "Enjoy your day at ArcheTech!" The elevator was fast and silent, whisking Alex up to the eleventh floor where another set of glowing arrows led her down a long corridor. This floor was much less busy than the lobby, and the people who walked past her in the corridors all wore ArcheTech security badges. Not all the people were actually people, either; she caught sight of several boxy little robots with extendable heads and arms, rolling around on sturdy treads and apparently intent on their own business. Each robot also had its own badge. After a minute or two of walking, the arrows petered out at a door that read "ROBOTICS LAB 2," under which someone had hand-lettered a sign reading "Caution: Rogue Robots." It was the first bit of whimsy Alex had seen in the whole place. The door slid open for her, very Star Trek, and allowed her into a lab that looked like a cross between NASA and a horror movie. It was full of computers and machining equipment, calibrating devices and racks of specialized tools, but there were also rows of heads, torsos, arms and legs hung up in corners or sitting on shelves, completely bloodless but still oddly macabre. One of the boxy little robots was in here as well; it spotted Alex and gave a shrill whistle, then rolled off into the jungle of equipment.
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For a building that had only been around a decade, the pyramidal frustum of ArcheTech Headquarters occupied its spacious campus in Hanover with a stately grace that suggested much longer years. It certainly hadn't taken long for the distinctive shape of the building to make it a landmark, or for its lobby full of scientific displays and free-of-charge rotating presentations to make it a popular field trip destination. The campus hosted a 5k fun run in the springtime, an all-ages Halloween extravaganza, summer science camps, and Christmas decorations that could easily be seen across the river. Whether or not people used ArcheTech products (and many of them certainly did), the company was a fixture in the life of the city. Even natives of Freedom City who'd spent most of the decade away from home knew something about the super-tech company. Going on a field trip or attending a fun run, however, was not exactly the same as actually coming into the company for a job interview. By the time Alex was invited for an in-person interview at ArcheTech, she'd already survived the resume submission and the phone interview stage, but now this was the real thing. An in-person interview with the company's superhero CEO, Miss Americana. Not only did Miss Americana run ArcheTech, she was a super-scientist and engineer in her own right, with dozens of articles published about her work in biomechanics, robotics, and a handful of other fields. She also apparently took it upon herself to hand-pick any metahuman scientists coming to work for the company. The lobby itself was not too intimidating, since it was mostly filled with schoolchildren and their harried chaperones, racing from display to display while cheerful tour guides led them around. Employees with badges and some with uniforms threaded their way through the chaos with the ease of long practice. Here and there, security guards in blue kept an eye on things and helped wrangle the wayward children. At the farthest point of the lobby from the displays was a bank of elevators and a large, sleek white desk. When Alex approached the front desk, she could see a trio of extremely efficient-looking employees wearing Bluetooth headsets and typing with holographic touchpads onto transparent projected screens. "May I help you?" asked the nearest receptionist, a young man with a polite smile and a small computer screen projected over one eye.
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"That's a very optimistic way of looking at things." Miss Americana handed Emerson her glass of water, then unfolded her legs and smoothed her skirt. "I'm afraid I have double-booked lunch meetings today, so I'm going to have to take my leave. This tablet has a few forms for you to sign for the sake of giving the legal department some way to earn their salaries, and I'll be instructing R&D to make contact with you regarding the flight suit testing." She extended the tablet to Naomi, then her hand. "It's been a pleasure meeting you, Naomi. I'm sure you'll have a bright future with ArcheTech."
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"I suspect we can work something out," Miss A told her, not seeming bothered by any presumption. "It might take awhile to work all the bugs out, but there's not much better acid-testing than putting a gadget to work for a superhero. Who knows, maybe you'll find yourself with the prototype for next century's air force. Though it would probably take well into the next century, given how government contracts work." She flicked her fingers, dismissing the idea for the moment. "It sounds as though you're adjusting well into this new life, and have some good ideas about what you want to do next. I suppose my last remaining question is have you chosen a hero name? (20)"
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When the robot rolled back with another bottle of root beer, he bypassed Miss A entirely and poured the beverage straight into Naomi's mug. "A solid enough plan, " Miss A agreed. "Some heroes start working with nothing more than a police band scanner and wind up doing fine for themselves. And I'd be pleased to give you a call when something seems like it could use your unique talents. Now, are there any questions I'm forgetting, or questions you'd like to ask? (19)"