Electra
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Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
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Fleur nodded, unsurprised at the reaction she'd gotten from the men. "All right. Jones is somewhere in the church, looking into our tactical situation. If you want to find and help him, it'll get done that much quicker. I'll try and find the other soldiers and get the football out of play." Stepping to the window, Stesha tugged off the hood that covered her green hair and closed her eyes. In normal circumstances, communing with the plant life was a leisurely experience, a sharing of sometimes important but rarely time-sensitive information. Today, though, she had a mission and every second counted. She pulled hard on her connection to the plant life, dragging their perceptions into her own mind with a speed she'd never reached before, one that was a little frightening. The onslaught of impressions left her dizzy for a moment, but it did the job. She saw both the soldiers from a plant's eye view, one hiding in the back of a car in a used car lot, the other, the one with the projector, approaching a diner where a small crowd had gathered to wonder at the strange loud noises from the other side of town. With a touch of her hand, Stesha opened a flower portal and leapt through it, coming out right next to the fleeing soldier. "Sergeant Davenport, I'm Fleur de Joie with the Freedom League," she told him briskly. "Sergeant Reynolds told me where to look for you. We need to get you and your item someplace safe and away from civilians. Can you and it handle a dimensional transit?"
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Fleur will use this round to concentrate her visual and audio ESP on finding the soldier with the projector, starting from his last known location and moving north in a broad searching pattern. Since her natural ESP is somewhat lacking in the speed department, she will spend an HP to stunt a power that looks exactly like the one on her sheet, except that the four free points are now four ranks of Rapid.
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Fleur goes on 26
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"I can help you, but you'll need to let me into your head a bit," Paige told Allen, coming up to stand beside him. "Not deeply, just the psychic impressions you're picking up. If I can filter those with my own perceptions, hopefully we can home in on your runaways. I think I sensed one earlier, actually, but you were so much closer that we came looking for you instead." After waiting for assent, Paige closed her eyes and carefully insinuated herself into Allen's mind, concentrating on the impressions he was picking up, sending her own power in the same direction to bolster the psychic signal. It was an odd and echoey feeling, being inside Slamdance's head and looking for Slamdance at the same time, but she managed to tune it out. After a moment, her eyes snapped open. "Pyramid Plaza," she told the others. "And he's got something planned, he's going to try and do something big. We'd better get there before he can."
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Fleur frowned thoughtfully at that. "In that case, Sergeant Davenport could be in danger as well. Can you tell me what part of town you left him in, so I can start looking for him? I'd like to find him before anyone else who might be looking for him does." She looked up, taking in both men. "As for the two of you, I can teleport you to a safe place right now, somewhere you'll be far away from the fighting and will just have to sit tight until things are clear again. Or if you prefer, you can stay here and help set up the command post. I have your comrade, Specialist Jones, looking over the building right now."
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"Stay down and quiet for a few more minutes," Fleur urged the soldier in a soothing voice. "You're still healing up. I'm Fleur de Joie, with the Freedom League. It looks like your caravan was attacked by supervillains who want the technology you're transporting. My teammates are out dealing with them right now, but I'd like to get you to safety, just in case. Where was your caravan headed, and can that battery of yours handle going through a dimensional teleport?" She wiped salve off her hands once more, then picked up the bloody arrowhead. "Wow, very retro," she observed, frowning at the stone weapon. "I have no idea who would use something like this in an actual fight."
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Moments after Sekhmet landed with her pinned trophy, Miss Americana raised her head and blinked her stunning blue eyes, seeming neither overly pained nor upset by her confinement. "You can let me go now," she told Sekhmet, "I'm feeling much more myself again." The afflicted paragon certainly looked much more rational than she had a few minutes before, with neither the near-crazed patriotic fervor or vacant uncertainty she'd previously displayed. "Though I'm afraid I'm not exactly sure what just happened," she admitted.
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"Thank you, Father, you've done just fine," Fleur assured the priest, kneeling down next to the wounded man. "I'm Fleur de Joie, my teammates are outside working on dealing with the threat. I'd like to set up a safe area for any civilians who might still be in harm's way. Can you tell me what's been going on here? Are people going to be holed up in their homes?" As she spoke, she briskly unwrapped a poultice and applied it to the arrow wound, then began smearing a very pungent salve over the burns. "This man is likely to be a special target; when he wakes up I may have to take him away from here."
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Paige listened with concern both to the exchange outside and to the mental communication with the freed prisoner. ~Something doesn't seem right here.~ She sent to Gargantua, Edge and Velocity. ~Gargantua says that the Harridan he knows was a criminal and a traitor, looking to take control of the gorillas. If he's taken over, our diplomatic footing could be worse than we think. And if he hasn't actually taken over, he's playing some kind of angle. Edge, do you know anything about politics on Gorilla Island? Either way, we may need some backup.~ She tuned her mental focus strictly to Gargantua, lacing it with compassion and understanding. ~Nobody's going to make you go out there if you don't want to. And if you do go, we'll protect you if needs be. Knowing what he wants with you might help us understand what exactly is happening here.~
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Paige let out a soft breath of relief at being given an out, sending Richard her gratitude along with the kiss she brushed over his lips. "We'll hold down the fort, make sure our friends upstairs don't see us gone and get antsy. Don't cause any trouble down there." Objectively, in her head, Paige knew that there was no safer way to travel underground than with a powerful and experienced terrakinetic at the helm. It was difficult to hear her head over the way her heart was thudding at even the idea of traveling once more into the darkness underneath a mountain, giant lava dragon or no. She took a few steps back to stand with Will and the camera crew to watch the final preparations for departure. Laying a hand on Will's shoulder, she let him feel her gratitude as well, careful to filter out her fear. "We can take the crew and get more footage of the dinosaurs," she suggested quietly to him. "And I still have one bag of Doritos hidden that I'm pretty sure your father hasn't dug out."
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There was silence for a moment. "Okay then," Erin began, looking around at the remaining bevy of time-travelers. "Guess that's taken care of, then?" She picked up the shattered clock that had been the centerpiece for the ritual, setting it on the nearest workbench. "Anybody else feel like pizza?" Tensile asked with a hopeful grin. "How about pho?" Knightfall countered. "I want to see the place where Mom and Dad-" She was stopped by Sojourner's hand gently over her mouth. "Hasn't happened yet," she reminded her younger "sister" with a faint smile. "even if things have changed now, no point in going out of our way to reveal the details. It might change the way things happen." "Well, that would suck large," Knightfall opined, folding her arms. "It's my favorite story!" "I did actually hear that one," Tensile put in. :"It's very memorable." "I don't think I've ever even had pho," Erin said, bemused. "You'll like it," Sojourner assured her. "But getting home should probably take priority over post-fight snacking. Mr. Quark? Can you get us back where we belong?"
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"All right," Fleur agreed, rising to her feet as she cleaned blood from her hands with a wet-wipe. "I'll get to the church and start a fallback point. Send any civilians or wounded you find there. Or if you need me, just stand next to a plant and give me a call." She leaned down and helped the now barely-injured soldier to his feet. "You're with me, Specialist. I need another pair of arms and legs, and at least you'll be out of the storm." Putting an arm around Jones, she touched the flowers in her hair and disappeared, leaving a faint wet-grass smell in her wake. Upon arrival at the church, Fleur braced the soldier until he could find his balance after the unaccustomed teleport, then let him stand on its own. "I'd like you to check what kind of defenses we might have to work with, what rooms are the safest, whether there are any supplies," she asked with polite firmness. "I'm going to check on the priest and the injured man, then I'll come find you."
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"We can't exactly meet it in person if it's buried under the earth," Paige pointed out from her seat in the makeshift editing bay. "Same problem with getting it on camera. But I do agree that we should probably try and make contact, just to be sure it's going to stay quiet until the asteroid comes. After that, well, there's really not going to be too much more damage even a giant magma dragon can do to this area." She shrugged one shoulder, tapped a few buttons on her laptop. "I could try and reach out to it, and I think Tiamat has some kind of connection as well. Getting closer probably wouldn't hurt."
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A dozen yards beyond the portal, the trees gave way to a large grassy meadow full of regularly spaced hills, like fairy mounds built by the world's most organized fae. A closer look revealed doors and windows cut into the mounds, and dirt-track roads running between them, turning the meadow into a town made of hundreds of sod houses. Here and there were open spaces with firepits and brick stoves, as well as prefabricated vinyl sheds marked for men and women. Near the front of the meadow were a dozen men and women waiting in front of a large pile of crates, led by a verdigris-haired woman clad all in green and brown and standing on a crate. "Welcome!" she called out as the first wave of refugees poured out of the forest. "Welcome to Sanctuary! I'm Fleur de Joie, and I-" She trailed off as the people just kept coming out of the trees. Furrowing her brow, she leaned down to the people next to her. "Is it just me, or are there a lot more than two thousand here already?"
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"I don't think any of us are entirely proud of the people we were back in the day," Paige agreed thoughtfully, her eyes on Allen. "And I believe that if we hadn't been offered clemency, Richard and I wouldn't have chosen to go to prison either. There are all kinds of ways to atone." She stood up as well, walked towards the former Slamdance with a considering eye. "We'll help you shut down your doubles before they cause any more damage. But you know what this means. If your doubles have acquired autonomy, that's not likely to just fade away. It means you can never use your powers again, or you risk the same disaster, maybe worse. Are you going to be able to live with that?" Her voice was firm, but not unsympathetic.
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"Hey Quark, long time no see," Erin said casually, then paused and added, "no pun intended. You sort of disappeared after you graduated, guess you've just been busy. You going to take this guy off our hands?" "Quark?" Sojourner furrowed her brow thoughtfully for a moment. "Oh! I remember now. You tried to teach Mom history by using Time Portals and got stopped by Dr. Tomorrow. She said she was sure she'd get expelled, but he just yelled at you guys for messing with time." "Not my finest high school moment," Erin commented wryly. "Come on, Mom got almost thrown out of school like twenty times," Knightfall commented, her normal cheer beginning to reassert itself. "Compared to the interdimensional stuff, that was tame." "How come I never heard any of these stories?" Tensile demanded, sounding disgruntled. "Perhaps she thought you didn't need any encouragement," Sojourner speculated, tongue tucked in her cheek. "I'm actually wondering why I told any of you anything. Will tell. Will have told." Erin shook her head. "Whatever. Can you fix this?" she asked Quark.
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"Try and stun him!" Erin suggested to Mark as she twisted a length of railing and used it to secure the helicopter she'd caught. "Or distract him so Nina can do something." She still wasn't certain about the motivations of the Socotran princess, but she at least seemed to be on their side tonight. With her burden lifted and the immediate danger on deck seemingly passed, she shielded her eyes aganst flying drops of water and looked at the tight defensive knot of Socotrans in the sky. "I'm only going after them as a last resort. I could make the jump, but I'm not super looking forward to getting lost at sea tonight if I can help it."
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Relent, Miss A is deadweight while Gina's taking over again.
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Gina's will save can beat that!
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"Steve? What's going on out there? I don't want to take the time to hack into a satellite and camera feeds are too fuzzy!" Gina's voice was a frustrated buzz in Steve's ear. He hadn't heard her this annoyed since the time when the substitute Peapod guy had tried to insist on delivering the groceries into the house. "If I can just get my damned nose to stop bleeding, I'm going to try and take control again. That bitch does not get to run away with my robot and go on some kind of disaster spree, not when I've spent two years rehabilitating ArcheTech's image! Try not to let anybody shoot me, okay?" She disconnected suddenly without waiting for an answer; apparently the question had been rhetorical. Miss Americana, meanwhile, had taken advantage of the momentary break in Caradoc's concentration to push hard against the joints in his armor, shoving them apart just enough for her to slip away and back into the open sky. "Freedom!" she crowed, climbing to put some distance between them as celebratory red, white and blue sparks shot from her fingertips. All at once, she jerked to a halt in midair, her spine snapping straight and her knees locking while her gaze fixed on some invisible middle distance. She rolled once in the air and then she was falling, fast and face-first, heading for the concrete far below.
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"The battery sounds interesting, but I suspect that the super-juice is what our bad guys were after," Fleur commented, even as she finished treating the last of the injured men. "I'd say the odds are pretty good that they somehow knew which vehicle it would be traveling in, and that's why it was targeted and the other one got away. You might want to review your security to see if there was a breach there, but it could just as easily have been an evil psychic." She rose to her feet, keeping one eye on the sky. "Let's get to the other injured man, see if he can tell us anything about what happened to the briefcase. Anybody who wants a ride, grab on." She touched one hand to the crown of flowers in her green hair, and suddenly her group was gone in a tumult of orange petals and the smell of marigolds. Ten miles down the road, a patch of wood sorrel that had been struggling to grow through a crack in the rumble strip suddenly sprouted an inordinately large yellow flower, which yawned open to emit the travelers. Stesha lost no time in moving towards the injured man, a poultice already in her hand.
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"I guess the blood gets kinda thin after a dozen generations or so," Erin commented, watching the tarp-covered interloper with unconcealed disgust. "Not having superpowers is no excuse not to be a hero. It's a really crappy reason to become a villain. What the hell are we supposed to do with you now?" "I've got a couple ideas!" Knightfall put in helpfully. "What about Dr. Tomorrow?" Tensile asked quickly, before Knightfall could offer any of her suggestions. "He's active at this point, right? Keeping the timestream clean and all that? I remember him one time from school, he did a presentation on avoiding paradox. Maybe we could get him to take this guy off our hands." "It's a possibility," Sojourner agreed, her tone thoughtful. "Otherwise we might have to try rewriting his memory in order to safeguard him for imprisonment in one of our times, and that's no picnic. Erase too much of someone's memory and you've given them a quick and dirty lobotomy. Which may be deserved, but it's not really our style."
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~They're real,~ Paige assured Gargantua, even as she kept a wary eye on the large and not exactly friendly delegation. ~They'd like to see you, to know that you're all right. I think they want to take you home.~ The timing seemed suspicious to Paige, why would the rescue party show up now, after all these years, just when rescue was no longer necessary? She tried to keep those feelings in her private mind, not wanting to prejudice the newly freed captive unnecessarily. ~If you'd like to go with them, that's all right. But if you don't feel ready, that's all right too. I think they just want to see you for now. Are you ready?~
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"The coffeshop at the bookstore is closed for business at the moment, thanks to not-you," Paige replied dryly, "but there's a Starbase a few blocks from here. There's at least one more of you out and about right now, but he's far away, almost at the edge of my search radius. He shouldn't bother us for awhile." She led the way down the block and around the corner, into the warm coffee-scented atmosphere of the cafe. Stepping up to the counter, she ordered an herbal tea blend that wouldn't have her up and jittery all night, then turned to Rick. "Our treat, so long as you tell us what the hell is going on."
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"Of course it was bad, you nitwit!" Knightfall exclaimed, only partially calmed by her twin's embrace. "You tried to channel the Schadenfreude-" "Der Schattenwelt," Sojourner corrected quietly. "Whatever, you tried to channel big evil magic and didn't expect it to blow up in your face? Didn't you ever go to school? That's like the first lesson they teach at Claremont, don't mess with evil to try and get more powerful!" Knightfall glared. "You turned into some kind of evil monster and started killing off your ancestors in every timeline you could reach. You're lucky you didn't explode from paradox before we stopped you."