Electra
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Freedom City Guidebook
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AvengerAssembled's Active Threads for December GM >Family Matters >Godwin's Law >Swan Fever >Aqua Regia >Never Did Run Smooth Comrade Frost >Molehills >Bright Lights and Good Cheer Edge >Reunions and Waffles Fast-Forward >Sweet Child of Mine >Bright Lights and Good Cheer Harrier >Stirring Up a Metallic Nest >Like It Comes Naturally
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Wander >Reunion and Waffles (1) Fleur de Joie >Molehills (2) >Bright Lights and Good Cheer (4) >They Grow Up So Fast (3) Miss Americana >Stirring Up A Metallic Nest (2) >Like it Comes Naturally (5) Hologram >Bright Lights and Good Cheer (3) >Sweet Child of Mine (4) >Never Did Run Smooth (3)
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"That's Redbird?" Erin asked, her tone half-amazed, half-bemused. "She looks... different." How had that even happened, turning an AI into a living person? This was a weird dimensional... whatever it was. Erin was pretty sure that whatever else happened, Redbird would be much happier to get back into the universe where they all belonged, where she could be a car or a motorcycle or a helicopter again. But first they had to fix the world! Deliberately blanking her mind, Erin let muscle memory take over and swing her up into the saddle behind Trevor as easily as though she were sitting pillion on the Night Cycle. "We'd better be careful who we try and talk to," she considered aloud as the horse began to trot out of the yard. "Maybe people who come from other dimensions already have some natural immunity. I can think of, hmm, Blue Jay, I'm pretty sure, and Harrier, they're both immigrants. I'm sure there are others, but even if they are immune, they might not be broadcasting it. With the warnings going out, that's a good way to get arrested and tossed in-" She stopped, a weird expression on her face, then cursed. "There's definitely one more person I know who's not from around here. Jessie's probably freaking right the hell out." The half-memories provided missing context once again; in this timeline the unfortunate Singularity was her long-lost twin sister, separated from the family in childhood and raised in turn by wild animals and brigands who used her strength and skill for evil. Unable to function in society and half-rehabilitated, she'd been put into a convent to learn more peaceable ways of living and keep her off the streets. It was, Erin supposed, a logical way to twist the story, but it made her weirdly uncomfortable to hear it put that way. Erin's fingers flexed against Trevor's ribs as she fought her own indecision. "We can't deal with her now, not when we have to solve this. And I don't see how she could be any help, even with her memories. She'll be okay there, it'll be safe." She didn't seem entirely convinced of the fact, but she was trying. "Anyway, Harrier, I mean, Caradoc, and Blue Jay might know something. We should look for them on the way."
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Gaian Knight's display with the boulder had drawn some attention from the brawling giants, but it wasn't at all clear to Fleur that they were ready to stop fighting. She was starting to feel more and more like Amaryllis here, surrounded by inscrutable giants and too slow to do more than run after and try to keep up. It was not a great feeling, but any worries about shortness were quickly driven from her mind when she noticed the cracks appearing in the walls. Gaian Knight or Canadian Shield could surely shore them up without much difficulty, but they were also the people the Igneous were most likely to listen to right now. Fleur could at least do a patch job. With a flick of her wrist, she tossed a handful of seeds at the base of the archway, then with a moment's concentration brought them to green and expanding life. Ropy vines swarmed up the stone of the arch, leaves and runners doubling and tripling back on themselves to create a latticework that looked more like a living green scaffolding than vines running up a trellis. Hopefully it would be enough, so long as the Igneous didn't get too enthusiastic about their fight. Just in case, she took shelter under the shadow of the sprawling green structure. "We'd like to talk to you!" she called to the fighting strangers.
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With the robots' physical threat largely nullified, Miss A closed her eyes and extended her powers into the nearer drone, mentally rifling through its programming and databases for anything they could learn about this disastrous folly. As she worked, she narrated some of her findings aloud for the benefit of her companions. "The good news is that these guys we have here are scouts, designed to stun and subdue, not to kill. There are no employees unaccounted for, so we shouldn't have to chase down any prisoners, but it's encouraging that at least something's not programmed for maximum carnage. It's hard to tell, but whatever's driving this car, it doesn't seem to want to destroy everything. "The bad news," she continued immediately, "is that there are two dozen of these little guys, plus a half-dozen "soldier" units that probably aren't going to be as easy to put down. Also, this place does not look even a little bit like it does on the map anymore. I'm going to try and download a map based on the route memory from this unit, it might help us find our way a little bit. The nanites seem to be concentrated mostly at that giant silver bulge, so if we avoid that, we stand less chance of contamination."
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"He does," Erin replied, looking at this altered Trevor with fierce eyes. "You do. Even though everything is wrong here, the one thing that's right is that we're together." She rummaged in the chest of weapons that rested beneath the clothes, tucked a wooden stake and a silver dagger into their holsters on her belt. "That's the reason I'm not secretly scared out of my mind. I know we can fix this." By habit she looked through the weapons for her bat, but also by habit her hand went for the hilt of a silver-bladed sword that gleamed with the same muted light as her Furion-enhanced bat at home. Drawing it from the scabbard, she tested the blade, then slung it across her back with the skill of having done it a thousand times. It felt very strange. "Mark said the warning he got came from the Royal Court itself. It sounds like someone there must have suspected that there would be people who didn't get the reality transfusion. Somebody there had to see this thing coming, and they want it to work. We need to find where that message came from, and we need to figure out how to find other people who might not be affected."
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Peter Evans looked was looking much improved these days, thanks to several months of treatment at some of the world's finest metahuman health centers. He still wore a power suppressing bracelet on his left wrist to avoid any psychic accidents, but some of the bright kids in the labs at ArcheTech had worked it into a silver wristwatch so it didn't seem so much like a manacle. He was dressed up nicely today, in a pumpkin-colored sweater and dark brown slacks that still had the store creases on them, and he was smiling more brightly than he had since coming to Freedom City. That change in attitude might have been prompted by the holiday, or perhaps by the presence of his wife Angie, and their children, three year old Petey and six-month old Renee. Despite the fact that Angie didn't look more than twenty, and Gina's mother's dire muttering about a shotgun wedding, and the fact that Petey's birthday was quite a bit less than nine months after the nupitals, Gina thought they looked happy together. Almost improbably happy, really. How could someone who'd grown up in the same house as her have ended up so... happy? Determined not to let things get awkward right off the bat, Gina swallowed hard and stepped forward. "We're so glad you could make it," she said in a voice that held only a hint of strain. "Come on in and get comfortable." She backed away from the door and took the coats as her guests shed them, trying to remember the small courtesies that made coming into someone else's house easy and not a strange imposition for everyone. She couldn't really remember. "Um, the food is just about ready, well, it's totally ready, but we don't have to eat it right away unless we want to. Can I get anybody a drink?"
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"I don't have a fever!" Erin protested, even as her hand automatically went to check her own forehead. "I'm fine, it's the world that's wrong, and I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. Something happened to us, and now it's suddenly all medieval here, and you're talking in complete sentences and I have half a set of memories of a person I know I'm not." She paced in front of the window for a moment, then snapped her fingers and pointed at him. "This is like that time when Mark's dad rewrote the world so everyone was all plasticky and happy all the time, remember? Everybody else got caught up in the rewrite, but it didn't take for me because I'm not from Earth Prime, and I got dumped out on the lawn instead. The same thing must be happening here, except it sort of got me, just not all the way. We need to figure out what's going on!" Erin hurried to the wardrobe, her new half-memories guiding her hands as she pulled out a tunic and leggings and a sturdy leather weapon belt. "Somebody's got to be behind this, someone must know something. Maybe we could look for Mark?"
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Erin sucked in a quick breath of surprise when she noticed Trevor's eyes. Objectively she knew that red pupils and black sclerae were much more unsettling than plain brown eyes, but after all these years, they just looked wrong. Wrong, just like the rest of this world. She eased back slightly but didn't pull away from his hand, hoping against hope that the changes were cosmetic. Of course, if that were the case, he wouldn't be saying things like "what peril" and looking at the room like it wasn't even worth commenting about. "The world, the whole world," she told him, looking around. "Or at least, right here. It's all different! Even my memories are different. It's like something is trying to overwrite Freedom City in my head." She climbed off the bed and went to the window, pulling back the tapestry to look out. Where yesterday she'd have seen the opposite wing of a stately manor home, now there was something much closer to a stone castle, complete with crenellated tower on top. The garage and much of the backyard was now stables, and even through the wavy glass she could hear the noises of animals outside. "None of this is right. When we went to sleep last night, we were in Freedom City and it was 2014 and you had a garage full of cars, not horses! Can you remember any of it?" she asked, her voice almost pleading.
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For the first moment after Erin woke, cuddled snugly against Trevor with her nose nuzzling his shoulder blade, she didn't register anything different. They'd done a late patrol last night, one that ended in the very satisfying bust of a gang of burglars in the Theatre District, and the cleanup had gone past 4am. Luckily it was her day off, and school wasn't back in session, so there was no harm in sleeping in. So what had woken her up? She drowsily lifted her head to look at the clock on the nightstand, only to find that it wasn't there. Neither was the nightstand. Neither was the bedroom. The room she found herself in was draped in heavy black tapestries and smelled musty in a way she couldn't quite understand, and instead of bits and pieces of crimefighting gear and electronics, there was a table full of weird beakers and chemicals. Erin shot to a siting position, and was suddenly overcome with a rush of memories. Looking at the world through the eyes of a child, watching her father whistle as he mended pots and pans, while her mother hung laundry outside their cottage, Erin's little sister in a sling on her back. Family, a long time ago... A young girl's eyes now, watching in wide-eyed horror as a band of monsters approached their village, slavering and terrible. The taste of a strange elixir on her tongue, filling her body with strength enough to kill the monsters, but not soon enough... Wandering a pastoral countryside, sometimes walking, sometimes on a pony or riding in a wagon, killing monsters, saving the innocent, always searching for something else, some greater purpose, till she arrived in a vast city and met someone she hadn't even known she was looking for... Erin pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes as a lifetime's worth of memories came crashing down on her, causing a disorienting double-vision. Part of her saw this place as home and was satisfied that everything was as it should be, while the majority of her fought the instinctive shock and terror that came from waking up to a world that was terribly wrong. Had she slipped into some alternate dimension? Had she gone back in time? Abruptly she leapt to her feet and took a better look at her sleeping companion. Definitely Trevor, she noted with a surge of relief. No matter what else was going on here, at least she wasn't alone. Reaching out, she shook his shoulder, gently, then more firmly. "Wake up!" she hissed, still looking around the room. "Something's really wrong here!"
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Hologram Paige linked her arm through Richard's as they stood among the gathered superheroes. She suspected that the hot toddy in his hand was not the only one he'd indulged in while on his ten-second journey to the bar, but that was all right. It was a party, and neither of them were driving tonight. Unfortunately, when he drank, Richard did tend to get a bit maudlin, and this year, in this place, amongst these people, there was really only one thing to be thinking about. And indeed, Richard was already scoping out the steps near the door, looking for a high place from which to make a speech. She tightened her arm on his in quiet restraint. Not tonight, love, she told him silently, letting him feel the sympathy in her words. We had the commemoration this summer, that was good and right. But it's been twenty years.She cast her gaze over the crowd, gently drawing his perception along with her own. Half the people here first learned about the Invasion in school. And the other half... Paige looked towards the closed door where Beth had drawn her teammates. Life goes on for all of us. Let tonight be a happy night. Lifting her glass, Paige glanced in Keith's direction, smiling to include him in her words. "To old acquaintances and absent friends."
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"How about I stay down here, you eat all the food, and when they get here, we tell them they have the wrong house?" Gina suggested over the in-house intercom. Despite the suggestion, she opened the door after a minute and came upstairs, dressed in a taupe pantsuit that at least approached the neighborhood of flattering, her mousy blonde hair twisted back in a simple chignon at the nape of her neck. She looked exactly like the assistant to a powerful CEO ought to look, efficient, inoffensive and unmemorable. It was a solid step up from most of her outfits. She forced herself not to tug the pins from her hair as she looked at the dining room setup. "Wow, it looks really fancy in here," she noted with a mix of approval and dread. "Smells good, too. I guess they should be here just about anytime now." Her outfit had no pockets, so she clenched her hands together behind her back to hide the shaking. "Tell me I can do this."
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Miss A is going to try and "possess" one of the drones with her transform ability, hopefully to mine its databank and find what it knows. Can I do that using a power check for Machine Animation, or will I have to stunt some kind of mind control limited to machines? (I am assuming that these guys are not high-end sentient robot types.)
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Fleur de Joie Stesha moved in for a hug as well, her face lighting up with genuine happiness for a moment. "Oh Beth, that's so great! Congratulations!" She stepped back, still holding her colleague's shoulders as she looked her up and down. "You may be fifty-four, but you've got a body a thirty-year-old would kill for. You'll do great, and you'll have a slew of willing babysitters on call. What did Trevor say when he heard the news?" Beth's husband, for all he was still quite handsome, did not have the body of a thirty year old anymore. Stesha could imagine the news coming as a bit of a shock. But this was Freedom City, hardly anyone died of old age here. "Do you think you're going to take leave from the League?"
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Hologram Paige turned at the sound of the new voice, automatically placing a hand on Richard's arm when he heard his mental consternation. No soothing or restraint proved necessary, however, and she stepped back to allow the two old war-horses their reunion. When Richard was done, she greeted Wail with a smile and a slightly diffident hug. "Hello, Keith, it's nice to see you again." They'd never exactly been friends, but they'd been allies through a hell of a fight, and in some ways that mattered more. "How have you been? Are you still teaching?" She turned, her face creasing with concern as Beth began to cry. "Beth, are you-" She stopped and watched with worried puzzlement as the legendary paragon wiped her face and took off suddenly. "I wonder what that was all about," she murmured. "I hope nothing's wrong with her or Trev..." That was the only thing she could think of that could unnerve Lady Liberty so badly, and Beth's entirely-human husband wasn't getting any younger either.
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Fleur shrugged at Canadian Shield's question about plants underground. "It's a little uncomfortable, and it impedes my teleport, but it's not a big deal. I brought what I need with me." She gestured to the pouch full of seeds at her belt. "Lack of sunlight is more of a problem, but we're just visiting..." Her voice trailed off as the noise ramped up. "That doesn't sound good." She broke into a jog, then a run to attempt to keep up with her faster colleagues. "Definitely missing the teleport now," she gasped under her breath.
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Paige stood on the edge of the conversation and closed her eyes for a moment, swaying slightly with weariness even as she extended her senses outside the police station. "Neither Medea nor Unferth are within a mile of here, unless they've got some heavy-duty magic disguising them," she reported, eyes still closed. "There's some disturbance on the edges of my perception, but I think it's sensitive, it's backing away out of my range. I can't tell what it is." She opened her eyes and looked at the other heroes. "You may want to find an expert on Anglo-Saxon lore and symbolism. If they are looking for girls to act out a ritual, it is probably something steeped in the culture and mythos. Knowing what they're doing might help find them faster."
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Miss A is currently at 6HP, including the one you just gave us. She goes on 14.
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Gather Information: 25 Use ESP to search one mile radius for our villains or other disturbances: Skill Mastery makes 20
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Hologram "Merry Christmas, Beth," Paige replied, hugging and air-kissing the iconic heroine with the measured warmth of someone who's spent a long time networking. "But you know, eventually you're going to have to stop calling us that," she teased. "It's been twenty years this past summer since we had our last caper, and we're trying to be good examples for the kids now," Tugging off her gloves and hat, Paige smoothed out her hair before they all walked into the party. Her outfit this evening was reminiscent of her costume, black turtleneck and slacks, but the fabric of her sweater was worked through with shining silver thread, matching the silver earth-shaped pendant and slender chain belt that replaced flash patch and utility belt tonight. As she looked around, Paige wished she'd brought a camera. It had been many years since she'd seen so many heroes together in one place.
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Miss Americana startled when the computer activated itself, then folded her arms and watched the video, her face impassive. Around the end of the first log, one finger began tapping rhythmically against her elbow in a very restrained sort of tic. By the end of the mouse experiment, the neutral expression was gone, replaced with a faint and growing horror as pieces began to fall into place. When he announced his intention to begin experimenting on himself, she began swearing softly, her musical voice reciting a filthy and very unflattering set of descriptors for the Baron, his lineage, and his company. She jumped again as Dragonfly punched the wall, her attention diverted for a moment by the sudden violence. She gave the other heroine a look of resigned understanding. "On principle," she agreed quietly, "or because there is nothing human in him left to save. If these machines do what he says he wants them to, and if they have achieved any complex level of sentience, it's likely they've been able to destroy or overwrite his brain. You saw the kind of access he allowed them, how pervasive and uncontrolled. Even if we find him, he may be little more than a technological zombie." With a sigh, Miss A turned her attention back to the screen. "At least we can analyze the data recorded here, perhaps get a better idea of what we're dealing with. If we know the makeup of the nanites, we might be able to rig up a detector and scan each other. We're all vulnerable, you know. Nanites could get into the machine parts even easier than into organic material. We could do little to stop it."
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"Well then he'd be knocked out and outside," Erin pointed out, sotto voce, as they walked back towards the others, "so really it would be more effective. But I'm sure it won't come to that." She quieted down as they caught up with the group, smiling as she caught sight of Eve. "Hey," she greeted the telepath, "feels like I haven't seen you in forever." She leaned in and gave Eve a quick and impulsive hug. "Jessie's been talking about you, though; it means a lot that you visit." The halfway house where Singularity lived now was not quite as foreboding to visitors as Blackstone Prison had been, but it still didn't provide a lot of opportunities for socializing. "How've you been?"
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Paige and Holly caught up with the group in the Zen Garden, Holly giving the plants a good once-over while Paige smiled at the meditating student. "Hi Giang, it's nice to meet you. I'm Paige Cline, and this is my husband Richard and our daughter Holly. We're moving Will into his dorm room today." I don't want to hear a word from you about ninjas, she warned Richard on a tight psychic wavelength, though there was a hint of amusement under the sternness. We want him to make friends here. Holly abruptly paused in her study of the foliage, tilting her head back and looking to the sky like a penguin watching an airplane. A second later, Paige looked up as well, seeming puzzled. "Wooowww," Holly said, looking rather impressed. "Elias, is that you?" she called.
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Elias is quite right, came another mental voice, this one also female, but much older, smooth and assured and just a bit stern. Definitely a mom voice. Holly, you should know better than to go casting around blindly looking for psychics. That could be very dangerous, plus it's rude. I apologize if we disturbed you, Elias. The voice was a bit friendlier on that last bit as she courteously opened her public mind for an introduction. A calm and strong mind, disciplined, experienced, burdened with a lifetime of memories and worries but bearing up gracefully under the weight. A little amused at the mercurial desires and emotions of youth, and at the same time a bit wistful and nostalgic. The psychic touch withdrew again after a moment, not cutting him off, but leaving him be. Out on the campus, Paige touched a hand to her daughter's shoulder and gave her a look. Holly frowned and rounded her shoulders inward sulkily, but focused her attention on the tour for the moment, at least. "Careful, Will," Paige called to her son. "Better find out the weapons policy on campus before you go showing off. And make sure of your footing," she added, shaking her head as he all but danced backwards down the sidewalk. He really was so much like his father.
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"Gabriel and Jack," Gina repeated softly, wearing a half-smile that somehow managed to still look vaguely appalled. "Well, I'm sure you'll put the advice to good use. And whatever you say or Peter says, none of it could be as bad as the insane mental break i'm likely to have, so any faux pas will probably be totally forgotten anyway. So that's good then." She wrung her hands, then went back into the kitchen and opened the microwave, dropping the Hot Pocket uneaten onto the counter. "Okay, time to breathe. I'm going to go take a shower and get dressed and do my hair just like normal people, so that when the caterer comes I'll be all ready to hide in the basement until they go away. I'll just give you the list to give to them, it's really easy, just like ten things. No big deal." With that she was off, down the hallway to the bedroom with the door slamming behind her like the drawbridge of a castle thudding closed.