Electra

"What did you expect people to do?" Paige asked, raising an eyebrow. "Fourteen kidnappings is certainly a lot, but when you compare that to the total population of heroes and villains in the city, it's closer to what, five percent? Less? And I don't think anyone exactly shrugged it off, not really. Of all the abductees, hardly anybody wanted to speak with us, even after ten years. Hardly any of their loved ones or associates wanted to speak with us either, and you know how unusual that is. I got the feeling that being replaced by a robot or having a loved one replaced by a robot was something that doesn't really get any easier to talk about, even with the passage of time." She took another drink from her tea. "Hell, Duncan Summers retired over the whole thing, and nobody ever thought that was going to happen. Poor Dorothy and her family were in sessions with the Claremont psychologist until she graduated, and I think it was the only reason they didn't pull her out of the school. People needed time to heal."

Paige furrowed her brow. "I've always been under the impression that Miss Americana is the chief mechanic for most of the cyborgs and robots in town," she pointed out. "I would assume she's pretty familiar with her husband by now, yeah. Though I don't know," she added with a grin, "you do still say 'vibes.'" She frowned a little at the last question. "I'm not sure what you mean. I'm sure there's stuff they all want to keep private. I'm about seventy-five percent sure that we have some archival footage of Miss A's civilian identity in the press videos we've pulled, and we're going to have to decide what to do with that, and we're going to have to be careful in how we cut interviews in order to avoid blowing a couple other secret IDs. We've always agreed that heroes deserve their private lives."

"What happened next?" Paige encouraged patiently. It could sometimes take awhile for guests to tell a story, especially an emotionally fraught one, but she always tried to project the air of someone who could listen all day. Offstage she could see Eamon adjusting his camera slightly, preparing for a zoom-in when the heroine came to the emotional climax of the story. Fred was watching everything with his usual impassivity, one eye on his phone as he checked on the rest of the day's schedule. "Once she was disarmed."

Paige raised her eyebrows and took a sip of tea. Almost thirty years of marriage to a psychic and Richard still couldn't discuss psychic phenomena without resorting to hand gestures and spooky noises. She'd given up and decided it was part of his charm ages ago. "Vibes?" she asked anyway. "They both had some trouble during the interview, needed to take a few moments to regroup during difficult portions. Ellie especially, but she was kidnapped into space so I'm not too surprised." She tilted her head to study him. "Did you notice anything weird in your interviews?"

"You're thinking hard," Paige observed, sitting down across from him with a mug of tea in her hands. It was late enough in the evening that she'd changed into yoga pants and an oversized Universal Studios shirt that was older than several of their children, but she was awake enough as she glanced at the legal pad. "Which episode now? Oh, finale stuff. I thought we were tossing the interviews to the editing team so they could get us some good clips to stitch together?"

Danica followed his fingers with her eyes obediently. That part of her, at least, seemed to move at a fairly normal speed. "I can see and hear and talk pretty regularly," she confirmed. "The Master Mage and some doctors did tests when I was little and said that I think and can use magic at normal speed, too. But it takes, like, two seconds for my knee to pop up when you use the little hammer thing." She laughed, obviously more amused than distressed by that result. "Most of the time it's okay; I mean, I always get where I'm going eventually! But going places without a car is hard, and always calling my folks for a ride gets less and less cool every year. Plus if I want to do hero stuff, I have to be able to get places!" She craned her neck over to look at Redbird. Her neck, it seemed, was at least somewhat more flexible than a normal human's, and also maybe... longer? More extendible? It wasn't too glaring, but it did look a little bit strange. "I'm sorry if I made you sad by talking about being slow," she apologized. "I'm sure you're very fast!"

Wander and Singularity (Uncredited for Singularity) Continued from Part One Deciding to get out of the past was one thing, but actually making a plan for it was something else. Erin had gotten a lot better at planning and tactical thinking over the near-decade she'd spent as head of security for HAX, but she still didn't count herself as an idea person. If they'd had to save this timeline from some terrible threat, she'd have at least known where to start “Maybe we should go to Freedom City anyway,” Jessie offered. “Even if a lot of people you know now are too young or somewhere else, the Freedom League is still there. They might be able to, you know, use science.” She waved a hand vaguely, making the old tire swing sway and creak. It wasn't a bad idea. Erin knew it wasn't fair of her to be surprised when Jessie had sensible ideas, especially after all this time. Hell, Jessie was less than a semester away from graduating college, which was a lot more than Erin had ever managed in both the “intellectual pursuits” and “doing sensible things” fields. It was still hard not to think of her as the broken shell she'd dragged off Anti-Earth a decade ago, the one who hadn't even recognized her own face in the mirror or known what year it was. Maybe it was easier to think of her that way than as yet another person with Erin's face running around and living their own life. Jessie's equilibrium was still very fragile in places and she'd probably never reach truly “normal,” but she was so much better than she'd been. That made her even harder to relate to. “It's a possibility,” Erin acknowledged, “but we should hold off a little bit. Survival guides say that if you're lost, the first thing to do is stop walking. With any luck, we left some kind of trail when we disappeared. People are going to be looking for us. It'll be easier if we're here for them to find.” Also, given the experiences she'd had with the Freedom League, from being disbelieved in the aftermath of the fight with Omega to being passed over for a slot year after year, she kind of preferred not to deal with them if she didn't have to. “Has anything like this happened to you before?” Jessie asked. She nudged the ground with her foot, sending herself swinging and spinning at the same time. “Getting lost in time?” “No,” Erin admitted. “I got lost in space that once, though, and Trevor and Mara found us. I know there was a thing with time slips a long time ago, but I didn't get sucked in, for once. And a guy I know went through a portal and came back an hour later but he'd been there for ten years.” Jessie's eyes widened. “I don't think I want to do that.” “Yeah, me neither,” Another few moments of silence, broken only by the creak of the swing. “Let's go inside,” Jessie finally said. “If we're out here too long, the neighbors might see.” Erin didn't really want to go back into that house, especially not when it looked like this, so perfectly like she remembered it, but she couldn't deny that they'd had some very nosy neighbors back... now. “Okay, but we can't mess with anything. We don't want to disrupt the time stream.” (Rest of story hidden under spoiler text for length)

"Yeah, Beekeeper gave me a lot of problems back when I was just starting out," Stesha said ruefully. "He thought we were a perfect match, a bee and a flower, and let's just say he had a really weird way of showing her cared." She rolled her eyes. "The whole giant bee thing was a real mess, especially when the giant dragon bees showed up, and then the giant robot bees. Never let it be said that the man could not work a theme! We needed some place to put them, and the only way they were going to have any kind of decent life would be somewhere with really huge flowers and hardly any people. They were the first permanent residents of Sanctuary. Gaian Knight helped me set up some _really_ big beehives." Her look was sympathetic when he talked about the difficulties of finding a team. "It's definitely not easy," she agreed. "People come and go, personalities conflict, folks get hurt or have families, all kinds of stuff. But it's always nice to have people you can call in a pinch. Oh, here," She opened her hand and bloomed a large marigold flower on it, then reached her other hand in to the wrist, like she was doing a magic trick. It was a good trick! She pulled out a business card and handed it to him. It was simple, just her code name, a phone number and an email address, and the logo of the Freedom League. It smelled faintly of flowers. "I know you've been at this for ages and you've surely got your network, but if you ever need anything, please don't hesitate. We should all look after each other."

"Oh, that's so cool!" Chelone enthused as the Robug showed off its other talent besides being an adorable sidekick. The delight lasted as long as it took for the monster to turn its attention on her, its roars and bellows enough to blow her hair backwards and set her ears ringing. She put her hands on her hips and glared up at it. "I'm not scared of you!" she shouted. "You're a jerk and a bully! Don't you know it's not rad to- eep!" She squeaked in alarm and pulled back into her shell as the thing abruptly went from posturing to actually attacking. It seemed inevitable that the massive size and power of the creature would crush the pretty black and gold shell like an egg, but that didn't happen. Instead, an instant before the raijin's tusks made contact, the gold patterning of the shell began to glow as though lit from within. The tusks, then the entire raijin, were repelled as though it had run face-first into an impervium wall. As soon as it pulled back, Danica emerged from the shell again. Her eyes were pure black from edge to edge now, and her voice was slow and resonant. "You are a fool to attack that which you cannot harm." One slow sweep of her hand and another ghostly blue tortoise appeared in the air, this one substantially larger than the usual little guy. It sailed leisurely through the air and clamped strong spectral jaws right onto the creature's furry throat.

Time for additional turtle bites! She gets a 24!

Danica's morale is sturdier than that! She passes the Will Save. And because Orokos is just the absolute worst, I will burn an HP for Ultimate Toughness and pass that save. Whew!

Because the garage was nice and warm, Danica took off her shell long enough to shed hat, scarf, coat, mittens, and the gloves she'd worn under the mittens before reshelling and climbing onto the stool. "Well," she began, "I do have magic powers; they're related to me being the living avatar of a tortoise god." Trying to forestall the usual next question, she added "It didn't have a name, because tortoises don't think of themselves like that, I guess, but since I'm its human incarnation, I do!" She made a face. "I mean, obviously I have a name, that's probably kind of irrelevant." She set her elbows on the table and put her chin on her fists, obviously trying to think of what facts might constitute her circumstances. "Let's see... I'm thirty-five years old, but because I age at half-speed, it's more like being maybe seventeenish. My mom was pregnant for eighteen months!" she added brightly. "Um, because I age slowly, I don't get to do things as soon as other kids, so this is my fifth year at Claremont. And I'm kind of slow," she added, sneaking a glance at Redbird in case that was enough to set the warrior off again. When no outburst was immediately forthcoming, she expanded on the topic. "There's nothing physically wrong with me and I can do things, I just do them all a lot slower than most people. I can talk and think normally, but my reflexes are basically terrible," she explained cheerfully. "Almost nothing can hurt me, so driving would be totally safe for me, but I don't want to cause accidents that hurt other people! Plus I've got this," she added, tapping the front plate of her shell with her knuckles. "I don't have to wear it all the time, but I like it! It doesn't fit very well in cars. Oh, and I have a mobility scooter that is too heavy for me to lift in and out of a car very easily by myself." She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows hopefully, checking in to see if she'd given the engineer enough to work with.

Singularity didn't even think as she stepped between the witch and the boy she was targeting. There was no need to think; the requirement to absorb damage for others fighting the same target was baked in far deeper than mere thought. It hurt, it always hurt, but it didn't knock her down and so was immaterial. A quick forward roll coated her hair and body with the rot and rust of the putrid deck, but also brought her up behind the witch while she was distracted by the boy's attack. Singularity had no blade, obviously an oversight, but the edge of her stiffened palm was sufficient to separate the witch's head from its body and send it flying.

Singularity will use Fast Acrobatic Bluff, skill mastered, DC 25 She will then do another fully shifted all-out power attack. She rolls a 26. Damage DC is 30

Stesha laughed. "Tell me about it! I swear it feels like I started no more than a couple of years ago, but here it's 2021 and I have a ten year old daughter and thousands of bees. I think maybe hero work is a little bit like parenthood, the nights are long but the years are short." Some of the day's bone-deep weariness was already starting to ebb away after a little rest and conversation. "I'm lucky, I have a lot of people doing most of the work on the ground in Sanctuary. There are village councils for each village and the queen bee of course, so I don't have to do much, you know, actual governing. And this is the quiet season on Sanctuary, we don't do too much new development in the winter months. During the summer, yes, sometimes it gets a little tricky when the League calls me in, but I don't do much of the grand cosmic adventuring." She wiggled her fingers like she was ready to cast a spell. "These powers aren't much good in space! I haven't been off-planet since, oh, that business with the Communion, I guess. Have you ever thought about joining up with a team?"

"Okay, good to know!" Danica called back, her voice echoing a bit as it came out the top of the shell. Reaching out, she put her hand on the brass doorknob set in the side of the shell and opened it, revealing the nice little bedroom beyond. "Quick," she encouraged the terrified mother in the shell with her, "get in here, I promise you'll be safe." As soon as mother and baby were safe in her dimensional room, Danica let the big shell poof back down into its normal version. "I'm very sorry that we have to hurt you!" she called to the Ragin, "we just want to keep you from doing a whole rampaging thing!" Cupping her hands, she produced her tiny blue spectral tortoise and then launched it towards the monster. It flew through the air, opening its pointy little mouth as it went, and landed bite-first on the creature's misshapen shoulder!

Danica is hiding with the mom and baby in her Created Object shell, which takes a ding with a toughness roll of 22. Move Action: Nudge Mama and Baby through the door in her shell to her dimensional pocket. The big shell will dissolve, leaving Danica in her normal shell as she shifts her array. Standard Action: Spectral Turtle Bite! First attack roll is very terrible, burning an HP for a reroll. That is a hit with a 23.

Raina gulped when Cueball leapt for her, bringing up an arm instinctively to block the attack. The long handle hit her hard enough to numb her arm to the elbow, but at least the wicked sharp head failed to connect. Luckily for her, the hand that arm was attached to was still full of a fireball, which she cheerfully applied to the villain's hair when he reached the apogee of his leap. "Is that the best the Devil's Advocates can do?" she laughed, the noise booming out derisively. "Shiny eye tricks and a moron with an axe? Go back to hell and ask your sugar daddy for 'just a little bit of power, pwetty pwease?" The deep-voice falsetto range was hard to pull off, but Raina considered herself an artist of making people mad. Now where the hell was that ghosty guy and why wasn't he saving the kid?

Miss A turned away from the interview for a moment to focus on her young assistant. Her face suddenly became smooth, cold, and hard as a porcelain figurine. "I believe the agents have overstayed their welcome," she said to the room, each word bitten off clean. "If you'll excuse me for one moment." She left the lab through the main door, pressing just a tiny bit too hard so the door flew open in front of her. "Director, Agents," she said coldly. "You were invited here as a favor, one of many favors I personally and ArcheTech corporately has done for you over the many years of our relationship. Our relationship has always been professional, even cordial." Her voice rose, got louder, icier. "You have absolutely no right to be here beyond the invitation you were given, and that invitation does not extend to manhandling my people or intimidating children!" Two of the bulky Emerson+ security robots appeared in the doorway that opened onto the public spaces of the building. Miss A glanced at them, then dropped her voice to something barely above a hiss. "Get the hell out of my building, and don't come back until you're ready to drop the bullshit and the bigotry. We don't work for you."

"Of course. Blade fighting is always a challenge when you're trying not to let anyone get hurt," Paige agreed. "I'm assuming that trying to talk her down didn't go the way you'd hoped." From the reports Paige had read, the infiltrators had been happy to talk, full of righteous fury over the lack of true justice or victory against evil (the sort of talk that had earned the day its moniker), but not particularly inclined to listen. Even Stesha, a famously good negotiator, hadn't been able to talk one of the bots down for more than a few minutes. "What happened then?"

Danica goes on ZZZZEEEEERRROOOOOOOO!

Danica didn't move fast, especially on cold days like this, but she could analyze a situation fast enough. While Ryder tried to deal with the angry guy, Danica made her way behind him, putting herself between the angry man and his targets. "Everybody is cold and frustrated," she began, "but we can all-" When the guy shoved Ryder, Danica barely even thought before her shell was forming up around her, much bigger than usual, big enough that it also enveloped mother and baby in a shell-structure the size of a family tent.

"Freedom City weather in February is awful," Danica confided. "Back where I used to live, by February it was already in the seventies every day, and the most beautiful time of the whole year! I miss how it used to get so hot in the summer that you could see heat lines rising up off the streets and making everything wavy..." She sighed wistfully, hugging her arms a little closer to her chest. The fretful baby caught her attention, drawing a sympathetic "aww" from the disguised tortoise girl. "Poor baby," she crooned, nudging a little bit of big, calm, slowsleepy feelings towards the stroller. Babies loved that sort of thing, and it was usually pretty good for calming down fussy parents, too. To her surprise, it seemed to have no effect whatsoever on the child's angry cries. "Huh," she murmured to Ryder. "That usually works. I wonder if he's, like, a psychic baby."

It's an area effect! Emotion Control 5 (patience of the ages, Extra: Action 3 [Reaction], Area [Burst], Flaw: Limited [Calm], [Range 2 [Touch], PFs: Inspire 5, Subtle 1 [psionic]) [20PP] Opposed power check, 1d20+5= It's a seven! That is so terrible!

"Hi, Mr. Hunter!" Danica greeted him cheerfully, setting aside the brief moment of confusion. Redbird seemed to like the idea of helping make her a car, so that had to be a good sign. She studied the engineer and wondered if maybe she should've brought some of her girl friends with her. Given the way they liked to talk about teachers and upperclassmen at school she thought they would definitely appreciate Mr. Hunter's looks, and that was always funny to observe. He had a nice voice, really calm and cool. "Yep, I'm Danica! Jill o' Cure told me that you are the best at making custom cars for people with, um, kind of supernatural needs!" The garage was big enough that she considered going back for her Segway, but there was no way she was going to drag its slushy wheels all over the pristine floor, even if it weren't making sad noises. Instead she started making her way across the garage at a good clip for her, which would've been a slow walk for most people. "I haven't been able to learn to drive yet because I haven't got very good reflexes, but we thought maybe there was some kind of driver assist, or something?"