Electra

Miss Americana opened her eyes and took a deep breath, seeming to come back to herself as she stepped away from the wall. "Nicely done, thank you," she murmured to Wail before focusing all her attention on the electrical being. "What did she do to you?" she asked the being, the first question of a million that filled her head. "Why did you want to be her "genie" in the first place? What was the point?" That question applied to far more than Danson's empowering, but there was no way to ask without revealing more than she liked.

"This place probably has some gizmo that can get us there," Koshiro guessed, looking around at the slick conference room and the high-tech building that surrounded it. "You hear about people going to different dimensions all the time, right? The old Young Freedom went to other dimensions every week, to hear CT talk about it. It can't be that hard, and once we're there, we can find Tulink and get him to help us. If we wear Nazi clothes, we should blend in with the people there well enough." He didn't even raise the question of not going. There was no question about going.

Wander looked the newcomer up and down, listened to his story, and decided he was trustworthy enough... for now, anyway. Freedom City was crawling with heroes, so this wasn't exactly the first time she'd met a stranger who turned out to be an ally. "Do you know what they were after?" she asked Vanguard, even as she hauled Orion to his feet and checked his pupils to see if he was ready to come around any time soon. "People are always getting into the museums around here, but there doesn't seem to be anything here valuable enough for so much of the Crime League to show up and try for it."

"Yes, that seems like a good idea." Fleur waved her hands, and the giant yellow flower hanging over Steelgrave descended like the final net in Mousetrap onto the captive villain. It was motionless for a moment, then closed itself into a tight bud the size of a golf umbrella, leaving no sign that anyone had ever been there. "He'll be safe tucked away for the moment," she told the others, "and out of our hair. I can't believe that we're going to end up protecting this waste of oxygen from the Terminus if they come for him." She flicked her fingers at the ship and grass began to grow, creeping up the sides of the vessel and over the top.

"Why don't we watch the game and order pizza?" Erin agreed, sounding relieved at the suggestion. "I think the Heroes are playing some kind of preseason game, they were talking about it at work yesterday." Football wasn't really her sport, but having something to look at on the television would surely help lessen the current awkwardness. Not to mention it would give her a chance to evaluate Quo Dis a bit more, see if she was going to be any good for her good-hearted but naive former teammate. "If you've got some sodas in the fridge and some potato chips, we'd be all set."

Fleur is spending another HP to stunt Speed 5 off her array! She is so busy and creative today!

Fleur gave the Beekeeper a scathing look, one that suggested she would be happy to truss him up in a flower now and ask questions later. Still, she had to admit that he wasn't acting like the Beekeeper she knew. Where were the weird innuendos and the braggadocio, and most importantly, why did he seem to be trying to stop the robbery? "All right, fine!" she snapped. "I'll sort you out later. See if you can track the money by air, and I'll follow on the ground!" With a wave of her hand, a vine rose up from the earth, undulating beneath her feet like a massive snake. She sat down and held on, even as it began growing at a tremendous rate, propelling her down the street after the fleeing monetary monsters!

Fleur is going to use her plant creation powers to start trying to grow some stuff in the cave. Groundcover, moss, deep shade flowers, anything that can normally grow well at the light level of the cave. Is it clear enough now that Tarrant's sealed the pods for the plants to grow and live?

"Intercepting the drones would be ideal," Miss A agreed, already getting up from her seat, "but it's hard to say how much time we're going to have. Cannonade, you may have to come behind us and handle a second wave. Citizen, give me your projector." She held out a hand to take the holographic projector that held her sidekick when he was away from home. Sharl could fly under his own power, but not nearly as quickly as she could, and carrying a small holoprojector wouldn't be nearly the tactical headache that a full-sized human being would be. Heading to the nearest actual window, she pushed a button to open it and leapt straight out. "Let's move!"

1d20+4=23 That's a startlingly good, if entirely wasted initiative. :D

On the other side of the room, the trees joined in the melee as well, awkwardly swinging their branches at the golems in an attempt to knock them over, or better yet break them apart. Trees are not very good fighters though, and the only one they managed to break up was the one menacing the Beekeeper! Fleur rolled her eyes, but just then, another money monster came at her, already swinging! Before she could dodge or duck, one of her faithful trees lurched in front of her, taking the terrible blow itself! The trunk splintered with a terrible crack of wood, sending it toppling over to wreck upon the polished floor. "Oh, that is it!" Fleur exclaimed wrathfully, pushing back the cowl covering her green hair. "I have had it with you! Cover your eyes!" she called to anyone who still happened to be in the main lobby, even as she fished a seed from her pouch. A flick of her wrist sent the tiny, innocuous pellet flying towards the money golem, disappearing between the rolls of coins and sacks of bills that made up its torso. The golem looked up at her, seeming almost smug, or as smug as a mindless creature made of currency can be. That only lasted a moment, though. From the center of the golem, a massive hydrangea blossom the size of a yoga ball suddenly seemed to explode into existence. In an instant, the air was full of flying money as bits of golem rained down everywhere, plinking off the walls and rolling in crazy circles on the floor. "That's right!" she shouted, glaring at the Beekeeper and the other golem. "Now are you ready to stand down?"

Stunt time! Spending 1 HP Disintegrate 8 (40 pp, PFs: Accurate, Incurable, Precise, Reversible) [44 pp] Attacking Golem 1, taking ten and power attacking for two, that's a 15, which should hit! If for some reason he does not dissolve in a satisfactory fashion, do it again!

"If Penny can neutralize Panacea's effects, we need to get her up near the pod," Fleur whispered back, pausing in her attempts to move around the room. "We won't know what we're dealing with until we see it. But it's definitely the source of contamination." She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes for a moment, her hood slipping back to reveal hair that was rapidly turning as blonde and brittle as straw. "I don't think I can get any closer. I'll keep Scraps with me and the rest of you go on." It was a difficult call to make, but she wasn't going to risk slowing them down at this point, not when they were so close!

Fleur dodged the blow one of the clumsy golems threw her way, most of her attention centered squarely on the mastermind in front of her. "Fight the golems," she instructed her trees, "but stay close." Pulling a seed from her belt pouch, she threw it at the Beekeeper, letting it explode midair a long, curling green vine. "I'm really disappointed in you, Barry," she told the squirming supervillain. "After everything you put me through last year, after I put myself and my baby in danger to clear you of that murder charge, I really thought things would be different. I really thought you were capable of change. And yet here we are again!" The vine landed and snaked across the floor, grabbing hold of Beekeeper's ankles and climbing up and around his legs with impossible speed. "And bank robbery? Really?," Fleur demanded. "You're a lot of things, but you've never been obvious. But I guess we'll have time to chat about that when you're back in prison!" The vines took hold of his arms, binding them down to his sides, and wrapped him securely to the neck, till he looked like a green robot mummy.

For Stesha's move action, she is going to direct the trees to attack the golems, first Golem 1, then any other golems who might approach her. For her action-action, she is going to attempt to grapple the nefarious Beekeeper with VINES OF STEEL! But the roll is terrible! It's a 16.

Fleur goes on 18. The trees go on 4, but are all prepared to interpose.

Fleur didn't spend as much time in Freedom City as she had before she'd moved her base to Sanctuary, but it was still her home. It was also still the place she went to bank and get groceries and meet up with friends, so she found herself there on a regular basis. And when she was in town, she made it a point to help out where she could. She was actually a little excited to hear the call about a bank robbery when she was close enough to be of help. It had been a long time since she'd dealt with one of those! A touch of her fingers to the flowers in her hair brought her to the front of the bank, where frightened and fascinated people were gathering to rubberneck. The first thing she noticed was that there was a great deal of commotion in the bank. Whoever was conducting the robbery seemed to have a lot of backup. It would be wise to even the odds. With a wave of her hand, Fleur had the young trees in front of the building pulling themselves from their patches of ground and standing up on braided-root legs. Shaking their branches like rousing sleepers, they climbed the broad front steps with Fleur just behind them, letting them clear the way into the lobby. The sight in the bank itself was something to behold! Rather than the gang of desperadoes she was expecting, Fleur found a room seemingly alive with currency! And in the center of the mess, locked in an enthusiastic embrace with a giant sack of cash, was a very familiar face. Or uniform, anyway. "Beekeeper!" she called, an unusually un-Fleurlike growl in her voice. "I should've known you wouldn't stay out of trouble for long! What is it this time, tiny invisible bank robbing bees?" Even as she spoke she was rummaging in her pouch, clearly preparing an attack against her long-time foe!

Fleur will arrive now, ready to kick bank robber bottom! In this first round, to give Baxter a little time to escape his bonds, I think I will have Stesha use her Summon power and stir up the local trees. They will follow her into the bank and be ready to attack starting next turn.

Fleur did a bit of a double-take, looking from the Captain to his doppelganger as the latter confronted Gabriel. She didn't know much about Grue and their ways, maybe it was normal for related Grue to be similar in appearance, or to all base themselves on a single model. Seeing how the Captain reacted would hopefully give her a clue on exactly how weird or bad this was. For the moment, she edged quietly along the wall with the children in tow, trying to get a closer look at the contents of those chambers while Gabriel still had the crowd's attention. Normally it would've been a simple matter to drop a vine from the ceiling and get a look, but today she'd do it the hard way.

"I'm afraid not, Doctor," Miss Americana told him. "Are you secure?" Upon his assurance, she went on. "We've intercepted a sophisticated virus package developed by the Foundry that specifically targets you and your computer systems. Any AI program there is in danger of being overwritten and replaced with a sophisticated doppelganger version." She spoke obliquely, not willing to give away Dr. Atom's secrets even in a secure forum. "The initial package was delivered in the form of a personality replica of the rapper D-Gray, whose programming unexpectedly crossed the AI threshold. We have him isolated here in the lab and are working to strip out the malicious coding, but I suspect that there may be further iterations of the virus either en route or waiting for deployment. We're currently tracking the dissemination path and trying to locate the source, but until we do, I suggest you lock down your systems as a precaution."

Erin nodded earnestly, obviously finding a great deal of meaning in the analogy. "Anyway, if the worst thing you ever face is that your girlfriend gets a great opportunity for a job where you'll have to visit her on weekends for awhile, you're doing pretty well for yourself," she pointed out with typical bluntness. "You both come from backgrounds that are kind of... sheltered," was the word she settled on. She wasn't totally sure about Quo-dis' background, but besides Claremont, the girl obviously hadn't had a lot of Earth-relevant experience. "It's kind of cool that she's got this opportunity to travel and see new things, and you're starting college and branching out with your education. You'll have lots to talk about when you get together."

"You don't need to worry about what we've heard or haven't heard," Fleur told Steelgrave coolly. "You just tell us everything you know about any Terminus activity on Prime, in as much detail as you can. If there's anything in there that we don't know, it'll be a point in your favor with the court system. And believe me, right now you want all the points you can get." Since Steelgrave was thoroughly covered by the assembled heroes and didn't seem to be fighting his bonds, Fleur concentrated her attention for a moment on the vines surrounding the ship. One began to grow again, sending out runners through the open hatch and into the interior of the little vessel, searching for any surprises or anything he hadn't told them about.

With little to do besides watch the rebuilding process, the Koshiros once again migrated to one side of the room and began speaking quietly in Japanese. Curiosity was natural in a situation like this, even if it was tempered with some suspicion. "I don't know how close we could really be," Koshiro said dubiously, "if you're from the West Coast, the, um, Co-Prosperity Sphere. I grew up in Detroit, like my whole family." "I grew up in Detroit too," Koshiro admitted. "After the shame with Grandmother, it was decided that we might do better for ourselves if we served the Empire from outside its borders." The deep sarcasm there was easy for his counterpart to appreciate. "That's why I was tapped for this mission, I already speak German and English, and I understand their customs. Most of them, anyway. And I got in some trouble, they wanted to teach me a lesson..." Koshiro nodded, though he couldn't help bridling at the aspersion on his grandparents. But in a world controlled by Nazis and the xenophobic Japanese Empire of the mid-20th century, it wasn't hard to see where miscegenation would be a very big deal. "The trouble you got in, I had some too," he admitted. "But it was after Takeshi disappeared. Did he... He didn't have to finish the sentence before his counterpart was nodding, his face tight. "They barely investigated here, didn't find anything about what happened to him. Did they find anything in your world?" he asked curious despite himself. "The Krauts weren't too interested in an investigation that might turn up a crime of one of theirs against one of us," Koshiro told his counterpart, his own face tight with banked anger. "They marked it as a disappearance, but suggested it was desertion. He added a few choice obscenities, then went on. "Aside from the symbols in the room-" "Symbols? What symbols?" Koshiro demanded, leaning in with sudden urgent interest. "There was a ring of symbols," Koshiro explained with some surprise, "On the floor of the room where his things were found, the same one where I found the book. They were written in soot or something, but the police took photos before they were wiped away. The police didn't think they meant anything, graffiti or some crap, but I know they mean something. I haven't been able to find out what, though." Koshiro listened to the recitation, hardly breathing, hardly able to control his own anger. "They "didn't say anything about symbols here," he told his counterpart, voice low and intense. "They said they found Takeshi's things outside the abandoned building, not in the room with the book." "But that's stupid," Koshiro pointed out, his brow furrowed. "Takeshi would never go into a building without his gear, he was too smart for that!" "I know!" Koshiro replied, his voice abruptly rising to nearly a shout. He forcibly brought himself back under control. "It never made any sense. Either they were just lazy or they were lying about something, but the story never rang true. I couldn't prove a damn thing." He looked over at the others, at the work that was nearing completion. "Do you remember what the symbols look like?" he asked his counterpart. Koshiro nodded with great certainty. "Burned into my brain," he told the other. Taking a sheet of paper and a pen from his pocket, he quickly sketched a circle of crude symbols, then handed them over. "I've looked into it however I could, but that sort of research is not exactly sanctioned where I'm from." Koshiro took the paper and scanned it eagerly, but the symbols meant nothing to him. "Nobody's going to stop me here," he told his counterpart. "Someone's got to know what it means." "Maybe you'll be the lucky one then," Koshiro replied sardonically. "Maybe you'll finally get some answers. It's not going to happen for me." "There are ways around any block," Koshiro told him. "You just have to find them. Ask Tulink," he suggested impulsively. "He can help you. Find something he wants and get it for him." "Tulink?" Koshiro repeated incredulously. "What could it even want, it's a computer program!" "Maybe you're not looking hard enough," Koshiro replied cryptically. "Worth a try, right?" Noise from the center of the room drew both of their attention, and suddenly the time for chatting was over. "Anyway, good luck with the search." "Yeah, you too." The Koshiros nodded curtly at each other before returning to their respective teams.

"I'm all for exploring, just so long as we let ourselves out afterwards and never come back," Koshiro muttered as they left the room. "This place is like a giant St. Bernard spent twenty years shedding all over the head shop in somebody's creepy uncle's furnished basement. We'd have to gut the place and fumigate it, then maybe we'd have something halfway ready to be an HQ." He started walking around the main room, looking into doors to see what else there was to the place. "I like the idea of moveable place, sort of, if we could find a place to park it and it didn't need hookups and stuff, but we haven't got the cash or time for this kind of fixer-upper."

I'll use Stesha's skill mastery and see how far that takes me for stealth. 16!