Electra
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ic Graduation Day: What You Leave Behind (IC)
Electra replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Grenville and Ashton
The service wasn't due to begin for a little while yet, but Trevor and Erin were exactly on time as the subdued and classic lines of the Night Cruiser rolled silently through the streets of Ashton. Mark hadn't been doing terribly well this past week, quiet and sad even in the delayed celebration of their graduation the day before. He needed his friends, and Trevor and Erin were probably his closest friends in the world right now. They'd been to several kinds of hell and back together, and that had to mean something. This, though, was a different sort of situation. As Trevor parked the car in the driveway, Erin stepped out and looked up at the house. As the invite had requested, she was in uniform, still the Claremont blue and gold, accented today with a black mourning armband. It still felt a little strange not to be wearing her headband, but the new cut she'd gotten for graduation stopped just past her ears and didn't need to be held back. She thought it made her look more grown-up, even if it had been done mostly from necessity. Her hair didn't grow back nearly as fast as her skin did. Taking a deep breath, she looked back to Trevor before mounting the porch steps. "Ready?" she asked. -
Miss A watched with interest as the suit seemed to flicker and disappear before her eyes and the eyes of the camera. Because she knew he was there, and had some very sophisticated sensors at her disposal, he wasn't entirely invisible, but it was damn close. In the wild, he'd have been very difficult to spot. "No, that's just fine, we've got the readings. Just relax for another few moments and we'll be right out." She nodded absently to Sharl as she continued tweaking the computer readouts. "Go take him the paperwork, would you?" she instructed. "And make small talk for a few minutes without any more slips."
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Okay, here's what we had for supper tonight. It was cheap and yummy, so I'll post it up here Spicy Crockpot Chicken Wraps with Quinoa (Serves 2) 4 lbs chicken legs ($4.00, 3/4 chicken saved for leftovers, so about $1.00) 1/3 cup margarine ($0.25) 1/2 cup Frank's Red Hot Sauce (Free with coupon, probably normally $0.50) 6 Soft Taco size flour tortillas ($0.50) 1/3 pkg cream cheese ($0.35) 1 cup Quinoa ($1.65) Cost per serving: $2.12, no other sides needed Layer chicken legs in crock pot, pour most of the red hot sauce over top, reserving a few tbsp for later. Reserve more or add more for added spice. Cut margarine into pats and put over top of the chicken. Cook on high 4-5 hours until chicken is soft and done. Separate chicken from bones and gristle, discard latter. Put 1 cup of chicken meat in separate bowl, refrigerate remainder for other meals. Shred chicken fine with a fork, add remaining hot sauce and stir. Spread cream cheese on tortillas, layer with a few spoonfuls of hot chicken, roll and cut into pinwheels. Serve with ranch dressing. Makes six wraps, approximately 18 large pinwheels. To make quinoa, strain solids out of crockpot cooking liquid, put 2 cups liquid in rice cooker. Add 1 cup thoroughly rinsed quinoa, cook approximately 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Makes two heaping servings.
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"Yeah, sure," Erin said, watching uncertainly as the oddly reptilian doctor scuttled away. She felt bad for him because he was obviously so upset, and wondered who the people were at the door. She waited until the secret door in the kitchen closed, then turned and walked back to the front of the house, wondering what sort of a distraction he needed, and for how long. Maybe she could just tell them to go away, if they were like Jehovah's Witnesses or political canvassers or something. In her faded blue blouse and khaki slacks that had been washed to the point of shapelessness she looked about as out of step with the house's opulence as the robot gorilla butler, but she'd do her best. Pulling open the door, she sized up the visitors. "Hi, can I help you?" she asked politely.
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Erin's sense motive is not at its best today. 16.
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It took Erin a moment to parse what she was seeing and what it meant, after all, it had been a long few days. Eventually she cocked her head to one side, smiling slightly. "Huh, interesting. Hope we didn't do anything to screw this place up while we were gone. She looks good with the powers, though." Louder, loudly enough for Hope to hear, she called, "Yeah, we could use a ride. It's been a long few days, or few hours, or whatever." Looking over towards Trevor, she asked, "Your place?" That had been the plan for after graduation, at least for a few days, but things hadn't exactly gone according to plan.
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Wander's eyes widened in consternation at the sudden change that came over the doctor. This was even weirder than what had happened at the Farettis', but on the other hand, at least this time he wasn't summoning demons. At his horrified cries, she stepped forward, concerned. "Are you okay, Doctor?" she asked him. "Do you need me to call someone for you, someone from the lab, or the Freedom League?" She wondered fleetingly if he were allergic to Terminus radiation, and if so, if that meant the armor was considerably more dangerous than they thought. But wouldn't that make him allergic to his girlfriend, too? She didn't know, but she was certainly worried.
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"Well, if you remember back on the first of the month, there were strange energy and weather fluctuations for a little bit in the morning?" she asked. She'd heard some ArcheTech researchers discussing it, so figured the doctor would've heard of it as well. "What it was, was actually a set of cosmic reality bombs that detonated across the multiverse and destroyed the whole thing. We got warning from Mark's mom just before it happened, so we didn't get destroyed with everything else,but that meant we had to time travel between the universes with bombs in them and disarm them before the multiverse could be destroyed." She pulled away the last of the garbage bags and laid the breastplate on the table, complete with the hole in the middle where she'd punched through. "We went to a bunch of different universes, and eventually ended up on the one I come from, EZO1. There was a huge Terminus stronghold there where Freedom City used to be, and when we disarmed the reality bomb there, Omega came to stop us. Cobalt Templar and I attacked him," she explained, "while Edge held off the tens of thousands of drones and Sage drew his fire. I managed to breach the armor," and here she pointed to the hole in the suit. "That opened him up for Midnight to take a shot. He used the payload from the reality bombs and built an improvised railgun to shoot them. When he shot one into Omega, Omega screamed and exploded into energy." Erin fingered her newly shortened hair, partially a legacy of what had been burnt off in that energy discharge. "Rick Lucas pulled the whole dimension into the Zero Zone to keep the Terminus from using it to get to Prime, but he sent us home, along with the armor. I guess to prove we'd actually done it."
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"Ah, no thank you, Doctor," Erin said politely. "I had something this morning." She set her large and awkward parcel down so one edge was on the floor, keeping her hand on the top edge. "I'm sorry to bother you at home and after hours, but I was hoping you could look at something for me. It's a... a trophy, you might say, from Young Freedom's most recent mission. We're trying to make sure that it's safe and inert enough to keep on Earth. Daedelus has been looking it over, but he hoped you could give a second opinion. And it's... well, it's not the sort of thing we're ready to show off openly right now."
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Erin hesitated in the foyer for a moment, trying to reconcile the inside of the house with the outside. She'd spent enough time around Edge that the house's seeming logical inconsistency didn't throw her that much, but not knowing where the outside walls and exits might be made her a little nervous. Not that she expected trouble, but old habits died hard, especially when they'd been recently reinforced. Nonetheless, she shouldered the car-hood sized piece of plastic-wrapped steel and nodded to the gorilla, falling in. "I, uh, hope he's not busy with anything."
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Wander pulled up to Doktor Archeville's home in her blue pickup truck, which was currently shiny clean and ruthlessly detailed. She hadn't slept too much since coming back from EZO1 for the last time, which allowed for plenty of free time for little chores. The work at ArcheTech was interesting, if not exactly challenging, but compared to her old schedule, she had massive amounts of time on her hands. Maybe after this, she would find Trevor and go patrolling, see if any criminals were dumb enough to brave the heat and go do wrong. When she arrived at the house, she sat in the driveway for a moment and double-checked the address, just to be sure. For someone who had so much money and power, the house was tiny, and just a little bit shabby. It was certainly nothing like she'd expected. Maybe he had a huge subterranean lair or something like that. Climbing out of the cab, she walked around to the bed and pulled out the giant parcel she'd brought, securely wrapped in four black garbage bags. They were keeping the fate of Omega a secret for now, which was why she was here at the house in the first place. Not that she'd told him what she was bringing in so many words, just that it was a sensitive matter the League wanted him to look into. Juggling the parcel, she walked up to the door and rang the bell.
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"Ah, a stealth suit," Miss A repeated, sounding quite interested. "Yes, that's definitely something I ought to make some recordings of. Also very useful when you do hero work, I imagine. I was able to get readings on the physiological improvements while I was scanning you in the medical lab. Go ahead and demonstrate your stealth capabilities whenever you're ready," she instructed." Up in the lab, Miss A turned to the computer and started a new set of recordings, glancing over at Sharl to make sure he was ready with the paperwork for afterwards.
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"A small team would be better," Miss A opined, after nodding along with what the others had said. "Faster, lighter, and less likely to be noticed. Two teleporters would be ideal, for backup in case something does happen. I myself can't make the trip. I'd recommend Supercape, Dragonfly, and Dark Star, if we can recruit him for the trip, and perhaps one more scientist or technician. The sooner the trip is made, the longer we'll have to formulate a counter for the nanites, and it doesn't seem as though we have much chance of gathering intel beyond what we have without a visit."
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"The Gorgon's modus operandi is somewhat similar to the Curator," Miss Americana observed, "in the sense that both entities seek to preserve what they consider valuable about planets and cultures. Unfortunately for us, organic life processes are not something they seem to value particularly highly. They are not hostile, but they are so extremely alien that attempts to negotiate are fruitless." She folded her hands together and looked around the table. "Given the caliber of scientific minds we have available to us, I believe that a solution will be found that does not require a military strategy. If we cannot come to terms with the Gorgon, then we must outsmart her. These nanites are machines, at their core. We can work with that. What we need to do, though, is to acquire a sample of the nanites before they arrive on Earth. We need to go to the Gorgon ourselves."
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"The Gorgon's modus operandi is somewhat similar to the Curator," Miss Americana observed, "in the sense that both entities seek to preserve what they consider valuable about planets and cultures. Unfortunately for us, organic life processes are not something they seem to value particularly highly. They are not hostile, but they are so extremely alien that attempts to negotiate are fruitless." She folded her hands together and looked around the table. "Given the caliber of scientific minds we have available to us, I believe that a solution will be found that does not require a military strategy. If we cannot come to terms with the Gorgon, then we must outsmart her. These nanites are machines, at their core. We can work with that. What we need to do, though, is to acquire a sample of the nanites before they arrive on Earth. We need to go to the Gorgon ourselves."
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"Call us and let us know how things are going, all right?" Erin told Mark. Just like after their last Lucas-based interdimensional detour, she didn't know what to do or say that might help him at all, so she just let them go. She hoped Mark would at least feel better if he could drop his heroic facade, with none of his friends or colleagues around to see. She turned to Captain Thunder, her face cool. "We told you what happened," she pointed out. "All you have to do is file the reports. If the armor's safe to carry around, I'll take it with me and deliver it to Doctor Archeville. I start work for him on Monday anyway." That was a truly weird thought, after all they'd just been though. Today her job was saving the multiverse. Monday it would be guarding a lobby against trespassers. Honestly, it didn't sound so bad. She looked at Trevor, cocking his hat forward on her head a bit. "Ready?"
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"This is a bus," Fleur explained patiently, stroking the back of the restlessly stirring baby. "It carries many people and goes on a set route through the city. If you catch the right one, it takes you close to where you need to go. The vehicle you're thinking of is a taxi, the yellow cars with the white lights on top. You can catch one of those and it will take you wherever you like, but it is much more expensive. Your job doesn't pay very much, so you will want to take the bus whenever you can." Amaryllis let out a plaintive wail, waking up now that she was no longer soothed by the motion of walking.
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Fleur gave him a friendly pat on the hand before stepping away to sign autographs for a couple of bold tourists. Her pregnancy had gotten a little bit of press in Freedom City as it had become increasingly obvious, so there was natural curiosity to see the new baby. Even so, the hero fans were generally polite folks, and within just a few minutes Fleur and John were away from the building and into more anonymous traffic. "I probably shouldn't have come in uniform," she admitted with a laugh. "If nothing else, it's too doggone hot." She pulled the brown jacket off and shoved it in the knothole of a nearby tree. "Much better. The Green Line bus will take us to Lincoln, the stop is right over here." She led him to the bus stop and gave him a quick lesson in identifying buses and using the pass the League had issued him.
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"I'm not the best person to be asking, honestly," Fleur told him apologetically. "I don't know very much about organized magic or the Pact, only what I've heard second- and thirdhand from others. Daedelus would probably know more, or some of the mages who do hero work. My understanding is that the powers that be in those other dimensions weren't doing a good job of policing their own when it came to causing trouble on Earth, so the Master Mage of Earth cast a spell and cut them off. I imagine it did cut off some beneficial contact, but I can't say we don't have enough problems on Earth without the gods of legend stopping by all the time."
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Wander took Oliver with her into the briefing, not sure what else to do with him, not certain whether at some point he would start talking again and do the debriefing himself. He seemed content, though, to sit on her lap and purr while she related the circumstances of the past four subjective days. Star Knight was a police detective, if an alien one, and allowed Wander to deliver her report in the most detatched, cut-and-dry manner possible. Erin tried to think of it as delivering a report on a Doom Room scenario, rather than a life and death mission full of pain and fear and triumph. Once the basic facts were on the table, Star Knight went back and began asking questions, fleshing out details. That was harder to handle, but Wander did her best. She explained the strategy she'd used on Herr Arkeville and why she'd given him to Midnight I, then discussed the fight with Breakdown and her meeting with her own daughter from a different timeline. She opened the backpack to show her mementos without removing or commenting on them much. She just said she'd visited her home on EZO1, but nothing about what she'd found there or about how she'd pushed both herself and Trevor to, or maybe past, the limits of emotional endurance. She glossed over the fight with Friendly and the zombies, though she dutifully reported the fatality that she had caused, and discussed the fight with Omega as an exercise in tactics. It was a tremendous relief, after more than an hour, when she was turned loose from the debriefing and allowed to go back to the main hall. Hugging the backpack to her chest, she waited for Trevor, hoping that they were done for the day. It had been a very long mission, for all that the morning sun was still shining here on the same day they'd left.
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"The Pact is a tricky thing," Fleur agreed affably, not even seeming to notice as the glass doors slid open of their own accord and allowed them onto the street. It was a fabulous world outside, one he'd seen from windows and on the television, but that seemed even stranger close up. Buildings reached into the sky all around them, and the streets swarmed with people and smoke-belching vehicles. It was crowded and loud, but somehow affable as well, with an unspoken camaraderie among all the people trying to get where they were going. "Many people today don't think of 'gods' as divine beings, but as a specific subset of superpowered beings from another dimension. You might think of it as Mount Olympus. There are other subsets as well, the Norse pantheon, the Voudoun pantheon. All of them superpowered folks who have from time to time called Earth their second home. The trouble is," she explained, "is that over the centuries, they've caused a great deal of trouble on Earth, even when they don't mean to. We have our own superbeings now, and that's enough to deal with! The Pact dictates that beings from these alternate worlds cannot come to Earth without being invited by a human being on Earth. So they can come, but only if someone here wants them. So we still see them, but not nearly as often as we used to," she explained.
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Fleur laughed. "Yes, I understand, don't worry. I know Harrier, he's a friend of mine. He's very quiet, so he should make for a good roommate. This is my daughter Amaryllis," she told him, tugging aside the cloth of the sling just enough for him to see the sleeping baby's face. "I'm not exactly on active duty, for obvious reasons, but I'm still happy to help out. If you're ready now, I'll take you outside and show you the bus system. It's the easiest way to get around if you don't drive, so you'll need to be familiar with it. Let me store your bag away for you." She held out a hand for his case, then shoved it into the yellow flower. The flower seemed to swallow it down, then shrank to a small and unobtrusive flower size. "It'll be waiting for you when we get there," she assured him, then turned to walk towards the broad double doors. "How do you like Freedom City so far?"
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Satyr, or John Black as he was now called, had a long final day in Freedom Hall. He'd spent quite a bit of time there since he'd woken up, undergoing tests and answering questions, but never quite so many as today! The interviewers wanted to know all about him, his past and its indiscretions, his hopes and dreams for the future. They were very concerned to make sure he understood the rules of personal boundaries in this modern world, and what he was and was not allowed to do with women. Things were very different in 2011, but he wasn't being cut loose to face the world entirely on his own. For the moment, he'd been left in the spacious main lobby of Freedom Hall to wait for a League member to pick him up. A guide, they'd told him, to explain what he was to do with himself in this city, and to show him where he'd live. All temporary, just until he was up on his feet, but certainly better than being tossed out on the street. He had new clothes on, white polo shirt, dark blue trousers, and functional black shoes with rubber soles. He'd been given a bag that contained more clothes, as well as some toiletries to get him started. As he waited, people walked by, hardly sparing him a glance. Suddenly, the potted fern next to him started doing very strange things. It began to grow a long and distinctly unfernlike tendril, then sprouted a yellow flower. The flower grew to the size of his hand, then the size of his head, then even larger. It yawned open all at once, and a woman stepped out! She was pretty in a perky sort of way, with curly green hair that spilled down her back even with much of it clipped up. Her green tunic and trousers were covered by a brown half-coat, half-cape that hung unbuttoned and open for the moment. She was obviously a superhero, with the one jarring note of a tiny green-haired infant secured snugly to her chest in a green fabric wrap. The woman stepped forward and gave him a warm smile. "Hello, you must be John!" she said enthusiastically. "I'm Fleur de Joie, and I'm going to be helping you get settled in today. Have you got all your things?"
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"Good," Miss A said approvingly, bringing the lights up once more. "Those are some excellent visual scanners you have. Now I believe I've tested most of what is listed in your dossier as far as your suit's powers. Is there anything else you would like to demonstrate, or tell me about the suit? As I mentioned, anything and everything is valuable when it comes to compiling your medical and repair file, so feel free to expound."