Electra
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Stesha startled at the unexpected voice, the seed she'd just flicked growing to a vine the width of a man's arm in unconscious reflex before she caught herself. "Oh, hello," she said to the newcomer, dredging up a smile. "I appreciate the offer, but caffeine just doesn't do much for me these days. I miss it!" She looked the man up and down for a moment, wracking her brain to try and remember who he was, but came up blank. That was embarrassing, there was a time she'd prided herself on how many heroes she knew. "I'm sorry," she began, "I don't think we've met. I'm Fleur de Joie."
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"It's all useful," Paige assured him. "I'd love to know which replacements you fought, so I'll be doing some follow-ups to see if I can pin down where all the infiltrators went during their fighting. Who knows, maybe we'll even find some old footage from somebody's camera that didn't get noticed before." She rose to shake his hand. "And even more than that, people need to know who their heroes are. The publicity the Freedom League gets is all well and good, but they're usually not the ones keeping an eye on the neighborhoods and streets. You're one of the folks out there taking care of people, and it's good that they can see you and hear a little of what things are like for you. It's definitely useful."
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Even though she knew full well what time it was, the dark and the cold were still a bit of a shock to Stesha as she stepped out of the largest knot in an ancient oak tree. She'd spent the past fifteen hours of a very long day much closer to the equator, helping out with a World Food Program/UNISON/Freedom League joint humanitarian project in Haiti. Evacuations ahead of the unseasonable tropical storm had kept casualties low, but the damage had still been extensive and a huge amount of arable land wiped out. She'd done good work helping put things back together, but it had been exhausting, miserable work in soupy humidity broken only by periods of pouring rain. By the time she'd finished doing what she could, her uniform was so soaked she could barely pull it off so she could change into somebody's spare UNISON jumpsuit. Even with as long as the day had been, even as tired as she was, Stesha wasn't quite ready to go home just yet. Ammy was out with her class on an overnight camping trip, and the house was so big and echoey with nobody else in it. She thought often about removing the extra bedrooms and going back to a cottage, but every time she considered it, some disaster or other filled all the rooms again. Tonight, though, it was empty rooms and tomorrow another tremendously long day of trying to organize the tax information for the 501(c)(3) that funded Sanctuary's needs from Earth Prime. Unless of course some disaster came up, she thought wryly, and wasn't it terrible and wrong to wish for a disaster just to avoid paperwork? Liberty Park, like most of downtown Freedom City, was never truly dark. Here on the footpath near the Children's Zoo, blue twinkle lights were strung along the path and through the trees, making soft shadows over the bench she sat down on. Just a few minutes to unwind, she figured, and she'd be ready to go home. Or at least cold enough to want coffee. With a rueful grin, she pulled a handful of seeds from her pocket and began flicking them across the path one at a time, letting them take root and grow into flowers as they fell.
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Paige inclined her head. "You make an excellent point," she agreed. "I suppose once you've lived in Freedom City long enough, things just don't seem very surprising anymore. It's almost funny how quickly things go back to normal after something like this happens." She looked offstage, exchanged quick nods with the director. "I think that's about all the questions I have for you today," she told her guest, "and I think my crew is about to freeze. I want to thank you again for coming out and speaking with me today. It really helps us to get the story from as many perspectives as possible."
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Danica's eyes widened almost comically. "I... hadn't really thought of that," she admitted. "But we can't let them out here, they'll get trampled! Shoot!" She looked again at the elephant. "Um, I mean, everything's totally okay, you can calm down and stop rampaging, it's all fine, fine, fine..." Wheeling her Segway behind the dubious protection of a pile of boxes, she turned back to Pan. "Maybe we can let them out as soon as we land and the pirates can pick them back up again?"
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"I remember there being some unrest around the T-baby issue back then," Paige commented, nodding her understanding. She did not, of course, mention that she kept careful track of those things because she herself was one of them. People tended to forget that the Terminus' first visit to Earth had been much earlier than 1992. "What kind of trouble did start?"
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She nodded. "Citizen has no memory of the events of those few days. While most of Earth's powerful heroes were distracted and confused by the infiltrators he'd placed in Freedom City, the Curator made an attempt to steal a number of priceless and extremely dangerous artifacts from a secured place on Earth. As an artificial intelligence, Citizen was able to interface directly with the Curator, who is itself an incredibly sophisticated program, and severely damage and overwrite portions of its code. Doing so, however, required Citizen to essentially destroy his own program, which would have been an experience very much like death for an organic human being. In every way that counts, Citizen sacrificed his life to stop the Curator. It was a combination of good fortune and good planning that allowed me to restore him from backups that we'd made a short time before the infiltration. I'd never had to restore him before, so it was all theoretical until the moment it actually worked. All of his memories from after that backup were lost, but the core of him survived. And his plan worked." She smiled. "I'm very proud of him."
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Gather Info DC 5: Fleur de Joie is a full-fledged member of the Freedom League! She is a plant controller and has long green hair. She is usually considered one of the friendliest and most approachable members of the League. DC 10: Fleur is an extremely powerful plant controller, possibly the strongest alive today. She can control plants and plant monsters, but she is also a gifted healer and can travel between dimensions at will. She has been active for over a decade now in Freedom City and went from beautifying parks to helping save the world! She has a little girl who is about ten years old now, who she had with her husband Dark Star. During emergencies in Freedom City Fleur can usually be found behind the front lines, coordinating evacuations and medical treatment. Fleur moved from the Freedom League Auxiliary to full-fledged League member in 2017. DC 15: Around 2012, Fleur stopped living full time on Earth Prime and moved to Sanctuary, an alternate dimension where she keeps her headquarters. In 2015, she got a divorce from Dark Star citing irreconcilable differences (New Jersey's basic no-fault divorce criteria.) Dark Star hasn't been seen on Earth since then (though he wasn't around that much before) and the general consensus is that he abandoned the planet to his ex. Dark Star and Fleur de Joie were a popular super-couple among the general public due to Dark Star's predilection for showy romantic gestures, so the tabloids that write about supers weren't particularly kind during this period. All of that died down after awhile, but Fleur hasn't spent quite as much time on Earth since then. DC 20: Fleur de Joie's civilian name is Stesha Madison, and she is originally from the Chicago suburbs. She has a degree in botany from Northwestern University and worked as a florist in Freedom City until her daughter was born. Sanctuary is actually an alternate version of Earth that was destroyed in a cataclysm a long time ago, and that she has been restoring to health. She lives on Sanctuary along with several other superheroes and has resettled thousands of refugees there. Superhero Grapevine (Diplomacy or Gather Info, but only if your character is involved with the superhero community of Freedom City. This info can be added to the above information in a single roll.) DC 5: You can find Fleur de Joie's contact information. It is extremely widely available and she allows it to be given out freely to heroes. Her world, Sanctuary, is a place where homeless refugees can sometimes go, and Fleur herself is a gifted healer who is always happy to help the wounded. DC 10: Fleur's real name is Stesha, and she likes to go by that name unless she's in the middle of official hero business. DC 15: Dimensional traveling heroes can find sufficient directions to travel to Sanctuary. Unless they specifically try not to, they will wind up in the Civilian Holding Area. It would be rude to visit elsewhere on Sanctuary without at least calling ahead. Calling League members Gaian Knight or Gabriel is also acceptably polite. Fleur has some kind of magic psychic connection to the entire world, so it's not likely anybody could visit without being noticed, and most of the world is a disaster anyway. Fleur comes to Earth Prime for work and to buy massive amounts of groceries, but otherwise she spends almost all her time on Sanctuary these days. DC 20: Fleur and the gravity-controlling hero Dark Star had a fairy tale romance back when she was a brand new heroine and he was based on Earth. He was often called to work off-planet without notice and could be gone for a long time, a circumstance that caused her to cancel their first wedding date. He returned, everything was happy again, she got pregnant, they got married despite the warning signs. He continued to be called away frequently, until eventually months and years would go past without him returning. Stesha stuck it out for five increasingly miserable years before calling it quits in the aftermath of the Communion incursion. Dark Star left the Sol system immediately afterwards and has not returned since. Stesha has tried dating a few times since then, but pours most of her attention into her daughter and the residents of Sanctuary. DC 25: Fleur's daughter, Amaryllis, is showing the abilities of both her parents as she grows even though she is still a preadolescent. Since both her parents are extremely powerful metahumans, this means their child has a huge amount of potential. Fleur is very cognizant of the fact that some people may want to acquire a young and malleable metahuman who may one day have the ability to travel across universes and dimensions, creating or destroying worlds. She is very, very careful about her daughter's safety, and woe betide anyone who so much as breathes a threat in that direction.
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By the time everyone else was standing up and talking, Danica had managed to get back on her Segway and manipulate it over or around the rubble in the street. She headed for Leon first because he looked the most hurt of anybody. "Here," she said, reaching into her shell and pulling out a fairly large first aid kit. "You look like you took a pretty hard hit. I've got an ice pack in here..." She set the kit on the crumpled hood of a nearby car and rooted around till she found an instant cold pack to give him. "Keep that on for awhile," she advised, "it'll make your head not swell up so badly." She turned as the newest arrival introduced herself, cocking her head and trying to put together the few clues she had. Omegadrones, riders, fighting the Terminus. "Wow, are you a Furion?" she asked with great curiosity.
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"That's a complicated question," the heroine began. "Partially because it covers a lot of ground, and partially because it can be hard to tell what makes life different for a group of individuals when the group is small and so uniquely positioned. ArcheTech has been the world leader in medical robotics and prosthetics for a decade now, so I feel very confident when I say that no two synthetic life forms have the same story. Angelic is young enough that she barely remembers the Day of Wrath, while Citizen does not remember it because he was willing to give his life and did sacrifice his consciousness to stop the Curator's plan. I personally was very concerned with how other heroes would view me if it came out that I was piloting a robot and pretending that it was my own body, but I was fortunate that my colleagues were both perceptive and understanding. Society at large and heroes in particular were able to tell the difference between synthetic life forms who just want to exist like anyone else whether their consciousness is AI or human and the Curator drones, which were designed specifically for purposes of infiltration and deception. Once the Curator bots were gone, there was really no more robot paranoia to speak of."
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"I'm sure it was," Paige agreed. Off-camera, she could see that several of her crewpeople were visibly shivering and even her insulated gloves were not keeping her fingers from going numb. It was probably time to move this towards a conclusion. "After everything was over, what happened then? Did you notice any big or small changes in the city, in the way people felt about robots or about heroes in general? Did you feel any different?"
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"You can tell the story however you want," Paige assured her. "We aren't going to be airing these interviews in their entirety; we've only got ninety minutes to tell the story plus some webisode extras. If there's anything that winds up being too graphic we won't put it on the show, but that's just an editing thing and you shouldn't worry about it. We're on the Discovery Channel so we do bleep swear words," she admitted with a slightly rueful smile, "but you're not going to give anybody here the vapors if you use them." From offstage, a woman approached with a small black microphone in her hands. "Here's Kelsey," Paige explained, "she's going to pin this mic to your collar and we'll run a couple of sound and light tests. I assume you'd like to keep wearing your mask for the interview, so we won't worry about makeup. Did you have any questions while we're getting started?"
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Paige nodded understanding. "All the research I've done says that the day was incredibly chaotic. That's part of the reason we're doing these interviews, honestly, so we can start to put together a full picture that most people probably didn't get a chance to see." She picked up a water bottle from the ground next to her chair, uncapped it and took a sip. There was an identical bottle available next to Ghost's chair, should he want it. "What would you say is the one thing you remember most from the day?"
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"Yikes!" Danica squeaked, dropping partway into her shell on reflex. "Nice Lucy!" she called hopefully, using her best persuasive voice. "You remember us? We got you all clean? I painted your toenails so pretty? We're going home really soon, if you could just like, not squish us before then? Pretty please?"
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"Why did you do that?" Danica asked curiously, more than willing to abandon self-examination in pursuit of a more interesting story. "I mean, I know some people do. I had a friend at Nicholson, we were emergency buddies because every middle schooler buddied up with a little kid in case we had to evacuate, and she had hero parents but couldn't tell anybody who they were or what they did. I thought that would be kind of a drag especially when the other kids were talking about their hero parents, but my parents weren't even heroes and I did okay, so I guess she did all right. But it seems like a lot of extra work to keep your secret identity with other superpeople. Did you have an archnemesis looking for you?" she asked, sounding excited by the possibility.
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Miss A shrugged. "My robot was toast. I had to scrap the entire unit and start from scratch, and I didn't have a backup unit available. Even if I had, my ability to interface is far less than the distances we'd be traveling. I needed to be there in order to help with the engineering, but that meant I had to go in person." She smiled, a little bit thinly. "I've spoken publicly in the past about my struggles with agoraphobia and anxiety. It was hard, very hard, to even leave my house, much less go into space. I owe a lot to Dragonfly and to the other heroes who were there that day for their help and understanding." The smile warmed into something more real, if still small. "It was after that when I really started to work on getting help for my problems, so I would be better prepared for the next time."
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"Yes," Danica said immediately, big-eyed and sincere as a little tortoise girl could be. "All the Goddess's followers must do the sacred dance and sing the special song, to ease Her heart and let her rest. But the problem is that it can only be done on sacred ground! You need to put us back in the sacred place where you found us so that we can sing the song!"
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Miss Americana grinned. "Well it wasn't mine, I'll tell you that much. It might be fun to have an interstellar spaceship, but ArcheTech isn't in the space business and hasn't been for a long time." Miss Americana hadn't spoken openly about her ascension to CEO of ArcheTech for years, nor of the calamitous fall of the company's founder, but it was an open secret that ArcheTech had closed down its weapons research entirely and largely scaled back its space research in the hopes of assuaging public fears about the company's capabilities. "Just make yourself a list of the most prepared, most engineering-savvy, most likely to have a purpose-suited vehicle heroes in Freedom City, and I imagine you'll at least get close on your own. It had been in mothballs for quite some time so we did have to do some repair work, but that didn't take too long."
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Paige chuckled. "I sure do. Freedom City's got more superheroes and villains per capita than any other city on Earth. It's a heck of a town, but that makes it hard to remember everybody." She leaned back in her seat and redirected the conversation down another avenue. "When did you first start to realize what was happening, in a big picture sort of way?"
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Paige laughed. "Good point, though honestly I'd give my eyeteeth for an interview with somebody with that name, just to say I'd done it. Come on over and have a seat," she invited. "I know you had some concerns during the pre-interview process about the scope and depth of our conversation, and I just want to make sure that you're completely comfortable with how things are going to go." She led the way to center stage, where two plush beige armchairs sat angled towards each other with small table between them. Two bottles of water sat on the table, neither opened yet. Paige sat down in the chair on stage right and leaned in just a bit to indicate confidential conversation. The rest of the crew could probably still hear, but there were no cameras rolling. "The depth and breadth of the interview is totally up to you. We are trying to get as many stories of the day recorded as we can for posterity and so people can know how it all happened." She smiled reassuringly. "I'm not a lawyer or a cop, and you never have to answer a question you don't feel comfortable with. In fact, if you feel like you're able, I'd like you to do most of the talking, just tell your story however feels right and I can prompt you for clarifying points. Would that be all right with you?"
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Danica didn't have much time to be disappointed by the results of her turtle's attack, since she was immediately blown over backwards by the drone's attack and left wondering what had hit her! The good news was that being bowled over kept her out of range of the big explosion that followed. By the time she had laboriously rocked herself from back to front and stood up again, the smoke from the explosion was already starting to clear. She rubbed her head and checked her phone for bars. "Is everybody okay?" she called out, looking at classmates, weird ally and lingering civilians alike. "Is anybody hurt?"
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Chelone fails the reflex save by a lot and the fort save by some, because I rolled extremely terribly. But I rolled last night and forgot to save them for this OOC post, sorry!
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"Yikes!" Danica ducked into her shell as the explosion sent pieces of Omegadrone shrapnel in every direction. None of it actually reached her, but it was still very scary! She looked around anxiously for signs that any of her allies had been hurt, but miraculously they all seemed to have gotten out of the way in time. That was great, but unfortunately the explosion had been enough to break her concentration and end her sleepytime chant. "Sleep, sleep, sleep," she tried desperately, but it was not going to be enough this time; the remaining drone was definitely waking up! She threw another turtle at it, but this time it, too, couldn't find a place to get a bite. Something bad was definitely about to happen.
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That brought a small smile to the beautiful scientist's face. "Your friend is right, space is indeed really, really big. Our interstellar allies had already shared with us the coordinates of the Curator's base, a massive ringworld structure larger than our entire solar system. Up until that point, the information had been mostly academic, simply because it was so far away and even our handful of spacegoing heroes had concerns much closer to home. Now we needed to know where to find the Curator, and we did. As for how we managed to get a faster-than-light ship to make the journey, well..." Her smile became a bit more mysterious. "I'm afraid I actually had very little to do with it. The heroes of Freedom City have always been at their very best when the stakes are highest and the odds longest."
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She laughed, reaching behind herself to thread her fingers through his hair. "I always said they were idiots putting me on it in the first place. And that we were idiots to do it, given our backgrounds. But we made it work out okay. It's what we do, we roll with whatever happens to us. When the next thing comes along, we'll grab it with both hands and ride, just like we've always done." She turned and slid her arms around his waist, touching her forehead to his. "And in the meantime, we'll make this the best season we've ever had. Nobody's going to forget us."