Electra

"That would be great," Stesha told him, only half-paying attention to the conversation as she worked. "Gabriel has been great about finding sponsors and supplies over on Prime, but the money only goes so far. Anything we can find that's reusable and safe is important. But you'd have to be careful. It's not healthy out there for any extended length of time, especially out near the bay and the Wading River. I haven't even tried cleaning in that direction yet." She sat back from her patient and stretched, popping her back. "There you go. The skin will be tender for a little while, but you shouldn't have a scar. Anybody else need help?" For the moment, it appeared that the crisis had passed.

Erin finally glanced over at Trevor, hoping for an out now that she'd said hello, but his face was inscrutable at the moment. No help there. But Travis had talked about cars, that was maybe a start. "I was wondering, was there only one Night Cruiser," she asked, "or did you get new ones as technology improved? Or just keep upgrading the first one?" Erin didn't think she'd seen the actual Night Cruiser yet, or at least not one that Trevor had pointed out as such. She suspected that it was a little bit like Trevor's motorcycle, with only a very select group of people allowed to handle it.

Miss A walked into her guest room and secured the door, put on a very nice pair of pajamas and laid down on the bed. The instant her sparkling blue eyes closed, thousands of miles away, a muddy brown pair opened. Gina groaned and rubbed her face as all the distant aches and discomforts suddenly asserted themselves all at once. She picked up the bottle of water she'd left next to her hand that morning, downed the whole thing, and then got up shakily. "Emerson, go make me a sandwich," she commanded, heading for the stairs. Shower, food, sleep, all in that order, and she'd be all right. The shower woke her up a little bit, and dinner with a caffeine hit eased the headache and stomachache. For once Gina sat at her dining room table to eat, letting Emerson clean the basement. She'd sort of had enough of computers for one day, honestly, and that was a rare feeling. As she ate, she kept half-expecting the holoprojectors to light up and Sharl to come in, or to hear his voice from somewhere in the house. But he was gone now, back with the family who missed him so much, back in the world where he belonged. And that was good. She hated noise and hated anyone seeing her. She loved the privacy and quiet of her house. No one ever bothered her, because no one even knew she was there. Gina finished off her sandwich and went up to bed, telling herself it was weariness that made her feel so leaden inside.

"That's what it always comes down to in the end, we can only do what we can. People have to find their own way," Stesha agreed sympathetically. While talk had been going on around the table and the food cooked, she'd been making a salad. It was a rather fascinating process to watch, since instead of going to the fridge or opening a bag, she'd grown the vegetables in her hands one at a time, then shredded or cut or tossed them into the bowl. It would be a very fresh salad. Finally, with everything prepared, she set the food on the table and motioned for everyone to dig in. "You especially," she reminded Jeanne, "all this is very good for you."

The men obediently fell in, leading Tarrant over to the little building that served as clinic and store room for the small colony. It didn't have much, just a padded table and a cabinet of first-aid supplies, but it also had a healer, which made the difference. Stesha was working on one of the villagers when Tarrant stepped inside, an older teenage girl with burns across the side of her face and down one arm. The girl was weeping softly, but the wound was obviously healing quickly under Fleur de Joie's careful attention. The air was pungent with the smell of herbs and dried flowers from the homemade remedies spread out next to the table. A few of the villagers had crowded in as well, including what looked like the girl's parents, standing nearby and looking worried. Stesha looked up briefly when the door opened. "Nothing too serious," she told Tarrant with a reassuring smile, "nothing that can't be fixed right up. It was a lucky thing you were here today."

"I'm counting on you to take care of things here," Miss A told him, patting him on the shoulder, then stepping back and giving his hair a quick ruffle."You've already shown you can be a hero, just remember you don't have to do it all alone. Leroj can help you if you feel out of your depth, and you can always call. We'll... I'll miss you. Take care." Without another word, she smiled at him and disappeared, leaving Sharl with only his phone as a connection to the world outside the metal box he'd contemplated only hours earlier. Back at the Sanctum, Miss Americana opened her sparkling blue eyes and looked around, then stood to stretch. "Well, that was a very long day," she said to her colleagues, then looked to Daedalus. "But very productive. I say we bunk down here again tonight and debrief in the morning. I don't know about you, Dragonfly, but I could use some rest."

"You'll do fine," Miss A told Sharl, patting his back with an awkwardness unusual for the socially adept superheroine. "Spend some time with your family, get back into things at school. Send me a text message to let me know how things are going for you. And stay away from strange glowing doors," she chided him teasingly, then stepped back. If her own throat was a little tight, it was probably just echo from a body that hadn't been fed or watered all day. "Let us know if you start having more problems," she told Leroj, "or let Sharl know and he'll tell me. I'll be starting work on your island right away, I'll let you know when it's finished." She looked over to Dragonfly. "Ready to go?"

"That's good to hear," Stesha told Heyzel with a smile. The news about war on another plane was worrying, but if there was anything she'd learned from being with Dark Star, it was that there were many bad situations that were entirely out of her control, and all she could do was support the ones who fought and hope they were up to the task. She certainly had enough challenges within her own sphere of influence not to even want to take anything else on! "We've missed having you on the League, and in the city. And the muffins just haven't been the same." Rising once more from her seat, she went over to slide the waxed paper pan of lasagna into the oven, then began slicing up a loaf of homemade bread. "Ah, no one has an aversion to garlic here, do they? I can never keep my mythologies straight on that sort of thing."

Miss A stepped over to Leroj to get a better look at the sylph, looking past the fluffy exterior and into what was making the goofy little thing tick. "Interesting," she said, "and elegant on the inside. These should come in handy for basic maintenance projects." She looked to the darkening sky and stifled a yawn. Far away, her body was sore, tired and hungry, things that were becoming harder to ignore. "Looks like it's about time for us to go. You have the communicator I made you, right Sharl? You can call anytime."

Bart nodded soberly at that. "Usually means chemicals," he agreed, "but sometimes it could be somebody's living someplace, or some machine's still got some power on it. Not so much since I was a kid," he told Tarrant, "but in the old days there was some machines what still ran if you found fuel for 'em. Fleur de Joie told us that if we knew where anybody else was livin', we should say so she could invite them up to live here too." He didn't look entirely comfortable with the idea, having just gotten used to the plenty they'd been given and perhaps not quite ready to share, but few actually contradicted Fleur in her domain. "Might be worth a look, for scraps or people."

Miss A took a couple extra minutes looking at the coding for the hoverbus, giving Dragonfly time to take care of her project and Sharl and Leroj time to talk. As she'd expected, over the years enough extraneous machinery had been stripped from the buses to ensure that if they had ever been workable in a normal-physics environment, they certainly were not anymore. Still, they worked in Tronik, and that was what mattered. It was kind of nice, she thought privately, being able to walk around in a city completely unseen, neither admired nor reviled. She might have to work on a project for that when she got home.

"Oh, don't worry a thing about it," Stesha said lightly, pulling out a dining chair for Jeanne to sit in and opening her extremely well-stocked freezer. "It's just an old comfy thing anyway, I've already moved the good one to our second home. The last thing anyone should worry about when they're injured is whether or not they're going to bleed on the furniture." She looked over the selection of carefully stockpiled and labeled meals, all stored against the days when she'd be too busy and frazzled to cook for herself. "Here's a vegetarian lasagna," she reported, pulling one out and popping it in the microwave to defrost. "I hope that will work for everyone." She pressed a glass of water on Jeanne, then took a seat herself. The residual adrenaline of the past few minutes had filtered downward, resulting in an epic kickboxing match against her diaphragm that was hardly comfortable. She ran a soothing hand over her own stomach. "So you have been fighting alongside Heyzel outside this plane lately?" she asked. "It sounds like it's been very big."

"Yes, that's fine," Erin said, beginning to wish she'd taken some tea if only to have something to do with her hands. She folded them together in her lap to stop them from fidgeting, and forced herself not to look over at Trevor again before answering the old man. "This is the way I sit most of the time, so you shouldn't, um, feel insulted or anything. You never know when something might happen." Truthfully, Erin had gotten a little better in the past year about that kind of behavior, but old habits died hard, especially when the stress ratcheted up. She made a concentrated effort to scoot far back enough in her seat that her shoulders touched the wood. What would Mark do in this situation? she asked herself. For all that the question was potentially fraught, Mark was undeniably talented at making friends, and he spent a lot of time around heroes. He would get Midnight to talk about his adventures, obviously. "Um, Trevor has shown me a lot of the vehicles down in your garage. I guess you must have used a lot of them when you were fighting crime?"

Miss A released the breath she'd been holding and relaxed her hands, smiling as Sharl began lowering the hoverbus to a safe landing spot. "Good work, Sharl," she murmured under her breath. "But you're right," she told Dragonfly, "that's going to attract a lot of attention, and he's not used to needing a secret identity. Now's probably a good time to give him a hand." She lifted into the air herself, smoothly as she did in Freedom City, and flew to where Sharl was just setting down the bus. Settling a hand on his shoulder, she made him invisible as well, causing the world around them to go just a bit gauzy. "Nicely done," she told him. "But now might be the time for a graceful retreat, before your face and family are plastered all over the city."

"Be careful," Fleur warned Jeanne, "you still lost a lot of blood. You need to take it easy and rest. Can you eat food?" Indeed, Stesha's couch looked as though it could use an entire bottle of peroxide and still would probably not come clean. She pushed herself laboriously to her feet, one hand on the couch and the other on the small of her back as she tried to regain her balance. "Things have been all right here," she told Heyzel, "though we have missed you. It's nice to see you back." She looked from him to the feathers on the floor. "Are you all right?" she asked solicitously.

"What are willathawips?" asked the first teen, the same one who'd asked about the meth. "They're animals," the other one replied self-importantly. "They've got a head on each end and horns on the heads, and you can eat 'em. Gran told us the story about them and the doctor what talked to all the animals, remember?" "Oh yeah," the first one nodded. "If there was some of those on the island, we could eat 'em! There ain't much animals around here, even with the plants and all. Fleur says she's gonna try and get some, but she has to talk to people who can teach us how to take care of 'em." He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. "If they got a head on each end, how do they poop?" His companion shrugged.

The wound itself was far more Stesha's focus now than what had caused it, but even so, she looked up at Nick's tone of voice. "I don't recognize that name," she admitted. "Whoever it was, I'm glad the acid didn't follow you to the mortal plane. Nasty stuff. All right, Heyzel," she continued, giving her friend a compassionate look, "I want you to hold her hand now. This is not going to feel very good. Nick, whenever you're ready?" She took a vial of oil and unstoppered it, pouring it over the gaping wound. The air was suddenly filled with the pungent scent of herbs and an energy that was purely organic and full of life. It seemed almost as though the oils were less the cure themselves and more a vector or focus for the plant controller's power, but either way, it seemed to be doing something. Stesha followed the first bottle with several more, murmuring under her breath the whole time as the wound began, slowly, to close up.

Miss A pursed her lips till they whitened as she watched the situation unfolding overhead. Her fingers curled and uncurled, catching invisibly in the code of the world around them, ready to intervene at an instant's notice. "He should be able to handle this," she murmured, "he's got the right idea,the physics should work. We'll let him try anyway, it's what he wants to do most..." Even so, it was very hard to stand by and watch her "sidekick" as he faced down the hoverbus on his own.

That idea seemed to appeal greatly. "Hey, if you helped out, we could carry heavy stuff back!" the first teenager enthused, breaking off the argument with his friend. Or his brother, since the two of them did look quite a bit alike. "And not have to break our own backs doing it, either." "And he can fly, we could go far, and faster if we was flying like Bart did!" the other added with an excited nod, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing along with. "We could get to the island where the pickers can't go, see what makes the lights!" "We appreciate any help you want to give," Bart said, somewhat more formally. "Could always use an extra hand around here. You've done lots of good for us already."

Stesha looked up, a quick smile crossing her concerned face as she recognized an ally. She wasn't sure what had brought Nick Cimitiere to this neck of the woods, but an extra pair of hands couldn't hurt. "Um, let's see, do you have any healing abilities, narcotic power, mind control?" she asked. "I could use some help managing her pain while I'm doing the healing. I don't know if angels experience shock, but I don't want her to hurt anymore." She herself had laid out an assortment of what looked like plant-based poultices and infused oils, but at the moment she was washing her hands with alcohol wipes. "I could also use some boiling water, and towels and washcloths from the hall closet," she added, in case his powers didn't run in any of those directions. "It's all right," she told the wounded woman, her voice soothing and confident. "We're going to take care of you."

Erin shot Trevor a somewhat helpless glance, and for a moment wished keenly that Alex or Mark or another of their more socially effective teammates were there. She was much more comfortable fading into the background of a conversation until her opinion or expertise was needed. Neither she nor Trevor were exactly paragons of social grace, though he had a lot more training and experience than she did. "No thank you," she said to the offer of tea, sitting down on the edge of the wooden chair. She thought about ignoring the blunt comment about being uncomfortable, but that wasn't really her style, and she figured he'd probably just bring it up again anyway. Old people got away with a lot of stuff like that. "You don't make me uncomfortable, exactly," she began uncomfortably. "I really admire everything you've done, all the stuff you accomplished when you were on the Liberty League. You're like a living legend."

"Oh, you poor thing," Stesha tutted, after sucking in a quick breath at the severity of the wound. She had a strong stomach, even now, and that was a very lucky thing. "She needs the armor off, and I'll have to get my things..." She half turned at the sound of the knock. Someone coming to the door now? It had to be someone who'd been called, or who just noticed something strange going on. Hopefully not one of her neighbors. "Could one of you get that?" she asked the men, even as she opened a basketball-sized flower and began to rummage through it for her healing supplies.

Stesha didn't even bother to say anything in response to the call, instead, raising her hand to touch the flowers in her hair and teleport. Suspecting traps was not in her nature, and when a teammate called to say they needed help, she certainly wasn't going to hesitate! She didn't know exactly what Heyzel had been up to lately, but he wouldn't have called if it wasn't important. Within moments, she was stepping out of a large hyacinth blossom in her own living room and looking around for her unmistakably angelic teammate. She herself was looking quite different from last time Heyzel had seen her; in her green leggings and a colorful maternity smock that showed off a popping tummy, Fleur looked a lot like a blooming flower herself. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Crashed alien ship," Miss A mused, "or perhaps the remains of an ancient civilization. Sharl indicated that the citizens of Tronik believe that they relocated to a new planet, away from the supernova. It shouldn't be too hard to mock up a recently uncovered island with certain advanced artifacts. For extra authenticity, we could rig a few harmless temblors, some storms in the upper atmosphere. It would help to take attention away from the work we're doing, and provide a plausible pretext for raising an island from the sea." She tapped her fingers against her lips thoughtfully. "First, though, we need to get the worst of the errors fixed up, before any more lives are lost. It'll take a minimal memory reallocation to stabilize the city as it is, then we can add the extra as needed to facilitate the rebuilding. How many major error sites have you pinpointed?"

Stesha gave him a friendly smile. "Mi casa su casa," she assured him with a laugh, "you can stay as long as you like. I'm not sure the beelings would forgive me if you went home without taking a flight with them. The refugee village is a few miles to the southwest, and you can probably see Gaian Knight's castle and the beehive from the air. I'm going to go inside and put my feet up for a few minutes, but feel free to go wherever you like and just drop in when you're ready to go or need a drink or anything. I really appreciate your help today."