Electra

"Mostly we use whatever we find," Bart told Tarrant. "Lots of scrap is good for summat, if you put your brain to it. Back afore we met Fleur de Joie, we sent parties out scrapping, bring back whatever they found. These was a couple of big, um, big gallon drums, made of metal, you know? Scrubbed 'em down good, built the fire in one and put the other on top. You think you could maybe save anything out of there?" he asked, pointing to the burnt building. "Lots of our cooking tools were in there, some might still be good, you know?"

"It shouldn't be a problem," Miss A assured the doctor. "I think I have everything here we'll need, if you'll just stretch out on my table for a few minutes." It did take a bit longer than a few minutes, but not by much. In less than an hour, the doctor was fitted up with a nearly-invisible double ring of electrodes fastened to his scalp, each one broadcasting wirelessly to the monitoring station in Miss A's lab. "The adhesive should be good for two weeks," she told him, "as long as you have a care when you're in the shower. Come back in ten days and I'll remove all the hardware and we'll have a look at the results."

"Both," she told him with the certainty that said she'd already planned this out thoroughly. "I love our home here, but it lacks certain amenities that you can only get in the middle of civilization. I have a nursery here, and we'll spend plenty of time here, but I do still keep my apartment in Freedom City. After all, Dark Star and I both have to be available for hero work, and it's much harder to get messages to Sanctuary. When I'm here, I open a portal every few hours to check my phone messages. It's certainly possible to be a citizen of two worlds, and this is such a beautiful place for children to grow up."

"You two did a good job," Wander told both of them, "but this isn't our mission anymore. We'll give what we've got to the police, who will pass it on to someone who can use it. You're both too green for me to take you in on a major operation where there could be multiple supervillains on their own turf. There's nothing wrong or unheroic about admitting when you're not in the right position to do a job," she advised. "Way better to pass it off and let someone else get the collar than to stumble in and get yourself hurt, captured, or dead. Then you've become part of the mess that needs to be cleaned up. Catching the Toon Gang was good work, getting information from them was good work too. I think we can call this one."

"What's meth?" asked one of the teenagers, giving Gaian Knight a blank look. "Is it good?" "Dolly said they was boiling the laundry today," the other one replied with a shrug. "They used the big-big pot for the first time, maybe it was too heavy. Least they hadn't put the clothes in yet." He pointed over to a pile of sooty laundry pushed off to one side in the clearing. "They'd all be burned up too." "Shoulda just put them in the river," opined the first teen. "They get mostly clean that way." While the two teens bickered aimlessly, the older man nodded soberly over Tarrant's comment. "Fleur de Joie gave us just about everything we've got here," he said with a sober nod. "And you helped, and the Gabriel guy too, but that was cause she asked you to. Her finding us is the first real good thing that's happened in a real long time. Maybe today we lost one building, some food, but nobody's gonna die of burns, you see? And that was cause of you,too." He held out a hand to shake. "I'm Bart, I forgot to say before."

Stesha raised a semi-amused eyebrow at Tarrant's skepticism. "I don't think they're cooking meth in there, if that's what you're worried about," she told him. "I'm going to see to these injuries if you'll just make sure that the fire's entirely taken care of." She hurried off, using a curious sort of waddle-run to compensate for the fact that her center of gravity had gotten way ahead of the rest of her body lately. Most of the settlers followed her like a herd of goats following their belldam. Tarrant was left with the man who'd come to fetch him, and a couple of teenagers carrying buckets from the well. Already the smoke in the air was beginning to clear, Fleur's curiously efficient trees rustling in an unseen wind as they filtered away the contamination.

The woman frowned at the question, then made a vague cylindrical shape with her hands. "Put the fire in the bottom pot," she explained, "then stack the water pot on top. Run a chimney out the bottom for air, hots up water fast, y'see? Faster than on the open fire, and not so sooty. The bottom pot exploded, sent embers all over, got the table, the food, all that would burn." A couple other nearby people nodded with the assessment. A soft popping noise and a floral scent announced the arrival of Fleur de Joie in the clearing. "What happened?" she asked, hurrying over to Tarrant and the others. "I was getting the applesauce, and then I had to use the restroom, then my phone rang... where's the fire?"

Erin looked over to Trevor, but it seemed like it was up to her to return the conversational serve. "Good evening," she replied after only a moment of hesitation, nodding in return because she wasn't really sure what else to do. "It's, ah, nice to see you again. Trevor and I were just out for a late dinner. And we thought, we thought we'd stop in and say hello, just for a minute. I hope we're not interrupting you or anything." It looked like a comfortable sort of scene, the sort she could pretty much imagine Trevor settling into in another fifty years, actually.

"It's been twenty-five years," Miss A agreed. "And Dragonfly and myself are both skilled technopaths, that's how we're here at all. We have access to many resources and skill that the Centurion didn't back when you met with him. He laid the foundation, which we are more than capable of building on. Your help would be extremely valuable in that effort." She looked around at the room, then wished the walls clear so they could see the city looming around them. "We don't believe Tronik is sustainable on its current growth axis. Getting your input into what needs to be done to fix it with the least damage and trauma would go a long way towards making you the hero you wanted to be all along."

"Thinking of yourself as nothing but a computer program is self-defeating anyway," Miss A pointed out. "So what if you're a collection of data now and you live in a hard drive that sits on a table? Is that functionally really so different from being a collection of carbon chains and water molecules that was about to be shamelessly manipulated by a sun going nova? It's the consciousness that matters more than the vehicle. If that didn't matter, I certainly wouldn't have put in the hundreds of hours required to get Sharl up and running again, adapted to our world, and then bring him back here because it's where he wanted to be. Now what sort of control do you have over this place?" she asked, impatient to move on to other things.

"Hear what?" Erin asked with a half-smile. "But yeah, she's really super-secretive about the secret ID thing. Usually at school we just use each other's names and stuff, and are like normal people, but she won't tell anyone her name or where she lives, any of that stuff. I guess maybe it's because her brother's a hero too, she takes it more seriously because he does or something." Erin shrugged ignorance of such motives. "Anyway, if you look into the Freedom League, you'll probably make it on no problem. You know people on the team, and you have pretty much my same powers without the reputation. They'd be nuts not to put you on a team."

Miss A listened to the story with a noncommittal expression on her face, her arms folded. "I assume that if you were singled out for special treatment from the Curator, it didn't take you too long to realize that the immortality he offered was a curious sort indeed. Why did you choose not to tell anyone? Why let them go on allocating their resources this way, letting the population and the city grow like this? You have to know it's completely unsustainable."

"Everybody's out," one of the adult women assured Tarrant. She was sooty enough that she probably had personal knowledge of the fact, and her hands and arms looked like they'd been singed in the fire. "We sent a team to go look for scraps inna dead city, and they brought back some big pot things. We made a cooker out of 'em, easier than cooking over open fire. But one was bad, and it all went up, and most of the food, too. Dolly got burned on her face and Nea choked on the smoke and passed out while we was dragging her out. Nobody died, though." She shrugged, seeming to find that a passable outcome. "Can you stop the fire?"

Miss Americana folded her arms and gave the man a level look, though her mind was racing. "In case you haven't noticed," she pointed out, "everything we've done here has been beneficial to the city and the mainframe. As for your memory crisis, we have a hardware upgrade that will increase your memory capacity by at least fifty percent waiting to come online as soon as we finish inspecting the damage here. And Sharl, well, after he fell out of the city, I had to alter him to be able to survive." She gave the man a close look. "We were under the impression, however, that this was an entirely automated system, and that none of the sentients were aware of their nature. Who or what are you?"

The settler got onto the platform without hesitation; he had watched Gaian Knight at work and obviously had no qualms about the hero's skills. It was only a few miles to the pretty and pastoral area Fleur had created for her refugees, a broad pasture surrounded by trees, with a cluster of sod houses around a central windmill-powered well. A generator provided some power, and through her contacts, Fleur had been gradually supplying them with what would be considered bare necessities of life on Prime. The first thing Tarrant saw was the plume of smoke rising into the air as they crested a hill, and as they drew closer he could see the charred and smoldering building with anxious people milling around nearby. Several of them began pointing and waving their arms at the flying pair.

Erin took off her jacket as they walked, and set the Night Bear down on a convenient end table. It didn't seem like the best way to come across as a strong and capable woman would be by taking a teddy bear into the library with her. As they approached the door, Erin put her hand in Trevor's for just a moment and squeezed his fingers, then pulled away to stand on her own. It was a bit lowering to feel so nervous, but Trevor's grandpa was the closest either of them had to a real parental figure, and that made him even more important.

"Lorem tores. Venimus auxilium. Non nocebit," Miss A replied, putting a polite smile on her face. "It's asking who we are and what we're doing here," she told Dragonfly in a low voice. "I don't think this is an automatic security program." Furrowing her brow, she leaned forward and began working more intently in the window of code, trying to run down and reveal whatever was trying to capture them. As she did so, her physical personification became blurry around the edges, starting to reveal hints of something else, some other form beneath it. "Ostende te!" she requested of the program.

For Miss A: Feats +6 Sidekick (6pp) +2 Dodge Focus (2pp) +2 Attack Focus (Ranged)(2pp) Skills Diplomacy 16 (26 when piloted by Gina) (4pp) Powers New Power Super-Senses 4 (Accurate Radius Ranged Radio Sense) [radar] [4 pp] +2 ranks of Energy Systems Array [4 pp] To Blast 14 To Enhanced STR 18 to (38/+14) Add AP off Energy System Array: "ESP 7 (200 miles) (all senses) (Flaw: Medium [machines]) (PFs: Rapid 6 (1m), Subtle) [28 pp]" (1pp) +2 Protection (Extra: Impervious) [4 pp] Device 1 (Scanner) (Easy to Lose) [3 pp] -Analytical Vision and Touch {3} -Detect Weakness (Detect Weakness [visual]) {1} -Ranged Touch {1} For Gina: New Power Comprehend 6 (codes, electronics, languages 3 [read, speak, and understand all languages]) [12pp] Gadgets 1 (Easy to lose) [6pp] To Array: Make Machine Animation [Dynamic] and add Move Object 18 (Extra: Range [Perception]) (Flaw: Machines Only) to array [3pp] Add PF (Cyberspace) to Datalink [1 pp] AP off Machine Control [1 pp] ESP 6 (20 miles) (all senses) (Extra: No Conduit) (Flaw: Medium [machines]) (PFs: Rapid 6 [1mk], Subtle) {31} and Machine Animation 1 (Range [Perception]) {3} and Super-Senses 3 (Darkvision, Danger Sense [mental] {3} Skills Knowledge: Medicine 16 (4pp) Makes total Medicine 20 Bluff 4 (1pp) Feats Skill Mastery: Diplomacy, Bluff, Medicine, Notice (1pp) Benefit: Security Clearance (hacker) (1pp) Doktor'd! However, I do need to see some sample Gadgets settings. Sample Gadgets: Lockpicks: [5 pp] Enhanced Skill (Disable Device +8) [2] Quickness 4 (x25) (Limited To Disable Device checks) [2] Second Chance (Disable Device checks) [1] Stealthsuit: [5 pp] Concealment 10 (all senses) (Flaws: Blending, Passive) [5] Telepathy Jammer: [5 pp] Obscure 2 (ESP and mental) (10 ft) (PF: Subtle) [5] Doktor'd!

Miss A also turned to look at the doors, her brow furrowing. "WTF?" she said aloud. "There shouldn't be anything here with the consciousness to spring a trap like this," she pointed out, shaking her head. "These people don't know they live in a computer program, they wouldn't think in terms of rewriting the world to change a building. They'd send security forces, if they could even see us. Maybe the inversion is already spreading further than we thought." Still facing the door, she made a square with her thumbs and forefingers, then opened it out into a window of code set in the GUI world. Reaching into the window, she began to manipulate the code, looking for what was causing the problem here.

"Yes, I know her," Erin replied, "we've talked a few times, but she doesn't spend much time on campus. I invited her to hang out sometime, but I guess that's how it goes, people are busy. But she's nice, and I hear she's pretty good. If she weren't graduating, I'd say she'd be good for Young Freedom except I'm pretty sure she graduates this year too." She shrugged, then pursed her lips at Mona's next suggestion. It was tempting, just to have a job with a built-in place to live, but... "I appreciate the offer," she said sincerely, "but I just don't think I would fit in. You guys have a style that really works for you, and it's kind of loose and easygoing and stuff. I think I need something with more discipline, just because that's sort of how I am, especially when I fight. Getting onto a team and failing would be worse than having to wait," she admitted.

Erin laughed, some of the nervousness easing. "Men of few words," she agreed. "I wondered where you got that from. We'll see how it goes." In the dark, running silent, the cycle was all but invisible as they covered the last long, winding blocks to the Hunter Mansion and turned into the driveway. Wealth was a pretty good cover for a secret hero identity, Erin decided, plenty of space and no close neighbors meant a lot more room to maneuver. They pulled into the garage and dismounted, Trevor unstrapping the picnic hamper while Erin took the time to try and smooth out her tousled hair. "Where do you think he'll be at this hour?"

Tarrant vaguely recognized the dark-haired, rough-hewn man at the door as one of the refugees he'd helped build sod homes for, a recognition aided mightily by process of elimination. There simply weren't that many people on Sanctuary, so even in his nearly-new blue jeans, jacket, and work shoes, it wasn't hard to tell. The man certainly recognized him in turn, snapping off a respectful salute. "Gaian Knight! We didn't hear you were coming! We need Fleur de Joie, there was a fire, and people is hurt. The cookhouse it's still smoking and could maybe get into the trees if the wind changes. She's here, innit she?" he asked worriedly.

"That's fair enough," Stesha decided. "Hopefully he'll get himself straightened out. Most people do eventually. I'll be back in just a minute." She rose from the table and disappeared, leaving only the faint smell of flowers in her wake. A minute passed, then two, with no sign of her return. It was very quiet out in the woods, he noticed, with very few birds and small animals left to make any noise. The whole world was quiet... except for a rustling, crunching-shells noise that seemed to be getting closer. Suddenly, there was an urgent knock on the cottage's wooden front door.

"And certainly more gratifying," Miss A agreed with a nod towards the people. "Being able to see firsthand in real time what we're accomplishing is kind of cool, plus if anything goes pear-shaped, we're right there to fix it. The second trouble spot is not too far away, I think we can get there on another one of those hoverbuses." It was much easier to get out of the plant than it had been to get in, now that the ground was stable beneath their feet and all the guards had left their posts.

"Now's as good a time as any, right?" Erin said with a bit of forced lightness. "I mean, I was kind of hoping it could be during some crisis where I wasn't totally falling apart and could make a better impression, but It's kind of dumb to just wait around hoping that'll happen. I can just say hi, and I like your grandson, and..." She hesitated. "I don't know exactly what to say," she admitted. "I've never had a real boyfriend before, I've never had to do any of this before. But the longer I wait, the more nervous it's going to make me, and that just makes it worse."