Electra

Wander, who'd been spoiling for a fight ever since the bodies started hitting the doors, needed no further encouragement. Silently, and with a fixed look of enraged concentration on her face, she flipped over a set of disused railings, coming down practically on top of the monster. Her bat whirled like a helicopter blade, almost too fast to see as she smashed it into the monster again and again. "Don't you use her ever again" she grated, too softly for most ears to hear, even as she brought the end of her bat around and drove it into the mass.

Erin is going to do what she always does when faced with unspeakable monstrosities, distract it and then smash it as hard as she possibly can! Fast Acrobatic Bluff as the move action, with skill mastery, DC 28. All-out power attack with bat, drops defense to +10, keeps attack at +15. 1d20+15=32. Depending on what that thing's defense is after the bluff, that may invoke some autofire damage as well, added onto DC 35 toughness.

"No worries there," Erin said, somewhat ruefully. "If I knew what I was going to do with the rest of my life in every other area, maybe things would be clearer. It gets easier after high school, doesn't it?" she asked Mona. "Not the having to work and earn money and feed yourself part, but the knowing where you're going and what to do. I'd just kind of like to get to some point where I feel like I have got a plan, and that things are on the right track, instead of just, you know, sort of flailing around."

That got a contemplative nod from her. "We both got pretty lucky... and not just like that," Erin added hastily, blushing a little. "I mean, a year ago I barely knew you, and now I trust you more than anyone else in the world. I didn't think I'd ever be able to feel like this." She smiled, settling in against him and offering him a spoonful of kiwi. "Having a boyfriend who can both fix my truck when it breaks and pack a hell of a picnic is just a bonus."

Stesha chuckled at the bee byplay. "Don't let him talk you into too much," she warned Tarrant, "the drones have all sorts of ideas they got from television. Now that the hive is done, the workers have been making all sorts of interior improvements. If you'd like to go inside, you can see the sleeping chambers, the honey storage, the larvae chambers, it's quite impressive. But we might want to put that off in favor of lunch." She raised her voice to address the bees. "Gaian Knight is moving here to Sanctuary to live with us. He has made a castle up past the sunset side of the forest!" There was a wave of general bee-acclaim at that news, Stesha let it quiet before continuing. "Gaian Knight has made his castle with rooms big enough for bees to visit, but you must not go inside unless you are invited!" She looked to Tarrant to see if he had anything to add.

"IZZ VERY GOOD," one of the larger bees assured Tarrant. Stesha seemed to have some way to distinguish between at least some of the bees, but they all looked very much alike. "THE QUEEN HAZZ FLOWN, AND NOW SHE MAKEZZ THE BABY BEEZZ, VERY MANY OF THEM! MORE THAN WHEN WE WERE SLAVEZZ OF THE BEEKEEPER AND LIVED UNDER THE GROUND!" "THE WATER IZZ VERY GOOD TOO," another one reported. "IT IZZ CLEANER AND BEETER THAN THE RIVER, KEEPZZ THE QUEEN COOL, LETZZ UZZ BUILD FASTER. UZZEFUL!" "WE ZZTILL NEED A HOT TUB!" another bee interjected urgently. "LIKE ON ZHE TELEVIZZON, FILLED WIZZ ZHAMPAGNE!" He waggled his antennae for emphasis. "ZZHUT UP, CURL-BEE," the first bee said impatiently. "ZZHE DRONEZZ DO NOT NEED A HOT TUB FULL OF ANYZHING!"

Erin hesitated a moment. "He keeps a secret identity," she said somewhat awkwardly, "so I don't know that I should really say without clearing it with him first. Not that I don't trust you to keep a secret or anything," she hastened, "but it's more like it seems like something I should ask him about." She shrugged, hoping Mona would understand. "Secret identities are hard, it's kind of why I'm so bad about keeping mine." She looked down, surprised to see how much of the pie she'd already eaten. "Anyway, his parents are never around, they live overseas or something, but his grandpa... it's more complicated. I made a bad impression on him back when we first met and I don't really know how to turn it around. I would like him to like me, but I don't really know what to do to fix things. Trev and I have been dating for a long time, months now, and I think it is serious, but I don't know exactly where it's all going."

Miss A frowned, both at the problem as a whole and at the mention of self-prescribed anti-psychotics. Well, there was nothing to be done about that at this point except to try and supervise the step-down process. "Are you saying that you were inventing things that you had no memory of later?" she asked. "Do you know if any of those inventions reached the production stage, or were they all just specs when you woke, as far as you know?" The idea of a deranged Doktor Archeville creating weapons of destruction was not only personally chilling, but could be a public relations disaster that would destroy his company.

Erin made a pleased noise as she opened the hamper, pulling things out and setting them on the blanket. "Okay, looks like I'm going to have to take back most of the things I've said about you not being able to do your grocery shopping," she joked, starting in on one of the kiwis. She would've started with the cake, but some things were better when anticipated a little bit. Preoccupied with the basket, it took her a moment to notice Trevor's pensive distraction. She followed his gaze, then looked at him. "What's on your mind?" she asked quietly.

"Sure, that was my plan all along," Erin joked, settling in next to him on the picnic blanket so they had an unobstructed view out over the river. "This is really cool, it's like a perfect picnic bubble. You could probably market these and make another million bucks. But then maybe next time we might have to fight the crowd for bridgetop seating." Reaching out, she snagged the hamper to check out what was inside. "It's weird, it doesn't seem like a whole year has passed already, even though we've done so much."

Erin took Trevor's hand and climbed off the motorcycle, entirely dumbfounded. She winced a little bit as she suddenly figured out the date and that she had completely forgotten, but she couldn't help smiling anyway at all he'd set out. "This is... wow," she told him, squeezing his fingers. "I guess you probably already guessed that I totally forgot. I'm bad with dates for things," she admitted. "It's just... I'm not even going to ask how you did all this." She chuckled, then turned and kissed him, wrapping her arms around his waist. "You have the best surprises."

"Go for it," she told him, wrapping her arms snugly around his waist and leaning in so her chest was pressed against his back, her heart pounding with excitement. The speed and the wind and the darkness around them, somehow this seemed much closer to flying than the bouncing she did all around town. As they raced up the side of the bridge, the city spread out below them like a carpet of lights, so beautiful and alive that the breath caught in her throat.

Miss A smiled at the little girl, acting as though nothing of interest had transpired in her absence. "That's perfect," she told Lois. "Now I'm just going to download a few programs onto this for you, some proprietary software I've cooked up for vector modeling. They don't have docs with them yet, they're still beta versions, but I think if you start playing with it, you'll get the idea pretty quickly. They're more sophisticated than what you've probably got at home, and should let you do a bit more tinkering." She plugged the drive into her computer, copied a series of folders with a few clicks, then handed the drive and a business card to Lois. "You can shoot me an email if you run into any trouble. I'd like to see what you develop."

"Yeah, of course," she called back, laughing. "Not many girls get a guy who jumps the Pramas Bridge on a motorcycle just to impress them." She lifted her head and tightened her grip a little as she saw the oncoming span, lit up and gleaming against the dark ribbon of the South River. "Are we going to try a reprise of that tonight? Because I wish I'd brought a camera along." Even after many months of riding with Trevor, even knowing much more about the magic he could do on a motorcycle, the thought of riding the cables made a nervy, whippy excitement run through her.

Miss Americana looked up with interest at the alert, but didn't seem terribly worried about it. If anyone did come to this door, it would be a simple matter to disappear the visitors, including Sharl, in the wink of an eye. She knew what the coding was for all the sensory processing data in Tronik, becoming invisible to it was child's play. "If they're cracking down hard, it may be harder for us to move around, but we need to get more data on at least a few aberrations. Sharl, you can stay here if you want to, and we'll just use the city map to get around. It may not be safe for you to be seen with us."

Erin snickered and hopped onto the cycle behind him, looping her arms around his waist in a way that had become second nature by this point. The cool night air from the open garage teased her hair as she fastened her helmet, then blew it backwards as they pulled out onto the street. There hadn't been much opportunity to just go out and ride since they came back from Anti-Earth, and the feeling of it was like a weight off of her. Just for now, it was nice to think of all the worries blowing away in the wind. She leaned her cheek against his shoulder appreciatively and watched the lights of the city melt into shining lines as they raced past.

"It's normal to see ghosts of ourselves in other people," Miss A remarked, not unsympathetically. "Especially people who remind us of times in our lives that were particularly painful. But it looks like Lois is very happy at school, and she's obviously making something of herself. Winning a science competition in a city this size is no small thing. You should be very proud of her for that, and I suspect that if you did a little bit of that journalistic investigation, you could even learn something about what it is that she's studying, and show her that you care about it. Lois is still at an age where she wants your approval more than anything. Don't let her get to the point where she despairs of ever getting it."

Stesha cocked her head to listen as well, then chuckled, the expression lightening her face. "No, those are the giant bees," she explained. "Their hive is a few miles south of here, around what used to be the Lower Fens in Freedom City. Some of them must have come over for a visit, otherwise we wouldn't hear them. Come on, we'll see what they want. Teleporting," she thought to add before she touched his hand and teleported them both through the green. Sure enough, when they returned to the clearing it was to see a massive bee the size of a semi-truck with trailer landing in the center of the path, taking care not to clip the trees. Around the big bee were a number of smaller bees, though smaller was extremely relative, in that each of the half-dozen or so were the size of ponies. The little ones were doing most of the buzzing, which was obviously communication, but the din fell silent for a moment when they caught sight of the humans. "Hello, Beeatrizz!" Stesha called, obviously pleased. "It's so good to see you. And look how big all the children are getting!"

While Joan processed her personal revelation, Miss A sat on the edge of an empty lab table, folding those long, perfect legs and giving her a minute. "I won't deny you're right about some of that," she said mildly, "especially the part about my hair, but it's beside the point. You want what's best for Lois, but that doesn't mean the same thing for her that it would have for you. As an engineer, as a scientist, I'm telling you now that your daughter is gifted with computers and mathematics. She's going to get enough people telling her as she grows up that those are unladylike, or that she can't keep up with the boys, or that she should just give up. She's going to need someone she can trust to be in her corner, not someone who's going to agree with the crowd."

Miss Americana laughed, a genuine and really quite beautiful peal of laughter at Joan's words. "Who am I to judge you? You, who make a living judging other people on no evidence and then defending yourself by saying you're only acting in defense of 'the children?' Consider this a spoonful of your own medicine, if that makes it easier to take. You're acting as though she wants to start taking max and touring with a thrash-metal band, when all she wants to do is exercise her mind more than her body. When all she wants to do," she said again, "is not be like you." Miss A's voice gentled, became softer and more poignant. "Do you really resent her so much for ending your career, that you would kill her dreams too?"

Erin colored a little at the question, but she didn't look defensive, exactly, more along the lines of normal teenage embarrassment. She even smiled a little as she said, "Oh, um, I don't know if you know him. His name is Trevor, we go to Claremont together. He's really smart, an engineer. He's been teaching me how to do stuff like fix my own truck when it breaks, basic auto mechanic work. He's already set to enroll in an advanced program at the university, and he's going to do really well." She was obviously very proud of that. "And he's got a lot of money and a really big house," Erin admitted, "but that almost makes things even more complicated."

Erin thought about the studying she'd planned to do tonight, about the hour of training she still had on her schedule, and mentally chucked it all out the window. What good was any of it doing her at this point anyway? "Sounds like fun," she replied easily. "Just let me change my clothes and grab a quick shower. I'll meet you in the common room?" Given that these days their late-night visits sometimes ended in his bed, she liked to make sure she was prepared. She was also quick, though, and in less than fifteen minutes was out in the common room, hair still damp at the ends, wearing a blouse and slacks that wasn't quite as nice as Trevor's outfit, but would do. "Where're we going?" she asked, slipping her hand into his as they walked.

Erin looked over quickly, looking as though she thought someone might be making fun of her. The younger students quickly began applauding as well, with varying degrees of sincerity. She relaxed when she saw Trevor, giving him a quick smile as she relinquished the padded floor. Water bottle in hand, she headed in his direction. "You look nice," she observed, giving him a quick kiss on the side of the mouth but taking care not to get too close and muss him. "What's the occasion?"

The gym was far from empty on a wet weekday night, but Erin was easy to find anyway. Since she couldn't spar in the gym, she was working on acrobatic floor exercises, with a row of dummies lined up on the mat to serve as villains. Several younger students had gathered to watch her as she vaulted and flipped across the floor with her bat in hand, her complicated maneuvers designed to confuse the eyes and throw off her enemies. She was intent enough that for a moment, she didn't notice Trevor's entrance.

A small, humorless smile played around the edges of Miss Americana's mouth. "Not everyone is an Olympic hopeful who just barely misses the cut, either." She turned to Lois, who was already looking nervous. "Lois, would you mind running down the hall to room C-151 and bringing me a sixteen gigabyte flash drive? I think they're on one of the shelves in a box." Miss A waited until Lois had left the room to speak again. "Tell me something, Joan, seeing as we're all friends here. You've spent the whole tour critiquing my work as being insufficiently worthwhile, too complex, too theoretical, insufficiently egalitarian. What exactly counts as good enough for you, in your world? Is a real childhood supposed to consist of Lois doing things she doesn't enjoy in order to please you, while the things she enjoys and excels at are pushed aside and dismissed? Will that build her confidence? Will that make her strong? If she does everything you ask of her and makes it to the Olympics one day, will you finally be proud of her, or will you still be sure that you would have done better if it were you there instead of her?"