Electra

Dragonfly recognized the robot that detached itself from the charging station at the wall, or rather, she recognized the design. It was very close in appearance to Miss Americana's robotic lab assistant Mavis, except that this one was blue in the trim where Mavis was red, and this one had an extra set of arms in the front, giving it a vaguely insectile look. It rolled up to Dragonfly on sturdy treads. "Welcome, Dragonfly," it said, and it was difficult to tell whether that was a programmed response or a real person making use of the robot's voice synthesizer. "Thank you for coming. Would you care for refreshments?"

The address she'd been given was for a two story office building in a complex full of them, completely nondescript and with not so much as a nameplate on the door to indicate anyone even leased it. Some of the buildings nearby were obviously tenanted, with cars in front and people in and out, but this one was quiet and empty. There was a keypad/retina combo lock next to the door, but since the lock clicked open at Dragonfly's approach, the issue of security was moot. The door opened into what was obviously supposed to be a reception area, but was unused space at the moment. A dusty wraparound desk stood near the door, with two dusty waiting-room chairs nearby. Lights turned on leading down a corridor, past a couple of unremarkable wooden doors, and into another locking-but-unlocked room, this one with a door that looked more like an airlock. Once through the door, the empty office space was suddenly a high-tech engineering laboratory, complete with state of the art equipment. It was immensely clean and obviously frequently used. A fresh pot of coffee stood ready in the kitchenette, but the place seemed vacant.

Perfect. Will be waiting for you. Thx. Gina set aside the phone and concentrated on getting ready to go out. She actually felt a little strange about leaving her body, for the first time in quite a long time. She supposed that after yesterday, it was understandable to feel somewhat vulnerable, but if she couldn't drop the flesh body, then the game was up whether or not she had her robot or her secret. All the same, she took pains to visit the bathroom before she went, as well as digging into the larder for a high quality breakfast of nacho chips with cheesy bean dip and guacamole. That took care of pretty much all the food groups when paired with a tall mug of coffee. Suitably fueled for the journey, Gina returned to the basement and reclined her ergonomic chair, closing her eyes and heading to a place she knew well.

Transport to my private lab would be ideal. Secure, low-profile, hopefully not too far. In the privacy of her basement, Gina chewed on her lip and debated the ethics versus utility of trying to triangulate in on where Dragonfly was located. She decided against it. Curiosity was all well and good, but if she wanted privacy, she had to be willing to grant it, up to a point. Besides, if the place was too far away, the other gadgeteer would have to say something. In Hanover, looks like office park. An address followed. Security will be taken care of.

Miss Americana's mysterious operator did not take long in replying to Dragonfly's message. Depends on condition of item. Probably somewhat banged up, still in operational state? Indeed, the android's illusion of sleep or unconsciousness was so perfect, if Dragonfly hadn't known better, she'd surely have been fooled. It was breathing evenly and slowly, and every once in awhile, an eye twitch or small movement in one of the limbs disturbed its stillness. It certainly seemed to be in good working order, despite the beating it had taken.

Gina waited until he was gone, her face impassive, then gave in and thudded her elbows down on the desk in front of her, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. She stayed that way, quite motionless, for several long minutes before inhaling a breath that seemed like half a sob and pulling herself back to the tasks at hand. The first and most important step was obviously to track down the robot and get it back to her lab, and if she was lucky, figure out exactly what had happened after she'd lost contact. If it had become widely known that Miss Americana was nothing more than a sad robotic shell for a pathetically introverted gadgeteer... no, she wasn't going to start thinking that way unless it was necessary. She set up a shielded phone connection to mask the origin and details of her phone communications, a trivial chore she'd done often enough she could practically do it in her sleep. Which was good, since she was still feeling sort of tired and under the weather. With that done, she sent a text message to the phone number Dragonfly had made available to her colleagues, using Miss Americana's contact number to send with. Feeling much better now, looking for an important lost possession. Any ideas?

Wander watched calmly from the sidelines as the fight continued, her silence and stillness seeming to insulate her from the gang's attention. Once or twice she looked about ready to step in, but held her peace and let the boys continue on their own. She nodded approvingly as they worked together to outmaneuver the villains, then nodded again at Cobalt Templar's request. Stepping away from the wall, she maneuvered her way behind the toons, cutting off any avenue of escape.

"It's okay," Wander told her counterpart, struggling to keep the edge out of her own voice. "My friends are out there, they won't let anything bad happen." She looked towards the ceiling, realizing that if a battle had been joined out there, she might be trapped in here longer than she would like, till someone managed to unlock the box again. "Help me move the bed," she told Singularity, as much for something to do as anything else. The bed was firmly anchored to the wall, but with two extraordinarily strong young women pulling on it, it didn't stand a chance. Dragging the bed into the middle of the enclosure, Wander stood on it and began knocking on the ceiling. ____ Fighting, there was fighting outside and the bad luck man, and the noise was getting louder and louder and LOUDER! Singularity paced while the stranger tapped on the ceiling as though someone were listening. Now they were both trapped in here, and horrible things were happening outside, blood and fighting and death, until there would be nothing left... She'd heard the distant explosions and felt everything shaking, she knew something terrible had happened. What if everyone was going to be gone? What if she was going to be alone in the box and the stranger left and the noises outside slowly became silent until there was nothing outside and nothing inside and nothing anywhere except the voices yelling inside her own head? ______ With an inarticulate cry, Singularity began flinging herself against the wall where the bed had been, over and over again, until the box began to shake from it. "No, no, no, no, no!" A dent began to form in the wall, right at the stress points where they'd pulled the bed out. Wander watched her counterpart, uncertain of what exactly to do now. Intervening at this point might just turn the girl's madness on her would-be rescuer, but it was hard not to do something, anything. At that point, if Wander had been able to scramble out of the box and leave her counterpart inside, it would've been a very hard impulse to resist. "Erin, stop it!" she called instead. "We're going to get out of here! There's no need to hurt yourself trying to get out, we just need to wait for my friend to open the door." The words seemed to have little effect on the maddened powerhouse, but the surprise of being called by her given name seemed to draw Singularity's attention, at least for a moment.

Fleur fails the reflex save! Toughness save: bruised and stunned, ouch. Let's spend an HP and reroll that. Makes it, no damage! And then there's another toughness save, crikey! Nat 20, wooo! So Fleur is tossed to the ground, but undamaged.

"Just... let's just keep things the way they have been," Gina suggested, her voice a little bit tight. "You can still go out with Miss Americana and do sidekick work until I figure out how to get you back home. I'm close now, maybe just a matter of days or weeks. Don't tell anyone anything about me, or about the robot, or any of that stuff. I know you can keep a secret, you've done well so far. And you've proved that you can handle yourself in tough situations, so I see no point in making you hang around here more than necessary. You're free to go around wherever you like, just so long as you make sure to keep in touch."

"Sharl," Gina said, sounding utterly weary. "I don't expect you to, indeed, don't think you'd be capable of understanding the exact depth and breadth of my intellect. That's all right, but I want you to believe me right now when I say that I'm fully aware of all the "treatments" and "exposure therapies" and "well-regulated medications" that purport to be able to cure me of all my neuroses. But I earned these neuroses one at a time, fair and square, and I'm not interested in discussing it with you or anyone else. Like I said, I'm quite wealthy, and that's enough to make me eccentric instead of crazy. I can live with that." She turned fully to her computer and began typing rapidly, hotkeying up various mail services and news aggregators at a fantastic rate.

"I have more than I deserve already," Gina said with a shrug. "Look at my house, look at my powers. I'm rich, I can buy anything I want. I'm smarter than pretty much anyone in the world. It should be enough for anybody.The world doesn't care who deserves what." She looked up at him then, but couldn't meet and hold his gaze. After a second, she looked away, back to her computers. "I was a hero online for awhile, Cyberknife. That wasn't a lie either. I did some good, just from here in the basement, but it wasn't enough. I wanted to do things IR... in the real world."

"Doktor Archeville does, I told him because I knew he would find out eventually, and telling him neutralized the danger of his curiosity. And Dragonfly figured it out yesterday, the same way that you realized something wasn't quite right." Gina kept her eyes focused on the bottle in her hands, as though waiting for it to reveal some great secret. "And it's nothing to do with keeping safe. When the robot takes a hit, I bleed from it, like you saw yesterday. And it's not much to do with a traditional secret identity. Miss Americana... I didn't lie to you. I can't leave the house, I can't go out and be a hero. And if people realized what I was behind the full-body costume, I wouldn't even be able to go out by proxy anymore. It's all I have."

Gina sighed, wrapping her hands around the bottle and looking down intently at the yellowy-green cap. She'd allowed Sharl to believe many lies, but she wouldn't lie to his face, even if she thought he'd believe her at this point. "Miss Americana is a highly advanced prototype android unit," she said with some difficulty. "I built the unit in my home electronics lab, refined it through field testing, and eventually reached a level where it could pass convincingly for human. The unit has only the most basic of AI functionality, but it is more than sophisticated enough for me to inhabit and control in the same way I inhabit the computer to visit your online environment."

Gina looked a lot more normal than last time Sharl had seen her, which was sort of reassuring. She was wearing one of the bulky and shapeless sweatsuits she preferred, and had pulled her unruly hair back into a tail that got it out of her face. She'd also evidently stopped by the kitchen, since she had a bottle of Mountain Dew, a large sandwich and a bag of Doritos with her. She sat down in her chair, which Emerson had cleaned up while she'd been sleeping, and began booting up her favorite computers. "How does it look out there?" she asked him.

"I'll be out in five minutes," Gina told him, sitting up in bed and raking her fingers through her tangled mess of hair. Going to bed with wet hair made what was usually a frizz control problem more of a stylist's nightmare. "Why don't you go to the basement and wait for me so I can get dressed and stuff." However this conversation might go, there was no possible way she was going to have it in her bedroom, in her pajamas. It was difficult enough to function with Sharl living in the house at all, she couldn't have him in her last sanctuary.

"Yes?" Gina called through the closed bedroom door. She sounded sleepy still, but not as edgy and near-frantic as she'd been when she'd sent him away. Once she'd gotten Sharl out of the house, Gina had shoveled down the ramen and dropped into deep sleep for six or seven hours, which helped take the edge off the aches and pains, as well as restore some order to her thoughts. She could gladly sleep as long again after a snack, but she suspected that wasn't in the cards. With both Sharl and Dragonfly onto her, with her robot far afield and with god knew what happening to it, there were conversations that needed to be had. The thought of that just made her want to pull the covers over her head even more.

"If you don't like jail, you should've thought of that before you turned to crime!" Fleur de Joie raised an arm and pointed it firmly at the ranting woman. "Edge is right, you're all disgraces to everyone who ever put on a uniform to protect a city." The trees she'd animated began to converge, lowering their branches menacingly and surrounding the athletic woman. Fenced in by leaves and wood, it would've been hard for her to even notice the long leafy vine spiraling up from the concrete and wrapping itself around her. All at once, the vine drew taut, the branches closed in, and she was well and truly caught! "And no more psychic attacks, either!" Fleur added! With another wave of her hand, the vine grew an enormous yellow tulip head that opened like a cup before upending and toppling down over the captured villainess! There was a puff of pollen, and when the dust cleared, she was gone!

The trees will Aid Fleur in her attempt to snare the athletic woman. Two Aid Attacks: Both succeed, 16 and 13. And three more I forgot about 14,15,14 That's a close spread! With five successful aides, Fleur goes for the Snare attack with a +10 bonus: That's a 27. Hurrah for minion aid! When Virago is snared, Stesha is going to surge and stuff Virago into her dimensional pocket.

Gina didn't see him, which was perhaps just as well since she likely would've been even more upset to see him poking through the door. As it was, all he could see of her was a big green blanket that made her look a bit like a moss-covered rock. "I'm fine," she told him firmly, voice muffled by the layers of fabric. "I just need to rest. A lot of rest. Emerson will take care of me, so just don't worry, okay? Why don't you go see if the people outside are okay now?" Anything to get him out of the house.

"You've little room to talk about classical archetypes, Freebooter, when you've resorted to silly memes yourself," Miss A shot back with a sharp-edged grin. "Ninjas, pirates, and robots? Please. Why don't you call off your zerglings and we'll do this properly? Alternatively," she added, looking at the Katanarchists, "You all can give me the sword and back off, or I can see how many of you my friend of all blades and I can take out before you can get in so much as a karate chop." She held up a hand that flickered menacingly with laser light.

Gina startled, turning towards the door fast enough to stumble, but was relieved not to see Sharl walking through. She climbed into bed and pulled the fresh covers up over her head, which made her feel marginally better. "Thank you, Sharl," she called in a voice that was almost normal. "Emerson," she commanded the robot, "Open the door and get the bowl from Sharl." The robot trundled obediently to the door and opened it a robot-width, extending its metal hands for the bowl.

Gina waited until she was sure Sharl was gone to get up and lock the door (a futile gesture that was nonetheless reassuring), then stagger into the bathroom. She drank three full glasses of water, which helped quite a bit, then sent Emerson to change the sheets while she took care of all the chores that needed done, as efficiently as possible. Clean and dry, she wrapped her hair in a towel and put on a shapeless old sweatsuit, then went to crawl into the bed her robot had finished freshening up. She was hungry, but what she really wanted was about twenty hours of sleep, interrupted only by painkiller breaks. After that, maybe she'd be ready to deal with her nosy boarder.

Gina grabbed for the blanket and pulled it over herself entirely, till she was concealed head-to-toe by its flimsy protection, at least. "Go away!" she yelled. She was certainly cognizant enough to know that she was being awful to someone who was just trying to help her, but nothing was going to get better until he just left her alone! Even if it was only to die in peace, either from the horrible way her entire body felt, or simply of embarrassment. The robot trundled into the room after Sharl, but she didn't care about that. Robots weren't the same.

"Well, I need to find a place to live," Erin began, picking up her drink. She didn't really mind the intense focus, she was used to people who paid a lot of attention to whatever they were doing. "I looked at some places on my computer, like the apartment rental places, but I don't really know what to look for. And they don't say things that I need to know, like whether there's a lot of doors, or roof access, and whether people are nosy. And everything seems really expensive here. How do you find a good place to live where you can have a secret identity and stuff?"