Electra
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"Of course," said the efficiently friendly young man at the desk, pressing an intercom button. "Miss Americana, your visitor has arrived." He listened to his earpiece, then nodded to Gabriel. "She's waiting for you in the biolab on 25. This visitor pass will let you get there. Just press it to the pad in the elevator and it will take you right up, then it's the second door on your left." The elevator was just off the reception desk and impossible to miss, and as promised, presenting his pass made the elevator take him right to his floor, no need for button-pushing. The biolab looked something like a cross between a hospital room and a science fiction movie, full of equipment he vaguely recognized and plenty more he did not. He did recognize Miss America, however, wearing a spotless white labcoat over a blue pantsuit with garnet accents. She smiled at Gabriel. "It's so nice to see you again," she told him warmly. "How are you doing?"
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On the steps of the museum, a young woman suddenly seemed to pop out of a planter of evergreen shrubs, keeping an eye on the rampaging wrestler. She didn't look much like a hero, dressed in an oversized green hooded sweatshirt and green leggings that couldn't hide a reasonably advanced pregnancy, but she was wearing a domino mask and looked like she meant business. Stesha peeked through the bushes to suss out the situation, which looked rather more precarious in person than it had on the television. Heroing was more difficult now that it had been a few months ago, but between jobs and secret identities, there were only so many heroes available for work on a weekday afternoon. She couldn't just stand by and let someone trash the museum and threaten the people in it! Keeping the bushes between herself and the madman, she threw a handful of seeds in his direction. They began to sprout as soon as they hit the ground, creating a twining net to try and restrain the costumed criminal.
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Stesha hugged him back, giving him one more pat on the arm as she stepped away to leave. "That'll be just perfect. Once I've got the supplies all sorted out, I think I'm going to kick back myself and have a little rest. This is the perfect time of year to lay in a sunny window for awhile and have a nap. I'll check my voicemails on the hour, so if you call and I don't pick up, you can expect to hear from me soon. I'll talk to you soon!" With a wave and a smile, Stesha disappeared, only the faint scent of flowers left behind.
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Miss Americana watched the crowd, pursing her lips. "We need to find where they're going," she decided. "Protectron, can you follow them and report back, see where they seem to be congregating? Dragonfly, if you're still feeling all right, we need to double down on investigating this thing. If you can run the bioscans, I'm going to dig out the information in the League files about the Legion virus and Grue physiology. Sharl, you check the Lab and see if there's anyone still here, infected or otherwise. From what you said, the infected seem to have some sense of where uninfected people might be. We need to make sure nobody's going to surprise us while we're working."
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"I'm fine," Miss A said, sounding surprised and a little concerned as she looked back at Dragonfly. "Are you feeling some sort of psychic influence?" Of any of them, Dragonfly was certainly the most likely to be affected by the adapted Legion virus. She was the most organic of any of them, and therefore the most susceptible. "Is anyone else feeling anything strange?" she asked Protectron and Sharl. "Speak up right away if you do, any information we get on how this virus operates and proliferates can be invaluable."
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"I wasn't thinking so much his memoirs or your mom's art as insurance paperwork, your bank account information, the deed for the house?" Erin suggested patiently. "Do you know if they have a fireproof file here, or if they have a safe deposit box? You'll want to know where all that stuff is, just in case. You have to take care of things now, but we'll help you however we can. We'll get Alex to do it," she suggested with sudden inspiration. "She's great at all that stuff, she'll know what to do."
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Erin efficiently went through the house, turning off lights, unplugging appliances, and making sure the whole place was locked up in case nobody was going to be back for awhile. She turned on the answering machine and checked the pilot lights on the stove, then started a drip in the kitchen and bathroom faucets before going to find Mark. "I think things are ready to close up here. Do you have important papers you want to take with you?" She looked at the small bag. "You can come back for anything else you need."
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Erin shook her head, waiting until Mark was out of earshot before she spoke. "That bastard, he's pissed because he got kicked off Prime, so he just sneaks away to leave us all for the Terminus? That's no hero I've ever heard of. And what was Mark's mom thinking, anyway? To abandon your kid on purpose..." She shook her head sharply. "I'm going to go make sure there's no perishables in the fridge and stuff." She stalked away, needing the motion as a channel for impotent anger.
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Erin stepped forward and awkwardly, hesitatingly, gave Mark a hug and patted his back. "Don't worry," she told him, "they'll come back." She didn't know whether that was true, but she certainly couldn't say otherwise in this moment. "You should come back to the school with us. The house will be okay here, and the headmaster will want to hear anything you know about the Terminus. You're not alone here." She reached out and snagged a box of tissues in a crocheted cozy off the side table, offering them to Mark so he could compose himself.
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Erin blinked, looking around at his dark house. "Wait, they both just left you here?" she asked, her voice perhaps just a bit sharper than she'd intended. "On purpose?" She deliberately modulated her tone, trying not to make things worse. "I'm glad you told us," she told Mark. "We're your friends, you should be able to tell us when bad things happen. Did he say exactly when the Terminus is coming, or what the plan is? He must know something, or at least suspect." Or, she thought privately, he was selfish enough to make up a story because he wanted his wife with him in exile. Bastard. Who would deliberately leave their own child behind to face the Terminus?
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Miss Americana blinked at the sudden appearance of the container, but looked relieved to see that everything was in order. "All right, that was good thinking, but we're probably safe enough just to travel straight out with it to the Lab. The less chance we have of lingering contamination in any extradimensional space, the happier I'll be. Just having it on Prime is quite bad enough." She held out her hands to take the specimen, grimacing at it. "Nasty little thing. Let's get going. Sharl, you take the black box, Protectron, you carry Dragonfly. We'll go the most direct route to the Lab." She lifted off, circling once to wait for the others before speeding off.
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Erin put one arm around Trevor to hold him securely as she took off, leaping into the sky as effortlessly as a bird taking wing. She didn't have wings, of course, so as soon as she reached the top of her jump, they immediately began arcing downward again, but it was still a good way to cover a lot of ground fast. A couple of roof-to-roof hops had them dropping down right into Mark's front yard, which looked shabby and uncared-for with a winter's worth of debris scattered around, in contrast to the immaculately groomed bare lawns on each side of it. Erin hurried to the house and knocked on the front door. "Mark, are you there? It's Erin and Trevor."
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"You really are new here," Erin commented, not unkindly, with a smile that was more rueful than amused. "It's not really a big deal, some people just have an easier time fitting in at school than others. You probably won't have any trouble. Just make sure to keep practicing, and do the weights and the cardio as often as you can. Every day is best. Once you've got some endurance built up, if you want, I can show you some actual fighting moves."
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Erin shook her head at Trevor, pointing upwards with one finger, then miming a leaping arc with her hand. "Yes, he's with me, we'll be right over. You're at your house, right? Sit tight, and we'll be just a couple of minutes." She closed her phone and put it back in her pocket. "If I just jump us there it'll be faster, especially during the lunch rush," she told Trevor, heading for the little-used stairs to the cafeteria roof. "Something's wrong with Mark. Not... I dunno. Not life or death wrong, but it sounded like he's been crying. Something has to be really wrong for him to sound that way."
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"All right then, let's get going," Miss A said, looking around the base camp to make sure everything was as secure as it was going to get. "All of you here! Stay in your suits until we come back and tell you otherwise, and don't go anywhere! If anybody starts acting strange, restrain them, and under no circumstances allow them to breach your suits! Somebody find a suit for the civilian, and see if you can rig up something for the baby." She focused on Dragonfly, who seemed perfectly calm despite the flecks of blood on her forcefield and the bloody knife nearby. There was no sign whatsoever of the actual specimen. "Dragonfly," she asked cautiously, "what did you do with the specimen?"
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"Trust me, things will be a lot smoother for you with Archer if you don't mention my name," Erin told him. "He usually goes easier on kids who don't specialize in physical fighting, anyway." She smiled a little. "Heck, if you suck up to him enough, maybe he can help you get your restrictions lifted. He used to be a speedster, back in the day. He'll probably sympathize with you, if you play your cards right." Erin headed up the stairs to the gym, keeping pace with Evander as she went. "As for everybody else, well, I think it's probably a lot like regular high school, except smaller," she told him with a shrug. "There are cliques and couples and outsiders, all that stuff. The bullying is pretty subdued because they're strict on that here, but you'll find about everything else. You've just got to watch yourself and try to get along with people. That's sort of like magic, it's not really my area of expertise."
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Erin rarely carried her phone with her, but these days, with job applications in the works, she just happened to have it on her. Her face went from registering surprise at the call to concern at its substance as her eyes met Trevor's across the table. Something was definitely wrong with Mark. "Of course we can come over," Erin told him, blithely ignoring her English Lit class. "Does this need to be an official call?" she asked, wondering if she'd need to go home for her uniform.
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Miss A smiled at Freebooter as his cutlass smacked harmlessly against her exceedingly tough skin, ignoring the robot's blow from behind. "You should know better than to trust corporate programmers," she chastened teasingly. "That kind of laziness will get you in trouble sometime." She pointed a reproving finger at him, shooting a blue laser bolt straight into his chest! Without looking to see what he made of that, she took off, flying across the room to try and intercept the Sword-wielding Katanarchist.
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Miss A successfully makes both saves, (though by the skin of her teeth on the second one.) She's going to shoot Freebooter with a laser blast. 1d20+12=27. DC 27 toughness if it hits. Move action to get to the exit ahead of the Katanarchist with Grasscutter.
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"Your shapeshifting actually introduced new proteins into your cellular makeup?" Miss Americana asked, sounding a bit skeptical. She wasn't a cellular biologist, though, and this wasn't a mystery that particularly engaged her. She had a feeling that Gossamer would be eager to get her strands on the alien girl. "The atmosphere is about seventy-eight percent nitrogen, twenty-one percent oxygen, and one percent other substances," she told the girl helpfully, drawing pictures of the molecules on her pad just to make sure the scientific concepts were getting through properly.
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"It's different for everyone," Stesha told him with an amused shrug. "In the summer, people were saying it smelled like mown grass. Lately it's been pine needles. I'm usually too busy navigating to pay very much attention. Lemons is a new one, though." With that, she teleported them both, and there was indeed the definite tang of pine needles accompanying the green light and motion of the transfer. They came out where she'd picked him up, like usual with these little jaunts. "Take care of yourself," Stesha encouraged him, patting his arm once. "You deserve to get some rest."
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"I'll fly you back, Dragonfly," Miss Americana assured her colleague. "We're on our way now. We can leave the support team and the civilians here, it's as safe a place as any, though that isn't saying too much." She picked up Sharl's projector and tucked it into her pocket, then passed him the baby. "Make sure to stay close to me," she reminded Sharl as she picked up the injured woman and let the medtech climb onto her back. "We'll stay low, and it's not a long flight." She led the way, heading back towards the staging area with all deliberate speed.
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Stesha laughed. "Well, you're always welcome, though Derrick and I are liable to be a little bit busy in the early summer," she pointed out. "The bees do love company. " Stesha rose from her chair and walked over to him, setting her hand on his arm in preparation for the trip. "Thank you again for coming out here with me today," she told him sincerely. "It means a lot to me to have friends who can help out when I can't do something that needs done, and I know that whatever you can do will mean a lot to the survivors as well."
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Erin laughed full-out at that, still grinning as she looked over at Evander. "Here's one big pointer for you, don't mention my name around Mr. Archer. He's not exactly president of my fan club, even though I spend more time with him than any other teacher in this place. If you tell him I've been giving you lessons, he's more likely to freak out and send me to detention than to give you a pat on the back for it. You can let your improvement speak for itself."
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"There aren't any easy answers," Erin agreed, choosing to let Evander's unfounded assumptions stand rather than explaining her background to him. He seemed like a nice guy, and it would probably only embarrass him. She certainly didn't feel like discussing it. "They just want you to be safe, and for the people around you to be safe. Same way you have to get a permit and lessons before you learn to drive a car." She looked him over. "You ready for more, or do you want to call it a day?"