Electra

"No, the vast majority of them don't breathe fire, that was apparently a genetic drift issue somewhere along the line. The Beekeeper wasn't happy about it, so he tossed the "defective" ones out of the colony just before his attack on Freedom City. The three you referred to me stuck together for safety, and I tracked down and rescued two more with Beeatriz and Henr-bee's help. The rest are all, ah, normal. More or less." She laughed at the absurdity of that statement, then raised her arms and began waving them to try and catch the attention of one of the bees high overhead. "They're lucky you found them before they starved to death! Bees this size need a lot of food, especially the fire-breathing variety."

"Oh, that's totally fine," Stesha assured him. "We missed having you there, but I understand. It's the problem with distance weddings, but on the other hand, not a single supervillain!" She laughed and teleported them. For a moment the world was full of green light and the smell of pine needles. When that cleared, they were standing in the fading light of evening in a vast meadow, dotted here and there by flowers the size of houses. They were alive and vibrant even in February, their fragrances perfuming the cold air. Directly in front of them loomed a massive earthen structure, easily twenty stories tall and the length of a city block. It was dotted here and there with garage-size openings, from which massive bees were flying in and out. "Welcome to Beedom City," Stesha quipped.

"Casual," she told him. "They don't understand "hero," at least not the way we do it. I don't think they had any at the time the world was destroyed, which could explain why things were so bad. There was, possibly anyway, some kind of advanced science. Like I said, I haven't learned too much." Stesha sighed a little. "Anyway, even if you're only wearing clean warm clothes and good shoes, that'll be enough to mark you as very different. They haven't got much."

Stesha laughed, regarding the energy controller warmly. "Totally," she agreed, putting a hand to her abdomen. "It's a girl, and we're due in June. We're both very excited, though I have no idea what kind of a playpen we might end up needing for her, if she ends up with either of our powers! We haven't really made any announcements, I figure people will eventually notice. I just don't want it to get in the way of my work anymore than necessary. There's so much to do!" She extended a mittened hand to him. "Ready to go?"

Stesha chortled at the suggestion. "Very funny. No, they're actual human beings, the third and fourth and fifth generation survivors of the extinction events here. Apparently there were shelters, but the damage was so pervasive and everything was so thoroughly destroyed that most survivors didn't survive. I haven't had as much time to talk with them as I would like, but I've been trying to help them. Having someone very reassuring and personable like you talk to them might give them a boost as well."

Wander looked at her counterpart, who looked back and nodded. Moving as one unit, they each applied themselves to the massive lever, all their extraordinary strength heaving against the doors to try and open them before the forces arrayed against them could come to bear against the little group. Despite their differences, they needed no words to coordinate their efforts, glances and nods did the job. Wander did use her voice to lead the rest of her team, for all it was strained by her efforts. "Edge, we need you back here! We have to get this door open! Midnight, if you've got any tricky little shielding devices socked away, now's the time!"

"Oh no, don't feel bad at all!" Stesha hastened to assure him. "Just having you at the wedding was more than gift enough. I've been slammed with other weddings and slow on getting my thank you notes out, but you should be getting yours soon. Derrick's been keeping busy with all sorts of projects, but we spent all of the day after Valentine's Day together, which was great. I'm still recovering from the first part of the month, really." Her voice brightened as she remembered something to tell him about. "Oh, but this might interest you. It turns out that my world isn't as empty as I originally thought it was! I've picked up a coterie of a couple dozen survivors, and they're living in the civilian enclosure now. They've had a very hard life, this is the first time they've ever lived above ground. You should come out and meet them."

It took a few rings for Stesha to pick up her cell phone, and when she did she answered on the end of a swallowed yawn. "Mm, hello?" The middle of a Saturday afternoon was a little bit of an odd time for a superpowered person to be having a nap, but from what he remembered of his time at Stesha's cottage, the diminutive heroine slept when and where her schedule allowed. And in the aftermath of Valentine's Day, she was probably a little bit worn down.

"You'd almost certainly know him as Dark Star," Stesha replied, tabling the option of going for a throw blanket for the moment. "I don't know if you've worked with him, but he does a lot of good in Freedom City, and we're on the League's auxiliary team together. When he's not in town, he's usually very far out of town. He spent a couple of decades exploring the universe, and made many ties with other civilizations who still call on him from time to time."

"Sounds perfect, I'll meet you there in a few minutes." Stesha tidied up her work area enough to leave it for an hour or two, then bundled up. It was always nice to get a chance to socialize, and she hadn't spoken to Jack of all Blades in ages, for all she'd worked with his younger sister. The flowers could wait. She had to put on Derrick's old black winter coat to bundle up these days, rather than any of her own much more attractive jackets, but at least it was warm! When she'd put on coat, hat, mittens, scarf and boots, she popped over to the Interceptors HQ, stepping out of a knot in the tree trunk that momentarily yawned wide enough to produce an entire person.

With a mental shrug, Erin took Eve at her word and dug in, scooping a slice of quiche and some melon balls onto her plate. "I'd like coffee with cream and sugar, please," she told the butler. Everything looked and smelled really good, and somebody had to start eating before it all got cold. "So this isn't where you grew up, right?" she asked Eve, looking around at the palatial building. "Who does it belong to in your family?"

"Oh, let's see, we have another hour or so before sunset, and a bit more than that where there are fewer buildings," Stesha mused, glancing towards the wide front window of her apartment. "The bees should be coming in for the evening, so now's a pretty good time." She set aside her unfinished bouquet into a work vase primed with treated water, then brushed the pollen off her hands. "I'll have to give you a ride, so I might as well meet you. Where's a convenient place for you?"

"Of course I do," Stesha said with a chuckle, "I see them several times a week still. Beeatriz is a good friend of mine. They're all doing very well, I was able to reunite the colony and they all have a good home on the world I'm rehabbing. I'd be happy to show you around and let you get reacquainted. When is a good time for you?" She kept busy while she spoke, cutting flowers and tying bouquets, the work so automatic now that she hardly had to think about it.

"Untrue, entirely slander!" Stesha protested with a laugh. "Tulip flowers never hurt anyone, it was speculation in tulip bulbs that were never even grown that ruined the Dutch economy! If they'd just planted all those bulbs and let them grow instead of thinking they were going to continue becoming more valuable forever, they'd have had many more flowers and far less trouble. But mostly what these gigantic tulips will do is provide a great deal of nectar, which is the great bee social lubricant. You're welcome to stay and watch if you like, but it does get a little loud, and the aerobatics are a little wild."

"Oh, hello, Jack!" Stesha was up to her elbows in flowers, like usual lately. The most romantic time of the year was also one of the busiest for her industry. Ever since her colleagues had learned about her double life, they'd been supportive of the time she needed for hero work, but she had to make some sacrifices in return. Spending a couple evenings a week working at home wasn't that big a deal, at least not right now, and it ensured the shop had the freshest flowers in town. In June, all of that was going to change, and she wasn't sure what exactly she was going to do then. But she had time to figure that out still. "What can I do for you?"

"Of course," Miss A said graciously. "They're yours, you can do whatever you want with them. But I think you might lack resources that will let you use them properly. We can help you with that, as well." She looked to Sharl. "Why don't you go ahead and call the Lab, and make sure that one of the secured living quarters is available? That's probably the easiest solution right now." Turning back to Jeni, she said, "We have a place where you can stay, where you can rest and recover. There's medical equipment there that can help you learn what happened to you." As a gesture of good faith, she held out the cores, though she wasn't entirely sure the girl was strong enough to carry them.

"Siblings? Or parents?" Stesha asked with a chuckle. "It was all right most of the time, though I'd have given several eyeteeth for my own bedroom more than once. Right now I'm busy working on a grandchild for my mom," she joked, patting her tummy. "I just got married last month, but hey, we're all free and easy about that sort of things these days." She winked, not seeming terribly bothered by it. "The wedding was supposed to be months ago, but my fiance was kidnapped by space pirates on the other side of the galaxy while working to free a planet from oppression. You know how it goes." With any luck, a little "we're all hero girls here" gossip might help the uncomfortable weather controller to loosen up, and maybe raise the ambient temperature a few degrees in the bargain.

"I understand," Stesha assured her, writing the name down on a little notepad she pulled from the coffee table drawer so as not to forget it. "We all want to have private lives that are private, to keep ourselves and the people we care about safe." She smiled, trying to put the other woman at ease. "And it sounds like we may have some heritage in common. My name is Stesha, and I'm a Lispzyanka on my mother's side. She immigrated from Russia as a young woman, though. All my siblings and I were born in America."

"I may just take you up on that, once I can get my hands on another generator," Stesha told him, rising when he did. "Let me put my coat on and I'll run you home." She closed the portal to her apartment with a wave of her hand, then bundled up against the weather once more. In just a minute, they were both stepping out of the big elm tree in the front yard of Hunter Manor. "Thanks again for your help," Stesha said, giving Trevor a quick, friendly hug. "And you let me know if there's ever anything I can help you or your grandpa with. I'll see you in a few days!" With that she was gone, nipping back into the trees and off about her other errands. It was too cold for a plant lady to spend too much time standing around outside.

"We all have our specialties," Stesha told him with a chuckle, circling her notes to remind herself later. "If someone built a generator made of plants, I might be able to run it, but until then, I'm totally lost about them. I'll make sure this is ready to go on the 13th, and you can come pick it up at my shop, if that works for you. Then you can decide when and how to give it to her. Don't worry about it wilting, my arrangements have famously long shelf lives. A little water now and again would help, though." She winked, then passed him the bag of cookies she'd assembled.

"Let's just wait a moment, Sharl," Miss A murmured, looking at the rebuilt refugee with faint consternation. She wished that one of the more genuinely people-oriented types would step in and take charge,but they'd all been thrown for a bit of a loop. "If you tell us what would help you," she told the girl, "we'll do our best to get it for you. What is it that you need most right now?" They couldn't bring back a civilization, or even the vaporized spacecraft, but there were plenty of resources that, between them and their allies, they could lay hands on even at short notice.

Stesha smiled and let Trevor speak, taking a couple of notes as he went along, then starting a quick sketch. She let the silence go on for a few moments after he was finished, penciling in a couple of design ideas as she gathered her own thoughts. The roads people took to become heroes weren't always happy ones, it sounded like this was one of the more difficult paths. "It sounds like being a hero, being part of Young Freedom is very much a part of who she is," she began, leaving room for Trevor to interject if he wanted. "We can reflect that. She wears dark blue and gold in her costume, doesn't she?" Stesha had needed to dig deep for that information, with the wide variety of costumes the Young Freedom kids wore, but blue and gold were the Claremont school colors, too. "My preliminary thought for a romantic and meaningful bouquet is to have lilacs at the base of it," she told Trevor, turning the notebook to show him her rough sketch. "They've got such a short season, but I can give some a nudge to make sure they're ready, and that they'll last. Gorgeous and they smell just amazing, and they're the symbolic flower of young love, very romantic," She smiled as she continued. "In with the lilacs, I'm thinking blue irises and yellow roses, the colors of the school and of her uniform, as the other major notes. Some green leaves interspersed, and just one or two black lilies tucked in, to remind her of the sender, without darkening the overall look too much. What do you think?"

"Don't mention it," Erin said to Hope. "We did what we could to help, any heroes in our position would've done the same. And it was pretty satisfying to kick the asses of a bunch of Nazi robots," she admitted with a half-smile. At the announcement of brunch being ready, she followed Eve and the butler into the dining room, sitting down next to Trevor and looking to him and Eve for cues. They were the ones most likely to actually know what one was supposed to do at a brunch in a fancy place like this.

"None of us purposely did anything to change your form," Miss A told the frightened young woman soothingly, firming her hand on Sharl's shoulder to get him to pipe down. "We've only been trying to help you. Whatever energy changed you, came from your own body. I'm Miss Americana, this is Sharl, Jack of all Blades, and Jill O' Cure." She would let the other woman introduce herself, since she didn't know her name. "You must be very confused right now. We can take you somewhere that you can rest and get a change of clothes."

"She may appreciate practical gifts, but it's a rare young woman who doesn't like getting flowers," Stesha counseled wisely. "Flowers speak to romance, and let her know that you're thinking of her in that certain way. A toolbox might last longer, but it's something she could get for herself, and it would mean the exact same thing. Only you can give her flowers for Valentine's Day, you see?" She reached into the coffee table drawer and pulled out a little notebook. "And I'll make sure you have something wonderful to give her. Do you know if there's a certain kind of flower she likes? Or if not, what is she like herself?"