Electra

"Yeah, of course." Erin picked up her discarded shirt and slid back into it, trying to get her fractured thoughts back together. It wasn't easy. "It'll take me just a minute to get changed. Maybe it'll be nothing big, and it won't take very long." She couldn't quite bring herself to believe it, though. If there was a situation involving multiple villains that the usual patrollers downtown couldn't handle, it would probably take awhile. "We can... we can pick this up again later."

It was not a very good day for Stesha. It was supposed to be, it was her day off, finally, after three back to back weddings that had come right on the heels of an all-too-short if very lovely honeymoon. She'd planned to spend the whole day lounging in bed, preferably with her husband beside her. Derrick didn't sleep much, but she had her ways of persuading him to stick around. All those plans had been shot to hell first thing in the morning, when they'd woken up to a very cold, very dark little plant house. Derrick's assessment was that somehow the generator had broken, but mechanical repair wasn't his strong suit, and he had no idea why. They'd had to abandon the bed for the warmth of Stesha's apartment, where she'd gone back to sleep on the sofa while he went out patrolling. Now it was properly morning, though she hadn't slept well, and she had a dilemma. She needed someone who could fix the generator, someone who was good with machines and who she could bring to her headquarters. Stesha had lots of friends, but they tended towards the magical rather than the mechanically minded... except one! She brightened as she got out her phone and looked up the number for the Hunter mansion. A super-engineer was just the ticket, if only he was available and willing! "Hello," she said into the phone. "This is Stesha Lumins, I'm calling for Trevor if he's available?"

Erin shivered when he touched her, though being cold was the last of her problems. Wrapping her arms around him, she pressed up close, skin to skin, kissing and touching and ignoring the little voices in her head that were shrilling alarms about this dangerous conduct. She didn't care, it felt too good. After a minute, though, she realized it wasn't just in her head, the communicator in her pocket was beeping an urgent alert! With a strangled moan, she pulled away and dug the damned thing out of her pocket. "If this isn't important..." she muttered, leaving the threat hanging. "Alert, alert," came the monotone voice of the computer at Young Freedom's base. "High levels of supervillain activity indicated at in " The AI was quite sophisticated for its age, but it still tended to relate warnings like a rather stupid brand of GPS, filling in locations with a voice that never sounded quite the same. "Multiple risks to civilians. Respond at once!" Erin looked up at Trevor, consternation on her face. "We have to go," she said, reluctant despite herself.

In the groom's anteroom, Derrick gave the Doktor a small smile, consciously straightening his back, then tugging on his cuffs. "She's the sunlight in my world, Viktor," he said with quiet certainty. "The whole universe is open to me, but she is the one who can make anyplace home. I'll never take that for granted. It's just... there are a lot of people out there." He took a deep, self-conscious breath, as though not used to having to bother with such small mannerisms. "But if I get through the ceremony, everything is going to be wonderful." Even as the guests finished arriving and settling into the pews, the audience was quiet, listening to the poignant and uplifting notes of the lone oboe. When Carson was finished, the audience gave him a satisfying round of applause, giving him time to sit down before the string quartet began playing again. As the strains of Edelweiss filled the air, the side door at the front of the church opened to admit the pastor, followed by a slightly pale but composed Derrick, then Doktor Archeville, then Stesha's two oldest brothers, David and Vasily, all in spiffy black tuxes with silver ties and cummerbunds. The groom's party lined up at the front of the church, four handsome men, and watched the doors at the back of the church as they opened. Stesha's brothers were smiling, Derrick had the focused look of someone waiting very intently. Two ushers rolled a gauzy white carpeting down the center aisle to the front of the church, immediately followed by an adorable towheaded boy and girl, siblings or cousins and no more than four years old, wearing a miniature tuxedo and a lacy white dress. The little boy was obviously very nervous, but his companion had one arm hooked through his and dragged him resolutely down the aisle while tossing handfuls of rose petals hither and yon. The pair made it all the way to the front of the church, where the little girl asked loudly enough to be heard over the music, "Do I get my Barbie Doll now?" Everyone laughed.

Earth Prime Erin hated dimensional travel, necessary evil though it was in their line of work. At least every time she'd traveled before, she'd been headed to some other specific dimension, not the nebulous concept of whatever lay between the worlds. Doctor Atom never had gotten around to explaining exactly what it would be like there, though she hoped there was air and light and something to stand on. Surely he would've said something if there wasn't... She reached out to Trevor, strapped in next to her, and took his hand, squeezing it surreptitiously. As the whole world became bathed in a violet light, she closed her eyes and waited for whatever was going to happen next. Earth Paragons Erin stared down at the little device, already smeared with some dirt from her hands and uniform. "So we just hold onto this, and then trigger it when we want to come back?" she asked Daedelus. When he nodded, she looked around at the others. "Well, guess this is our ride, then. Huddle up, everybody, don't want anyone left behind." As the team gathered, she looked over to Midnight, meeting his eyes as best she could through his mask. "You in?"

Fleur folded her arms over her round tummy and gave Rook one more quick glare before turning to the cop. "He's safely contained outside the dimension for the moment," she told him crisply. "For everyone's safety. I can deliver him to wherever you'd like him to go, as long as you have a plant there for me to travel through. Do you want him now? I believe Rook was just mentioning that Monolith is not the full extent of your supervillain problem."

"Good," Erin managed, her breath coming fast enough to clog her throat when she tried to speak. "But maybe not tonight can just mean not, um, not everything tonight. You know? Cause I know you'll stop if I want to, so it's okay." She was pretty sure that had come out garbled, but hoped the sentiment was there. Putting clearer actions to garbled words, she pulled free of his grip and stepped back, tugging her sweatshirt over her head. Since she didn't have a lot of extra clothes to let her wear two shirts at once, that left her in just a plain white bra above the waist. She immediately crossed her arms over her chest, then made herself uncross them, watching him closely all the while.

Despite the romance of the moment, Erin had to take her attention off Trevor for a moment to assess the new situation. "It's nice," she decided, "it's big. Looks like it suits you." There was, she noted, no sofa and only one chair, which dramatically limited the furniture options for the room. So she kissed him standing up instead, which seemed a much safer alternative at this precise moment. The dim room was nice and warm and very private, which right at the moment was a great asset and an equally great liability.

Erin tensed with surprise when he picked her up, then relaxed when it became clear that he wasn't about to drop her or anything. She laced her arms around his neck, pausing only to snag his shirt from the table as they passed. No need to be leaving dropped clothes all over the mansion! It felt kind of weird to be carried, but also romantic in a weird sort of way. She thought about leaning up and kissing him, but it seemed like a bad idea to disturb his balance at this point, so instead she just hung on, laughing as they jounced up the stairs.

Erin's breath caught in her throat as he kissed her, and for a moment her mind was too blank to let her say anything at all. "...Knew you had couches," she finally murmured. "Had to be one somewhere in this place." She tilted her head to give him free access to her neck, her fingers sliding up to tangle in his hair. "But if your grandpa wanders out to use the bathroom or something, I don't think I'll ever be able to look him in the eye. Where's your room?"

"Yeah, and like five of them are kitchens," Erin teased. She toyed with the ends of his hair, studying his face as she tried to make a decision. It wasn't like she had to make the ultimate decision-decision just yet, there were all kinds of little intermediate decisions to be made before that. Yeah, that sounded good. "Did you have any specific rooms in mind?" she asked him, half-smiling, half concentrating on him like she was trying to look into his head.

It took Erin a second to get the joke, but at least it drew a chuckle from her instead of another smack. She cocked her head to one side and studied him, hands still resting on his bare shoulders. For a moment, she was very tempted to call him on his dare, but some last, gasping molecule of good sense intervened. "Mm, it's too cold down here," she temporized with a half-smile. "Plus there's probably like, cameras and stuff."

"And here I thought that was why you keep taking your shirt off." She chuckled, even as the color on her cheeks grew a bit darker. She ran the tip of one finger up from his chest, over his collarbone and up to his shoulder, wondering who she was going to torture more if she kept doing that. She was definitely playing with fire now, but it was harder than it ought to have been to tell herself to stop. All the reasons that seemed very important when she was alone and thinking clearly now rang much more hollow.

Erin curled her fingers into a loose fist and knocked lightly against one of his pectoral muscles, giving him a crooked smile. "You've been working out," she observed. "The different colors makes, I dunno, the light reflect differently. You look kind of like a museum statue, and it shows off how you've gotten cut this past few months." She shrugged, a little embarrassed to even be talking like that. "Looks good on you."

She was still screaming when she woke, curled in a ball on the floor with the finished remnants of a meal around her. It took her a minute to remember who she was, and where. A trick, it had all been a trick in her mind, again. In this hell, not even her thoughts were her own. Crawling over to the bed, she began hitting her head uselessly against the rail, over and over again. Have fun with that, came the derisive voice in her head, a trace of nasty amusement running through it. Just remember, if you break your bed, you're sleeping on the floor from now on. Behave yourself, or next time I'll do worse to you. My counterpart's not the only one who can be extra inventive. The voice went silent, but even Singularity was cognizant enough to not believe she was actually alone. She shuddered at the threat, for even though she couldn't remember details, she knew it was bad, very, very bad. The lights went down in her box again, but she stayed huddled on the floor, as though darkness and stillness would somehow keep away the monsters that lived inside her mind.

She eagerly clambered up into her seat, eschewing the booster seat and perching on her knees instead to bring her up to the proper height. She was so hungry! Mommy would be here any minute, she was sure, and didn't bother to wait before digging in. It didn't taste quite like she thought it would, more like a ham sandwich and chicken soup, but she was hungry enough not to care. In just a very few minutes, Erin had cleared her plate like a big girl, and finished her milk as well. But Mommy hadn't come! Uneasy, Erin climbed down from the chair and went looking, checking the kitchen, then the living room, and then Mommy and Daddy's room, but she was all by herself in the house. That wasn't right! She pushed open the back door and walked into the yard, hugging herself as the wind kicked up and blew gravel and dead leaves at her. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, Mommy was right there, or what was left of her. Most of her face was gone, her arm hanging by a thread, her chest torn open and spilling revolting things onto the nice green grass. “Give me a hug, sweetheart!†the walking corpse demanded, lurching towards her. Erin screamed, and screamed, and then she woke up.

This is stupid. Singularity whimpered and curled in on herself as a petulant voice echoed inside her head. You're making me look bad, you idiotic freak. What do you think you're going to do, starve yourself to death? Let yourself get so filthy that no one will want you to leave your cage? Get real. Or better yet, how about unreal? The white box and the whole world dissolved around Singularity, even as she clawed to hold onto some small fragments. Suddenly she was in a sunwashed room with wood floors and a giant dining room table. Not giant, she realized, she was just very small. The memory clicked into place, and Erin was three years old again, and trying to get up to the table for lunchtime. Mommy had made her favorite, grilled cheese sandwich and tomato rice soup, not too hot, with the cup of milk with her name on it.

Singularity knew that Pathos had done something to her mind, that not all the things she remembered were true, but not what was changed, or how to get it back. Pathos liked to hurt her for fun, and didn't mind letting her remember that much. She did know that the gist of it was true. There was no hope, not for escape, not for anything. She would die in the while box, and if she was lucky, it would be sooner rather than later. But she was not a very lucky person, so she waited, and waited, and waited. Someone out there was watching her, because sometimes the shower turned on to remind her to wash, and the food in the drawer started to smell really good. It was obviously something different than the usual sandwiches and vegetables, but she didn't go over and look. There was nothing good in hell, and there never would be. The door opened again, and the images began to play on the wall. Megan screamed at her for help. Singularity buried her face in the pillow and closed her eyes. Megan was better off dead than here. All of them were better off dead. If only she were with them now, somewhere peaceful and quiet and safe. She didn't notice when the images switched off, or the door shut itself again.

She had gotten out of the box once, she remembered that much. Not how long ago, or how it had happened, but she'd gotten out, gotten away, just for a little while. The world outside the box had been as bad as the world inside. She had found Pathos there, and tried to hurt her, but Pathos was invincible, even while she was sleeping, and her blows had been useless. The mental agony that had been inflicted as punishment for that was difficult to remember at all. Eventually she'd woken up again, still outside the box, and gone to a place where there'd been wonderful food, so much of it, there for the taking! She'd tried to get some of it, but it was all illusion that disappeared the moment she reached for it. Then the scary man had come, and the bad luck man, the crazy man, the music man. They chased her when she tried to run, and her best attempt to fight back had been useless against the bad luck man, who just laughed at her as she'd drowned in the black dots. She'd ended up back here, back in hell, back with Pathos, who had been so angry about her trying to get away.

"A wild animal that feels that it no longer has any reason to live reaches in the end a point where its remaining energies may actually be directed towards dying... If aggression cannot mend their troubles, then often they begin to drift toward the only other way out." Richard Adams, Watership Down October The lights came up in the white box, but Singularity wasn't sleeping anyway. She lay on her stomach on her bunk and stared at the door of her cage, as she had for the last... long time. Days and nights were meaningless here, the lights went on and off at random, but she'd been there for several cycles now. Her hair itched, and her stomach was tightly cramped for want of food, but she had no desire to get up. Even when the door had opened invitingly once, she hadn't so much as investigated. There was no point to it.

Erin's lips curved. "Little bit," she admitted candidly, "but not bad." She drew back, lay her hand flat against the center of his chest, her skin looking even whiter against the darkness of his. "Still feels the same," she observed. "Shows off the muscle definition pretty well, too." Color was creeping back into her skin now, or at least pink into her cheeks. "You, ah... do you think you'd be able to do this again without electrocuting yourself to do it?"

Earth Prime "But what exactly exists in the space between dimensions?" Erin asked. "If each dimension is a different kind of Earth, then is what's between them... does anything real exist there? Is there going to be air and land and gravity, things like that? And do we have any way of knowing what we're bumped up against? Some of the worlds we've been to have been pretty hostile." Despite her reservations, she was already beginning to make her way towards the door. It was obvious they only had one solution, unpalatable as it might be. Earth Paragons "Then we're going into the rift," Wander said resolutely, though her pale face somewhat belied her brave tone. She reached surreptitiously for Edge's hand and squeezed it, for courage or good luck, maybe both. "It's the only way. We can't let these disasters keep happening, and we can't just surrender the whole world to a madman. But how are we going to get there?" she asked Daedelus.

It was a probably a sign of Erin's distraction that it took her at least half a minute to remember that Trevor, despite the change in his skin coloration, was still half-naked. The thought didn't make her pull away, but it did make her a lot more aware of the feel of her cheek against his shoulder, her hands on his back. She'd have thought maybe covering himself with the mist would at least make his skin clammy, but he was very warm to the touch. She slid her hands up his back, pulling away just far enough to look up at him. "It's definitely an interesting camouflage look for you," she noted.

Erin helped out by poking a finger into his toughened chest. "Never, ever, ever do anything like that again, okay?" she implored. "You took a couple of years off my life right there." With the adrenaline surge and its accompanying anger abating, she was finally able to catch her breath and clear her mind. She leaned in and hugged him. "Anyway, I'm glad it worked, and that you didn't hurt yourself."

Typically Erin was not someone who let her violent impulses control her, at least not when it came to anything living. This time, though, he did ask. In the blink of an eye, she backhanded him across the face, the sound of the smack reverberating in the still air. She'd pulled her slap considerably, just to be on the safe side, but it was still hard enough that it should've knocked him back a ways. The fact that he'd barely rocked back on his heels was a good sign, she hoped. "You okay?"