Electra

Erin glanced at the vapour trail Trevor was leaving behind as she got into the passenger's seat, perversely pleased to know she had the same effect on him that he did on her. She knew it probably wasn't right to wind him up for nothing, and it definitely wasn't kind, but at least she was doing it to herself at the same time, so they were both frustrated, which evened it out. Or something. She didn't really know, and this was one area she didn't feel at all comfortable discussing with Dr. Marquez, or even with Alex, who would be so depressingly adult about the whole thing while secretly wanting to jump Mike's bones at the earliest opportunity. She'd even briefly thought about writing or calling Clarissa for advice but... yeah, no. She'd have to figure this one out for herself. As Trevor got into the car, Erin settled back in her seat and opened the vent a little wider. She glanced over at Trevor and wasn't quite sure what to say. Luckily, in this case, saying nothing was a perfectly viable option.

"That could be changed," Erin said with the perfect confidence of someone who'd seen Trevor at work. "Bigger engine, maybe some power steering for the really fast handling, replace the axles with something harder-wearing... but I guess if you change too much, it loses part of its charm." She shrugged and flicked on the headlights as the short winter day began to dwindle into evening. "Guess we better start getting back before it's too dark." At the next exit, she pulled off at an empty park-and-ride and got out, letting Trevor take the wheel so he could check the tune-up as well. As they passed each other in front of the car, she let her fingers run along his arm. Even though they still hadn't done anything more than some very entertaining makeout sessions, every touch still made her feel like she'd been charged with electricity.

I got word from Moira today that Sandman will not be around for the next little while, due to health concerns. She wasn't specific on exactly how long he'll be away, but keep him in your thoughts and work around him or wait for him in your plots while he recovers. I'll post more details if I get them.

Earth Prime "Freedom Hall is a good idea," Erin agreed. "There's not a lot more we can do here, anyway. Midnight, if you want to drive the ambulance to the nearest hospital, I'll go with you and we can meet everyone else at the Hall. Mark can take care of talking us in if he needs to while we're catching up." She headed for the ambulance where the remaining injured people were waiting. Earth Paragon Wander helped Sage up onto the motorcycle, then returned Edge's hug briefly before addressing the expanded team. "All right, we're going to the tower at best possible speed. Midnight, you take Sage, I'll take Edge with me. Cobalt, do one more sweep of the levee and make sure no civilians are still on or around the danger zone, then catch up with us." Gathering Edge up in her arms, she leapt into the air, towards the Freedom Tower and maybe a little more sanity.

Erin smirked. "You think I've been your girlfriend this long and don't know better than to touch the unmarked buttons on your stuff? I have a finely honed survival instinct, you know." Despite its age, the car showed no signs of stress at highway speeds, even when Erin pushed her luck and took it up past the speed limit and merged into the fast lane. "Guess I'll also resist getting into a car chase on the highway in this thing," she decided, almost wistfully.

Earth Prime Erin ran a hand through her soaked hair as she watched the broadcast, her eyes flat. "He's insane," she muttered. "He's got to know that not a single hero group is going to surrender to him. He's just given everyone the same target, even other villains. He must have some ace in the hole." She looked up towards the rip in space again. "It must be him who's behind that thing, as well. But what the hell could it be doing for him?" Earth Paragons Wander looked up briefly from the radio when Midnight pulled up, a look that was almost like relief crossing her face. She didn't look ready for primetime now, she looked more like she'd been thrown in the river and then rolled down the beach. Then again, most of the people on the levy looked that way. "Nice to see you too," she told the black-clad vigilante with a trace of her usual wit. "If you can... Sage!" She lunged forward and caught the diminutive telepath before she hit anything vital against the ground, and then everything went even more to hell. By the end of the broadcast, Wander was sitting on her butt in the soaked mud and sand of the levy, wheyfaced and with one arm still around Sage's shoulders. "What do we do now?" she murmured aloud before remembering herself. "Freedom Tower. We have to get there."

"Of course, Sharl," Miss A told him benignly. "We can start with my lab and I'll show you some of the projects I have going right now. And if anyone else would like to show you their lab, we can go visit there, too. There's plenty to see here, even if you may not understand all of it right off the bat. Have you got anything on your table you'd like to show off?" she asked Dragonfly politely. "Sharl's very interested in computers."

"No problem," Erin assured him, grinning herself. "It'll be a cool project. And the limo's sounding really good. I don't have your ear for engines, but as far as I can tell, everything's fine. It's handling really well too." To prove it, she pulled out onto the bypass and accelerated, the winter wind whistling in the side air vents as they reached highway speeds. "I could see this thing as an awesome supervehicle," she decided. "Put a couple of laser machine guns in the back, bulletproof the whole thing. It'd make a statement."

Earth Prime Wander looked up from the sandbags she was casually tossing into place, two and three at a time. It looked like the levee was going to hold, at least for now, but she had a hard time leaving anything to chance. "Get back from there, CT," she warned him. "We can get Psyche to find us something to scan it with. Or maybe... hey Sage, do you get anything from that rift?" She leapt back to the top of the levee wall, watching over the workers even as she got a better look at the strange phenomenon. Earth Paragons "Don't get too close!," Wander warned Cobalt Templar, a chill running through her as she looked towards the sky. "That thing ripped apart the Pegasus like tissue... what's this?" Kneeling in a pile of soaked and broken sandbags, she picked up the box. It was obviously debris from the plane, the biggest piece of debris she'd seen so far. "Daedelus, can you hear me?" she asked, looking to see if there device needed to be activated somehow. "This is Wander from the Young Paragons. The Pegasus just dissolved in midair, some kind of rift in the sky tore it to bits. They're all gone, and the levee is about to give way. We can't stop it!" Despite her best efforts at calm, fear crept into her voice as she looked at the barely controlled chaos around her. "We need help!"

"It's not going to be a problem," Miss A said with confidence. "For one, Sharl is a sentient individual, and the rights of artificial sentients are protected. A lawsuit couldn't be brought on his behalf without his cooperation. Two, any organization who tried to make a case for ownership would also be responsible for the millions of dollars in infrastructure damage he caused before I was able to track him down and partition him off. And three, Sharl is just visiting, he's not actually affiliated with the Lab. His code suggests an undeniably organic pattern of growth that indicates an original author would be hard-pressed to recognize what he had wrought by this point anyway."

Miss Americana intervened before Sharl could give himself away under Protectron's questioning. Looking to both him and Ironclad, she explained, "I tracked down Sharl on the internet, thinking that he was a rogue program, possibly some kind of virus. As it turned out, he was an artificial intelligence who had gleaned a great deal of knowledge of human behavior, but whose matrix had grown too complex for the mainframe that originally held him. Sharl's awareness of robots is fictional, I'm afraid," she explained to Protectron. "He's seen many science fiction shows and read many books. Part of his education now is to help him separate truth from fiction." The explanation was so perfectly plausible that even Sharl wanted to believe it.

"It's a testing dummy," Miss Americana told him. "I pull parts off it to test new prosthetic limbs. And the next step of our plan is to shove it, and you, into a freezer and see if you solidify." She looked over to Doc. "I would say an hour to start with at a temperature of no lower than -10 should be sufficient to test the hypothesis, unless you'd like to try a liquid nitrogen compound for faster results." It was hard to tell from her expression if she was kidding or not.

"Be nice, Dragonfly," Miss Americana said, her voice entirely pleasant, though with a soft hint of warning. "Sharl is a sentient computer program, and deserves to be treated like any other guest to the Lab. You'll have to ask him nicely before you have a look at his code or try and sneak a peek. Dragonfly is a cyberkinetic and inventor," Miss A explained to Sharl. "She's very enthusiastic about her work, but she won't do anything that makes you uncomfortable."

Fleur took the clothing and tucked it under her arm. "You behave," she told the bees, only half-seriously. "No hotdogging, or I'll tell the queen on you!" She turned her attention to Victory. "I'll wait for your back at the house, it's only a few miles from here, almost exactly west. If you see the giant crystalline dome, you'll know you're very close. The bees can help, too. If you get into trouble, just say the word, and I'll do what I can to help. Even if I can't be there, this is my planet, in a way, and I have more power here than I do on Prime."

"Let's meet in the library," Miss A suggested, "that's a good place to start." She toggled off the intercom and pressed the elevator button. "Once you've had a chance to meet some people," she told Sharl, "I'll give you a tour of my lab. Some of the others might be interested in showing you what they're working on, but don't be offended if some things are too classified for you right now. We have a lot of high-security projects going on here, so we have to be careful." The elevator discharged them into the library, a wide-open space full of books and desks that covered an entire floor of the building. "Just don't speak too loudly," she instructed him, "the library is a quiet area."

The assorted heroes went into the church and found seats, and soon other people began to arrive for the wedding as well. The string quartet began to play as guests entered in groups small and large, seating themselves all over the church. There didn't seem to be any assigned seating, except for a couple rows at the front for family, which was just as well, since many of the Freedom City contingent were friends with both the bride and groom. Soon there were well over a hundred guests in attendance, ranging from the very elderly to babies in arms, and more still coming. Backstage, Taylor and Docktor Archeville were kept busy with dressing and last minute preparations on opposite sides of the church. Derrick was obviously extremely nervous, pacing and sweating lightly, looking as though he might choose to drop his civilian form at any moment and go rocketing out a window. Stesha's brothers were doing their best to calm him down, with one even producing a flask for the occasion, but it seemed likely that the only cure for nerves would be the exchange of vows. On the other side of the church, Stesha was glowing with excitement despite practically needing to be vacuum-sealed into her dress, while the dressmaker fitted a last-minute layer of tulle and flowers around her middle to disguise how tightly her tummy was pressing against the satin. At two o'clock on the dot, the string quartet wrapped up their music and turned the stage over to the oboe player, and people began hurrying to take their seats. The wedding would begin very soon now!

Earth Prime With Midnight and Sage to tend to the wounded and keep the team in contact, Wander threw her efforts into fortifying the levee, adding her wall of steel to Edge's wall of earth. She kept an eye on the rift the whole time, wondering what on earth it could be, and what might try to get through it. "Hey CT!" she called through her communicator. "Can you get a closer look at that purple thing? Not too close, just make sure there's nothing nasty coming through there?" Earth Paragons "We've got to get off the levee!" Wander barked into her communicator, even as chaos swirled around her. "Edge, move as many of the wounded as you can, I'll help you round them up. See if you can get in touch with a terrakinetic to shore this up, there's nothing we can do at this point. Sage, where the hell are you?" she demanded in the next breath. Psychics were so damn unreliable. "Cobalt Templar, can you fly up and get a closer look at that rift?" She began moving the shaken civilian workers off the levee, which was straining dangerously under the weight of water.

"That would be fun, and a good reason to get some of them fixed up before Memorial Day or the Fourth of July or whatever," Erin agreed. "It'd be cool to let those old cars see the light of day again. And maybe you can pick one to be your Night Sedan or whatever, the special one for when you don't want to use the Night Cycle. Need to carry passengers, or whatever. I know a newer car would be less noticeable, but it sort of seems like a shame."

"Okay, not so much with the things," Erin nodded. "You've got some time to think about it, anyway. Still another month and a half or so." She tapped the horn lightly for some impressed spectators on the sidewalk, unable to suppress a grin. "I really like this car," she decided. "All the maintenance work is worth it to watch people watching it go by. Do you ever loan any of the cars to like parades or anything?"

Their flight was all too short, and in only minutes they were touching down on the roof of a beautiful building that reminded Sharl a little bit of the decorative top stories on some of the nicer buildings back home. It glittered like a jewel in the sun, but like all the buildings around here, it was very small, surely not even twenty stories! As they touched down, Miss A touched the keys of the projector again, then handed it back to Sharl even as his feet settled back to the floor. "All right, here we are!" she said pleasantly. "Have fun, but remember, some things need to stay secret." Apparently not feeling like she needed to elaborate, Miss A walked over to the elevator that led into the building and pressed her palm against a security pad. The door opened to let them in. As they rode down, she activated an intercom system that led throughout the building. "Good afternoon, everyone. I have a special guest with me, is anyone free to say hello?"

"Well, make an exception this year," Erin suggested with a half-smile. "It's a big deal birthday. Last kid birthday or first grownup birthday, either way you want to look at it. You've got to be at least a little bit excited to be turning eighteen, getting ready to graduate high school and all that stuff. And if you tell me what you want for your birthday, I won't have to go half-crazy trying to figure out a good present," she added, her smile widening.

"You can come along with me," Miss A told Sharl. "Give me your projector." That was a request that required some trust, but Gina had told Sharl that he could trust Miss Americana like he trusted her. The beautiful heroine flipped open the top of the projector like she knew what she was doing and made a couple of fast adjustments on the tiny keypad. "I'm putting you in tether flight mode," she told him. "I'll carry your projector, and you'll automatically stay right next to me, flying or on the ground. That way I don't have to carry you." She stepped outside, and sure enough, Sharl rose up slightly from the ground and floated after her! Outside the house, she took off into the sky, and so did he!

Fleur finally caught up to the group, just in time for the new arrival to deliver a cruel sucker punch to the rock man. Looking disgusted, she clapped her hands once sharply. The vines seemed to inflate, then constricted and collapsed, the rock man no longer inside them. "That was a pretty pitiful display," she chided the group as a whole. "Taunting and attacking a helpless man. Why don't you tell us exactly what's going on?" she suggested to Rook, her pretty face creased with a rare frown.

"Thought you'd never ask." Putting the limo into gear, she carefully maneuvered it out of the garage and into the long driveway. It, far more than her truck parked outside, looked exactly like the sort of vehicle that fit with the house, big and old-fashioned, but in a quietly elegant sort of way. She was quiet for a few minutes, concentrating intently as she got the feel of driving the long vehicle again, but eventually relaxed enough to sit back and enjoy herself. "So what do you want?" she asked him, glancing over at Trevor. "For your birthday, I mean."

"Why don't I take you to visit The Lab first?" she suggested. "That's a center for superscience in Freedom City, there's bound to be someone there you'll be interested in talking to. Some of the greatest minds on the planet work there on their nonprofit and private projects. I think you'll enjoy it, then after that we can go for a little tourism?" She smiled at his enthusiasm, but seemed happy to wait patiently until he made up his mind.