Electra

Miss Americana took his hand and shook it firmly, giving him a warm smile. "You must be Sharl," she said, her voice captivating in its dulcet tones. "It's good to meet you too. Cyberknife has been keeping me updated about your progress here, and it sounds like you're ready to see more of the city than just this one little block. We can do that today. Where would you like to go first?"

Sharl waited a few minutes, then went upstairs himself to wait for his ride. He found Emerson in the kitchen, dutifully using a small hand-vac to sweep crumbs off the kitchen counter, but Gina had apparently already retreated to her second-floor bedroom. By waiting at the front window, he was able to watch as an amazingly beautiful woman swooped down out of the sky and landed at the front door! He'd seen Miss Americana on the television before, she was something of a local favorite, but in person, she was only more gorgeous. Brushing a few errant blonde curls away from her perfect face, she checked a slim silver watch on her wrist, then rang the doorbell.

Earth Prime Elsewhere on the levy, Wander sprang into action, grabbing the large section of corrugated wall that she'd been about to put in place against the levy, and instead carrying it into the sky! Placing herself and the broad metal sheet between the explosion and the workers below, she wielded it like a shield, deflecting chunks of debris even as she kept an eye out for falling bodies. There didn't seem to be any, though. There wasn't even enough of the plane left to cause a splashdown in the river. "Midnight!" she called into her commlink. "We're going to have casualties here, we need help on the ground." Earth Paragons "On my way." Wander's voice immediately came over Edge's communicator, without any of the typical banter or flirting she might have used. Today was not a good day for that. Leaping from the top of the Pramas Bridge directly towards City Center, she zeroed in on the cloud of debris and the sound of screaming people. She was intent enough that for a moment, she didn't even see the purple rift. When she did, it startled her enough that for a moment she lost control and began to tumble through the air. "Crap!" she yelled, the conditioning of years keeping her from yelling anything stronger over an open com. "What the heck is that up there?"

"Good, then we're all settled," Gina said, rising from her terminal and heading for the stairs. "And since I was up all night making sure that your projector is going to hold out through your little adventure, I'm absolutely beat. I'm going to grab a sandwich and go to bed. Miss Americana will be along very soon to pick you up. You won't be able to mistake her, she has a red, white and blue uniform, and she's quite a looker." With a yawn, Gina headed up the stairs.

"That's right," Gina agreed. "We're definitely not going to tell anyone about Tronik at this point, though I may have to bring in a collaborator at some point if I run into trouble getting you back. We'll take careful precautions to make sure that not only do we get you back, but that we patch up whatever hole caused you to fall out in the first place. No one else is going to get lost the way you did. For now, you might want to explain yourself as a super-advanced artificial intelligence. Miss Americana will be able to help you bolster your story with the tech words," she assured him.

"It's not the helping you part," Gina told him. "It's simply that... you've been watching TV and reading about superheroes online, right? You understand how many of them have secret identities." She waved her hands indistinctly. "I have a secret identity as well, but it's one that is more secret than most. I don't even tell other heroes who I am. The fewer people who even know I exist, the safer I am. I trust you to protect that for me when you go out and interact with other heroes. I know you can do it."

The door swung open, allowing Sharl to step out and into Gina's basement. Gina handed him the projector that was providing his body, watching as he tucked it safely into his pocket. "Miss Americana, the person you're going to be traveling around with today, is a good friend of mine," she began. "She's very nice, and very smart. I've shared the specs of your program with her, and you should listen to her like you would to me if she tells you something." Gina took a breath. "I value my privacy very much," she told Sharl. "Besides Miss Americana, no one you're going to meet today knows me or anything about me, and I want it to stay that way. If anyone asks, you can tell them that Miss Americana has been helping you with the holographic projections and with decoding your programming language. Please don't mention me, or where you've been living these past few weeks. I would consider it a personal favor."

There was a knock on the "door" of his habitat, and Gina's voice filtered down through the air. "Sharl, are you ready to come out now?" she asked. "It's almost time to go, but I wanted to talk about a few things with you first. My friend's going to be here in about half an hour." Outside in the real world, Gina sat at her terminal, her brow furrowed with unease that she couldn't hide. She wasn't really used to concealing her emotions on this face anymore.

Miss Americana watched with great interest as the robot assumed its flight form. It was no Omegadrone, but it was very sophisticated in a different way. She'd love to get a look at him under controlled conditions. Rising into the air herself, she smiled at Protectron and gestured for him to follow. "Come along this way, it's not too far," she encouraged. "Let me know if I'm going too fast or too slow." She set off at a leisurely pace, giving anyone who wanted to fly along a chance to take to the skies as well.

"It sounds fine," Fleur said, though she sounded a little uncertain, "as long as you're sure it's not going to be dangerous for you or any of the bees. I can't come with you," she told him again, sounding very sure of herself on this one point. "I'm four months pregnant, and I'm not even supposed to be getting X-Rays. I can't take the risk of being exposed to leaking gamma radiation if the carrier is out there and emitting particles. I can watch you from here, though, I can see anywhere on the planet, from anywhere on the planet."

I don't have a lot of ideas, but I'm very interested to see what people can come up with. Gina's sheet as it's written doesn't capture all of what I want her to be able to do with computers. Even having more powers available for stunts would be very useful!

"One of these days, I'll figure out a really good present for you," she promised, tilting her head slightly toward his caress. "Maybe for your birthday." Erin looked over at him and smirked as an idea hit. "I've got it. I'll have Mark buy you a raffle ticket for a new car or something like that. Not that you need any more cars," she allowed. "Maybe a cool computer or something." Giving his hand a quick squeeze, she went back to the limo and climbed inside, now that she wasn't going to get the interiors dirty. She turned it on and revved the engine a few times, listening to it purr. "This is sounding really good. Unless you want to wash and detail it while we've got it up here, I think we're done."

"This isn't a great time of year to see parks, but you can see the museums and stuff like that." Gina took back the projector and turned it off, making Sharl shimmer momentarily as his projection was picked up by the in-room holoemitters. She studied the machine thoughtfully, running a few instruments over it to make sure it was within tolerances. "You'll like my friend," she told Sharl, as though sensing some part of his disappointment. "She's a much better tour guide than I would be."

"Wait! Everyone! Are we sure he's the...villain...we're looking...for?" Fleur did her best to keep up with the group, but she wasn't in great shape for running and soon fell behind. Stopping where she was, she watched the others beating on the outnumbered and outclassed rock man. If something didn't happen, they might beat him unconscious and then they'd never learn what was going on. "STOP!" she yelled again, in her best "corral the unsupervised children" voice, and extended her arms. Vines shot up from the ground at the rock man's feet, wrapping tightly around him and binding his legs together, then his arms tight to his body, leaving only his head free.

Okay, Fleur's going to attempt to snare the Big Rock Man Her attack is an 11,, so I spend HP to reroll. Much better, a =http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2847170/]27. DC 28 Reflex save to avoid being snared.

"Yeah, well, I got you motorcycle gloves and grips," she pointed out with a crooked smile. "You're already like light-years ahead of me in the gift-giving competition, and I'm never gonna catch up. But you'll have fun in space too, right? Probably lots of weird gadgets up there, and then, you know, it's being in space, where hardly anybody gets to go." She looked down at her feet, or maybe at the floor beneath them. "Is there really a flying saucer down there, or were you pulling my leg?"

"You can get us onto the Lighthouse?" Erin asked, looking impressed almost in spite of herself. Trevor still had hidden depths of resourcefulness. Of course, his grandfather had been an anchor of the original Liberty League, so Midnight II was sort of a legacy to the Freedom League himself, whether or not he ever actually joined up. "That would be really amazing," she told him. "I had this brief phase as a little kid when I wanted to be an astronaut, back before I knew how much science and math was involved. That sort of passed, but getting to see the earth from space..."

Erin thought about that for a moment, looking at him with a half-smile playing around the edges of her lips. "Visiting space would be cool," she acknowledged, "but I'm not sure I'd want to spend a weekend up there. It's pretty cold, I hear, and I don't think I could hold my breath long enough." She went over to the garage sink and washed her hands, then her face, finally removing the last smears of oil from her cheek. Her coverall had not fared as well, testifying to her own wisdom in putting it on. "That rebreather thing you made me for underwater was really useful, but I don't know that I'd want to wear something like that for that long, either. You don't have a spaceship down in the basement, do you?" Somehow, Erin wouldn't have been totally surprised.

"Yeah, I can probably manage to get something set up for you," Gina told him. "I'm going to be pretty busy this next little while. Trying to get you home and handling all my other projects is really tying my schedule into knots. I think I can line up a friend of mine to take you out to see some different places around the city. I don't want you going out alone yet. If something happens, your projector could get stranded and stolen or broken, and it's got a lot of expensive parts in it."

"Just wait till you get a look at North Bay," Gina's dry voice came over the comm. "These houses are nice enough, but they're nothing compared to where the really rich folks hang their hats. That can wait for another day, though. Head back in now, I want to make sure the battery use is in line with my projections and make sure your pattern is still fully patent. I saw one strange bobble in the readings while you were out, so that's something to check out."

"The projector contains part of your program right now and backs up in real-time to the stored data in my mainframe," Gina told him over the comm. "Theoretically you can go anywhere as long as you're getting a 3G signal that allows data transfer, but if you drop into a dead zone, you could hang or partially discorporate. You can go around the block, but let's keep it close to home for this first outing."

"Sounds like a good trip," Erin agreed. They worked in companionable near-silence for awhile, with Erin occasionally asking a question about the work, or Trevor asking for a tool or pointing out a trick. That was comfortable for both of them, more comfortable than making small talk or discussing movies or music that neither of them knew anything about. The oil change itself didn't take that long, even on a classic car. When it was done, Erin carefully drove it onto the lift while Trevor raised it up so they could get a better look. It didn't get a lot of driving, but Trevor was meticulous with its maintenance anyway, and between them, they gave it a full fifty-point inspection.

Gina's voice came from his pocket, obviously she'd wired some sort of communicator into the device as well. "No, usually there's a lot more snow on the ground," she told him. "We had a quick warm snap a couple days ago, but we're supposed to get more snow in the past couple of days. If you like, I'll remote-unlock the gate for you and you can go into the front yard and see the rest of the block." The gate on the wooden privacy fence was sealed with a keypad lock, but as Sharl approached it unlocked itself so he could swing it open. The front yard was a bit of a revelation, even though he'd seen some of it already through the living room curtains. There were houses all up and down the street, each one different in its own way, some bigger and some smaller, all different colors, each designed to house only a single family. In front of some of the dwellings were cars, primitive combustion vehicles that Sharl knew were common here. Even as he watched, a car drove past down the street, and as it passed, it slowed down! The driver looked out, directly at Sharl, with an expression of curiosity, before continuing on and pulling into a dwelling down the road.

Gina looked down intently at her pad, scribbling a few obviously very important notes on her pad rather than answering what she apparently considered a rhetorical question. "Emerson!" she called down the stairs. "Start the dishwasher!" After a few more notes, she told Sharl, "Listen, how about I give you the projector and you can walk around in the backyard? Don't get too far away from the house, but you'll be able to test how it works in a controlled environment. And you can feel the grass under your feet and stuff."

"Huh," Erin commented with a half smile. "I barely knew him, he must have a good memory. Doctor Marquez told me I should probably avoid taking his class because we wouldn't be able to see eye to eye on most things. It was just an elective, so I didn't. Everybody who took the class got to go up into space, and that was pretty cool, but Alex said she thought that Marquez was right about the not getting along thing. He's a really nice guy, and I hear his wife is too, he's just got a weird philosophy. How was the drive out?"