Electra

"I'm not sure," Stesha admitted, still studying the radiation symbol with some consternation. "The entire planet is uninhabited and uninhabitable save for this bubble that I've created. If this deposit is far enough out to sea, we could simply avoid it for the near future. But that's not really a sustainable solution. We could move it to a world that is even deader than this one, one with no vegetable or animal life, but that would require getting me getting close enough to teleport it, and I'm not willing to do that right now." She looked at the government hero. "Any ideas?"

Miss Americana was reluctant to step forward and receive her gift, but not taking it at this point would seem strange at best, and would probably just draw more attention to other oddities she'd displayed this evening. So instead she put a big smile on her face as she examined the vending machine. "Wow, this will be perfect for the long nights in my lab," she told Santa, her eyes serious behind the smile as she studied his face. What was the old elf up to? Her strength easily allowed her to carry the machine, which felt like it was already fully loaded with beverages. "I was wondering... could you help us get back to Freedom City? It's a bit of a hike home from here."

Fleur smiled, brightening to see a familiar face for all she was already feeling half-frozen. "Hello, Nick! Doctor Metropolis mentioned that other heroes were already on their way, but I had no idea how to find anyone. It's good to see you. Do you have any idea what this is about?" She looked around the calm scene, chilly and white with snow, but not at all strange. "I admit I'd expected to find things in a little more disarray than this when I got here. I can't even figure out what might be wrong with the town."

Stesha slept in that morning, an indulgence she hadn't gotten to enjoy on a Saturday for a long time. Derrick was already up and long gone, since he didn't need sleep anyway, but she hugged her body pillow and enjoyed the cozy warmth of her bed a little while longer. That is, until the plaster dust started sprinkling down on her bed. Sputtering, she sat up and turned on the light, wondering what the upstairs neighbors could possibly be up to at this hour. The writing on her ceiling was definitely a surprise. She'd worked with Doctor Metropolis before, putting the city back together after disasters, but never at his behest. She wondered what exactly was going on, but it wasn't a summons she was going to ignore. By the time she'd visited the bathroom, the writing was gone, as though it had never been there. Even the plaster dust was gone. Shaking her head, she put on her costume, though these days the tunic was a bit tight, and she had to leave it untucked to cover the fact that the pants did not button. She also couldn't fasten her cowl all the way anymore, but at least it wasn't Spandex! Eschewing her belt entirely in favor of a well-stocked spatial pocket, she popped over to Ashbury Park, landing near a tree in the center of town, for lack of any better ideas. Hopefully something would make itself apparent soon!

Miss Americana turned and gave the children a reassuring wave, then turned her attention back towards the robot. "You said you just came online five minutes ago?" she asked Protectron. "Do you know anything about your makers, or why you came online in the location where you did? Have you run an internal diagnostic to check for any errors or memory loss you might have experienced?" The abandoned building could, she suppose, house the secret lair of some unknown robot builder, but she rather doubted it. And this robot didn't look like anything she'd seen coming down the pike, for all that she counted herself extremely well-versed in cutting edge robotic sciences.

Miss A landed neatly on an area of hard-packed snow, putting herself between the new robot and the frightened children without making an issue of it. "Greetings, Protectron, and thank you," she told him with a warm smile. "I am Miss Americana, and these are my colleagues." It didn't surprise her that a motley crew of science types had shown up, though she did notice a new face. "You've met Caradoc, and the one already trying to take a poke at you is Dragonfly. Don't worry, she's an excellent engineer, she won't hurt you. Over there is Supercape, and... I have to admit, I don't believe I know you," she said with a nod in the large man's direction. "What brings you to Freedom City?" she asked the robot.

Miss A was visibly uneasy about working closely with Santa and his elves, a fact made both more obvious and more strange by her usual perfect equanimity. She didn't let it affect the quality of her work though, and between her and Dragonfly, the sleigh was quickly working better than it had in years! She grimaced at the reindeer's near-slip but let it pass, and merely took her place in the line when it was time to fly. Between Jack's guidance, Victory and Miss A in the traces, and the tune-up they'd given the sled, it was going to be a speedy Christmas this year!

It had been a couple of days now since Miss A had even been out on patrol, what with the holiday and Gina's interesting new AI project. She had more than enough to do in her own basement, and there were enough heroes out there to give her a break from fighting IRL crime for a few days. Just working on her computers, rigging up holoprojectors and learning the complex programming language that Sharl was written in was sort of a nice break. She liked the social contact and the adoration that Miss A gave her, but she also valued quiet and solitude immensely. The quiet in her mind was suddenly broken as a loud electronic shriek, inaudible to her physical ears, suddenly ripped across the network and nearly drove her to her knees. Gina dropped into her chair and grabbed her head. "WTF!?" she said aloud, looking to see if anything in her lab could possibly have done that. Seeing no likely suspects, she jumped online and began hunting. Minutes later, Miss Americana was in the air, hurtling through the skies of Lincoln like a sleek guided missile towards the source of the disturbance.

"Emerson, activate," Gina said offhandedly, and suddenly the box on treads lit up all over! The top of the box lifted on all sides, revealing a squarish robotic head with glowing eyes, even as two servo arms unfolded from the sides. It hummed as its processor revved up, then turned its boxy body to face its master, for all she wasn't even looking that way. "Activated," it said in a pleasant tenor voice quite at odds with its cold mechanical appearance. "What are your requirements?" "Run maintenance one," she told it, still buried in work. The robot obliged, opening its chest cavity to withdraw a hose and attachment, and began to vacuum the floor. It carefully skirted around Sharl as though he were just one more obstacle. "Don't walk through things," Gina told Sharl again. "You'll fu- you'll confuse the holoreceptors, and parts of your body could disappear temporarily. I doubt you'd like that."

"Of course we will, Santa," MIss A said graciously, descending from where she'd been hovering. "We'd be- oof!" Avenger, who had stepped right underneath her during his appeal to Lupita, suddenly found himself with one-hundred-eighty pounds of stunningly beautiful paragon landing right in his arms! And on his head, and halfway over his back, as Miss A dropped into him in a startled and graceless belly flop. She pushed herself away, but seemed almost to be shoving blindly at his shoulders and face as she attempted to extricate herself. "What were you doing down there?" she demanded with annoyance.

"Right now you're mostly composed of light," Miss A affirmed, "for targeting purposes, and so I could make sure that your components transferred successfully," Gina told him, only a tiny percentage of her attention on the conversation. As Sharl got used to the layout of the lab, he noticed another door, besides the open door that led up the stairs, set in the far wall of the room. There was also what looked like a box on treads in the corner, with a few blinking lights. to indicate that it was drawing some kind of power. "I'm increasing the strength of the variable magnetic field inside the hologram now, which should interact with your emulator to allow you a simalcrum of touch. It's an interface that's going to require refinement, but for today I'll be happy if we can stop you clipping."

Though she was entirely out of her depth, no pun intended, in these dark waters, Wander at least had a really good idea of how to destroy things. Taking off through the water as quickly as though she were leaping through the air, she followed the descending mass of rock, getting above it and beginning to push. It was already moving at a good clip, and with her momentum behind it, it only fell faster, descending towards the damaged temple quickly enough to send waves rippling through the deep water.

"That's good," she told him. "It's colder in here than the temperature in your partition is set at, the cold helps the computers run better. The fact that you can feel it means that the emulator's working. You're still clipping, though. Let's see if I can firm that up a little. Go ahead and walk around if you want." She sat down in the command center and rolled to the central console, beginning to type commands in very rapidly even as she kept one eye on his progress. "You can try touching things, but don't try walking through anything."

"Yes, I'm here." After another few moments, there was noise from behind one of the server towers, and someone stepped out. It wasn't who Sharl was expecting though. This was a young woman, probably in her early twenties, with dark blond hair in a sloppy ponytail, wearing blue denim pants and a black short-sleeved shirt that read "I void warranties." She was so generically plain, he would've passed her on the street without ever looking twice, but the voice was definitely that of his savior. "How do you feel?" she asked, stepping forward and into the command circle, even as she watched him carefully.

It took longer than Sharl might have hoped, but eventually, after the entire pizza was consumed and he'd had a chance to clean up and use the bathroom and pace the room a few dozen times, Gina's disembodied voice echoed down from the ceiling. "All right Sharl, stand still for a few minutes. It may feel strange, but tell me right away if you start feeling any pain, or if you feel yourself losing consciousness." A faint light surrounded him, and suddenly the room around him began to fade away! For a moment, he saw the terrifying morass of uncontrolled data he'd been lost in for so long, but this time he was being guided as though on invisible strings, and within seconds, he was in another room. This room was very different than the one he'd just come from. The ceiling was low and the walls were white, and the floor beneath his feet was covered in nubbly navy-blue carpet and seemed to be hollow. The room was long and broad, and seemed almost entirely filled with computer equipment. A well-lit open area in the front was obviously the control center, with terminals and equipment arranged in a near-complete circle around a comfortable-looking rolling chair. Behind that command area, hulking processors filled the rest of the area, cooled by strong fans built into the walls. The air smelled faintly of ozone, and he seemed to be alone.

Miss Americana's eyes narrowed as she lowered the microphone, studying the man in black. "Mister Infamy," she intoned, her voice carrying across the snow. "Torturing children isn't usually your style. Slumming in the off-season?" Rather than engaging with the villain any further, Miss A approached the girl, stopping at eye level and only a few feet away. "Lupita, you know this is wrong, don't you," she began, her voice warm with sympathy. "It hurts so much, you want other people to hurt as well, but you know it isn't right. Causing other people pain and misery won't make you feel better. It's time to stop before someone gets hurt."

They danced on the terrace until the candles died and the long day began to catch up. Erin insisted on taking the cake back to her room with her, but the rest of the dinner was left behind, nothing more than nice memories. Outside her room, she leaned in and kissed Trevor one more time, resting her fingertips lightly against his cheek. "It was an amazing night," she told him. "Thank you so much." She slipped into her own room, dodging the sleeping Alex, and got ready for bed with the brisk efficiency of someone used to dressing quickly in the dark. Sliding into the gigantic bed, she looked towards the window and fell asleep with a smile on her face.

"That's reasonably accurate," Gina confirmed, her voice dry. She sighed. "Okay, listen. You eat your lunch and do whatever you need to do to get ready to go. I'm going to go tweak the holoprojector systems, and we'll see what we've got. It might take a few tries, but I can probably get you projected into at least one room by the end of the afternoon. Okay? I'll let you know when I'm ready to get started." With that, she left the boy to the pizza he'd already inhaled several slices of, trusting that by the end of the day, there probably wouldn't be any leftovers to dispose of. How she envied that kind of metabolism.

Okay, revelers! Here it is: Somewhere That's Green

January 2, Evanston, Illinois 12:30pm The day had finally arrived. For awhile, things had looked iffy, with the original date pushed back and the groom absent for months, but now all was well, and it was time to get married! Guests had been arriving at the Lake Street Church all morning, not just by car, but by teleportation, plant portal, flight, or however they chose to quietly make their way to the beautiful white building with its tall spire. Even though the wedding was set for early afternoon, the church's doors were open in case of early arrivals. Though this was a strictly civilian event, it was obvious that the bride had not bothered to hide her particular light under a bushel. The sanctuary was a wonderland of flowers of all kinds, heavy on pink roses and white lilies, with arrangements that seemed to have built themselves adorning every pew, and flowering vines creeping up every pole and pillar, even hanging off the banisters. It smelled like a fairyland, though fans had been turned on to keep down the pollen. For the moment, not many of the civilian guests were present yet. With a 2pm start time, they'd probably be arriving shortly, but for the moment, there was a quiet space in which visitors from Freedom City could meet and mingle. Stesha and Derrick had been on hand earlier to help transport those who needed it, but by now both of them had retired to prepare for the biggest day of their lives. It looked like it was going to be a big wedding. Stesha said she was expecting two hundred fifty guests, so one benefit of early arrival would be the chance to get good seats!

"It'll be awhile before you can see my lab," she warned him. "My basement is my control center, it's really mostly a room full of computers and equipment. Like I said, that's the first step to prove that you can be holoprojected at all. My lab is in a different building, about half a mile from our physical location. Once we have the wrinkles ironed out of the projection, I can show that to you too. But it's only been three days," she reminded him, not for the first time. "Walk before you run."

"Not of you," Gina assured him glibly, "just of your code. If anything glitches, I need to know what happened, and the best way is by being able to compare it to the original unchanged code. That way I'll be able to make the necessary repairs. I'd much prefer," she added quickly, "not to have to do any of that, but I would be an irresponsible programmer, not to mention a lousy host, if I didn't take basic safety precautions when I don't even know exactly how your programming works yet." Sharl didn't seem too computer savvy, and she hoped that would save her from having to explain what exactly the difference was between copying him and copying his component code, when the only functional difference was that one was running.

"Some," Gina admitted, almost reluctantly. "I've got the basics of a holoprojection unit set up. When it's complete, you'll be able to activate it and step into one room, my basement. It's not much to look at, I'll warn you, but if it works as proof of concept, I can set up more projectors around the house. I don't want to move too quickly. I've backed up your program, of course, but I don't want to do anything that could interfere with your internal integrity and consistency, or cause you to start glitching. It's wiser to move slowly and avoid making any mistakes."

"We're both doing fine," she assured him, stepping into the room and looking around. She had made some refinements to the details, added a nicer chair for the computer, a more comfy recliner in front of the television, and put some art prints on the walls so the place didn't look so stark. She figured eventually she could let him decorate the place, but maybe when his grip on reality was a little more secure. "I brought you lunch," she told him, extending the pie and two-liter bottle, then making cup and plate appear on the table. "It's pizza. I think you'll like it. Baked dough base with tomato sauce, pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, and mozzarella cheese. Pick up a wedge with your fingers and eat it starting at the center point."

Gina gave Sharl a couple of days to get accustomed to his changed circumstances, checking in with him several times a day to make sure things were going well in his little artificial world and give him more food, but otherwise leaving him largely to his own devices. That wasn't entirely by choice. Besides the bank job Miss A had been needed to foil during their first meeting, she'd had several projects going at ArcheTech and the Lab that couldn't be put on hold, and there was always more crime. But besides all that, she had to think about what he'd asked, about being able to come into her world and see what it was like. It was a reasonable request, but until she knew more about his programming compatibility, she wasn't ready to risk moving him to another system, especially one she hadn't designed herself, like the ones at the Lab. Holoprojecting him would mean more than bringing him onto Prime, it would mean bringing him into her world, her most private demesnes. She tried to talk herself out of automatic rejection of the idea. Sharl was a computer program, for Christ's sake. Sure he was sentient, and thus deserved protection, but he was no more human than the AI who already ran her household functions, and that one saw her naked! She wasn't even sure what impulse had driven her to build the matronly avatar, except that she'd thought maybe he'd respond better to that than to someone only a few years older than he himself appeared. Why should she care what he thought of her? That was the same question she asked herself every time she didn't manage to leave her house, or answer the door, or pick up the phone. So far, for all her advanced intellect, she still didn't have an answer. So she stalled instead, and the many distractions made it easier. Three days after she'd pulled him out of the datastream, though, she knew it was starting to get unfair. She dropped into the computer world for her usual lunchtime visit, this time bearing a pepperoni pizza and Mountain Dew, the same thing she'd just eaten herself. "Sharl?" she called, standing in the "anteroom" she'd created just outside his rooms to give him some illusion of privacy and autonomy. "It's Gina. Are you decent?"