Electra

She looked up when he coughed and turned her smile on him. "This is so good," she told him. "The cupcake was really sweet and nice, but this... I'm not sure what to call this. It's something more than dessert. It's like a transformative experience, like we were talking about in English class. I don't think I'll be the same after eating this cake." Chuckling at her own effusiveness, she took another bite. "Anyway, good cake. Good dinner. Excellent birthday."

"Mmm, that does sound like an unfortunate encounter," Fleur agreed, "but there are a few bad apples in every bushel. It's good that you were able to take care of the problem before anything bad happened." She dipped a corner of her bread into her soup. "Now do you do hero work and publicity as your sole job duties, or do you work at AEGIS in another capacity and do the hero work in addition to that? There aren't too many full-time heroes outside the Freedom League."

Erin's eyes got noticeably bigger when she looked at the cake. "Maybe we'll get everyone else a cake to share when we get back to Freedom City," she murmured. "Hmm, a wish. All right..." She waited while Trevor lit the candles, their soft glow playing over her face as she folded her hands and closed her eyes as though praying. After a moment, she opened her eyes and smiled, then blew out all the candles, careful not to blow too hard and actually knock any off the cake. "Okay, let's eat!" Taking the serving set, she cut and served two extremely generous pieces of cake, then dug into her own with a look of pure bliss.

Erin nibbled on a thumbnail, considering the options. A continuation of the once-in-a-lifetime romantic dinner for two, or a ride through the capital city of Dakana on a night when she might be able to persuade Trevor to let her take the handlebars. It wasn't an easy choice. "Do it," she told him with a grin. "But I'm going to eat my cake while we're waiting for it to get here. That way I can, you know, have it and eat it too." She lifted the lid off the cake server. "Maybe we can save some for the rest of the guys later."

"Hey, I never kept that a secret," Erin protested, her grin widening. "If I'm remembering this right, that's how you got me to go out with you in the first place, offering me a ride on your bike on patrol. Which was a good strategy, I've gotta admit. Between that and working on my truck with you, it's not like I've been hiding my affection for a really well-crafted vehicle. Now if you'd teach me how to actually drive the Night Cycle, that would really be something," she hinted unsubtly.

Erin laughed even as she blushed at Trevor's unwitting double entendre, and his more amusing reaction to it. She thought about what Alex had alluded to in their conversation the previous night, and decided that just made it funnier. It also made for a situation that would eventually have to be addressed somehow, but she'd put that off a little while longer. "It is good," she agreed. "It's hard to try and get along on your own. And solo patrols are lonely and usually boring. Plus, I don't get to ride on the motorcycle when I'm out by myself," she pointed out with a grin.

"That's nice," Erin told him, her expression wry and soft at the same time. "It's nice to have someone worry about me in a fight for something besides how much damage I could end up causing. Not that it's not, you know, a valid concern, but still. Not everything that happens in a fight is getting hit physically. Some of it's bad in different ways. And I mean, I know you're totally capable, and your grandpa was already training you back when I was playing softball and reading Jessica Darling books, but I still worry about you all the time. At least when we're in a fight together, we can watch each other's backs."

Miss A tested the balance of the weapon in her hands, then carried it over to one of her scanners to run tests on it. The weapon seemed quiescent when it was out of Harrier's hands, but it was still hard for her to suppress a shiver just looking at the thing. Gina had been just five years old when the Terminus had invaded, and far away from the action, but there were some images no one would forget from that day. In school, in popular culture, in museums and even on particularly tasteless Halloween costumes, there probably wasn't a person on Earth who didn't understand something of what that length of metal could do. Deliberately turning away, she let the scanner run and looked at Harrier. "I think our best option is going to be to disguise the pike as an entirely different, though similar weapon, and then design you an entirely new costume and persona from there," she told him. "If you typically use it to deflect blows and shoot beams of energy, we could call it a scientific-magic staff, and you could be a technowizard. I could teach you enough to make you believable in the role," she assured him. "If you tend to stab and slice and parry with it, I could make it look like a giant sword, and you could be a knight in shining armor type. I could also make it look like a spear and have you become a gladiator type, but that would be both less convincing and possibly too close to the original pike shape and form."

Erin let him finish talking, then slid the sunglasses on. They were a good fit, snug enough to stay on, but not so tight they'd give her a headache, and they brought the world into startling focus. The dreamy romantic light of the balcony was replaced by the brilliance of a surgical theatre, so that every detail of Trevor and the table were thrown into stark relief. She wondered if this was how he saw the world all the time, or if he could turn it on and off, but now didn't seem like the time to ask. She undid her zirconium earrings and clipped on the deep blue gemstone earrings. They matched the dress and even the necklace like she'd planned to wear them all together, and though she didn't hear anything different, she trusted they'd work as well as the glasses did. Sliding the glasses down her nose, she looked over them at Trevor. "I really like them," she told him sincerely. "You always seem to have the perfect equipment for the occasion. Even birthdays." She took the glasses off but left the earrings on, dropping the original pair into the padded box. "And you don't have anything to apologize for," she reminded him, reaching out to take his hand. "Yeah, maybe it scared me and I freaked out, but that wasn't your fault. It was Medea's fault. She tried to make me hurt you, and you stopped me. And you stopped her, too. Once I was, you know, myself again, I understood why you and James had to do what you did, and I'm okay with it." She smiled. "Doesn't mean these aren't going to come in handy. They're really cool."

"Fascinating. May I?" she asked, sliding on a pair of heavy gloves and holding her hands out for the pike. "This is undoubtedly going to be the most difficult part of the whole getup to disguise, because it channels such amazing amounts of energy. But of course it's also the most vital part, because it's so very iconic. The good thing is that it's quite simple, so I should be able to alter its silhouette in ways that make it less distinguishable. How do you use the pike, typically?"

"I'll keep that in mind," Fleur told him with a soft laugh. "I'll send some of this soup home with you, if you like. I think it turned out pretty well, for a new recipe. It's amazing how a recipe can turn out so differently than you expect, no matter how certain you are about the ingredients you start with. I think that may be the concern about the government as well. All those agencies want the same end result, the safety of the public, but there are many cooks with just as many different recipes for achieving that. I'm glad that you and AEGIS want to work with the other heroes. If you've already spoken to Doctor Archeville, you're well on your way to connecting with all the heroes in Freedom City."

"Oooh." Grinning, Erin accepted the package and flipped it over, neatly opening the wrapping along the seams. "MIght want to read that later," she explained, though mostly she was deliberately going slowly to prolong the anticipation. Birthday presents were a big deal, especially ones from special people. Unconsciously, her fingers went to her necklace, the irreplaceably priceless heirloom that had been her grandmother's. It didn't really match the zirconium earrings, but it looked nice with the dress, and she'd wanted to wear it today. Thank god she hadn't decided to wear it all day. Setting aside the newsprint wrapping, she opened the box.

"I'm not even surprised anymore," Erin muttered with a half smile, slipping the cowled rebreather over her head. It didn't do anything good for her peripheral vision, but her hearing was surprisingly unaffected. She wondered if there were speakers built in, or if that was just some property of the fabric. "Teleporting is probably going to be the fastest way. I can get a teleport for me and maybe one other person, but it would take too long to get the equipment to move everyone."

"Kiwi skin and flower soup," Erin muttered, shaking her head. "I don't know about all this exotic food. But I know chocolate, and I know birthday cake." Laughing, she extricated herself from his arms and went back to the table, uncovering the rest of the dishes. She dipped a piece of mango in the fondue and sampled it, nodding appreciatively. The realization, mundane as it seemed, that she really did want to do hero work, that it wasn't just something she did to stay at the school, or to stay in the good graces of the Freedom League, or even to atone for her own inaction, was strangely comforting. She was an adult now, and could make her own decisions, and she chose to ignore the other paths she could travel and be a hero instead. Even if on her next birthday she was broke and living in her car, she at least had a direction, one she was choosing. She smiled at that, and took another piece of mango. "You should try this," she told Trevor.

"Let me make this perfectly clear, Mister Slick," Miss A said, blowing out an annoyed breath. "I'm very sorry that your metahuman powers have malfunctioned in such an unprecedented way. I'm going to do everything in my power to see that you're repaired as quickly as possible. At the same time, your sexual harassment is totally unacceptable and I am not going to subject myself to it," she told him, her voice cold and clipped. "This is my workplace, not some dive bar, and I'm neither a prostitute nor your girlfriend. Whatever you wanted to do with me, you should feel free to do to yourself. I'll be in the side lab preparing the mannequin, Doctor," she told Archeville, then strode out.

"Unfortunately," Miss A said, voice dry as dust, "the mannequins are completely sexless." It was an effort not to cackle, but she would save that for later. "I'm sure you'll become accustomed to it, and perhaps it will be an incentive to learn to control your new body chemistry as quickly as possible. I assure you that I will be doing everything possible to return you to your normal life and get you out of my lab as soon as can be humanly managed. Possibly faster, given the intellects working on the problem."

"I have several mechanized mannequins that I use to test prosthetics," Miss A offered. "They're already wired to respond to electrical impulses similar to neural firing, and should hopefully be compatible with Slick's brainwave patterns. I'd be more comfortable if you have some kind of forcefield generator we could use to reinforce the housing, though, as they aren't designed to hold liquid. Once he's in the device, we can begin to cool it down and hope that no further degradation occurs.

Miss A hastily cleared off the largest workbench in her lab, making a place to set the bat down. "I already have most of the equipment I'll need for my part of the job in this room," she told Doctor Archeville, "but the vet may have other needs. She's already on her way." Gesturing over to an impressive-looking computer in the corner, she told Rift, "That's an ArcheTech Universal Reader, try putting the memory block in there. If it's still got anything that can be read, that machine will read it." She checked the bat over again, then set up a scanner for continuous monitoring of its condition.

"Yes, I told him," Stesha told Quentin, even as she headed back to the kitchen, "I didn't want dinner becoming a sitcom affair of everybody knowing some secrets and nobody knowing what everyone does and doesn't know. It would be much too silly, and I thought you probably wouldn't mind. And I'm reciprocating by bringing you home and feeding you and all," she added with a chuckle. I am an excellent cook!" she echoed Derrick, "though it would help if certain members of the household ate a bit more often!"

"They're fuzzy," Erin pointed out with a half-disgusted chuckle. "I can take a little pill that tastes like oranges and get all kinds of non-fuzzy Vitamin C." She turned in his arms so she was facing him with her hands on his shoulders, as though they were about to dance. "To each their own, I guess. You generally have pretty good taste." Brushing her lips across his, she tested the theory. "Taste like berries. What else is in all those covered dishes?"

"I'm all right," Stesha assured Beeatrizz, suppressing the face she wanted to make at the mental image the giant bee conjured. "No hatching till summertime, actually, when the world is warm again. The cold just bothers me. Let's go inside and see what Gaian Knight has done!" She teleported herself to the entrance, followed closely by a half-dozen surprisingly speedy bees, and walked inside. "It's a lot warmer already," she observed, with some relief. It was fairly dark, as would be expected in a windowless honeycomb, but the bees didn't need light to see. Taking out a seed from her pouch, Stesha made a water lily grow in the palm of her hand, then reached inside it to pull out a flashlight. Flicking on the beam, she played it over the walls of the big inner chamber. "It's huge, and yet it's somehow cozy too," she said approvingly. "What do you all think?"

"Maybe I was just fishing for compliments," she quipped, turning her head to smile at him. "I was half-drunk at the time, remember." Maybe Trevor was too good for her, and maybe they were doomed to eventually go down in flames and she'd eventually be devastated. But for nights like this, and a guy like him, well, she'd taken big risks for far lesser rewards. Before the moment could get too heavy, she asked, "Do you really eat the skin on a kiwi?"

"That's a worthy ambition," Fleur decided thoughtfully. "I think that most of us trust the government to do the right thing and have our backs in a crisis situation, but many of us wouldn't like the government digging too deeply into our personal lives. There's just talk that goes around, you understand? With the people who are afraid of Terminus Babies and other boogeymen like that, some politicians start throwing around ideas about hero licenses and mandatory government teams. We all know it's nonsense, but at the same time, it feels wiser to keep things on the QT." She smiled and took a sip of her milk. "But you're a hero like us," she added, "and you're right about heroes needing to back each other up. There are plenty of dangers in this world that one hero can't handle on his or her own. I make it a point to meet as many heroes as I can, so that I can put people in touch with the folks they need to meet. It's very useful!" She paused for a moment, buttered her bread. "And don't worry about me going to any trouble for lunch. I've been on a cooking kick lately, and my fiance doesn't eat. It's nice to have someone to feed!"

Erin leaned against the motorcycle, watching and staying out of the way of the first aid efforts. "I can't breathe underwater, but I can hold my breath for a long time. Midnight, have you got any rebreathers or scuba tanks or whatever on you?" She wouldn't have been at all surprised to find that he carried them on the Night Cycle, for just such an occasion. Trevor was nothing if not prepared for all eventualities. "Really though, if these things are coming, won't we have an advantage if we wait for them to get to shore?"

Miss A found it hard to restrain a grimace at the idea. "I'm afraid I'd need more prep time to acquire tarpaulins and the other necessary equipment before such an effort," she told him dryly, "but I do appreciate the offer." She homed in on the psionic scanner with laserlike focus, adjusting the settings rapidly as she searched for a better modulation. "I'm getting something, " she told him, restrained excitement in her voice. "Do something a little bigger than what you've been doing with your hand."