Electra

"A summer barbecue will be problematic at best," Stesha agreed with a laugh. Going over to the oven, she drew out the fragrant pan of lasagna, checking with a fork to make sure it had cooked all the way through. "Mm, this is perfect. I'm starving. Quentin should be here anytime. It's so nice that you're both scientists and teachers, I'm sure you'll have so much in common. I've been telling him about you for ages, so it's wonderful that you finally get a chance to meet. And I'm getting a chance to polish up my cooking skills again."

"I'm sure everyone will make it to the wedding," Stesha told him, pleased with the thought. "Nobody has plans for the day after New Year's, especially since it's on a Sunday. It's the perfect time. We'll just make sure that everyone who needs one gets a ride out to Chicago, and it'll be wonderful. It's going to be a heck of a party," she assured him with a laugh, spinning in a circle that had the powder-blue skirt she'd put on for the occasion flaring around her legs. "But after that, I mean, we should have more dinner parties, weekend get-togethers... we could get a grill for the Sanctuary, and have people over for a yard party this spring, before we get, ahh, too busy for awhile." Grinning at the idea, she began tucking the new flowers into the already bursting-full bouquet adorning the table.

Stesha took the advice, pausing with her hands full of flowers to take a deep breath. "Whew. You're right," she told Derrick with a smile, going over to him and wrapping her arms around him. "I've been so crazy lately, getting the wedding plans rebooted and moving stuff around in here, I forget how great things are already. And the food smells fabulous." Standing on her tiptoes, she gave him a light kiss, then tucked a flower in his top buttonhole. "This is going to be fun. We should have people over more often, really. We have plenty of friends who live close by."

"Well, that's an image I'll probably see in my dreams tonight," Miss A said dryly, not seeming too upset. "If you ever do that again, try and get yourself to the lab here, all right? I'd be very interested to see what readings I could get off you then. At the very least, I'd probably win some mad science prize just for the footage," she chuckled. Even as she spoke, she tuned in more closely to her molecular motion scanners. They were picking up something unusual, and though it might just be artifact, it was the closest she'd come so far to actually picking up anything useful off the zombie.

"I was," Miss A nodded, "and I think I've got this poor creature stabilized enough for the trip back to the lab." The cyborg bat was still in a terrible state, but it appeared to be breathing more normally now, at least. "It's going to take quite a bit of work to get him back up to good working condition, but it should be an interesting project. I've never seen cyborg parts quite like this before. Some of them are quite sophisticated. What did you find in the alley?" she asked curiously.

Stesha kept herself busy right up till the last moments before their guests arrived, fussing with the food, or the table settings, or the hundreds of flowers that decorated their small Midtown apartment, which were more verdant and near-overgrown than ever these past few months. The air smelled amazing with the lasagna minutes away from ready and garlic bread baking, but she'd worked herself into a bit of a state anyway, making sure things were ready. "Derrick, could you light the candles and open the wine?" she asked, even as she grew and cut a few more chrysanthemums for the arrangement on the table. "It's just about time." She knew any nerves were silly and out of place tonight. Quentin was her friend, and he certainly didn't stand on ceremony much when they met to talk or do hero work together. But she'd been planning this dinner for such a long time, and it had never worked out, that it had come to assume a greater air of importance than it perhaps deserved. Not to mention that lately she'd become a little obsessed with her home anyway, both this one here and the one on her sanctuary world. It was nice to get a chance to show it off.

"Do all the girls compliment you on that, too?" Miss A asked him teasingly, giving him an unapologetically assessing look. "Your form is excellent, I'll certainly grant you that much, but you don't carry yourself much like a boxer. Definitely like a fencer." She heard the sirens in the distance and sighed a little. The police were on their way to pick up the Fearmaster, who was now rolling around on the ground and gibbering a little, possibly from madness, possibly from boredom at listening to the two heroes flirting.

No sooner had the second robot sucker-punched Gabriel than the rosebriar vines were upon it! They slithered around the robot's feet with a soft rustling-leaf sound, climbing its legs like a trellis and wrapping around all its waving limbs until it was bound even more securely than its predecessor in the sweet-smelling trap. Outside the room and outside the fight, Stesha made her way across the building towards the battle, picking her way carefully to avoid running over anyone while her attention was split. In her hands she still carried the violet, which by now was looking great and almost needed repotting.

Fleur is going to use the same stunted AP, and try to grapple the one attacking Gabriel from behind. Woo, nat 20! That's a DC 48 to avoid the grapple, wascally wobot!

"The first thing you should know about me is that I hardly ever play fair," Miss A told him with a smile that was positively feline in its satisfaction. "It's a tough world out here, a girl needs all the advantages she can get." With a soft laugh, she did a perfect back walkover on her invisible rail, coming up without a hair out of place. "But it's good to know that there's at least one freaky genius in Freedom City who isn't blond and blue-eyed," she quipped. "What's your specialty?"

"He'll have a very different set of challenges," Miss A agreed. "But this research may be beneficial to him as well. If I can get you a functional camouflage, he might be interested in that as well. It's not going to be easy for any free Omegadrone, but there's no sense in making it harder for you than it has to be. I think that's enough aptitude tests for today," she decided, "why don't you get up on the table and I'll do some more in-depth scanning and run some simulations. Could you leave your armor off but produce your power pike, or does it not work that way?"

Miss A left him alone to do the tests in peace, after making sure he was comfortable and didn't need anything to eat or drink. She went over to one corner and sat down at a terminal of her own, sitting very quietly while she worked. Blocks away, Gina darted upstairs, still keeping a tenuous connection with the robot, and nuked herself a Hot Pocket which she ate standing up. She guzzled a twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew, ate a banana for potassium, and considered it a healthy lunch. A quick bathroom break (because it was really unfortunate when she got too caught up in Miss A to remember that) and she was back down to the basement and into her favorite robot-inhabiting recliner in less than ten minutes. "How are you doing?" Miss A asked Murdock after about ten minutes, looking up from her own work.

Gabriel's urging had the desired effect, and the bidding ramped up! The businesswomen put their heads together and hung in there, while the middle aged women both dropped out. The older man continued, still looking perfectly composed about the whole thing, while the young father sweated and hemmed, but held on, for the moment. The bids climbed above three thousand, twice the previous top price, with the crowd now cheering for every new bid! Miss A watched from the sidelines, smiling as Gabriel worked the crowd.

"Of course, Doctor." Quickly, Miss A picked up her pad and called up the results from the interrupted scans. She'd been running several at once, which wasn't unheard of, if the technician was skilled enough, and everything seemed normal. For awhile, anyway. "You can see how his readings are indicating some degree of stress all through the scan," she pointed out, gesturing to the appropriate points on the readout. "At fifteen-twenty-two-seventeen, the first highlighted point, I asked him to try and relax. We had a short conversation that lasted till fifteen-twenty-three-oh-one, when his readings began to become erratic. The initial readings were consistent with the intentional expenditure of metahuman energy. I thought he was doing it on purpose, so I asked him to stop. He called for help here, at fifteen-twenty-three-thirty-three, and I shut the scans down two seconds later, but by then, he had already begun to transform."

Politely, Miss A stepped off the railing to let him pass as he paced, standing comfortably on nothing. "Oh my god!" she said with exaggerated shock, her eyes rounding as she made a moue of surprise. "How did you guess? That's it, my cover is ruined. I'll have to return to the motherland in disgrace." She continued speaking in Russian, words he couldn't understand, but that sounded quite overwrought, undercut with humor. "And my clothes will never be the same, either," she finished, switching back to English.

"You can get together with other students to make a team, but the faculty will decide whether to make you official or not," Erin told Corbin and Jill. "Even if you're not on a team, you go down to the Doom Room for some simulation, powers training, things like that where you're supervised. But you can't sign up for a time slot or go down there on your own unless you're on a team or with someone who's on a team. Partly it's to keep people from doing stuff that's too dangerous, partly it's to keep the traffic down. There's only so many hours in the day, and a simulation can take hours to run."

"Oh, a mask will do, I suppose," Miss A allowed, unfolding her long legs and floating through the air till she was balanced on the railing too, en pointe with the toe of her other foot pressed to her opposite knee. "If you don't feel like being creative about it." She gave him a courtly bow, then pirouetted slowly on the bar. "Showing your face doesn't matter if no one knows it anyway. Though I will admit, you make the masked look work for you," she told him with a sly grin.

"Actually," Miss A cut in, "while we're absolutely delighted to have you here, Doctor, and it would be wonderful to have you monitoring the opening, a speech might not be the best idea. After all, though I'm sure we'll be working hand in hand on a number of projects, we don't want to confuse the press and the public that we're actually a subsidiary of ArcheTech. Seeing the doctor give a speech, no matter what the substance of it, would give the wrong impression. Today should be a day where we speak our own words. I'm sure you understand, Doctor Archeville?" she asked with a smile.

"That's why they call it a secret identity, handsome," Miss A admonished playfully, waggling a finger at him. "But I will admit that everything I know about Tulsa, I've learned secondhand, as I've only ever been there once. Can't I just be the embodiment of American values and traditions, all wrapped up in one heroic package?" She smiled brilliantly and folded her legs up under her, sitting on the air.

Miss Americana Character Score Theme Song [groove]23302970[/groove] Never been so high, like my six million dollar smile. Look how fast I can run, never going back where I came from. It's the answer I've been looking for, I don't want to be human anymore! No more being unhappy, no more pain can touch me, We have the technology, better, stronger, faster... Fight Song [groove]23303000[/groove] Somewhere after midnight, in my wildest fantasy, Somewhere just beyond my reach, there's someone reaching back for me. Racing on the thunder and rising with the heat, Gonna take a superman to sweep me off my feet! Romance Song [groove]23302972[/groove] Your lovely arms and legs are attached by metal pegs, Your loose embrace just makes me love you even more so. We would be the perfect match, if I could just get you detached, From the steel support rod bolted to your torso! (my little darling) I know we'll rise above those who would condemn our love, Resisting all their efforts to examine it. Oh but if they only knew the loving heart that beats in you, Notwithstanding that you are inanimate! Tragedy Song [groove]23302984[/groove] Call your lawyer, deny the rumors, but some lies are true. You can go there if you want to, when this ends is up to you. When you're ten miles up and you're coming down, You don't feel a thing when you hit the ground. You just come apart and it's like you never were...

The bidding opened strong, rising rapidly from the opener of 250 to over a thousand dollars in less than a minute. That wasn't much of a surprise, a photogenic hero could expect more than that as a charity honorarium for most speaking engagements. It looked like most of the bidders weren't planning on having them come to speak to their organizations, though. There was one group of young, professional-looking women who had their heads together and kept laughing between bids, which one representative was making for them. Three middle-aged women and one middle-aged man with few other distinguishing features, and one young father in subtly expensive clothes and a six or seven year old boy who was watching the action with hero-worship written all over his face. Two thousand dollars knocked out one of the women and the group bid was becoming more reluctant, but the rest still seemed determined!

"It's the problem with living in Freedom City. They only have so many keys to go around," Miss A said with a chuckle. "If you lived in, say, Tulsa, I'm sure you could get the key to the city. Not to mention all the farmers' daughters swooning over you... and their fathers polishing their shotguns. Even so, I can't imagine you have much trouble coaxing the girls to sneak out of their houses." She leaned casually against a decorative brick planter nearby, keeping one eye on the Fearmaster.

"Sounds like we'd better get to work," Erin muttered, brushing rock dust off herself and looking up towards the mouth of the volcano. "And we don't have a lot of time, so maybe we should split up? Midnight, Psyche, can either of you find us the biggest nearby source of daka crystals? If that's what we'll need, we'd better get started collecting them right away. Phalanx can pound them out of the ground and bring them here, and maybe Edge and I can head straight up to the summit and get a look at what's going on there. If the cage is intact, we can all go help with the evacuation." Personally, Erin didn't think even Mark had that kind of luck, but it never hurt to plan ahead.

"I was running a standard set of medical scans on him," Miss A said, her voice carrying the strain of tension. "Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, and I know there was no malfunction, because I was personally managing the machines." She knew he would understand what she meant by that. Suddenly, his energy readings began to spike. I thought he was playing a prank, as he hadn't been taking the process too seriously, but then he called out to stop the tests. By the time everything shut down, he was like this..." She gestured to the mess on the floor. "He's still conscious."

"I understand," Miss A told him simply. "We'll get you fixed up, and things will be much better for you. If you want, we can start the research portion right now. I have some simple aptitude tests that you can take that will let me learn more about your mental faculties, and then we can move on to physical tests. You never know when some small piece of information could be critical in learning about Terminus technology." Truthfully, she didn't expect to learn much from the aptitude tests, but if he'd sit down and take them, it would give her ten or twenty minutes to eat her lunch in peace.