Electra
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OOC thread for Fleur and Harrier meeting.
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The week of Thanksgiving came with bitterly cold nights in Freedom City, the sort that made a not-entirely-well plant controller want to curl up inside her warm house with a good book or maybe some mindless television. But it was her patrol night, and she was doing her very best to keep up her normal routine, so that wasn't an option. It didn't mean Stesha couldn't hurry through her work as fast as she could! Bundled up with a green sweatshirt over her tunic and long johns under her pants, an extra hat beneath her cowl, along with a festive red scarf and gloves, she hurried her way through the south side, dropping bulbs for the spring and clearing away any unhealthy dead growth. After an hour, she was so cold and miserable that she stopped in at a grocery store and bought a box of Rice Krispie Treats cereal, her latest must-have snack. Munching to avoid the shivering, she made her way through Lincoln Place Park, dissolving away dead annuals as she went. Eventually she sat down for a little break, ignoring the way the grass began to green around her bench.
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"What about with the right partner?" Erin asked, a hint of teasing in her tone. "I seem to remember that before the prom went all to hell, the dancing was pretty fun. Even the slow dances. The swing is more fun though." JJ interrupted her by finishing his bottle and noisily beginning to suck air through the new holes he'd created. She tugged the bottle away, then sat him up and started patting his back.
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"Fascinating," Miss A murmured, adjusting the readings several times to confirm what she was seeing. "I'm not getting any readings at all, or any more than I would from an inanimate object. And yet there you are, moving and speaking. It's really quite astonishing." She rolled the table back from the scanner to let him sit up. "Do you have a theory on how and why your powers work they way that they do?"
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Erin nodded at that. "Yeah, even if you're rich, it's probably hard to get everything you need into one building. Besides, it gets boring training alone all the time. When did you start dancing?" she asked then, comfortable enough to be easy in her questioning. "Did you have to do cotillion and stuff like that when you were in school? I read about that somewhere, like the PE unit in ballroom dance, except they take it seriously." She laughed. "It's kind of hard to imagine, when I think back on my gym classes in regular high school."
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"Exactly!" Fleur confirmed, pleased with his understanding. "Helping people is the most important part, whether you do that by stopping a criminal or saving a life more directly. Myself, I rarely throw down with supervillains if I can help it. But I can feel proud of the work that I do, getting people out of dangerous areas and to safety, not to mention feeding them and making the places where they live nicer. No hero is ever superfluous. We all have our part to play to keep the city and the world safe."
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"All right," Stesha replied, digging a handful of seeds out of a pouch on her belt. She held them ready, little vines already beginning to grow and curl around her fingers as she followed her friend to the crypt. Even in the dead dry grass of the cemetery, the place where she'd been standing had formed a fairy ring of grass and flowers, even a few little mushrooms. She ignored that, keeping her attention on the matter at hand. "Just be careful. He's crazy, but that makes him tricky. I'm sure he was hoping to get a little bit of revenge out of this."
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"It's a nice idea," Stesha replied wistfully, "I just don't know if I'm ready to be quite that open with basically everyone I know about my secret identity. Telling my folks was one thing, and that went pretty well, but telling all their friends and all my siblings and everyone in my hometown... I'm not so sure about that. But if we can get it all together by spring, it's going to be just amazing here. It'll be like fairyland." She sighed, looking around. "JJ will probably be running around on his own by then. Wow." She led the way away from the dome, back towards the forest. "Oh, do you want to see the giant bee meadow?" she suggested.
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Erin smiled as she took the card, sticking it into her pocket for safekeeping. "Thanks," she told him. "You know, if you ever get a chance, you should meet my friend Edge sometime. I think you and he would hit it off." Sure, Edge spent most of his working life mostly ignoring science, but he had the same over-the-top happy-to-be-who-you-are attitude that the scientist presented. Plus their costumes almost matched, from what she could see under the lab coat.
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"It's like gymnastics classes for babies," Erin explained. "Basically I think it's just a big room with things to crawl over and under and those big bouncy balls and some trampolines. Mostly it's just a way for babies to socialize and get exercise. JJ would really like the playing part, but there's no way you'd be able to keep him off the other kids, especially the slow, fat babies." She gave JJ a look of amused tolerance, then settled in comfortably next to Trevor. "So where did you get your gymnastics training?" she asked Trevor. "Did your grandfather actually do all that with you, or did you have classes?"
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Erin considered that, considered how useful it might be to have someone outside the school who could open a dimensional door for her, especially now that James was so hard to get in touch with. Not for the Terminus project, obviously. It was too soon to even begin thinking that way, with so much left to plan. But she had other missions left undone far away from her cozy new home on Prime. "I was wondering," she began, "if you would let me keep that offer as a favor. I know some place I want to go, but I'm not ready today."
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Erin hesitated for a moment, looking very torn. She looked back to the alcove, then back at Professor Cape. Finally she worked up her nerve and asked, "So when you say you can go to alternative dimensions, does that mean you can go to any dimension at all? What kind of information would you need to be able to go someplace specific? I mean, do they have addresses, or coordinates, or do you just need to know what they're like?"
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"It's beautiful," Fleur told him with a smile. "You're very talented. Is that what you were doing out tonight, making sketches?" She noticed that he seemed to have plenty of stuff on hand for drawing, but not much for villain apprehension. "You know," she continued, "one area where lifting and jumping is amazingly useful is disaster rescue. Were you here when the Grue invaded this past summer? Every superhero who could lift a car or more was in high demand, trying to get people out of wreckage or move debris out of the way of emergency teams. You could concentrate on things like being able to read a disaster scene, learning first aid and CPR, things like that. You could save a lot of lives someday. Not all of hero work is foiling bank robberies, after all."
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"Yuck," Erin commented with a laugh, even as JJ gave up the pretense of sleep to regard Trevor with big red eyes, his little hands still locked around the bottle. "I'm not sure he believes you. Or that he knows what a cigarette is. Poor guy doesn't get out that much." She snuggled the baby against her chest, then headed towards the plush living room with its expansive entertainment center. "Phantom was talking about taking him to Gymboree or some baby class like that, but it seems like such a horrible idea to let him be around other babies. "But he's very sweet once he realizes he can't bite you. Aren't you?" she cooed to the baby, settling down on the gigantic sofa.
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"Hmm, jumpers and lifters..." Fleur said thoughtfully, continuing her work as Powerhouse drew. "Well, I believe there's Wander on Young Freedom, but she's just a youngster. I think Cannonade is a jumper, or so I've heard. I don't know much about him. Fulcrum, from the Interceptors, is very strong, but I think she actually flies. You could try looking up any of them, or ask Doktor Archeville about them." She chuckled, dropping a few more bulbs. "It's a little strange, but most of my contacts tend to be heroes with more supernatural powers, a little closer to my own."
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"Um, thanks," Erin said, wishing she had her notebook with her so she could write down some of those words to look up later. It would look a little suspicious if she couldn't name what she was supposed to have done in the lab for her report. "We have a zero gravity simulator at the school, I train with it sometimes, just in case. It's okay, if your stomach is strong and you don't just barf." She hesitated for a minute, weighing the pleasure of getting off school early with the necessity of a good grade on this report. "Maybe I could help you move those boxes?" she suggested again.
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"They're kind of weird people," Erin told him with a wry smile, "but that's sort of par for the course with a lot of hero types." She looked down at JJ, adjusting the bottle so he could get every drop. "I like babysitting," she admitted. "Not just because it pays really well, but it's kind of fun to play with him and take care of him. I guess maybe I always want to protect people, but with JJ, it's actually my job and he always lets me." There was a rueful undercurrent there, and perhaps a tacit apology as well. Erin knew that Trevor didn't always appreciate being protected, but it wasn't easy to stop. She chuckled. "Look, he looks like he's about ready to fall asleep, but I can see his eyes on you. He's hoping you put your hand in reach."
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"The person you need to talk to is Doktor Archeville, at ArcheTech," Fleur told him with great confidence. "He studies superheroes and metahumans, and he knows a lot about the origin of various superpowers. He's very trustworthy, and he knows most superheroes in Freedom City. If anyone can figure out where your powers come from, especially if they're from a scientific source, he's the man who can do it." She dropped a few bulbs into the ground where she was standing, the brown spheroids burrowed their way into the ground without any further assistance, ready to hibernate through the long winter.
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Erin stared at Professor Cape blankly as he launched into his enthusiastic explanation. She wished Alex were here to interpret what he was saying without having to ask. "I like Star Trek," she said inanely, for lack of anything better to say. "Are you saying you can go out into space with your powers? That's cool, we have some teachers who can do that. And my friend has a spaceship. Um, are we going to finish in the lab today, or do you think you want to rest now?"
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"I've never stopped a bank robbery myself," Fleur admitted with a laugh. "We all have our skills, and our areas of expertise." Leaning down, she picked a yellow tulip and handed it to him. "I think the best advice I can give to you is to do what you can. If you can lift things and jump, learn how to use those skills the best you can, in all the different ways you can. Growing plants may not sound like a particularly good power for getting into fights, but I've learned how to adapt my powers to do a lot of different things. Work with your powers, get creative, and practice all the time. You'll do fine."
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Even behind the black domino mask and shaded by her cowl, Fleur's eyes were crinkled with amusement, once she got over the initial startlement. The big man's enthusiasm was endearing, in an odd way, and he was hardly the first new hero who'd been excited to meet her. In fact, despite the outward differences, he reminded her a little bit of herself, more than a year ago now, when she'd first met Divine by falling over her porch. "I'm Fleur de Joie, and it's a pleasure to meet you, Powerhouse," she said cordially, extending a hand. Fleur de Joie was a reasonably well known hero in Freedom City, and when she stepped into the moonlight, it was easier to recognize her distinctive costume. She rarely entered combat in front of the cameras, but spent a great deal of time beautifying Freedom City's parks and gardens. "My power is plant control, but I occasionally jump in to stop a villain. Lifting and jumping are important powers too, though."
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Miss A launches another power attack against the robot, this time starting up a Combined Attack. She rolls a 16! DC 29, before the other two pop in to help.
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Miss A watched in some annoyance as the robot was barely scratched by their attacks. A new technique was called for. "Come on," she called to the others. "Everyone hit him together! It's the only way we'll be able to take him down!" She matched actions to words, sending intense beams of focused colored light shooting once again towards the metal carapace. "Hurry!" she urged them.
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"In a straight-out melee fight, no one at the school can beat me, including the teacher," Erin said matter-of-factly. "But I'm not that great a student regularly, so I guess it balances out. I don't think the school has any adult students, but if you ask, they might set you up with a tutor or something. Maybe like after-hours lessons. You don't really need to do backflips, you have powers that mean you can fight from a safe distance. You don't have to get in there and mix it up." Erin looked back towards the alcove again, almost in spite of herself. "It's a nice thing to have."