Electra

Erin had brought her lunch along on this little jaunt, packing up JJ into the stroller with his sunglasses, hat, and sunscreen all carefully in place. It was a cloudy day, and under the trees she'd let him pull off the shades, but there was no point in taking chances. Still, it was probably one of the last really nice days they were going to have this year, now that October was draining away rapidly into winter. It would be a shame to waste it. Plus she liked watching Jack Junior pushing up on his elbows to look around, or rolling over to find some especially interesting leaf or piece of grass. "Good job, JJ!" she congratulated him as the baby reached out and grabbed hold of a nearby twig. "You got it! When you get bigger, I'll teach you to hit things with it!" Even as she spoke, Erin became aware of a presence near them. Her head immediately came up as she looked around, checking for any potential threat. She was both relieved and surprised to see Mrs. Faretti coming towards them. It had been quite awhile since that notable had been around, one reason why Erin had been making so much money lately. She waved, picking JJ up so he could see. "Look, it's Mommy!" she said encouragingly. "Wave hi to mommy!" With some help from Erin, the baby sort of waved his arm in Taylor's direction.

Erin folded her legs under her, turning so she faced Trevor while he lounged. "Thanks," she told him quietly. "It doesn't usually feel that way, but I guess when it takes so long to get better, I don't really feel it happening. But I know I'm stronger and more secure than I was last year, or the year before that. It's been two full years now, I came over on October 17 in 2008. It seems weird to think about it that way." Giving in to the moment, she set aside her coffee and stretched out next to him, letting the campus and the city watch over themselves for a few minutes. "Pretty day."

"Hey Jill," Erin replied cordially enough, most of her attention still on the brown packing box she was meticulously peeling the tape off. "You're here kind of early today, aren't you?" She didn't pay huge amounts of attention to most of her schoolmates, but she knew Jill was a townie and spent her spare time with the Interceptors. It was rare to see her on campus outside school hours. Oliver was interested in the new arrival as well, getting up and stretching languidly before padding over to investigate Jill's ankles. He seemed happy enough with what he found, since he then twined himself around her legs and purred to invite a petting.

Stesha nodded. "I've met a few of them out fighting villains and patrolling the city. It seems so dangerous, but I imagine it's better to start when you're well-trained and closely supervised than to just blunder around like I did at first." She laughed, remembering herself what seemed a very long time ago now. "The first other superhero I ran into was Divine. She was covered in about five gallons of corn syrup from a fight she'd gotten into at a factory, and in the dark she looked like a monster. I tried to run away, fell off a porch, and wound up with her taking me inside to help me clean up. Now that I think about it, a super school is the best idea I've heard in a long time!"

The box Erin had been waiting for arrived with the morning mail, much to her delight. It was pretty big, too, so even better. From what she'd read on her counterpart's Facebook, things were looking up for Roger at work, so the White family's finances were not as stressed as they'd been this time last year. And even then, they had sent her a birthday package. Since Alex was busy doing something with her company on her computer that Erin couldn't begin to understand, she headed out into the common room with Oliver at her heels, sitting down at the table and picking the tape off the box carefully, just to prolong the anticipation.

"It's easier not to talk about it," Erin acknowledged, looking over at him. "It's not like it's ever not there in part of my mind, but talking makes me think about it more. And then I always wonder how people are going to react, if they're going to be all freaked out, or think I'm lying, or whatever, even if I'm only telling a little bit. But I do feel better because I told you. It's easier if we understand where we're both coming from, I think." She shrugged and picked up her coffee again, feeling a little bit more on balance.

"Yeah, I'm sure it will be," Erin agreed, nodding again. "It really sounds like a cool thing to do. Do they pay for all that stuff, the training, and then your room and board while you're down there, or is it all sort of you have to make your own way? And did they do background checks on you and stuff like that?" Not that UNISON would need a punch-in-the-face type superhero on any of its teams or anything like that, she was just interested on a curiosity level.

"Yes, of course, Doctor," Miss A agreed immediately. "I'm eager to see everything. I hope to speak with you again soon, Dr. Silver." She fell into step with Archeville as they left the lab, tucking aside her analysis for later. It was one thing to evaluate someone's work as a colleague when it was your job to do so, but she suspected she'd be better off not making waves yet unless asked to do so. It wasn't even her first day yet, after all! "I know I've mentioned it before, but this is a very impressive facility as a whole, Doctor Archeville."

"I was interested to see whether it could actually be thought out of existence," Miss A said unrepentantly, "and hopefully before it upset any more of my beakers. I do think you're safe for the most part, it's going to be the rare civilian or villain who just happens to understand quantum physics to the point where he even thinks to disbelieve your creations out of existence. What's the longest you've ever been able to keep anything your created?" she asked curiously.

"I'm not mad at you," Erin told him, happy to turn the conversation as well. "I just hope you don't think differently about me after all of that, after I told you about where I come from, and we had all that stuff with the zombies. It was kind of bad timing all around. I probably should've told you earlier, then it wouldn't all have happened at once and been so, you know, weird. I've had to talk about my past before, when I first got here and to the doctors, but you're the first person I've told it all to who matters."

"It's not about that," Erin said, waving all that aside impatiently. "That's just having superpowers that let me hit things, and being at a school where I train fifty hours a week. I'm not like you or Mark or Alex, with the whole... I don't know, the heroic mindset I guess. I want to do the right thing and help people, yeah, but sometimes I feel like I'm just doing hero work to pay off my debt to the Freedom League, or prove I'm not crazy, or to make sure I have a job after graduation." She scrubbed her face. "If I could feel it like you do, I'd be a better hero. Anyway, I really don't want you to be messed up just because I was. Zombies screw up enough stuff already."

Miss A furrowed her perfect brow, looking at the sphere like a disappointed schoolmarm. "You do not exist in any effectively quantifiable manner," she informed it. The sphere wobbled, then popped out of existence, and immediately her frown changed to a smile. "You should be careful with those things," she told him cheerfully, "there's a great deal of sensitive equipment in here. I have no idea what an entity in quantum flux would do to my readings, to say nothing of the things it could break." She carefully replaced the test tubes on their shelf and floated back to earth.

If nobody else can throw in, I'll pledge a second PP from Miss A. She also has Wealth 2, so she can help IC with providing the equipment and capital for the maze. I don't think Dock or Living Space are necessary, all our science types have homes, as far as I know.

Erin put down her coffee before she dented the cup on accident, massaging the bridge of her nose with her fingertips as she tried to think. "You didn't do anything wrong, Trev," she said again, hoping to find some words that would help. "I don't want you to feel bad because you're a better hero than I am, cause that's just stupid. Maybe I was kind of upset, maybe I had to take a couple of days to think about it, but that's nothing to do with you. Dr. Marquez is always telling me that even if I can't control anything else, I can control my own feelings and reactions, and he's right. I already said I should't have asked you to not go. I don't know what else I can say."

Miss A yelped, rising into the air herself to field the test tubes and address the ball. With the tubes securely in one arm, she told the ball, "Careful analysis of your state of quantum flux indicates that you do not, in fact, actually exist." She glared sternly at it, wondering if the errant creation would actually pop out of existence. "Your accent does suggest a possible suspect," she told him, "but I am, of course, only guessing."

The corners of Erin's mouth turned up in a humorless smile. "Well, sometimes life sucks," she pointed out. Cradling her coffee in both hands, she looked over at him, not sure what to do with him or for him now. She was trying really hard to be adult about this, but it didn't seem to be working. Telling him the rest, that she'd felt hurt that he cared more about strangers than about her in that moment, that was hardly going to help, and it would be embarrassing, too. She was supposed to be a hero herself, wasn't she? "Heroes have to do the right thing even if it sucks, even if it hurts," she said aloud. "There's not really anything we can do about that. And I don't know what you could've done differently anyway, even looking back at it."

"You did the right thing," Erin replied quietly, keeping her eyes trained on the campus below. "We both know it. It was... it was a bad moment for me, and I shouldn't have asked you to stay. I know it wasn't fair. Your first priority is protecting the city and the people, and that's the heroic way to be, right?" The words sounded almost rehearsed, as though she'd worked on them ahead of time. "I just... I was so afraid," she admitted, then subsided, taking a long drink from her own cup. The caffeine didn't touch the weariness, but it was something to do with her hands.

"I was kind of freaking out," Erin acknowledged, trying to sound matter-of-fact about it. "It's okay, I needed some time to, you know, pull myself together again." She ran a hand over her hair and tugged on the ends, shoving aside the confused tangle of embarrassment and loneliness that had been underlying zombie paranoia for the last few days. Eventually she would work through the stupider emotions, but until then, she didn't really want to show them off. "Like I said, getting better now. I checked all over the city, and nobody's seen any zombies for days. Even Dead Head is laying pretty low, though apparently he's still around somewhere. I guess we did all right."

Erin nodded. "It sounds really nice," she told him sincerely, almost wistfully. "I'm sure you'll be really good at it, too. You're good at giving people hope, and when you give them hope and houses and clean water, that's pretty much a winning combination. You think you're going to start right after you graduate, or wait a little while, what with the paperwork and your mom and all? I mean, hopefully she'll be a lot better by then, I know."

Erin looked at him, then out over the grounds again. She suspected he wouldn't take a generic "okay" for an answer, for all he wasn't the type to pry. "Getting better," she told him instead, which was sort of true. "I didn't even get detention, and that's a minor miracle." She'd been doing tons of time in Marquez's office, between the trip to Anti-Earth and the zombie thing, but when he'd seen how shaken she was after the invasion, he hadn't assigned punishment on top of that. "How are you doing? How's your grandpa?"

"There aren't a lot of heroes in Freedom City who are set up to deal with mass evacuations or endangered civilians," Stesha pointed out. "And we've had a lot of fights, especially this past year or so, where regular people have been caught in the crossfire. The fighting heroes have done a great job trying to end the threat and minimize the damage, but there's only so much they can do. The battle has to be fought," she said with a little shrug. "I had just been keeping them in the pocket dimension I can access through the plants, but it tended to make scared people panic, and even regular people uncomfortable. Now I've got all this space, so I figured why not make a place to put people that makes a little more sense, and has more resources. Though I am worried that someone's bound to climb over the hedge and wander off," she admitted with a frown. "There's nothing really dangerous around here, but I'd hate to lose someone and not notice it." She walked over to the nearby hedge, perking it up a little with a wave of her hand. "I've been wondering, do they teach you rescues and first aid and things like that at Claremont as part of the curriculum?"

It wasn't easy to find Erin today, she wasn't in any of her usual haunts, and nobody had seen her in a few hours. Finally he ran into Oliver, who although he was a bit cool and didn't purr and rub up against Trevor's legs like usual, apparently took pity on him. The cat led him to the emergency stairs to the roof of the dorm, then left him to his own devices, apparently trusting that the young engineer would get the message. Erin was sitting on top of the HVAC assembly at the center of the roof, a high vantage point that let her keep an eye out not only over the campus, but of the surrounding area beyond the wall as well. She had her books stacked up beside her, but was just sitting for now, looking out over the city around them. She looked really tired, which for Erin meant she was probably pulling an all-weeker, rather than an all-nighter. As soon as his feet hit the gravel roof, she turned sharply to look at him, then smiled. "Hey stranger."

"That's great," Erin said, struggling to pull herself back from the negativity that Dr. Marquez was always warning her against. She had enough problems in this universe, didn't she, without worrying about one more person she couldn't save? "I knew they'd be interested in you. Is there a lot of paperwork, or do you think it's going to be mostly for form? I can't really imagine them turning you down for any reason, since you want to work with them. You could do a lot of good."

"I've been wracking my brain," Erin admitted. "I don't know what I could do to help her. She's just... she's so broken. Just from seeing where she had to live, and hearing about her, and seeing her for those few minutes, I don't know what anyone could do with her. The Freedom League made a huge investment of money and time and resources in me when they brought me here, and I wasn't nearly so bad. Nobody is equipped to take her on, and I couldn't ask them to. And I couldn't just let her run free, she would still be terrified and miserable, and she'd kill anyone in her way. The only thing I could think of to do, you wouldn't want to help me with," she told him flatly.

Erin stared down at the shoes, turning the one she was holding over and over in her hands. "It wasn't really that," she finally said. "I mean, I was mad that you healed the bad guy, after we'd seen all the terrible things he'd done and was going to do. But I guess it was easier to be mad than to think too hard about how things turned out for me on that world." She paused for a second and blew out a breath. "I mean, she was me. Not some alternate universe opposite, she and I had the same lives, and if the divergence had gone the other way, I would be her. And I couldn't do anything... I didn't do anything for her but send her back into hell. Knowing that Hex was right there to hurt her again made it worse, it wasn't the root of it, you know?"