Electra

"That was quick thinking on her part," Erin said. "If she'd just run away from it, it might have attracted others, and she'd have been in big trouble. But the therapy is a good idea." She couldn't really think of anything else she wanted to say right then, not that was polite and conversational anyway. Instead she took the shoes out of the box and looked them over, then started lacing them up. "These are really nice," she told him.

"Yeah, it's the biggest shopping week in the year, I think," Erin agreed. "I'll probably get on Alex's computer and go shopping online, now that I have a bank account and stuff." The bank account had been a nightmare to get, but it was nice to have. "After next week, I'll be able to get a debit card and everything, so I can shop without it being a problem." She hesitated for a second. "So how's your mom doing?" she asked, somewhat awkwardly.

The pajamas had a definite "Alvin and the Chipmunks" vibe, what with the giant initial sewn on it, but the fabric was soft, and they were the right size. And the shoes were a decent brand and not pink, so they were entirely perfect. "Thanks," she told him sincerely. "I really appreciate it. Did your mom make the decorations?" she asked. Mark could've done it himself, but it looked like it was actually stitched, something he generally didn't have the patience to detail. "Oliver still loves that pillow thing from last year."

Mark's guess was right, as they usually were. He managed to dodge the RA for the girls' floor and found Erin at her desk with the door half open. She had her chemistry book open and a notebook in front of her, as she often did in the evenings, but she didn't seem to have done much homework, since the page was blank. She looked tired, but she was certainly alert enough, since her head came up the moment he paused outside the door. "Oh, hey Mark," she said, unable to inject any enthusiasm into her tone. "What's up?"

"Secret identities are very important," Miss Americana agreed judiciously, making sure to tuck away the threatening smile. "It's the rare superhero who entirely abandons her civilian identity to go full-time, if only because it does feel a bit silly to go to meetings and job interviews and introduce oneself as Miss Americana. I totally understand the need for them. However, they do certainly get in the way from time to time, and they certainly make it more difficult to create a network of like-minded scientists, super or no." She set aside her half-finished soda and began to check on some readings from a set of monitors running continual field-stress experiments. "I suppose it's a decision every hero has to make for themselves."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Silver." Miss Americana gave the scientist a megawatt smile, but most of her attention was focused on what the woman had been building on her screen. It only took an instant to look over and synthesize the salient details of the project, just by looking at the schematics and the formula the woman had been inputting. It was certainly an interesting idea, an energy cell that looked to be borrowed from some sort of focused-energy beam, but the danger of overheating seemed much too great to her. She refrained from mentioning that, for the moment, and instead looked around the lab. "This is an amazing facility you have here, Doctors," she told both of them. "I confess I've built a lot of my own equipment from the ground up, it will be an interesting new exercise to get a chance to use the state of the art."

It wasn't exactly difficult to see through Supercape's paper-thin deception. Now she was sure he was one of the civilian men at the brunch. Now that she thought on it, Liebniz was too short, frail and old to fit the bill. He could be the other professor, Quentin Quill, or John Fraser, who'd looked a bit older, but could easily have dyed his hair and affected a limp. Interesting. "I would like to get in touch with some of those people again," she agreed, "but most of them seem to have been civilians, unless they simply all chose to hide their identities. Getting civilians deeply involved with a superlab seems a little bit irresponsible, given the shenanigans heroes tend to get into. I do plan on speaking to Dr. Archeville again soon, though. He is probably the best connected scientist in the area, if not anywhere."

"I'm afraid I'm not set up for either of those things at the moment," Miss A said with an apologetic shrug. "As I mentioned, I'm still moving in, and, well, those things are both a little outside my area of expertise anyway. I'm sure someone has those things, it's just a matter of finding out who, and pooling resources. There must be a more efficient way." Efficient herself, Miss A stowed away her tools, then went over to the minifridge and got herself a can of Diet Mountain Dew. As she drank, she took a thoughtful look around the lab. "Honestly, there's just not enough room here for anything a superhero might need. Meeting other heroes is a good start, but we need a better way to work together."

"I'm not quite at escape velocity speeds," Miss A told him, "at least not yet." She felt a little bit bad for teasing him, both because he seemed annoyed and because it had been a slip of persona, but what was done was done. "And I imagine that Grue technology is probably reasonably hardy against the rigors of space. I know a chemist I may be able to consult with on finding a nullifying reagent, that would probably be the safest option. Do you know any space fliers, if it becomes necessary?"

I can toss in a pp or two for Miss A, though someone else is going to have to actually design the thing. =)

Miss A turned to look at him, giving him an enigmatic smile. "Planck it is," she agreed. "Just dial 6626068 when you want to get into your phone. I'd need to actually dig in and modify the hardware to make it totally untraceable, but this will make anyone interested in tracking you work quite a bit harder. If you're interested, I can put something together for you that will do more, but that'll take some time and some parts." She looked over towards the bomb thoughtfully. "I'll need to take the bomb apart to access the gas, then I'll probably rig up some storage device to keep it secure until I can find somewhere to dispose of it. Probably not inside a plastic plant, though," she said with the faintest of smirks on her lovely face as she handed him the phone.

"That's certainly a field I'm interested in, as a scientific observer," Miss A told the doctor with a nod. "I did extensive studies on metahuman flight and superstrength, of course, since they are of particular interest to me. The sheer range of superhuman abilities is phenomenal, and just begging to be categorized and studied in more depth. I wouldn't call it my forte, but I have been thinking and doing some research on what it would take to build superhuman prostheses, both for the disabled and for industrial or security functions. Being able to replace a lost limb with a perfect replacement would be good, but making it better than what was lost would be optimal. I assume it wouldn't be a problem to interface with your medical research team from here?"

Unsure of what she was expected to do now, Erin backed up out of the way of the shifting lights and colors, and watched the participants instead of attempting to play the game. They seemed to use their simulator a little more cavalierly, but that made sense, since there were a lot fewer people competing for time on it. And it wasn't as though she hadn't managed to get into the Doom Room for fun once, when she and Mike had played baseball. It looked like the Interceptors spent a lot of time joking around and teasing each other, which seemed to work for them. She didn't think it was necessarily a dynamic she'd ever get used to herself, but then, she wasn't really a very fun sort of person. She was interested, though, to see how they were going to play the game.

"I haven't done a lot of experiments with miniaturization, beyond what I've needed to create prostheses and... other projects," she told him as they walked. "I simply haven't had the equipment available to me, though I've done some theoretical work. As far as my own abilities, I think the simplest machine I've been able to inhabit was a toaster with a timer and burn sensor, and the smallest was a digital multifunction watch. It's not so much a question of size or complexity so much a versatility," she explained, using her hands to describe the sizes of things as she spoke. Even while she was talking, her eyes were moving, taking in the rooms they passed, the layout of the building, what she could see of the security and information systems. It was a very impressive setup. "If something has a lot of possible uses, or a lot of free processing power, I can do a whole lot more with it than if it's designed to make toast pop up or not. It's just not particularly rewarding to tie most of my mental faculties up in burning toast," she added with a laugh. "How many people do you have working in your main facility right now?" she asked as they stepped into the elevator.

"I got a super-mind along with the rest of my powers," Miss A told him matter of factly, even as she pulled the back off his phone and attacked the insides with a slender tool. "Once I had that, it was easy to study everything that interested me, so I accumulated a lot of knowledge in a relatively short period of time. It's really amazing how much information is just out there, on the internet, in libraries, at university lectures, all there for free, right for the taking. And then I practiced a lot, taking things apart and remaking them or cannibalizing them for parts. There's plenty more to learn, though, and Freedom City's the place to do it. What do you want your passcode to be?"

"For this model, I was concentrating on getting the superpowers built in, as well as simply making sure that all the basic equipment was there to allow me to pilot it," Miss A explained to him. "Now that I've had a chance to pick up more ideas and make a few runs with it while doing hero work, I have plenty of ideas for upgrades. As you can imagine, though, it's quite difficult to make a life-size and lifelike robot that contains all the parts I need to make it work. I'm going to be exploring further into miniaturization, hoping to ameliorate some of those concerns. And I would love a tour," she told him, rising from her seat with a smile.

"Fraid not," she called back distractedly. "You can make some coffee, I've got some instant crystals and a hot pot over there by the pile of ramen, but no tea, and no kettle either. Soda's more my drink of choice. And that's an interesting look on you," she added. "Sort of Doctor Zorro, MD. Is quantum mechanics your field?" she asked idly, wondering if he might be interested enough in her toys to speak more frankly.

"Sure, I do that all the time," she told him, reaching out her hand for the phone. "This is a... pretty basic model," she told him, doing her best not to laugh, "but I think I can do something with it. Give me fifteen minutes or so. You can go ahead and poke around the lab or whatever. There's drinks and snacks in that minifridge over against the wall." Catching her lower lip between perfect white teeth, she began tapping on the keypad, doing god-knew-what to the poor little cell phone.

"Perfect!" Miss A said pleasedly, filing away the information about the university without so much as a blink. "It will probably be another couple of weeks before I'm ready to do any intensive analysis here, but you'll be the first one I contact when it's done. Except I'm afraid I don't have any way of getting in touch," she added delicately. From the way he acted, she was almost sure he was either a teacher or had aspirations of being one. There had been a professor at the brunch, she recalled suddenly, perhaps several of them. She honestly hadn't been paying too much attention, busy with controlling herself on her first public outing in this model, but she did remember that there was one who'd been very eager to work with everyone. Who was it, Liebinz, perhaps? Well, she would go take a look at Professor Liebinz later, just to satisfy her own curiosity.

Miss A sat down next to him, watching as he scribbled, and clearly keeping up without a problem. She asked questions that showed she certainly had more than a basic knowledge of the field, though even she couldn't add more than new theories to his knowledge about the workings of his own power. "I'd love to get you back in here when I have all my equipment set up," she told him. "I'm still moving in here, obviously, but once I'm settled, I have some diagnostic tools that could provide a much more revealing look at the quantum matrices surrounding you as you use your powers. It's all theoretical, which is pretty much the word of the day when it comes to quantum physics in any case, but I think it would be fascinating. Would you be interested?"

"That will be more than enough time," Miss A assured him. It was quite a good deal, in Gina's mind. She'd been willing to let him examine the robot anyway, and this way she got a look at the doctor's fascinating little gadget as well. And since he didn't seem terribly interested in the squishy meat body behind the perfected robot, things seemed to be going very well indeed! "Just give me a moment to concentrate..." Gina made the robot fold its hands and close its eyes, bowing its head as though praying or meditating. Satisfied that it would hold that position for a minute, and that the automated systems would keep up the appearance of breathing, she hopped out of the robot and straight into the electromagnetic screwdriver. What an amazing little toy! Immediately she coveted it. Even as she examined it, a part of her mind was creating and discarding ideas for how to make something similar of her own. To never be caught without the necessary tool or sensor, wouldn't that be something! The screwdriver blinked, beeped and whirred in the doctor's hands as the cyberkinetic played with it, though it didn't actively exhibit any of its flashier functions. After fifty-nine and one-half seconds, Miss A opened her eyes and lifted her head. "I set it to a full analysis mode," she told him. "You can look at anything you like. And I want one of those," she added, chuckling.

"Engineering is engineering," Miss A told him with a little shrug, tucking her tools away once more. "A lot of it is just simply understanding how things are put together generally, then applying that knowledge to the specific. I've seen studies of Grue technology before, learned how other pieces of their munitions have been disabled. Eidetic memory," she added, tapping her temple lightly. "It was really just a matter of putting theory into practice. Now that the crisis was past, she walked up to the blast shield and began to look at it more carefully, analyzing it with a handheld scanner. The scanner seemed to have some trouble with it, reading one second and not the next, as though it were only finding anything to analyze about half the time. "I've never seen anything like this, though," she admitted.

The waldoes obligingly ceased their rolling of the bomb, though one did turn its metal fingers to the window to give Supercape a saucy wave. A few moments later, Miss A stirred once again, removing the gloves, then the goggles. "It's disarmed," she told him, shaking out her hands as though they'd become cramped from the micromanipulations. "I'd like to take it all the way apart to see how it works, but it should at least be reasonably safe now. Looks like it was full of poison gas, with an explosive propellant. We're lucky it didn't detonate during the invasion, that's a very populated area." She smiled at him, smoothing her hair back into place from where the goggles had disordered it. "Thanks for the shield, by the way. I'd hate to have to replace all the equipment in my lab, assuming I survived any explosion. You're really not going to tell me where I know you from?"

Miss Americana laughed. "I believe I mentioned once before, Doctor, that you can't judge a book by its cover. My resume is thin, so I thought it might be prudent to bring in my latest and best example of my work. I'm sure you understand, however, that I don't want this information to be released to anyone. I find that exchanging my entire body is a much more effective way of keeping up a secret identity than merely donning a costume." She brushed her hair back again, then examined her hand as though checking a tool for imperfections. "And I imagine I could manipulate your device there, but it would be rude. It's not my toy, after all," she pointed out with a brilliant smile.

"Go ahead," Miss Americana told him easily. "I actually have no problem with holding my paychecks and records in my own name. I trust your security." She'd checked it out herself, though only passively, and found it adequate for her purposes, which meant it was fantastic against the average technological attack. "Really, the less curious people are about me, the happier I'll be. It's the easiest way to hide something obvious in plain sight."