Electra

As promised, Miss A was motionless while doing her work, instead the waldoes and cameras worked for her, performing an intricate and dangerous ballet. One waldo selected tools from the bag and laid them out, while another ran a scanner over the bomb, observed carefully by a camera. After several minutes, the waldo picked up a slender tool and carefully inserted it into one seam in the bomb, causing the whole side to pop off suddenly! The entire operation froze for a second, but nothing else happened, and it seemed okay. Very carefully, the second waldo brought out what looked like a very tiny arc welder. While the first waldo's tool lifted a single chip just the slightest bit free of its housing, the second tool vaporized it in a small puff of flame and smoke. The waldos ran the scanner again, its whirring loud in the quiet lab, and then, oddly enough, they put down their tools and began to roll the bomb around on the table like a toy. Apparently, it was defused.

"That would be something of a logistical nightmare," Stesha agreed with a laugh. "There's really nothing here besides what I pack in, and no other ways in or out. It'd be a lonely life, and it's not like I'm sending groups here every day." She looked again at the kits. "Really, my hope is that if someone can be stabilized long enough, I can heal them myself when the danger is past, or at least get them to a hospital. I'm just afraid somebody might bleed to death here while I'm trying to do mass evacuations." She shrugged one shoulder wryly. "Again, nothing like that has ever happened before. But after the invasions this city has seen, it seems smart to be as prepared as possible. Maybe I'll lay in some chicken soup."

Another quick teleport took them back into the heart of Fleur's green oasis, this time into a broad open field, about the size of a football field, that was open to the air in the middle and shaded by bowers of vines and trees on the ends. Signs in several languages welcomed people to Sanctuary, giving them a little information about where they were, and assuring them that they were safe. "The food supplies were easy enough," Stesha told Jill, pointing out a number of durable sealed plastic containers under one arbor. "Just prepackaged meals, open and eat, I found them on the internet. I'm laying in sleeping bags as money permits, even though I've never had to keep anyone overnight so far. But all I've got is a couple of those big Red Cross first aid kits, and I don't know what else I should put in." She led Jill across the field to one bower, where the bright red boxes with the crosses were still sealed in plastic wrap. "Every situation is so different, you understand?"

"Mmm," Miss A pursed her lips, tapping one fingertip against them lightly. "I have no problem whatsoever with your first reason, so long as my privacy is guaranteed. I'd certainly like to know ahead of time if anything in your facility is going to disrupt or be disrupted by my working here, and I'm willing to take whatever tests are necessary to ensure that doesn't happen." She straightened in her chair and looked at him levelly. "As far as my metahuman physiology, Doctor, that is not on the bargaining table. I'm sure that you can further your understanding with any number of other willing volunteers, especially in Freedom City."

Miss A was more interested for a moment in the electromagnetic screwdriver than in the image it displayed, the typical curse of the engineer. She refocused her attention quickly and hoped he wouldn't notice the lapse. "I can work with others she assured him blithely. In this body, it wasn't too hard to secure cooperation from most people, she'd noticed quickly. "I am looking for a substantial degree of autonomy and creative control, however," she told him. "I certainly don't mind helping out on other peoples' projects, or collaborating on companywide initiatives, but I'm not interested in being told what to invent. I'm sure you'll find," she added with another smile, "that I'm far more useful when given freedom to work. I have plenty of ideas already."

"If anything happens, I'll shield you with my own body," Miss A promised with a wry chuckle. "It seems only fair, since it would presumably be a serious error on my part that would lead to such an outcome. Not to mention the fact that I'd rather not have a few thousand pounds of unstable quantum matrix sitting in my lab with no one to take charge of it." Before Supercape completed the diameter of his shield, she wheeled in a strange-looking machine that seemed to be nothing more than a set of cameras and waldoes suspended from a steel lattice, along with a box of tools. "I'm going to work remotely," she explained, stepping back out of the danger zone and sliding on a pair of goggles that covered most of her face, then a pair of thick gloves studded with contact points and metallic chips. "It's much safer than actually going in there with my tools. and I don't need to worry about the opacity of the blast shield." She sat down in an ergonomic desk chair behind a console that didn't even face the shield, and took a noticeably deeper breath. "All right," she told him. "This is all going to involve what's going to look like no more than infinitesimal muscular twitches, so don't expect to see much from me. If half an hour passes and I'm not up, I've probably gone to sleep, so feel free to give me a little shake. She grinned to show she was kidding, then leaned forward in an almost prayerful posture over the desk and let her body slump. A moment later, the cameras in the blast chamber began to move and refocus, and the waldoes began to move.

"I was doing much the same thing," Stesha agreed. "Just trying to get people out of the line of fire, healed up, anything to try and save lives and stabilize the situation. I'm not much of a fighter," she admitted with a shrug, "but the city needs people to hold it together until the fighting is over, too. Oh!" She brightened considerably, standing up again. "I have an idea! Would you mind taking a look at my holding area, and seeing what I might need to put in there in terms of medical supplies? I've got a couple of first aid kits, but hearing from someone with actual training would be great."

Miss A nodded thoughtfully. "I'll definitely see what I can do," she promised Murdock. "I'll give you a call in a few days when I've got some ideas ready for enhancements. And you both know how to get in touch with me if you ever need anything. I really appreciate you both taking the time to come out here today. I know it's hard to get away when it seems like you're already leading two full lives sometimes. I just hope that something very useful comes from it all eventually."

"It's fairly resilient," Miss A told him, flying at a leisurely pace alongside her caped counterpart. He still looked familiar, maybe the face and name would click for her later. "Though I wouldn't say no if you wanted to erect a quantum blast shield around the area where we'll be defusing the bomb. Not that I'm not totally confident in my own abilities, of course," she added with a rich chuckle, "but it never hurts to be prepared. Down this way." She circled carefully lower, down to a nondescript office park on the edge of Hanover. Landing behind one of several equally anonymous office buildings, Miss A cautiously tucked the box under her arm and walked up to the back door, keying a complicated series of at least thirteen digits into a pad by the door, then applying her hand to a pad beneath it. The door opened obediently onto a narrow hallway with an airlock door that opened as they approached. The lab itself was not large, one good-sized room, but it was full of all sorts of interesting equipment, much of which appeared to be homemade or substantially altered. "I'm going to put this on the table in the middle of the room," Miss A told Supercape, "and get some waldoes in there to manipulate it. If you can rig a shield, that would be lovely."

Miss A looked around and rose smoothly from her seat, a little smile playing around the corners of her mouth. "I'm Miss Americana," she told the room, her lovely voice projecting easily to the corners of the room, "and it's wonderful to get a chance to meet all of you. I specialize in computer engineering, with a special emphasis in medical prostheses, special accessibility, and applied technological solutions." The smile widened with self-deprecation. "In English, I'm doing most of my work in technological replacements for lost body parts, and in tools to allow those with special needs to accomplish everyday tasks more easily. I look forward to speaking with all of you more in the future." She sat down again and folded her hands serenely to listen to the rest of the guests.

"I've got to take Oliver home and... um, bye." Erin trailed off as Corbin walked purposefully away, then shrugged her shoulders. "He must be really hungry," she told Oliver, turning in the direction of the dorms. "He seemed okay, though. I guess you must have liked him. Anyway, like I was saying, I have a huge pile of history homework to do, and training this evening, so it's granola bars for me for lunch. Yeah, I know," she chuckled when Oliver sneezed disapproval. "I'll make it up later."

"Don't worry," Miss A told him blithely. "I have a fairly strong grasp of quantum mechanics. I'm sure I can keep the box in existence long enough to get to my lab. I'll just try not to think too hard about cats and light waves." Holding it firmly in both hands, she lifted off without a wobble, soaring over the buildings and high enough to mitigate the danger to civilians. "Follow me!" she called to Supercape. "It's not far!"

"It's no sin to act to protect yourself," Stesha maintained staunchly. "Especially if you were forced to use powers you hadn't even had a chance to practice with yet. It's a lucky thing you had them and didn't get hurt!" She nodded to reinforce her words. "I imagine you have some idea of how they work, then, at least enough for you and a trainer to work with. In the meantime, your healing skills are pretty impressive, if you've kept that brother of yours in one piece. Even if you only use those, you'll be pretty heroic."

"Perfect," Miss A told him with a nod, her face intent as she once again lowered herself to the level of the bomb. Not even touching the ground for fear of a missed step, she floated in the air as she ever so carefully maneuvered the bomb into the super-strong housing. "We'll feel pretty silly if this turns out to be nothing more than a piece of Grue rubbish, but better safe than sorry..." She let out a breath as the bomb slid into the housing. "All right, finish it up, and we'll get it out of here," she told Supercape.

Miss Americana regarded him levelly, cocking her head to one side and giving him a slow smile. "I guess it just goes to show that you can't judge a book by its cover," she replied enigmatically. "Personal appearance and poise was always very important in my household, so I've had plenty of training." She brushed her hair back behind one ear, and everything about the gesture seemed perfectly natural. "As for my abilities, I've had them for about five years now." she told him easily, with no apparent reticence. "No particular trauma, really, it was more what you might call a personal setback. It took me quite some time to learn to harness my new powers, so I've really only been putting them to use for the past three years or so. I feel like I've just started to hit my stride, and perhaps come to the limit of what I can accomplish on my own. Coming to ArcheTech, as well as the hero work I've been doing, will let me broaden my horizons."

Miss A floated close to the bomb, giving it an intense look without actually touching it. She turned horizontal to do so, a few strands of blond hair falling around her face as she studied the problem. "We need to get this contained as quickly as possible, no matter what kind of device it is. I'd say a box with about thirty-five centimeters interior diameter should do it. We need to fit those projections, but I don't want to give it a lot of extra headspace to rattle around. If you can build it without a top and front wall, in a scoop shape, I'll roll it in, and then you can put the other two sides on. I have a flight stability of ninety-nine point seven three percent, so once we're airborne, we should be fine. It's obviously able to handle a minimal amount of jostling, it did survive for months on the street without detonating." After delivering her recommendation, Miss A backed away from the bomb a little way to give him space to work, turning herself upright and folding her legs under her like a floating genie as she looked at him for consensus.

"I really don't know how to test something like that," Stesha admitted. "You might be better off asking about it at school. I know they have teenagers there with all sorts of powers, some of them very dangerous. My fiance taught there last year," she explained, "so I've heard a few things. But I think it's a good first step that you're so concerned about doing damage. It'll keep you from hurting people from carelessness, and that's very important. Have you had to use it in a fight yet?"

"My resume is short," she admitted with a smile, "but I have one available for you." She reached into her pocket and drew out a memory card and a reader, sliding the card into the slot. A projector popped up, beaming a holographic image of a sheet of paper about six inches above the reader, clear and easy to read as if she'd brought in a hard copy. "This is one of my devices, too," she added. "It's more impressive with videos, but it works for documents as well. Holds a charge for hours, too." The resume was simple and unembellished, but the most striking part was that it was for Miss Americana's secret identity. Gina Evans did not list a home address, but her educational history and work accomplishments were all neatly laid out. She had a high school diploma that, assuming she graduated in a timely fashion, put her at about 22 now, but no college degree listed. Instead of a degree, there was a list of just over three dozen patents issued to her over the past four years, mostly for software innovations, but some graphical interface upgrades and other technology-related innovations. Some of them had really caught on, and it was hard to doubt that she was indeed comfortable financially as the inventor. "Of course," Miss A said, looking at the doctor intently, "outside of my intellect, my main talent of interest is that I'm a functional cyberkinetic. I can inhabit any mechanical device and examine or operate it from the inside. As long as I can make radio contact, I can make machines do just about anything I'd like. It comes in handy."

By the time the white fog cleared from around Singularity, it was too late. She had only seen the outside of her prison a couple of times, but she vividly remembered what it looked like, and certainly recognized it as it approached through the strange gray void they were all moving through. She turned and ran away as fast as she could, but whatever was under her feet wasn't ground, and she couldn't find any purchase. "No, no, no, no, no," she muttered, balling up her fists as though she could fight whatever was dragging her back, even as the adrenaline-fueled rage of fighting gave way to exhaustion. A figure approached her, and she readied herself to fight, then stopped when the figure she saw was impossibly familiar, and yet entirely strange. She cocked her head. "Mom?" she asked with great uncertainty. Wander pursed her lips and studied her counterpart, lost and mad and afraid. They had only seconds, she was certain, and nothing was going to stop the transfer now. And even if she could have, even if she knew how, Wander knew that she couldn't bring the creature she'd been turned into back to Earth Prime. This was the monster she'd always been afraid of becoming, and it had no place on a clean, safe world like Prime. The only thing she could do was to put her counterpart out of her misery, and she didn't even know how to do that. There wasn't much that could kill any version of her, and this one was even tougher than most. "No," she told Singularity, reaching down and taking off her own shoes. "Here." She handed them to her counterpart, still wearing the stained and tattered pajamas that Wander had worn to bed what seemed like a really long time ago. "You'll need these." Singularity took the shoes and looked at them uncomprehendingly for a minute, then sat down tiredly and put them on. Wander stepped back, out of sight of the other girl, and went back to her own people.

"I don't know," Erin admitted. "None of that is really my area of expertise. I only even know about Phantom because I babysit her kid. But I think probably if you ask around, someone will point you in the right direction. Anyway," she said with a shrug, "lots of people don't know very much about the origin of their powers and they still do fine. It's probably not a big deal for now while you're still learning how to use it and all."

Miss A had to grin at that, even if the grin was a little rueful. "Well, as long as it makes you happy," she told him. "I'm glad you managed to work it out and didn't get fired. I should stop in sometime." She noticed with satisfaction that Harrier's vital signs were back down to normal, now that he was a little more distracted. "All right, I think I've got a good set of baseline readings here on both of you. It'll take some time to work up the schematics I need for the field and to put together a holoemitter, but I think this has been an excellent investment of time. Was there anything else specifically that either of you has concerns about with your various cyborg parts?"

Erin listened attentively as Corbin spoke, though most of it wasn't anywhere near her field of expertise. She was used to that, since her expertise mostly involved hitting things. Oliver seemed quite interested too, focusing on Corbin with his big yellow eyes and tilting his ears forward to listen. Erin never knew how much he was actually absorbing, but she got the unsettling feeling that the cat understood more of the conversation than she did. "Maybe you could talk to some of the teachers here about it," she suggested. "Or maybe like Phantom or somebody. They know a lot about magic and old languages and stuff."

Miss A handled the pike with all the care and caution it deserved, not touching it while she scanned it with a variety of instruments. "Well, it's your decision, Murdock. Nobody is going to make you get any treatment you don't want. But think about it. It's not your responsibility to carry all that on your shoulders. You're free now, you can do anything you want. How do you like working at that restaurant? Things going okay for you there?"

"Makes sense," Erin said with a nod. "There's enough to get used to at this school already. There's lots of time." She looked curiously at the ring while he spoke, wondering what he meant. She hadn't met anyone who had object based powers before, so it took a little while to make the connection. "Oh, so your powers come from the ring?" she asked. "Like it's magic or something, and you found it in a cave?"

Erin's going to do an all-out power attack on the Squrm, with the intent to bring it down as quickly as possible. I think a 25 hits, so that's a DC 34 damage check plus whatever autofire gives. If it's not unconscious after that hit, she will surge.