Electra

Miss Americana sat down in the seat next to him, folding her long legs demurely and smoothing down her skirt over her thighs. It was a perfectly innocuous gesture on a perfectly modest outfit that nonetheless couldn't help but bring attention to her legs. "Some of both," she admitted with a smile, "though perhaps mostly the latter. I'm comfortable financially at the moment, but I'm sure you know what it's like to want fresh challenges. I can't pass up the opportunity to try and work with the one man in Freedom City who may have a keener scientific mind than my own. And, of course," she chuckled, "I'm desperately envious of your facilities."

"Well, you might feel differently when you're older," Stesha said, smothering a grin."You've got a long time before you have to think about anything like that. But I imagine it's something you'll study, too." She was quiet for a moment when Jill mentioned her tactics against the plant monsters. "I'm not sure how much I can help you with that," she admitted. "It's a power I haven't explored nearly as much as some of my other abilities, and I'm almost sure I can only use it on plants, anyway. It's not even making them sick so much as..." She reached out a hand, waved it over a tulip. The healthy flower withered instantly, turned brown, and seemed to melt away, as though biodegrading in fast forward. "As taking away the molecular bonds that hold it together. It's sort of unpleasant, but it has its uses." Stesha snapped her finger over the empty space, and suddenly the flower was back, shooting out of the ground like a spring-loaded toy to wave once again beside its fellows. "Not something to use lightly on anything that might be sentient."

"Sure, an education will absolutely serve you well," Stesha agreed. She took a handful of seeds and sprinkled them around the trees, where they sprouted into unseasonable daffodils and tulips, an island of beauty in the blasted landscape. "I got my degree in botany before I got my powers, but I use it all the time still. The more you know about your field, the better you can be at it. Knowing what parts work together and how they break will certainly make you a more efficient healer, if nothing else." She smiled, sitting down in the grass that suddenly covered the ground. "I know my own human healing is pretty woeful, because most of what I know I picked up from my mom. She's a great midwife, but I haven't had much call for that in my line of work."

Miss Americana took the bit of floating metal, turning it over in her hands and observing it. "Fascinating," she murmured, wishing like hell she'd brought along just one scanner. "Speaking of things I would love to get in my lab..." She pressed the specimen between her hands, nodding when it didn't instantly pancake under her strength. "This should do fine for a container, though. Let's go see what we're dealing with." Leading the way, she floated over the caution tape, giving a dazzling smile to the police officers who stepped aside for her.

Gina resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the insinuation. Miss A was nothing if not nice. "That's sweet of you to say, but I don't give this particular number out except for professional reasons," Miss Americana told Supercape blithely. "But if you prefer to cloak yourself," she smiled at her own joke, "in mystery, I'm certainly not going to stand in your way. What we need is a way to transport the bomb safely away from all these civilians, so we can get a better look at it. I don't suppose you have access to an impervium crate or anything like that."

"Mmm, that's a tricky situation," Miss A mused, looking towards the roped off area. "The easiest thing might be to dump it in the ocean or create an impact shell around it for a controlled detonation, but I'd love to get a closer look at the tech inside it." She gave Quentin a speculative look. "By the way, how did you get my number?" she asked. He looked and sounded a little familiar in person, but she couldn't quite make him through the gaudy costume.

"Luckily, you're right in my neighborhood," she told him easily, not seeming to notice any oddity to his speech patterns. "Just give me the cross-streets and I'll be there in ninety seconds or so." That was the nicest thing about having a robot hero body, she didn't have to worry about things like changing clothes or fixing her hair to go out. As soon as she had the coordinates, Miss A opened the porthole that led into the backyard and blasted off, describing a few large spirals to cloud her exact origin point before arrowing down on the bomb-disposal situation. The scene was busy, but she just looked for the man with the most superlative cape, assuming him to be her contact. Touching down as lightly as a feather in her sensible yet stylish red boots, she tucked away her phone. "Supercape, I assume?" she asked pleasantly.

Miss Americana raised one eyebrow as she listened to the voice on the phone. She knew there weren't any superheroes named Crisis currently operating in the city, so she suspected that it was a description of the situation, rather than a salutation. And she'd met too many people lately to recognize most of her acquaintances by voice alone. "I've disarmed a few bombs in my time," she replied, "I'm sure I can probably lend a hand. With whom am I speaking?" she asked politely.

Gina was deep in thought when the call came in, sitting in her easy chair with a book open and unread on her lap. The insistent ring shattering the lovely four-dimensional latticework of electrochemical interactions she was building inside her mind. She shook free with a growl of frustration, ready to throw something at the phone, but then realized it wasn't her normal telephone. It was Miss Americana's phone! Hastily, she reclined her seat and closed her eyes, letting her consciousness race across the room and into the body of the statuesque superheroine. A moment later, Miss Americana picked up the phone with one perfect hand. "Hello, this is Miss Americana," she said, her tone dulcet as usual. "What can I do for you?"

"There's always room for a little more sunshine," Stesha told him with a smile. "Once I get a little more done with the place, I'll make sure to have you over again. Winter's rolling in, so I might have to shift my operations south for a little while. It's a big planet, and there's plenty to do! I'll see you next week in class, unless some citywide emergency crops up before then." Humorously, she knocked lightly on the woody part of one of her shelter's walls.

Miss A gave his hand a firm shake, her grip nuanced enough to be solid but not at all painful, despite her super-strength. Her hand was warm and dry, and surprisingly uncalloused, but that could easily be a function of her tough skin. "Of course not, Doctor. Everyone worth knowing in Freedom City knows where ArcheTech's headquarters are. And it's certainly distinctive enough to find by air. I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me. I've been following your company's work for some time now, and it's all very exciting." As she spoke, she took in the office with a glance. It was certainly spacious, and well-equipped, but it seemed to a practiced eye as though the cleaning crew probably spent more time in it than the good doctor. Perhaps he was more the hands on type, who preferred the lab to sitting behind a desk. She could respect that. "Ever since the brunch you put on, I've been looking forward to a chance to speak with you again."

Erin stepped up on Mark's other side, forming a shallow triangle like the people on Star Trek before they beamed up. It was a sound tactical move, if they got dumped into the middle of a melee, they were already in a position to watch each others' backs. For just this moment, though, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, searching for the calm that had been drilled into her over the past two years. She wished now that she hadn't dipped so deeply into her own memories today, and brought the past so very close. That wasn't what she needed right now. But Trevor was right, the ghosts from her home dimension and the school's restrictions didn't matter right now, not when lives were at stake. Especially his life... Hefting her shovel, she opened her eyes and stared once more at the monitors. "Let's go."

Erin goes on 31.

Erin debated trying her communicator again, but decided not to. This was her job, after all, and she could take care of it while her teammates dealt with whatever other situation had come up. Going back to the window, she covered the distance to Providence Asylum in a few quick bounds. Though she was out of uniform, she was doubly glad that she never came to a babysitting gig unarmed. You never knew what could happen, though she had to admit, this scenario hadn't even arisen in her mind when she'd been planning childcare strategies. The Squrm was where KC had said it would be, flying around the asylum while the inmates and doctors watched it from the windows. These people didn't need any more disruptions or weirdness in their lives, that wouldn't help them get better. The faster the nasty thing was gone, the better. Hefting her bat, she sailed through the air like an efficient, deadly missile, smashing the thing with both ends of the bat several times before following it to the ground. Like KC had suggested, flat surfaces were not good for the monster.

"That can be an unfortunate side effect, yes," Fleur said with a chuckle. "I think men, especially, can get an invulnerability complex going once they realize they're much harder to hurt, or that they can be healed instantly. But if you want more practice, you could always try volunteering at a hospital. You don't even need to tell them you have powers if you don't want to, and you can help people while you're honing your skills." She grinned, putting her own hand on the tree to finish the job Jill had started. The tree instantly straightened and greened, and so did the ones around it. "It might give you more variety than patching up your brother, at least."

"I imagine at some point, we can modify some of your memories, if you decide that's what you want to do," Miss A said with deceptive offhandedness, running a palm-sized scanner over the armor plates as they appeared. "That's the good thing about pervasive cerebral cyberization, it is possible to therapeutically reprogram the cerebral cortex, the hypothalamus and the lateral interpositus nucleus. Not that we want to do too much tampering, but under the guidance of a trained specialist, it might be possible to excise the worst of the traumatic imprints. And as for the repairs, well, I like to think I'm at least as good a mechanic as any of Omega's minions," she told Harrier with a faint smile. Looking up, she focused on Victory for a moment. "How's the head?" she asked. "This is the scanner with the broadest wavelength I've got, so if anything's going to get your skull vibrating, this would be it."

"Yeah, I guess." Erin looked a little disappointed at his lack of baseball enthusiasm, but she shrugged it off easily enough. "Anyway, it is a lot like a really small high school here, except that the extracurriculars are kind of weird. But it does take awhile to meet people, I guess. This is just my second year here, so I don't really know how it usually is for new students who come in. I've made some pretty good friends here, though. Do you go out and patrol already, or is that something you're gonna learn while you're here?"

Miss A was quiet for a moment, looking over the edge of her pad at the faceless cyborg, her own expression nearly as blank as his for just a second or two. When the animation returned, it was as though nothing had happened. "Well, we'll see about all those long-term adjustments later," she said with brisk professionalism, stepping forward to run a tool over the plates of Harrier's skull. "Right now I just need to figure out what makes you tick. As far as you know, are you fully human under the modifications, or do you have any alien ancestry in you?"

"That's fine, we'll test that another day," Miss A told Murdock, returning to the cyborg on the table. Looking over at Lance, she added, "If you feel anything else, let me know right away and I'll get some sensors hooked up," she told him. "If you're having minor power fluctuations, I should be able to detect that with the equipment here." Turning back to Murdock, she told him, "If you could activate your armor one piece at a time, the way you did with your arm and the pike, that would be helpful." She reset some of her equipment, so that, if anything, the data flowed faster than ever across the screens. "How long have you been a cyborg?" she asked Murdock as she worked, sounding almost as though she were just trying to make idle conversation.

"Yeah, it takes awhile," Erin agreed with a nod, absently scratching Oliver's head. "It's weird coming to a place where everyone is different in different ways. But you'll probably get used to it pretty fast. And if you're doing well with your schoolwork, that's a leg up right there. Gives you more time to concentrate on other stuff. You a Cards fan?" she asked with some interest. "I was hoping to see them last time they came up to play, but getting the time is kind of tough. Plus last time we went to a game, a supervillain attacked." She shrugged. "There's always TV."

Erin took the shovel and made a few testing practice feints, learning the weight and balance of it. She'd never used anything quite like it before, but she was pretty sure she could fight with it just fine. Anything that gave her extra reach was good. Mark's mother, on the other hand, did not seem to be good at all. She was making Erin distinctly nervous, as a matter of fact. But Travis seemed to have that under control. "Are you coming," she asked Mark, "or are you going to stay and work by remote?"

It took a little bit, long enough that Stesha almost stepped in to guide the process, but eventually Jill's efforts began to show. Some of the brown spots began to fade from the leaves, and the branches began to stand straighter. "That's great!" Stesha said enthusiastically. "That's a really good start. And it's just from using your powers and the strength of your own mind. No medicine, no fertilizer, nothing like that. With some practice, you should be able to start doing that for people, too. Do you get a lot of practice healing human beings?" she asked Jill.

"Hi," the girl said with a smile, shaking his hand in a firm grip. "I'm Erin White. I'm a senior here this year." She didn't seem to be too startled by his floating demonstration, but then, anyone who'd spent much time here probably got used to seeing superpowers in action. "Oliver likes to sniff out new people, I think he feels it helps him keep his paw on the pulse of the school. Where are you from, and what year are you?" she asked.

Oliver rose and stretched, almost like he was shrugging, and gave Corbin a lazy look. He was about to settle back in when his entire demeanor suddenly changed, ears pricking forward and eyes going alert as he watched students exit the classroom building below. They looked like older students, juniors or seniors, and only a couple people Corbin even recognized. The group separated, some of them going towards the cafeteria or the dorms, others coming this way. With no more warning than a shiver of his tail, the cat suddenly dove off the branch, fearlessly plummeting towards the ground! Well before he could hit the ground, Oliver was scooped out of the air by one of the students, a tall, auburn-haired girl whose reflexes were obviously quite a bit better than the average human's. "You nutcase," she told the cat affectionately, "one day I'm not going to be paying attention and you'll be sorry. The cat purred, seemingly unworried by that possibility as he climbed up to perch on her shoulder. With the cat settled, she looked up to see where he'd come from and caught sight of the student in the trees.

Oddly enough, just sitting in the quiet tree and petting the purring cat was very soothing, easing some of the nerves that came with transitioning to a new school and a whole new way of life. The cat didn't protest having his collar examined, so it was easy to read the embossed "OLIVER", as well as the local Freedom City phone number. He seemed perfectly content to sit next to Corbin and watch the world pass by beneath them for awhile, occasionally looking up as though actually interested in what Corbin was drawing.