Electra

Erin responded to the silent gesture of support by sighing and resting her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes for a moment. She was alive, and he was alive, and all of the rest of it was in the past. And now Trevor knew the whole sad story, and it hadn't freaked him out or chased him away. He'd cried with her, in his way, and he'd stuck around. That was good. Erin wrapped her arms around his waist and held on.

Erin watched him, her own face bleak, but calm. Now that the story was told, she felt wrung out and empty, but more okay than she'd expected. "I don't normally tell people," she told him softly. "Nobody knows what to say, and it just makes everything depressing and awkward. Or the really ghoulish ones asked if I ever killed a superhero zombie, or anybody famous. It's a lot easier not to talk about, and it's all behind me anyway" She leaned back on the sawhorse and looked up to the gradually lightening sky. "But then there are days like today, when I wake up and it's like I can smell zombies in the air, and I realize maybe it isn't as behind me as I need it to be. And I didn't want to be alone with it today. Thank you for listening."

Even as absorbed as she was, Erin had to notice Trevor's unease when he began smoking from under his clothes. If he'd asked her to stop she would have, but he didn't, so she kept going. It was almost impossible to stop now, the words coming faster in the rush to just say it all, to just finish and be done with it. "Megan and I were the only ones who survived the attack, and afterwards, I had the powers I have now, just not as strong back then, not as trained. We were both immune to the flu, but we were the only people for miles and miles. I learned how to drive Uncle Aaron's Jeep because I knew we'd just run out of food if we stayed. I wanted to go to Freedom City. I thought if anyone was still alive and working on a cure, it would be there. I got a map and we packed some supplies and went. There weren't any people anywhere, just zombies. I killed them when we found them, because I was afraid they'd attack Megan. Since I was so much stronger and faster then, it wasn't that hard unless there were a lot of them. She hadn't gotten enough medicine to give her powers, though, and she was so much more fragile than me. I tried to keep her safe. I did everything I knew how to do, but I was careless one day and let her wander off, out of sight. She fell over this little cliff that was hidden by brush. Maybe ten, fifteen feet, but there weren't any doctors. I couldn't do anything for her," Erin flexed her hands, watching her fingers curl and uncurl. "She died two days later, and I buried her by the hospital I'd taken her to. It was full of nothing but zombies. "After that," she recalled, "I went kind of crazy for awhile. I couldn't handle it anymore, and I snapped. That's got to be when my path and that other Erin's diverged. If I'd been picked up at that point, I'd have been crazy and violent too. I spent months killing every zombie I could find, just wandering from city to city, trying to make some kind of difference, or get some kind of revenge. But after awhile, even that got old, and I started heading for Freedom City again. It was empty except for zombies, but I found Doctor Atom's program there.He helped me put together a machine to signal Prime. It took a month of running around to all these weird places in Freedom City, but we got it put together, and they took me in. Doctor Atom felt guilty because he could've listened to my uncle, but he didn't. So I came to Prime, two years ago last week. I was in quarantine for a couple of months, and then I spent a little while with the version of my family that lives here, but it didn't work out. So I came to Claremont." She took a deep breath and let it out.

"It's okay," Stesha assured her, compassionate worry writ large on her face. "Starting at a new school in the middle of high school is tough, even without all the superpowers to deal with. You're entitled to a little frustration. But you should give yourself and your classmates a chance. You could be colleagues with them for a long time, if you all become superheroes in Freedom City. Maybe some of them are lonely and isolated too. And they should be nice to you," she suggested slyly, "if you've got the power to heal them up during a fight. That can come in pretty doggone handy under the right circumstances. No pun intended," she added after a beat.

As promised, the exam didn't hurt a bit, consisting as it did mainly of blue lights that played over Lance's body, scanning him and sending readings back to the excitedly chirping bank of computers on the other side of the room. "Temperature's good, blood pressure is good, blood chemistry is a little bit off, but that might be normal for you..." Miss A spoke loudly enough for Lance to hear, but she seemed to be talking more to herself as she jotted notes on an iPad and watched the screens. "Can you tell me a little more about what shape your body was in before you got the implants?" she asked Lance suddenly.

She didn't seem to notice that he had no response, caught up in her own memories. "They tried to stop the vaccine program, but it was too late. People who hadn't seen the news or didn't believe it still wanted the vaccine, and the flu was still spreading everywhere. Watching it from the compound was like being on the moon, we saw it all, but none of it reached us, for awhile, anyway. I remember the local station, eventually it was down to the weatherman and one camera guy trying to broadcast the news, but the only news there ever was was that more people were dead. Eventually the cameraman must've gotten sick or killed too, and the last broadcast was just the weatherman sitting at the anchor desk and crying and telling us that the world was ending." She stared down at her hands. "I don't know if maybe it wasn't until then that I realized things weren't ever going to get any better. Not just that they wouldn't be the same, but that we weren't going to grow up. Eventually something was going to get us, like it was getting everyone else." She sighed and deliberately released his fingers before she crushed them, using her hands to scrub her face again. "And then Uncle Aaron came up with a vaccine," she continued inexorably. "It did the same thing the original vaccine wanted to but better. Or at least it was supposed to. He had to give it to us before he'd tested it," she explained, "because the zombies had caught wind of us. Once the mental functions were gone, all they had was dim memories and the animal drives," she explained. "They were hungry, and they wanted people, and the two urges sort of combined, you know? They killed everyone they found, everywhere they were. And somehow they found their way in our direction, and they were coming, fast. Faster than a person could run. Uncle Aaron gave us all the shot, except Megan, who only got a little. She was only seven." Erin's voice did break there, but she steadied herself and kept going. "It made us all sick. I don't think I've ever been so sick. When the zombies came, we couldn't fight. Mom told me to take Megan and run, so I took her over to the compost heap and we sort of buried ourselves in it. The adults tried to fight them off, but they were way outmatched. I saw the zombies tear her apart, but it was such a mess afterwards that we couldn't tell what bodies were whose. We buried them all in one big grave. I guess the zombies didn't smell us or something, because eventually they went away. They looked like corpses, even though they were supposed to be alive," she remembered. "It was horrible."

"It's easier to tell it all at once," Erin told him, "rather than in little bits and pieces. This way I only have to work up the nerve once." She took a deep breath and kept going. "He realized he had it, and somehow, I don't know how, he and my mom faked up or bribed their way into passes to travel. The roads were closed, to try and keep it from spreading," she explained. "My mom woke Megan and I up in the middle of the night and made us pack for a trip, just like a week's worth of clothes, some toys and books and stuff. I took along my bear, Megan brought along her stuffed pony and her music box." Trevor had seen Erin's room enough to remember that the bear and the music box, along with a photo of her parents in a cracked frame, held pride of place on her dresser now. "We put our stuff in the car and left in the dark, without the headlights on. I didn't realize until we were actually pulling out of the driveway that I realized Dad wasn't coming. He hadn't told us he was sick," she recalled bleakly. "He just kept away so we wouldn't get it." Erin rubbed her face with her hand for a minute before continuing. "My mom's uncle Aaron, my sort-of namesake, was this crazy rich inventor guy who lived on this compound, I guess you'd call it, in Northern California. We went to stay with him. He was working on a cure for the flu, but he wasn't part of the big effort because he'd fallen out with the scientific community over some crazy ideas. I don't really know. Anyway, they came out with a vaccine, and started making huge batches of it. Everyone who could help did, even the supervillains. We were all in the same boat, you know? They made hundreds of millions of doses really fast, to try and innoculate everyone at once. It didn't kill the flu, you see, it made the body strong enough long enough to survive it, or that was the idea. Everyone had to get vaccinated, or it wouldn't work. Only Uncle Aaron wouldn't let us get vaccinated, because he said the formula was bad, that it was a killer itself. And he was right, but nobody else saw in time. I was so mad at him," she remembered, her voice poised on the edge of cracking for a moment. "I was sure we were going to get the flu and die when we didn't have to because he was nuts." She cleared her throat. "Governments all over the world set up vaccination programs, like nothing anybody had ever seen. This was when a lot of the news channels still worked, so we could watch it. It was a huge effort, first they got the essential people, the doctors and nurses, the military, the superheroes who were still alive. The flu hit superheroes really hard and fast," she added. "Then kids, then everybody else. People were fighting to stand in lines that were days long, and something like seven hundred fifty million people got vaccinated in a week. It seemed to work at first, which just made people crazier to get it. People who were in a coma from the flu started getting better. But then everybody realized, pretty much all at once, that when the vaccine made your body stronger, it did it at the expense of the higher brain functions. It would see you brain dead before it would see you get not only the flu, but a cold or an infected scratch. Seven hundred fifty million people had that in them," she repeated softly.

Stesha chuckled. "I can't grow doughnuts, which is probably a lucky thing for my thighs, all in all. I just opened a little portal back to my apartment and pulled them off the counter. It's one important reason why I wanted my cottage right here, it corresponds exactly to my Freedom City home, so I can transit easily." She brushed a few crumbs off her lap and sat back. "But in any case, surely you can make some friends with the heroes your own age? I'd think they'd be pretty nice people, if they've decided already to devote their lives to being heroes. Maybe you could stay over for a couple weekends and do activities with them, get to know people better," she suggested helpfully.

"Okay." Erin didn't smile back, she couldn't right now, but she squeezed his fingers and took some comfort from it while she organized the words in her head. "The world I come from used to be a lot like Prime. I mean really like it, so that Doctor Atom thinks it didn't even split off into its own timeline till sometime in the mid 2000s. I lived out in Seattle there, with my mom and dad and my little sister Megan. Everything was pretty normal, you know, the sort of thing you think is horrifically boring when you're growing up that way. I thought so, anyway." She jerked her shoulders in a shrug. "Anyway, you know how there are flu scares every other winter or so, where there's some new strain that comes out and everyone wants to get a flu shot and the drugstores all run out? That's sort of what happened on my world in 2007, right after I turned 14." Erin looked away from Trevor, staring out over the obstacle course and the running track. "Only it wasn't just a scare, it was the real thing. By the beginning of 2008, so many people were dying all over the place, so many superheroes, and nobody knew what was going on, that everything just shut down. They canceled the school year and closed businesses, and everybody just tried to stay home and not get sick. The flu had a perfect mortality rate, and scientists were estimating that it could kill one out of every three people in the whole world, and maybe more than that. My dad caught it."

"Maybe later," Miss A told him with a grin, patting his boot as she walked by. "That table's rated to hold a few tons without a problem, so don't worry about breaking it. Just stretch out and make yourself comfortable, this won't hurt a bit." Once Lance was situated, Miss A wrestled a rack of sensors over the table and into position. "Lie as still as you can," she told him, "this should take about five minutes. All I'm doing now is taking medical readings of your body at rest."

"No, I mean, I don't think so," Erin said, running a hand over her hair. "I mean... before, when we were working on my truck together, I told you I would tell you about myself, but I needed some more time. Not because I don't trust you or anything like that, but I guess because it was easier just to not think about it, much less talk about it. But going to the evil world, you got a glimpse of what I could've been, and I know there are stories that float around. And some days, like today, I wake up from bad dreams that I can't really tell anybody about because they wouldn't understand, and it seems stupid to be that way. So I thought maybe I should tell you. Um, you know, if you're not busy, and you want to hear about it," she added.

"Right, no damaging or breaking the pike," Miss A said with a nod. "But we still might be able to disguise it a little bit, maybe even rig you up with a portable holoprojector. It wouldn't have to be foolproof, but if it could fool the civilians, it might keep a panic like what happened last time from happening. I'm sure we'll figure something out." She turned her attention to Lance. "And I did talk to your supervisor, and we won't be doing any sort of metallurgical tests today. That's not my specialty anyway," she admitted with a breezy laugh. "I'm more interested in seeing how your cybernetic parts mesh with the biological systems of your body. If you're ready, go ahead and get up on the table and lay down. I won't make you strip down or anything, she teased.

"Morning," Erin replied, returning the smile, for all hers was a little halfhearted. "Nice form up there. You've been practicing." She scooted over to let him lean against the sawhorse too. "Pretty soon you're gonna have to take it inside if you want to take your shirt off. It's getting cold." That pretty much took care of greetings and the weather, and talking too much more about Trevor's shirtless chest would be weird, so she figured she might as well get down to brass tacks. "Do you have a little bit to talk?" she asked, trying not to let her discomfort show.

After checking the garage, the common room, and the cafeteria, Erin finally made her way out to the outdoor gymnastics equipment where Trevor was. He was obviously deeply involved in his exercise, so she didn't disturb him, instead leaning on the sawhorse where he'd draped his shirt and watching. That was no hardship. Trevor looked awfully good with his shirt off these days, especially when he was demonstrating the considerable physical agility that came with all those new muscles. Even with the strangeness of the morning still bothering her, it was nice to take a few minutes and appreciate the view.

"We have to stick together," Stesha replied matter-of-factly. "Superheroing is hard work, and if you don't have friends to help you out and just to vent to, you'll go crazy or get burnt out." She seemed a little sad about that for a moment, then deliberately shook off the mood. "We can do something about breakfast, though. One second." Going back to the kitchenette, she pointed at one of the vines along the wall, which obediently sprouted a daffodil with a cup eighteen inches in diameter. Reaching one arm through the cup, she fished around and pulled out a box of doughnuts. "It's not the healthiest breakfast in the world," she acknowledged cheerfully, "but we'll work it off." She set the box on the coffee table in front of Jill, opened it up, and selected a jelly-filled long john for herself. "Are you going to school at Claremont this year?"

"Well then, this will be a good opportunity," Stesha said, pleased. "The sun's almost up, so it should be warming up pretty quickly. When we've finished our coffee, I'll take you out to some trees that could use some significant help, and you can see how it goes. This way, even if it doesn't work, I'll be right there and I can back you up. Better to practice on a plant than a person, that's for sure," she added with a smile. "Have you had breakfast yet?"

It was impossible to ignore the voice of the bad luck man, Singularity had been too thoroughly drilled for that. Her eyes widened when he mentioned Pathos, that threat enough to make the grasping asphalt hands she kicked aside seem like nothing. "No," she said, shaking her head violently from side to side. "No, please..." She knew Pathos, knew Pathos' name, except for when Pathos was in her head and made her forget. Nothing, not the fighting, not the box, not anything was as bad as Pathos when she was playing around. The punishment for leaving the box would be horrible, and for running away, and stealing food, and attacking the bad luck man. She whimpered when the world started to fade at the edges and go white, another memory that had burned its way into her unreliable brain. Everything disappeared, the foes surrounding her, the sky above, even the ground beneath her feet and her own shoes were very fuzzy. "No, please, no, please," she murmured, repeating the useless mantra again and again until the man with no face started making the loud noises again. The first one hurt, but she shook her head and covered her ears, cowering in the white void, and it went away. Before she could hope for anything, though, it came back worse than before, a deafening cacophony that sounded like the moaning of a thousand zombies bearing down on her. She screamed and ran, going only a few steps before she launched herself into the air, with no idea where she was going or what was there, only desperate to get away.

Failed the reflex save. Failed the will save.

Miss A quickly stepped forward, in between the two cyborgs. "Lance, Murdock, it's all right!" she assured them both in her most soothing voice. "We're all friends here, honestly. I should've told you beforehand, Lance, that was entirely my mistake. Harrier is an escaped Omegadrone, he was able to sever his connection and regain normal mental function. Through courage and luck, he made it to Earth Prime, but of course he faces a lot of problems here because of his appearance." She turned to Murdock. "That's another thing I'd like to try and address," she told him. "I know the armor is bonded too deeply to you to be removed, but if we can change the appearance of it, that might make your life a lot easier."

Singularity will break the grapple! And the reflex save you asked for, Giz: 1d20+8=25

Singularity screamed as she slammed full-speed into the cage that materialized around her, looking around wildly as she began to fall helplessly from the sky. "No-no-no-no-no!" she cried, bracing her legs against the bars and pummeling the top of the cage so quickly her fists barely seemed to move. "Please no!" She knew where the box came from. The bad luck man could make things like a magician, all sorts of things however he wanted. The bad luck man had been part of her personal hell since the beginning, and she knew more about him than the scary man and the no face man. He was the one who had made the cage. He was the one trying to put her back in the box. "No!" she screamed again. She would not go back in the box. The top of the box fractured and broke away, leaving Singularity to scramble out just before it hit the ground. She cast one quick look towards the river, knowing she couldn't reach it, and then turned on her tormentors. If she attacked them, it would hurt. It would hurt anyway. It was her only chance. With an incoherent scream, she leapt for the bad luck man, missing him by mere inches from a hundred feet away, tumbling to the ground, and then rolling back to her feet.

On her surge action, Singularity is going to turn on her tormentors. Move action to bring her back to Hex and The Blank, surge standard to do an all out power attack on Hex. She gets a 23. Too bad!

Okay, after consultation with AA, Singularity is ditching all combat feats and skills that Erin acquired after coming to Claremont, and in return she gets enough Rage to last her for quite some time. She is going to fly into a rage and attempt to bash the cage to pieces with a full power attack. That's a DC 36 damage check against the awful, horrible cage! Whether it works or not, she's going to surge after this, too.

"Against a wall?" Erin said disbelievingly. "That... that seems pretty weird. Does that mean that the three of them I knocked to the ground should be taken care of now? I mean, the ground is pretty much flat, does that make it Euclidean?" She wasn't comfortable dealing with all this creepy metaphysical stuff, but as long as things could be solved or at least helped by punching them, she'd do what she could. Going back to the window, she looked out into the darkness of the night, but nothing weird seemed to be out there at the moment, not even the house ghosts.

Miss Americana gave both men a warm smile. "As you might know already, both of you are cyborgs and both of you are working as superheroes. Victory, I know that you have a team devoted to keeping you in tip-top condition, but it never hurts to have someone in the field who can patch you up if necessary. And Murdock, I don't know if you have any arrangements for your upkeep and maintenance, but I would be happy to help you." She perched on the side of the lab table, folding her long legs demurely. "But in order to be able to help you, like any doctor, it helps to have readings on you when you're in optimal functioning condition. That way if things ever do go wrong, I have good specs to go on for how things are supposed to look."