Electra
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"It might have been just a matter of timing," Erin guessed, putting her breakfast away neatly and quickly. "If the glowing light we saw on our end was your field coming online, we might have been seconds ahead of you in forming up a field, or whatever we were doing. Maybe the newer gate in the same place sort of took the place of the old one, so that when Mark did his thing with reality, we got thrown through that gate instead of you all getting thrown through ours." "Or maybe something even smaller," Aaron added. "Marcie was standing well back from the gate when she started doing her thing. If Mark was too close, maybe he was at a disadvantage of leverage and got pulled through. And then maybe it was like tearing a piece of paper," he continued, picking up his napkin and poking a hole in it with his finger. "Once it's torn, all the torn pieces go inward, so its easier for things to go one way than the other, you know?"
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Erin turned her head to notice the rapid-fire finger spelling between Trevor and his counterpart, but she only knew enough to recognize what it was, not to read the communication. For a moment she thought that maybe it would be a good idea to pick up some sign language beyond what was necessary to direct comrades in a fight, then she reconsidered. She wasn't sure it was a good idea to know what Trevor said behind her back, literally, without saying a word. Why would she want to know that stuff, anyway? In the cafeteria, she went immediately up to the food line, in inadvertent near-lockstep with her counterpart. They both selected fresh fruit, buttered toast with jelly, orange juice and milk. Erin looked at the similarity, exchanged a glance with Aaron, and shrugged at the same time he did. They'd been through the same crucible, it only made sense that they would prefer the same sort of food afterwards. Carrying her tray, she walked back to sit down next to Trevor. "So what do we do now? Aren't we supposed to be going back now?"
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"Breakfast sounds good," Erin said, rising from the couch with a glance at her counterpart. She was glad not to have seen any more of him the night before, but it was also good to know that he would make sure that the strangers at the gate would have something to eat. She stretched, popping her cramped joints, sighed a little over her altered clothes, and headed out after Trevor. Aaron followed her with a nod of greeting to Tricia. Neither Wander seemed entirely eager to acknowledge Mark and Marcie for some reason. "The couch in the common room is pretty comfortable."
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Erin blinked and yawned from where she'd dozed off as well, once the novelty of opposite-gender celebrities had worn off. "Guess we didn't pop back in the night," she observed, smoothing her hair down with her hands. "Should be any time now, though. Where do you think Mark was all night, anyway?" She paused, her hands stilling, and thought about that. "Never mind. I don't think I wanna know. It's really time to go home." Just then, Aaron stuck his head into the common room. He looked a little uncomfortable, but resolute. "Uh, hi. I wanted to say, if you guys need anything to eat, you can come to the caf with me. I mean, I'm sure they'll feed you anyway, but I can, um, explain for you if anyone wants to know who you are." He clearly wasn't wild about being there, but his protective instincts extended to making sure that their involuntary visitors didn't go hungry.
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A Doktor Who Makes House Calls?! [IC] [Closed]
Electra replied to Dr Archeville's topic in North Bay
Erin sneered at the doctor. "He's too little to talk," she said with great definiteness. She had done research before starting to babysit again, and the internet was pretty clear that babies didn't talk till they were more like a year old. Even a weird magic baby like Jack Jr. wasn't going to talk seven or eight months early. "And if you put your finger in his mouth, he'll probably bite you. He likes biting." -
Erin chuckled. "Well, if you can put up with mine in return, we may really have something here." Forgetting homework for a minute, she settled in comfortably next to him, her head resting against his shoulder. "We've got some time to kill, I guess, want to see what the TV here is like with everybody the opposite gender? I bet it's really weird." This was a safe place, or at least a reasonable facsimile of one, and being with Trevor, for all his too-human frailty, made her feel oddly safe as well. It was nice to be able to turn off the tactical part of her brain for awhile and think about something entirely trivial, like what all the beautiful movie actresses looked like with beards and sideburns.
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A few silent moments passed. "Maybe I don't need saving," Erin finally agreed, "but it's nice to know that someone cares enough to try sometimes. I guess maybe I need to get better about remembering I don't always need to do everything on my own." She tugged at the cuffs of the jacket he'd lent her, then reached out and put her arm around him, a little awkwardly.
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Erin sighed and set the PDA down in her lap, struggling with the words for a minute. "It's just..." she began, then hesitated, then tried again. "I know I have a lot of problems, okay? And I get that it's frustrating. We're all hero types, you know, we want to help. But it's embarrassing to be the one who needs the help, and I don't... I really don't like to talk about it in front of other people. Even if you were pretending to talk about Aaron the guy." She ran a hand through her hair and looked around the room, avoiding his eyes. "It's hard to look at him and see myself, and see all the things I don't like about myself. But that's something I have to face, and maybe talk to Dr. Marquez about if I need to. It's not something I want to start unpacking when we're on a mission, you know?"
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Erin shifted uncomfortably, looking between the two Midnights. She wanted to get up and just walk out, leave Trevor and Tricia to their encounter session or gossip or whatever it was, but there wasn't really anywhere to go. She couldn't go to her room, that would just mean encountering her own counterpart, and she wasn't supposed to get away from the building. And she'd already picked one fight today, she was tired of that route. "It's okay," she told Tricia instead, "I can smack him myself if he needs it. But generally he doesn't poke too hard." Attempting a look of nonchalance, she wrote a couple notes on the notepad she'd found on one of the shelves.
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"He's got reason to be angry, don't you think?" Erin asked, not looking up from Trevor's PDA. She really didn't want to get involved in this conversation, but she felt perversely driven to defend the copy of herself she didn't even like very much. "He hasn't had a whole lot of good things happen for him, compared to all the crap he got dished out. Anybody would be mad." She blushed herself, normal red that stood out starkly on her pale skin, and concentrated even harder on the reading.
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Eventually Erin, Trevor and Tricia wound up making their way into the common room, which looked very much the same as it did in their world. It had always been a pretty unisex place, so there wasn't much to change between universes. Erin tucked herself up on a corner of the couch and continued reading the book on PDF, occasionally glancing around the room to keep an eye on things. Aaron had made himself scarce as soon as they'd entered the dorm, rather than accompanying the others. As Mark had said, they were all in the same building, and wasn't that close enough?
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Erin brightened visibly at Trevor's suggestion, digging into the coat pocket and pulling out his PDA. "That's awesome!" she told him. "I can get this stupid report finished up and not have to catch hell again for being sucked into an alternate dimension with my homework not finished." She ignored most of the cheerleading display in favor of the book, which she didn't enjoy, but was determined to finish up. Now that homework was back on track, being stranded in a friendly dimension with allies nearby and a way home visible wasn't so bad. "Sure," she told Mark when he suggested leaving, "just make sure not to miss our ride back. We've got team training scheduled for tomorrow afternoon and you don't want to miss it." She glanced over at Trevor, wondering if he was getting the same weird vibe from Mark and Marcie, then deciding she didn't really want to know. Aaron put away his book and clapped at the end of the program, dutifully supporting his roommate and his other teammates in their extracurricular endeavors. He couldn't help thinking that cheerleading was a total waste of time, but Alex enjoyed doing it, and he didn't do a lot of things that were useless and just for fun, so maybe it was good for him. Standing up, Aaron looked towards the newcomers. He wasn't crazy about the idea of hanging around with them much longer, but it was important to be polite. "We've got a common room with games and books and television and stuff," he offered. "You can hang out there and relax while you wait to go home."
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Erin watched with wide eyes as well, though her expression varied between slightly pained and mostly disbelieving when she forgot to keep it schooled to polite blankness. "Where do they find the time to do all this stuff?" she murmured to Trevor. "And what do they cheer for, anyway?" Aaron had obviously seen the show before, he looked up and clapped occasionally when it seemed appropriate, but he was mostly focused on reading A Separate Peace and making notes for his book report. Erin glanced his way enviously from time to time, but without a Prime version of the book, she was stuck waiting and homeworkless.
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Erin shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so. He said that God isn't paying attention anymore and even the angels can't find him, and that angels can't do much without His say-so. Since I already figured that if God exists, he either hates us or just doesn't care, so I guess I was pretty much right. It was a little depressing, maybe, but it made sense. I believed it a lot more than if he'd said that God was up there and listening to us, anyway." She stabbed a tomato vindictively and ate it with a shrug.
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Feel free to start one, if you would like.
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Aaron looked at Tricia, then around to see if anyone was looking at them. His pride was suffering, but he figured he would look like even more of a loser if he refused and it caused a scene. The sausage was already bought, anyway. He ran a hand over his hair, wincing a little at the new bald spot, then took the grease-spotted paper bag. "Thanks," he said, sincerely for all there was a hint of a sigh in the word. "We can probably grab an outside table, it's not that busy." He headed out of the restaurant, following Mark and Marcie, though not too closely. Across the room, Erin played with the ends of her own hair and watched the room. "I don't know," she admitted to Trevor with a shrug. "Ask me later, maybe." The fight had alleviated some of the worst stress of interdimensional travel, but she still didn't feel especially good about it, especially about losing. And she definitely wasn't in the mood to hear any lecturing, even if it was a lecture condensed into four or five words or full of incomprehensible babbling. "Let's eat."
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Erin laid her head momentarily on Trevor's shoulder just as they were leaving the doom room, the only sign that she was feeling any lingering distress or discomfort after the fight. Since he hadn't asked for his jacket back, she kept it on to cover up her healing bruises and newly decorated clothes. It smelled like him, in a good way, and she liked that. The hot dog stand was pretty much the way she remembered it except for a few design touches. She kept it simple and ordered a polish with mustard and onions, not even thinking till the other girls started whispering that she didn't have any way to pay for it. Aaron looked a little uncomfortable as well, for the same reason if not from the same source. He stood with the others, hands clasped loosely behind his back, and didn't order anything. Like his counterpart, he didn't need to eat at every meal, or even every day, and it wouldn't hurt him to wait to eat till he got over to the cafeteria where his meals were free. It wasn't like he didn't earn money or anything, but after taking Olivia to the vet this month, he was pretty tapped out. Letting other people pay his way was a necessity occasionally, but it was still embarrassing.
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Erin looked down at herself, torn between relief and dismay. She didn't like the way the clothes looked, and she definitely didn't like the pink shoes, but it was better than losing a whole outfit. Of course, the shoes had been fine, and she didn't have any others... maybe she could paint them white again or something. "Thanks," she said, and tried to make it sound sincere. You generally didn't have to try too hard with Mark, and she figured Marcie was probably the same way. "I could go for something to eat," she suggested, dabbing the last of the blood from her now totally healed nose. She'd have preferred to ditch the doubles and just stuck close to Trevor until it was time to go, but that didn't look like an option right now.
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Erin had a bloody nose and two black eyes from her last set of impacts with the floor, but the bruises were already beginning to fade as she stood up and leaned on Trevor for a moment. "I'm fine," she told him, wiping the blood from her nose with a bit of her shirt. "These clothes are wrecked, though. Dammit," she said again, and started to look around for her lost footwear. Aaron was limping as he got to his feet, and favoring the arm he hadn't used for the pin. He had a couple of fading bite marks, and was missing a small clump of hair on the side of his head. "You're okay with it," he muttered to Tricia, "but Ms. Archer's gonna ride my butt about it. I think we're done for today." He found one of Erin's shoes and tossed it to her.
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While the others did their best to ignore it, Aaron and Erin continued their fight on the opposite side of the room. It would've been almost impossible to follow even if anyone had been watching, with blows traded and blocked almost too quickly for the eye to see, interspersed among blinding flurries of feints and acrobatic feats that carried them around the room between blinks. Fighting Aaron, Erin recognized every bad habit, every weak point she'd been unable to excise from herself, every personality trait she hated, every neurosis that wouldn't respond to therapy. And she knew, even now, that he saw the same things in her. What else was there to do but try to physically fight the manifestation of all the things they couldn't fix in themselves? Dr. Marquez, both of them, would likely have a field day with the training footage. Time lost meaning as the fight dragged on, till it seemed they had never done anything but fight, and would never be finished. They were so closely matched, so keenly aware of each others' strengths and weaknesses, that neither was able to move in for the finishing shot. Despite their immense superhuman stamina, both of them began to tire. The fight slowed down and moved apart, with the combatants circling more, looking for opportunities, saving their strength. Erin, who hadn't been in full uniform, was down to half her shirt, shredded pants, and no shoes or socks, and Aaron's morphic uniform really wasn't doing much better. Finally, in one last massive rush, they leapt at each other, tumbling across the floor like a brawl in a cartoon, going after each other with punches, bare hands, even nails and teeth. They fetched up against the far wall, with Aaron using his superior size and weight to pin his counterpart to the floor, one arm under her chin. Disgusted, Erin reached out a hand and slapped it against the ground. "Godddamn it," she gasped. He rolled off, and both of them lay on the floor, just out of arms' reach of each other, both gasping.
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Both combatants checked for a split second when Mark and Marcie entered the fight, but it didn't stop them long. With the skill of the exceptionally well-trained, Erin adjusted her strike so it whiffed past Mark's head, and Aaron's tonfa avoided Marcie's midsection by fractions of an inch. "Stay out of this, Mark," Erin commanded, executing a neat backflip that let her avoid the interloper, even as Aaron leapt to meet her. "You too, Marcie," Aaron said flatly. "We're training." It was hard to tell, given that they were apparently sincere in their desire to beat each other unconscious, but the two Wanders almost seemed to be enjoying themselves.
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It was obvious that both Erin and Aaron would've liked to settle things then and there, but they were also too well-trained to ignore the priority of finishing the fight. Luckily, with the Lucases in action, that only took a few more seconds. Within moments, the last of the staggered monsters were down and disappearing, and the Wanders were back in each other's faces. "I asked if you wanted to go high or low and you said high," Erin snapped at her counterpart, on tiptoes so as to bring them nose to nose. "Yeah, and I went high, and finished the job, and then started going low," Aaron shot back. "You weren't going fast enough, so I figured you could use the help!" "I was going faster than you!" Erin scoffed. "There were twice as many dogs, and they could smell in the dark. Way to manage to take out a bunch of blind one-eyed guys, that had to be really tough for you. You could've helped more by staying the hell out of my way and maybe getting a little more team training." "I'm not the one who needs training in how to work on a team. Around here, I train more than anybody," Aaron replied, setting his feet in a ready stance. "Maybe you do things differently where you come from, cause it sure doesn't seem that way." "Oh yeah?" Erin asked, raising her stick. "I can take you any day of the week, no matter how much you twirl your little sticks." "Bold words," Aaron smirked. "But you're just standing there." As if that had been some kind of signal, they both rushed each other at the same time, exchanging a flurry of leaping, tumbling blows that was nearly too fast to follow.
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The Wanders worked like a smoothly oiled machine,for awhile, anyway. When there were a lot of targets available, it was a simple matter to stay out of each others' way and take out dogs and cyclops. As the field narrowed, however, it became obvious that they were automatically prioritizing the same targets. In the darkness, even with their enhanced hearing, they quickly started interfering with each others' fighting. When Aaron's tonfa blocked Erin's bat for the third time as they both tried to take out the same dog, she raised her staff at him instead of the dog. "Stay out of my way!" she snarled. "You stay out of my way and we might get this done," he growled back, lifting his own stick. "I thought you'd be done already." "I would've been if you weren't in here with your damn drumsticks, keeping me from doing my work!" she snapped.
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A Doktor Who Makes House Calls?! [IC] [Closed]
Electra replied to Dr Archeville's topic in North Bay
Erin wasn't entirely happy about the idea of sticking around, but Jack and Taylor were paying her an exorbitant amount of money per hour, so it was prudent to keep them happy, and just gave her more money in her pocket. She shoved her hands in those pockets and rocked lightly on the balls of her feet, watching the proceedings. "He rolls," she told the doctor, "from tummy to his back, and he props up on his arms pretty good. He has good coordination, he can grab things and put them in his mouth. And he smiles when he's not so tired. It's past his bedtime." She gave both men a disapproving look. -
Erin glanced at her counterpart, who was already looking her way. "High or low?" she asked him. Combat was not the time to mince words. "High," Aaron replied with a decisive nod. "You get the dogs." Erin nodded agreement, spinning her staff to its full length. Again in unison, both Wanders looked to their respective Midnights. "Fog it up!" Aaron called. Trusting their teammates to do their work well and quickly, they both ran into the thick of the fray, Aaron leaping for the eyes of the lead cyclops while Erin laid into the dogs at their feet. Both of them were very quick and very efficient in their handing out of beatings.