Electra
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"Be a shame to waste the great outfits and the music," Erin agreed as she rose and took his hand, her words pitched for his ears only. Smiling back at him, she walked with him to the dance floor and stood opposite him, putting one hand on his shoulder and the other in his. With prom coming up, she and Alex had both been practicing how to do it properly, though it was substantially easier when the partners were close in height. In her heels, Erin was just a touch shorter than Trevor, letting her look eye to eye with him with ease. "I don't really know how to dance," she murmured with a chuckle. "We'll have to fake it."
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"I told my parents about all of it recently, but it's not a genetic thing, more a weird magical accident," Stesha told him. "I didn't want them to worry about me, but at the same time, if anything bad ever did happen to me, I don't want that to be how they found out either, you know? They can keep a secret, and it makes it much easier to deal with them, now that I don't feel like a big liar all the time." She grinned. "If you really do want to get out to Chicago sometime, I can give you a ride. It's no more than a couple seconds' travel if you do it right."
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"I train four hours on school days and eight or ten on most weekends," Erin replied, walking with lengthened strides to keep up with her tall companion. "Solo training, anyway, or supervised solo. Young Freedom trains together for at least three hours twice a week, and then I usually meet a couple of times a week with classmates to train in smaller groups. "A lot of the training is because I laid out my last mentor, or at least it comes from the same reason." She reached down to her belt and unholstered the silver stick she carried there, no longer than her palm. With a practiced spin, she opened it out into a five-foot-long baton with rounded ends and a matte finish. "And this too. They gave it to me to blunt my strike, so I don't hit things any harder than I mean to. It's shock absorbent, you know, some kind of super-science thing. When I first got here, I couldn't not hit things as hard as I could. But that's getting better." She collapsed the baton just as easily. "Are you going to have me come do training with you?"
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"Maybe you could get free rent as someone's air conditioning," Erin suggested half-seriously. "Freedom City gets hot in the summer, I bet there are people who really wouldn't mind rooming with someone who's always generating cold. Winter might be more of a problem, though." She cracked a half smile. "You're probably better off with Alex's suggestion. Are you hungry?"
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"He probably could, but I think we'll go with something more traditional," Stesha told him. Remembering why he'd come, she opened a few of her catalogs to show him altarpieces that might look good in the church. "I've been working on nailing down a venue. It's too late in the year for an outdoor wedding, but there's this gorgeous old mansion out by where my folks live that opens up for weddings and receptions. Costs the moon, but I have some savings and so does he, and hey, you only get married once, right? I'm hoping I can get that lined up, even on short notice." She circled a few designs lightly with her pencil. "Any of these appeal to you? If nothing looks good, we can design something special, but it might take a little longer to put it together."
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"Sure, no problem." Some of Stesha's color had come back in the form of a blush at the byplay she really hadn't needed to hear. She scraped by in her dealings with Jack mainly by not thinking of any of that stuff. Ick. Standing up, she cradled the uncrushed flowers from her hair in one hand and went over to Taylor and the baby. "You haven't killed your plant off yet, have you?"
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Stesha chortled. "Sorry, nothing so exotic as that. My huge, huge family all lives out around Chicago, and it's going to be a heck of a lot easier, both logistically and on our secret identities, to move our friends here out there and back then to try and get my whole family and all my friends out there to Freedom City for the occasion. Not being quite as much of a lightning rod for any supervillain who thinks he's being cute is just the icing on the tall white cake. I think you're probably right that no one would dare, but it's one less thing to have to worry about on the big day, you know?" She winked. "I think we may be having the honeymoon in space, though. He's being cagey about it."
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Wander and Hellion are going to appear behind the Behemoth with the Screamer group. Wander is going to hold her action and go after Edge on 14.
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"Well, Jack and Taylor's wedding had the odds stacked against it from the start," Stesha told him with a laugh. "I think ours is going to be a lot quieter. We're not having it in Freedom City, for one. A superhero wedding here, I think that's just asking for trouble." She looked around once more. "I think that takes care of everything, then. You sure you're okay? Nobody's going to come back looking for you tonight or anything like that?"
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"I've barely started thinking of any of that," Stesha admitted with a laugh. "We've only been engaged ten days, I've been so busy telling everyone and trying to find a date and a venue that I haven't had time for anything else. I know all about the flowers, my wedding's going to have a million flowers and I'll supervise them myself, but all the rest of it is kind of strange and new. I'm going to have to get some books. And call Ace," she agreed with a laugh. "He knows everything about everything, partywise. We do know that we're going to have it around Chicago, hopefully in Evanston, but the rest is still up in the air. Derrick is leaving pretty much everything in my hands. He's just mystified by formal occasions."
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"I don't know," Erin replied, sounding fairly dubious. Listening to the angry swordsman tell jokes was far from the top of her list of things she'd like to spend time doing, right down there with spending her day off in a small car with Mr. Archer. "Maybe he inherited it from somebody. Maybe he doesn't get that it's kind of an insult to himself." She shrugged. Since they were walking anyway, she started pointing out what the various buildings were. "Over there's the dorm, and there's the gym, and the caf is over there. Lot of the students are gone for the summer now, so it's pretty quiet. How often do you train?"
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After just an instant's hesitation, Stesha put her hand in the bony, half-fleshed one, letting him get a look at the ring. "He's wonderful," she told Dead Head with a smile that verged on dreamy. "I'm surprised you haven't run into him by now, he spends a lot of time looking after Freedom City. I'm sure you will soon. And he did make it for me," she confirmed, "it has a real seed in the middle of it. Isn't it perfect?" When Dead Head looked closely, it seemed like the ring glowed just a little itself, independent of the streetlights. Or maybe that was just Fleur herself.
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It was odd to hear Avenger and Phantom's real names used in this context, but then, Stesha figured, she wasn't taking much care with her own identity, out here in sweatpants and with no mask. "Well, if you ever need a place, you should let us know. Dark Star's not using his old place very much anymore, if you need a place to crash for whatever reason." Without her gloves on, the light from the streetlamps picked up the ring on her finger, which she couldn't help but glance at in a very pleased way. "Did anything else get messed up in the fight?"
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"I don't watch much reality TV," Stesha replied with a smile. "I don't like to watch people being horrible to each other. Well, except Bridezillas," she admitted. "I watch that sometimes just to make myself feel better over some of the bitchy women I have to deal with. You know," she said, changing subjects as she stood up, "I know some freegans who seem to be pretty good at finding the right dumpsters for decent clothes. I could get in touch with them if you want, maybe give you some leads on better places to get clothes?" She didn't want to insult Dead Head, but the truth was that he looked pretty ucky to start with, and the dirty, falling-apart clothes didn't help. "I mean, if that's what you want to do. Is living out here," she waved a vague hand around the cemetery and the nighttime streets, "how you prefer it?"
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"No clue," Erin admitted. "I've narrowed it down to two possibilities, either the kid is some kind of superpowered freakshow who could really hurt or escape from a normal babysitter, or it's a normal kid but in some kind of threatened position. Or some combination of both, I guess." She shrugged. "Hey, maybe it's actually a celebrity's kid, and they need a babysitter who's also a bodyguard. I think I could handle that. Mr. Archer's always talking about my protective instinct." Hanging one arm off the bed, she leaned over to look at Alex on the floor. "Or is that what you mean when you say personal assistant?" she joked.
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Stesha climbed down from the table and sat in one of the chairs, collecting the pins and flowers falling from her hair. "So we're not at your house, then?" she asked, concentrating on that rather than that she'd been a few feet away from the man who had tortured and nearly killed her friend, that she'd had him wrapped up, but had let him get away. That was something to think about later, preferably when she had Derrick to snuggle with and make her feel better. "We could go there, it's safer. Unless... why were you talking about moving earlier?" she asked Taylor.
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Not quite sure of what to do with the looming threat of ex-"dance partner" and the empty dance floor, Erin spent a few minutes in conversation with Spectacles, whose name turned out to be Lucas, about the World Cup. It was something she knew a lot more about than universities or endangered trees, anyway! Just talking to someone about sports made it seem more like a normal party and let her forget she was wearing an absurdly pretty dress and talking to people who probably got more money for their weekly allowance than she'd made since arriving on Prime. Trevor seemed to be feeling better about the situation too, so when a few couples got up to dance, she looked inquiringly in his direction.
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"That shouldn't be too hard," Erin guessed, "no place around Freedom City is more than a few miles from the water anyway, really. "Maybe eventually you can get a place that's insulated like the inside of a freezer, and you can do whatever you want with it. But probably not right away. So that... that frost thing," she said, waving a vague hand, "you like doing it?"
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"Not really," Erin replied. "I thought about taking the truck and going for a weekend somewhere, but I don't really know where I'd go. I'll probably take some summer classes and keep up my training, maybe spend a little more time relaxing, if I can convince Dr. Marquez I'm not crazy again." She smirked at that. "I'm applying for this babysitting gig, watching some superbaby whose parents live in town. Now that you've got actual staff and a huge corporation and all that to take care of your computer stuff, I need to pay for my cat food some other way," she reminded Alex teasingly. "The ad said they want someone with combat reflexes, so maybe it'll be right up my alley."
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Stesha, who'd honestly been mostly preoccupied with getting her breath back and making sure she hadn't lost any important body parts in the Void, suddenly clued in on the conversation. "Wait, wait, wait, wait!" she demanded, sitting up straight on the table and dropping her handful of pins. "That was Zealot?" she asked, with a wide-eyed look to Taylor. "Oh my god, he's the one who... oh my god, he had his hands on the baby! I didn't realize..." Even the green had leached from Stesha's face by now. She'd heard enough from Taylor last year that even now she locked her windows when Derrick wasn't staying over.
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Erin turned her head to look over at Alex, smiling ruefully. "Ain't no cure for the summertime blues?" she suggested. "I guess most people will be out of here really soon, going home or going on vacations, getting away for awhile. That should help. More elbow room and bathroom space for the ones who stay, anyway. Your family going to take a vacation this summer, now that you're off the government's leash?"
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"I think he staked us out," Stesha opined, fruitlessly attempting to push the pins back into her hair and just making things worse. "Not us, but the park. He shouldn't even have been able to see us, it was so secluded where we were. And it's not like he could've followed either of us, the way we travel. I wonder if he was attracted by the fact that I used some extra power on that little grove, making it sun-resistant. It might have been a fluke, he noticed it and laid in wait for anyone to come along. And that's why he just ran in there blindly?"
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Jack's sudden movement brought him nearly nose to nose for a moment with Stesha, who was still hanging on to Taylor. She fell back, sitting hard on her butt on the table with her hair starting to fall from its pins. Her eyes were wide and her face a pale greeny color, but she seemed a little more composed than Taylor. "I'm fine," she told Jack. "I couldn't hold onto him," she reported to Taylor. "I tried. He managed to get out of the vines and out of the plant I shoved him into. I should've stayed behind to make sure he didn't get away, but I wasn't thinking. I'm really sorry."
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"All right, we'll head for the water." Moving carefully, Erin pulled on the string till she was out from under the mass of the balloon, then hopped up on cars and fire escape landings till she hit rooftop level. The balloon rose as well, till the 600-foot mass of it was above the buildings and floating free. Moving at a slow jog-and-hop till she heard otherwise, Erin began pulling the bottom of the massive balloon towards the harbor, trying not to think about how impossible this all was.
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Stesha squeaked again at the yelling and noise, but this time when she did so, there was air awaiting her reflexive inhalation. That made her brave enough to open her eyes and look around, though without quite releasing her death grip on Taylor. They were in a room, sitting on a... a table? People who looked like the folks who stood outside clubs all night and didn't get in were streaming out of the room as fast as they could, and the whole place smelled like copper. It had to be Jack's place. She took another deep breath, then another. "Is he okay?" she asked Taylor, looking over her shoulder for Jack Jr.