Electra
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Freedom City Guidebook
Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
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Well, Erin could top the order on a nat 1, but I rolled anyway. And I can't believe I wasted a nat 20 on that! Oh well. Erin goes on 33. She's going to jump in next to the beleagured Lady Winter and start smashing skeletons. I will leave it to Doc to determine their positions, but it's entirely possible with Takedown Attack 2 that she could take the whole bunch of them out in a round with no roll.
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"So does this mean that Trevor's supposed to take off his hat and coat when he's fighting villains?" Erin asked curiously, giving Trevor an arch look in the mirror. "Or is he exempt as long as the bad guys aren't taking theirs off? It seems like it could put him at a disadvantage if they aren't going to behave like gentlemen." As Frank unwrapped her from the lengths of red fabric, Erin sighed with relief and smoothed the wrinkles out of her blouse.
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Stesha jumped in hastily, knowing that Derrick was a terrible liar, when he could even bring himself to dissemble at all. "Do we need more of a reason than that?" she asked teasingly. "And maybe the fact that the weather finally got nice out here? I've been watching the weather channel and I thought it would never get warm out here. How are you teaching botany when the ground is frozen till May?" That was an exaggeration, but it distracted her dad a little at least. "I can teach just fine in the greenhouse," Paul reminded her, "and Freedom City is hardly warmer than Chicago most of the year, despite all those crazy weather superheroes flying around out here. Maybe you're just getting soft, punkin." Rolling her eyes, Stesha grinned anyway. "Yeah, right. Anyway, you know I can't resist your grilling. How could I miss the biggest barbecue of the year? We're just about to go outside with the rest of this food."
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"How do you feel about Chicago?" Annie asked brightly. "It's a nice town, isn't it? A good place to raise a family, good schools, work for scientists. Northwestern has a nuclear science program, you know." A first generation immigrant, Annie still had a Russian accent, though decades in America had softened it considerably. "Mooom..." Stesha began, embarrassed. "Well it is!" Annie told her, completely unsubdued. She looked to Derrick for his reaction.
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Annie looked satisfied when Derrick exhibited at least a rudimentary knowledge of herbs, though she tested him further by asking for basil, which was easy, and cilantro, which was harder. They carried the herbs into the house, where Stesha and a pretty blond woman in her early forties were chopping brightly colored bell peppers. Stesha beamed at him, her discomfort seemingly forgotten for the moment. "Derrick, this is Grace, my big sister. She and her husband live right here in town." The social worker, Derrick could remember from earlier conversations. "It's nice to meet you," Grace said pleasantly enough, giving Derrick a once-over that said she was reserving judgment. "Stesha is always talking about you when she calls home. You're a native of Freedom City, aren't you?"
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If it's not too late to pull Fleur in on this, I'll have her attempting to calm the citizenry and stop any riots. Wander will be up for stopping any giant "pets" that might be marauding around, unless someone takes charge of YF and points them all in one direction.
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"Wait, Mark," Erin called, holding up a hand to stop him. "We need you with us on this. Eve, can you stay with Mrs. Lucas and still follow us telepathically? I'm sure she'll be safe here, even if we leave her for a few minutes, but Mark's dad needs to see him. And Mark needs to be here for this too." Erin looked around at the others, then went over to Mark. "We didn't tell you this before, but you have to know. Just before your dad changed everything, you were hurt by that Omegadrone. We... we all really tried, but we couldn't save you. That's why your dad did all this, rewrote the whole world, locked you in your room, because he wanted to bring you back and keep you safe. If we can change everything back, make it all the way it's supposed to be again, you might pay a higher price than anyone. You deserve to know that saving the world might cost you your life this time."
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"An hour should do it," Stesha confirmed. Working that in would push her schedule back, so she'd be late getting home, but it was in a good cause. She'd just have to give Derrick a call and tell him she'd be a bit late. "Well, if it works out, perhaps you could drop in sometime and tell me what happened. I always love happy endings, that's why I work in a florist. I'm sure everything will turn out for you."
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"Nice to meet you," Stesha told him with a smile, looking over the totals and entering them into the balky computer. "I'm Stesha. You're lucky in your timing, I'm just between weddings this week, and we have lots of flowers around. And sunny weather always puts me in a good mood. We'll get you set up with your flowers, and I'll cross my fingers that things turn out for you." She took the bills and made change for him, printing out an invoice and a receipt. The flowers weren't cheap, this was a classy joint after all, but it was substantially less than five hundred dollars.
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"No problem," Stesha said with an easy smile. "Some messages are better left private. I can ring you up now and get started on that right away. If you want, you can go buy a card to go with the flowers, that'll give you a little more room for a message than a florist card." Truthfully, Stesha wasn't sure they had any florist cards floating around, it wasn't something they needed a lot of, given their clientèle." Standing, she moved to the cash register and began the process of finessing the computer to handle a single bouquet instead of an entire event. One day she was sure she'd toss the damn thing into a giant flower in a fit of pique, but today she merely regarded it with a look of frustration as she worked the keys.
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"It's a personal blend, it's never the same twice," Stesha fibbed smoothly. "You could always send her some flowers," she suggested with a wink. "This bouquet will take me about an hour to put together. You can come back and pick it up, or you can give me an address and I can have it couriered over for you with a message attached. What's your pleasure?"
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"Mister Lucas, we want to talk to you!" Erin called, looking from wall to wall as they resonated with echoes. "We deserve a chance to see you! Isn't that how it works? We came all this way, we found you, now you meet us face to face. Mark's right here with us, don't you want to see him again? Don't you want what's best for him, and for Freedom City, and the whole world?" She tensed, looking for the black ink.
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"That's a good choice," Stesha nodded at the selection, making a few notes on her memo pad. She'd need to force a few flowers to get it taken care of, but that was sort of her specialty these days. "And think about it this way, you can talk to the people in your hometown in a certain way because they knew you when you were in diapers, right? It's the same with the neighborhood I come from. You can be blunt, even pushy, and the worst someone is going to think is that you're being a little annoying with your heart in the right place. That's because they trust you." She flipped through the book, though most of her attention was on her client still. "The big city's different from that. You have to act differently with people who don't know you and where you come from. They don't have any reason to trust you, you know? Especially if your friend is a college student just starting out in the world as well. You have to establish trust, you can't just assume you have it because you're a nice guy, the way you could back home. Does that make any sense?"
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"Even the villains?" Erin asked curiously. "What about people who didn't have coats and hats?" She didn't know very much about hero history, despite the class she'd sat through in the spring, but she was fairly sure that not everyone in the past had played fair, or worn hats, for that matter. "When did it start changing, the costumes and the attitudes and all that?"
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"If it was easy, everyone would do it," Stesha joked, giving him a sympathetic smile. "And there's not much more difficult than the battle of the sexes. We'll get you started here with a really excellent apology in flowers. After that, though, you're going to have to go in there with a nice laid-back apology in words." She pointed out a few suitable friendly apology bouquets. "Now maybe you don't want my advice, but if I were you, I'd avoid mentioning whatever's making her sad until you're back on solid ground again. It's tough when you want to help, but you can't be much help if someone won't even let you in the door," she advised sagely.
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"All right," Stesha replied, though her curiosity was piqued. "How romantic do you want to be? Do you want to start with an "I'm really sorry, please be my friend" bouquet, or an "I'm really sorry, and I am also ideal boyfriend material" bouquet? We can totally ditch the sunflowers, and go with daisy poms, asters, pink roses, and a couple of calla lilies, in a wicker basket. That's a good friendly bouquet, or we could punch it up and go with multicolored roses and white stargazer lilies in a ceramic vase with ribbon for some romance." She pointed out the flowers as she spoke, going quickly, but with Eli's speed that was hardly a problem. "Either of these should knock her socks off without being overwhelming."
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"Great!" Stesha said enthusiastically, giving her mom another hug, then passing her the baby. Looking at the two of them together, it was possible to get a good idea of what Stesha would have looked like in thirty years, if she'd kept her natural blond hair and predilection for aging. For a woman with six grown children, Annie Madison was surprisingly youthful-looking, and surpassingly cheerful "I'll go in and say hi, then freshen up quick. It was a long trip," Stesha fibbed. "Derrick, there's a whole table of drinks and snacks around the side of the house, and probably some beer in a cooler if I know Jasha and David. I'll be right back, and if any big blond guys hassle you, just smack them around a little and tell them it's from me." With a broad grin, she ducked into the kitchen.
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"Hope so," she replied with just the ghost of a smile. "We're getting pretty good at doing that. And... well, I won't say I haven't ever thought about it as saving people I couldn't save in my own world. Maybe if I make enough of a difference, I'll find the reason that I lived and nobody else did. It's a thought, anyway." She sighed again, looking towards the dorms. "I think I'm going to go in for the night. See you later?"
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Erin took hold of Mark's shoulders to keep him still long enough to explain. "Mark, something really bad happened when the Steelegrave robot attacked you. Your dad lost control of himself, and started using powers nobody even knew he had. He literally rewrote reality to make it like a fifties sitcom or like the old stories he tells. People have been literally erased for not fitting into this universe. Other people are here, but totally different from real life, or never existed at all. I think he trapped you in your room because he thought it would keep you safe. He's not rational right now, and we need your help to make things right."
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"Hmm, so more a tomboy then. We can work with that." Stesha flipped through several more pages in the book. "I like to look at the leaves because it's a nice break between the summer and the winter. There's just something special about a perfect fall day with the scent and color of dead leaves. We have entire color palettes of fall flowers just to try and capture that moment, but you really can't beat that perfect day. How do you feel about these?" She turned the book back to him, turned this time to cheerful displays of daisies and sunflowers, big sturdy blossoms in blocky vases. "Did you meet this girl, Erin, you said, at school?"
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"Oh, I hear it's pretty out there," Stesha replied. "I meant to get up there this fall when the leaves were changing, but I never quite managed it. Are you out here for school?" she guessed. He seemed the right age and attitude for a college student, and they were close enough to the university to make it a reasonable assumption. She opened a book and turned it towards him, showing several bouquets of roses. "These are some very romantic bouquets, really gorgeous rose mixes, and there are some with lilies thrown in as well. If she's a very feminine girl, she'll probably really like something like this."
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"Mm, much as I love to make a sale, five hundred might be a little much for someone you just met, if you're already on thin ice for coming on too strong," Stesha told him with a smile. She came around from the counter and led him over to a little table where books of flowers were stacked. "Let's take a look at some of these arrangements and find something that says what you want it to. Now where are you from?" she asked conversationally, sitting down in one of the chairs around the table and opening the book.
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"I know you are," Erin told him, "but it's hard to talk about. It's hard to think about. If I don't leave it behind, I'm never going to have any kind of life here." She let go, standing up on her own and taking a deep breath. "Dr. Marquez keeps reminding me that I've only been here eighteen months, but I don't like giving it time. I have too much to do here." Erin looked around, testing her own mental balance, and decided she'd do for the moment. Still no sleeping, but she could probably train off the leftover emotions and adrenaline. "Thanks for being there," she told him sincerely.
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She sighed and leaned into the hug, putting her arms around his waist and hugging him back. Hugs didn't solve anything, but it felt good and eased the sharpest edge of the pain. "I'll be okay," she told him, hoping it was true. "But if I see that zombie again, it had better hope it sees me first. It's not worth getting kicked out of school for, but I might forget that in the heat of the moment." Talking about the night's embarrassment was far easier than dipping into the past, for all it wasn't any more fun.
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After a minute, Erin reached up a hand and put it on his, but she wouldn't or couldn't reach out any further than that. She stood with her eyes closed and tried to pull herself together, at least enough that she'd be able to go further onto campus without waking Alex and having to go through all of this again. She didn't know what she would do when she got there, since she didn't trust herself to train and sleeping would be an awful idea, but at least on campus she felt safe. "Summers is going to hear about what happened tonight, I'll probably end up in detention again for awhile, or at least extra sessions with Dr. Marquez. It'll eat up some time this summer at least, I guess."