Electra

"She was only seven years old." Erin turned to look at him, her eyes full of pain even as she struggled to keep her voice even. "She couldn't have a full dose of the serum, so she didn't get powers from it like I did. We couldn't stay on the compound, we started to run out of food even though I didn't eat much anymore. We started driving, heading for Freedom City. I thought if anyone was still alive, they'd be in Freedom City and trying to fix things. I didn't even know how to drive, but I practiced for a few days and we took off in this old jeep. We traveled for weeks, maybe months. It's hard to remember. I fought off the zombies that tried to attack us, and we took food from stores and houses and stuff. We camped, because it was summer and it was horrible to be in buildings for long. The smell," she added, as if that should've been evident. "I had her gather firewood and stuff, and one day she fell. I should've been watching, but I was trying to put the tent up. She fell over this little cliff, probably ten feet, and she hurt herself. If we could've taken her to the hospital, maybe she'd have been okay. But there weren't any doctors. I drove into Albuquerque, to the hospital, but it was just full of zombies like all of them were. She lived three days, but it was hurting her so much. I gave her the painkillers I found, and she died. And then there wasn't anything left to do or anywhere to go, so I just started killing zombies."

Stesha was pretty involved cuddling and cooing at Jasha's six month old son, but she jumped in to defend Derrick from an annoying younger sister. "For God's sake, Chloe, there's more to nuclear science than building bombs," Stesha told her little sister, rolling her eyes. "The work Derrick does helps millions of people." She broke off, brightening visibly, as a woman came out of the house with a plate of rolled sandwiches. "Mom!" She jogged over to her mother and gave her a hug with her free arm, turning to beam at Derrick. "Mom, this is Derrick, the most wonderful man in the world... that you didn't give birth to," she added humorously, knowing what her mom would say.

"It wasn't the serum, not the one I got," Erin told him. Now that the door was open, the words seemed to pour out. "There was another one, a vaccine that some of the greatest geniuses of the world came up with to try and stop the flu that was killing everyone. Everyone was supposed to take it, hundreds of millions of people did. Tons of metahumans did, because the flu was killing them too. We were going to get it, my mom and sister and I. My dad... he was already gone by the time the vaccine was available. But my uncle, he was this genius who lived out in the middle of nowhere on a big desert compound, he wouldn't let us. He said it was poison and it would be worse than the disease. And he was right. Everyone who took the vaccine turned into a zombie, and the ones who didn't got killed by them or died of the flu. He made a new vaccine, but by the time it was done, the zombies were right there, and the vaccine made us all sick. We didn't have a chance, and Megan and I only survived by hiding in a compost heap so they couldn't smell us. They all died, but it turned out the serum worked, at least for me, and so I survived in the whole empty world." She looked a little dazed by her own tumble of words. "I just... I can't keep thinking about it if I want to be able to live here at all. Seeing a zombie here, and having all of that jerked right back up to the surface..." She stopped, swallowed hard a few times. "I don't know what to do with all of it."

"Mmm, sounds like maybe you came on too strong," Stesha told him sagely, leaning an elbow on the counter. "People who are really sad deep down often don't like to talk about it with everyone they meet. Maybe she didn't even want you to see it, and you embarrassed her. Flowers a good apology for that sort of misunderstanding." She pulled out a pencil from behind her ear (or was it from behind her ear? It certainly hadn't seemed to be there a moment before), and started making notes on a bit of scratch paper. "I think we can figure something out. We'll start with the basics. How much are you looking to spend, and do you know what flowers she likes?"

Normally Stesha would've referred him to the florist down the street for a bouquet of flowers, but she couldn't help feel amused sympathy for the young man. "We don't normally do make-and-take bouquets around here," she told him, "but I might be able to help you out. First, though, what exactly is it that you're sorry for? Some sorries require different flowers than others. Some sorries require flowers and jewelry," she told him cheerfully. "Did you have a fight?"

For a florist shop, there weren't as many flowers as he might have expected. There were bouquets here and there, and pictures of flowers, and stacks of books of pictures of flowers, but not a blessed posy had a price tag on it. A woman was working behind the polished front counter, attractive despite a very slightly green tinge to her skin. It was complemented, at least, by her spring green hair, pinned up in braids and twists around her head and decorated with yellow flowers. Stesha looked up and smiled at the young man as he came in, for all he didn't look much like her typical client. It wasn't too unusual for people who were unfamiliar with the business to wander in off the street. "We do sell flowers here," she told him kindly, "though we may not be exactly what you're looking for. What did you have in mind?"

"They called it Dead Head, like it was some kind of joke," she told him, her voice a soft monotone. "But it was a zombie. Maybe it is just a joke when there's only one of them, but it's different when there are millions of them, when they're people you used to know. I've walked through Freedom City where creatures like that were the only thing besides me that moved anywhere. And I killed them when I found them. There was nothing else to do with them. Even if they used to be human, they weren't anymore, and all they knew how to do was kill and eat." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "They killed my mother and I never even found most of the pieces, because they were eaten. There aren't supposed to be any zombies in this world. But this one was different. It had some kind of intelligence, some kind of mental power. After I shook the mind control and came back, I wanted to talk to it. I had to find out if there were more. It dug into my mind somehow and made me relive everything, like it was happening again for real, while it watched. My whole family, everyone I ever knew. I don't know if I destroyed it. I wish to god I had."

Fleur de Joie Change Defensive Roll to another rank of Dodge Focus. (0pp) Sell four ranks of Protection (+4pp) Buy four ranks of Con (4pp) Buy four ranks of Will Save (4pp) Buy two ranks of Reflex Save (2pp) Done by Sandman XI

"I don't know," Erin admitted, pushing away from the tree and standing with her arms held rigidly at her sides. "It's hard... I went out to that citywide training skirmish, like we were talking about. There was someone there who reminded me a lot of where I came from." She pursed her lips, looked away, and was silent for long enough that it seemed as though she were done talking. Finally, though, she said, "I totally lost it. I snapped right back to my old world, to the old instincts. Phantom's boyfriend had to pull me off and send me running out of there with mind control powers."

Erin jumped as he said her name, tensing but not swinging. She jerked her head up straight and tried to compose herself, embarrassed to be caught like this, even by a friend. Even in the chancy light from the streetlights, it was obvious she'd been crying as she ran. She wiped the palm of her hand over one cheek, then the back over the other. "Had a bad night," she managed. "I should've known better than to go off campus. Sucks out there." It was meant to be a joke, but it fell entirely flat from the weight of too much truth.

Just as he thought that, he caught sight of a dark shape racing towards the campus, leaping across rooftops and racing along the top of the handsome brick wall that surrounded campus. Before he could move to intercept the intruder, he recognized the runner as Erin. She was moving fast and wild, seeming heedless to her surroundings. She certainly didn't notice him. Near the main gate, she dismounted from the wall and ran to one of the big old live oaks as though she were reaching base in a game of tag. Resting an arm against the trunk of the tree, she hid her face in the crook of her elbow and caught her breath for a minute.

Wander's come this far, she'll continue fighting.

Erin watched him go, as best as her eye could follow, anyway. "I'd hate to see what you'd do if you didn't like me," she muttered. Since her concentration was shattered anyway, she continued packing up her things to leave. As she walked out, she looked around the gym a little uneasily. There had been people there when she'd arrived, but it was just a coincidence that it had emptied out, because she'd been working so long. Wasn't it?

"Give me a break," she sneered. "You know nothing about me or my pain, and you wouldn't give a damn if you did. Why don't you go back to your buddies and jump around with buzzsaws or drink beer or whatever? I have people here who are my friends, and who actually like me, and don't want to just, I dunno, ogle at my life. If I need help, they're the ones I'll go to, not you. Don't you have somewhere else to be?" Descending smoothly from the bleachers, she went to her bag and began packing up her things.

"God, you Interceptors are really cut from the same cloth, aren't you?" Erin stood up, irritation practically radiating from her. She was obviously pissed, but there was none of the restrained violence he'd seen from her before. "For one thing, you've doubled the population of this place, plus a bunch of students are already gone. The fact that nobody else is in the gym right now isn't some kind of condemnation of me as a person. Maybe it's the fact that you're scared of even being here, with people as powerful as you but with better training, and that's making you project onto other people?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "We do plenty of team training and small group training. I don't need someone holding my hand every second to get me to work on my powers. My teammates train on their own as well. Not much good to train as a group if one of us doesn't know how to use our own powers. I'm sure your team doesn't feel like they have to be with you for every training session, right? Otherwise, where are they today?"

"I always liked it. Everybody here is good people, they're going to understand, eventually." Stesha took one last deep breath, then climbed out of the car. She went around for her luggage, but had barely gotten the trunk open when she was nearly tackled by a blond man in a Northwestern t-shirt and jeans. "Ha, I've got you now!" Stesha chortled as she was scooped up and hugged, throwing her arms around the man's neck. "You've still got that crazy hippy hair, too, little sister," he said, mock-admonishingly. "We've got the razor for that, right after we finish beating up this boyfriend..." Stesha snorted, pushing at his chest till he put her down. "Jasha, you're a horrible person," she told him, still half-laughing. "Derrick, this is my big brother Jasha, who is a horrible person. Jasha, this is Derrick, who is a wonderful person, and a lot harder to beat up than the boys you chased off me back in high school."

"Please do," Erin encouraged. It sounded like an interesting story, plus she was happy enough to be getting out of the yards of pinned fabric that she probably would've agreed to anything. "Trevor mentioned that you did a lot of clothes for heroes back when his grandfather was active."

"It's Young Freedom." Erin shrugged, deliberately trying to suppress the defensiveness under a feigned casualness. "Because I came here for basically the same reason you did, because I have to control my powers. Working with the team is another way to learn, but if I don't want to endanger my teammates and everyone around me, I have to train even harder on my own time. You'll probably put in a lot of solo hours too, if you really want to learn."

"Exercise is good for you," Erin pointed out, shifting from foot to foot as she waited for Frank to finish up. Fidgeting was definitely normal for her, especially when she was doing something she was already uncomfortable with. "Are we almost finished?" she asked Frank. "It looks good, I think." Truthfully, it was hard for her to envision what the dress was going to look like when it was done, and the dressmaking terms he'd been tossing out went mostly over her head. "How long does a dress take to finish?"

"Because I feel like it," Erin said, a trace defensively. "It's easier to work out when nobody else is around, easier to concentrate. This place is busier right after school and on weekday afternoons and stuff. But finals are on, and some of the students who go home for the summer are already gone. And you can't always practice in the Doom Room. Sometimes all the technology is just distracting."

"You'd be tough to beat at hide and seek," Erin pointed out with a grin. "I'm not sure you'd even have to hide. But somehow things aren't as fun when you don't have to work at it. But anyway, now that I think about it, maybe you shouldn't mention the dancing thing to Archer. He might decide to make it a unit in the class, and laughing at some of our classmates might give me an aneurysm." She looked over at Frank. "You could wrestle," she suggested, deadpan, as she gave the fabric bodice one more tug.

Erin rolled her eyes. "They're not allowed to kill us for real, you know. What kind of a place do you think this is? Sometimes you just get stunned, otherwise the sim just goes dark and ends if you get killed. I heal up fast, so he feels free to let the simulations beat me within an inch of my life, but that's sort of different. We have a simulator that's like... well, it sounds stupid to say, but if you've ever seen Star Trek, it's like the holodeck they have. He builds scenarios and tosses things at you, and it seems real, but it's really fake. It can be tailored to anyone's powers, so we can all get trained."

Erin stepped up next to James, hoping that her lack of any information about this world woudn't get her in too much trouble. She hadn't even thought to ask her teammates if they had memories of Mark that might indicate whether they even knew him here. "Mrs. Lucas, can we come in?" she asked. "I'm sorry you're not feeling well, but it's really very important. The fate of the world could be at stake."

Erin colored slightly, realizing she'd opened the door to questions she'd rather not have to answer. "It's not that big a deal," she replied evasively. "Just something Archer and Dr. Marquez cooked up between them. It's not like sports are as much fun as they were before the whole superpowers thing. Too easy, you know? Mike and I went out and played super baseball in the simulator once and it was okay, but not that exciting."