Electra
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When he regained his feet, the roof was at least a good vantage point from which to see the neighborhood. The building overlooked a number of other, smaller buildings, and a little park as well. As he watched the park, he could see that something strange was going on there, though it was hard to tell what it was. Some of the trees seemed to be growing and filling out under the light from the street lamps.The smell of flowers and growing plants was unusually strong in the air.
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"Eve," Erin said, her voice unusually gentle, "I know it seems nice down there. Everything works in harmony, the people are happy, right? But it's not because things are actually better. We watched someone on the monitor who didn't act like Rick thought he should, who was unhappy about this world, and he was literally erased from existence. If something bad happens, if someone gets angry, it doesn't get fixed or progress, it just goes away." She stepped up to look at the monitor as it played over the Lucas house. "The people's minds are real, but the world they live in is a fraud. If you go back, eventually you won't be able to buy into it anymore. It's just one big game of pretend, but it's cruel to the people who don't know they're playing."
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Wander: Life's Parade of Fashion (16) House of L: Wake Up Call (14) New Sound (2) Fisticuffs 2: Opening Credits (24) Midnight Express (40) House of L (7) Down the Rabbit Hole (10) Fleur de Joie: Open Fields (17) Green with Envy (2) Childhood Dream (2) One of These is Not Like the Other (3) Hero Work (2)
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Erin took a good look around as she got out of the car, getting the lay of the land. She'd never been to this particular part of Freedom City before, either in this world or the last. It seemed nice enough, even if there were a few more places for things to hide than she was entirely comfortable with. Coming around the side of the car, she met up with Trevor just outside the shop. "Well, here goes nothing," she said with a crooked smile. "If he chases me out of the shop with a broom, I'm going to Goodwill next."
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"I don't think so," Erin told Sage, looking down at the world beneath them. "I'm not sure we're in an actual alternate dimension. I think Rick might have sort of overlaid this dimension down on top of Prime. That's why there are people who remember, even if they get erased. And there seem to be a lot fewer people here than there are on Prime. If we're lucky, they're just in limbo somewhere and not actually destroyed. If all the rest of those people are going to have a chance to come back, we need to put things back the way they were."
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"Well, it sounds promising, but I don't really know what most of that means," Erin admitted, glancing over at him as they drove. Trevor spent most of the ride explaining exactly how he would go about reinforcing the truck, some of which sounded like it had come straight out of a science fiction movie, but he seemed confident about it. Erin had seen way too much weird tech in the past year to discount anything out of hand. He had a nice voice, she realized, and figured that this was probably the most she'd heard him talk about anything in one chunk. By the time she had even a sort-of handle on what he was suggesting, they were nearly there.
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Stesha let him go, rolling to sit up on the opposite side of the couch. She fiddled with her hair, braiding it into segments with distracted fingers. "I still don't like it," she said, though the idea that the evil counterpart could come back had subdued her quite a bit. Even thinking about it made her scared to the point of nausea. She shifted the conversation instead. "Anyway, since when do we trust Jack? I can't think of anybody in Freedom City who calls themselves a hero that I would trust less with a huge amount of power."
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She raised both eyebrows. "I wasn't actually aware that it was possible to turn a truck into a hang glider," she admitted. "It might be something to think about, but an aluminum and carbon frame would be less sturdy, and I need sturdy even more. You never know what you might end up driving into, or when you're going to need to go offroad. Now if you were really going to go in and rework the frame, would it be possible to reinforce the whole thing, the way they do for the president's cars and stuff?"
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"Okay," Erin replied, trying not to sound dubious about it. Egos were a delicate thing, and you didn't have to be Alex to figure out that some of Trevor's was on the line. "Guess I should be grateful you didn't ding my truck with it," she joked instead as she shut the glove box. "Now if you could put a hang glider on the truck, that would be something to see."
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"You sure you don't want an aspirin?" Erin suggested, glancing over at Trevor as they stopped at a light. "You bumped yourself pretty hard back there. That's the problem of going around without the armored costume, I guess. You get used to being able to take some hits your body can't actually take. I tried a padded costume in simulation for a couple of weeks, but I just couldn't get used to it." She reached over and opened the glovebox, revealing a well-organized stash of manuals, first aid and repair supplies, as well as a cache of meal bars and a couple bottles of water.
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Erin thought about that for a minute. "Or formal gowns that double as emergency parachutes?" she suggested with a laugh. "Sounds like an interesting job. Think I could convince him to build some kind of fancy gadget into this dress? If the party gets boring, we can climb onto the roof and hang-glide off into the the sunset." The music really wasn't too bad, she decided, when it wasn't quite so loud. It had a nice rhythm.
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"So he makes mostly costumes, right?" Erin had a bizarre mental picture of a spandex formalwear dress in bright primary colors with a logo emblazoned across the front. That would certainly turn heads at any formal function. "Does he do a lot of other kinds of clothes too, or mostly just that?" She didn't want to insult the family tailor or anything, but it was definitely a concern on her mind.
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"It's not the right thing!" Stesha maintained loudly, giving his shoulders a little shake for emphasis. "That thing we destroyed was designed to steal your energy and kill you. Not only would you be dead, whatever had control of you would have a huge amount of power to do whatever they wanted! I don't care how trustworthy the person is who you give it to, they could be mind-controlled too, and then what..." Stesha trailed off as the rest of what Derrick had said started to sink in. "Wait... you mean he could come back? He's not gone for good?"
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Erin jumped at the initial blare, but decided it wasn't too bad, aside from the trumpet crescendos. Following Trevor's directions, she drove the truck into the normal crush of Freedom City traffic, headed for the Riverside district. "So what exactly is the deal with this guy?" she asked. "He made your grandfather's uniforms back in the day, right? Does he do a lot of work with superheroes?"
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Stesha moved then, abruptly tipping them both over so that he was flat on the couch and she was pinning his shoulders with her hands. "That's probably the stupidest thing I ever heard," she opined, looking down into his face with her hair tumbling around both of them. "Just because you met a bad version of you doesn't mean that you're going to go bad, or that you'd kill me or anyone else. I know you better than that. Deciding to keep around some, some torture device just out of this misguided idea that you might end up being dangerous, it's just crazy. Even thinking about you inside that thing makes me sick inside, can't you understand that? Can't we just get rid of it? If something bad did happen to you, mind control or something, we'd find another way."
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"All right," Erin said, lowering the truck just a bit reluctantly. She would've preferred to spend the afternoon working on the truck than going to get fitted for a dress, but they did have an appointment. Sliding out from under the car, she put her hair back into the headband and brushed herself off, then climbed up into the driver's seat. "Help yourself to the radio," she told him, "it came with a year of satellite radio subscription, so there's pretty much everything." She herself hadn't gotten very creative, the station was currently set to the local Top 40 station.
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"Why not?" Stesha asked in surprise. "If it's something like what we destroyed in that lab, it's a terrible thing. I could see how it was hurting you and draining you. What if someone found it and figured out how to use it? They could hurt you! I think we should toss it back into space where it belongs." She nodded firmly to punctuate the sentiment.
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"Would this be easier if I lifted up the truck?" Erin suggested, reaching for the engine block and pushing up on that and the front axle, lifting the truck a good six inches with no apparent effort. "You can get a better look at it this way." Trevor's head seemed okay, and the truck as well, so that was a relief. "There's a first aid kit in the truck if you want an aspirin or something."
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"Ouch." Erin winced sympathetically and angled the flashlight over to look at Trevor, the surprise of his sudden movement quickly outweighing the startlement of his leg brushing hers. "That looked painful. You okay?" Heroically, she resisted the urge to sneak a glance at the undercarriage as well to make sure he hadn't put a dent in it.
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"Weird," Stesha murmured, studying her own hand. "I suppose it makes sense, given what happened. I wonder if it will wear off. I'll have to wear a little more foundation till it does, perhaps. If I turn any greener, I'm going to have a hard time passing at all. But it beats the alternative," she reminded herself aloud. Leaning back against his shoulder, she made herself comfortable. There didn't seem to be any good reason to move anytime soon. "Did you destroy that awful prison once you got out?"
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Erin followed his movements with her flashlight, trying to follow what he was looking at, but aside from the major components it was pretty incomprehensible. Her hair, freed from the headband by her trip underneath the car, got into her face and didn't help anything. She brushed it aside impatiently, which helped her, but resulted in a few errant strands escaping to tickle Trevor's cheek instead. "That's... good?" she ventured at his pronouncement.
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"If Rick Lucas is dead here, or a spirit that can still act on the world or whatever, we can't count on him to make things right," Erin said, looking around at the others. "So let's go find Mark. If anybody's going to be more powerful in this world, it's going to be him. I mean, this is what his brain probably looks like all the time, and his dad made this world. But we have to be careful. Chris almost got erased because he didn't follow this world's rules. We can't afford to risk anybody else."
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Erin crouched down next to him, bending to look under the car as well. "What are you looking for?" she asked curiously. Given Trevor's choice of hero avocation, she thought he could probably see well enough, but for her own sake she stood and retrieved the flashlight from the glove compartment before sliding under the truck as well.
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"Sounds like a good idea," Erin agreed. "Like I said, it's almost new, but I think it could do better. I've been reading up, a little, but it's all pretty confusing. I can change my own oil and filters, that's about it." She led the way to an extended cab pickup truck in an attractive metallic blue color. It was obviously well taken care of, very clean and with no more dings than were unavoidable given New Jersey driving.
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Erin's first instinct was to hit back, but in a split second she had redirected the destructive impulse, grabbing Chris' wrists and pinning them to keep him from lashing out again. "It was Rick Lucas," she told him, "I don't know exactly what he did, he changed the way the universe works. It's like the aspirational rules for heroes when he was young are the rules for the way the whole world works now. He even changed you guys. Can you remember things from this world differently, like a second set of memories?" She turned to James. "Do you have a holding cell on this thing?" she asked him. "Can you get Spellbound up here and contained? If we can talk to her when she wakes up, we'll know if other people can remember the way things used to be."