Electra

Despite her resolve to be at least socially neutral for this visit, Erin couldn't help showing her disdain for that idea. "I used to think God was all those things, but that's not true," she told the angel. "If God was loving, he wouldn't let the things happen that I've seen. If He was loving, or if gave a damn about people, He might have listened when the whole world was calling out for Him to help them. If He was just, you'd think that He'd at least have saved the people who spent their whole lives working for Him, and showing looove," she elided the word sarcastically, "to everyone they met. If He was paying attention, maybe He could at least have looked after His own. And if He's so interested in Peace, why doesn't He stop Omega?" she demanded. "Even a child is known by his doings, that's another one from the Bible, isn't it?"

Third week of January. Erin learns more about the Terminus, from the resident dimensional expert.

January swept in cold and dreary, dumping patches of snow here and there, but not enough to be enjoyable or scenic, even three weeks into the new year. It had taken that long for Erin to get things set up for her interview with Phantom. Even after she'd worked up the nerve to set things in motion, the dimensional guardian had been indisposed for awhile, busy with other things, apparently. But eventually the stars had aligned, and Erin was hopefully going to lay to rest some of the questions Shadivan Steelegrave had raised, for all that it meant dealing with someone who made her distinctly uncomfortable. James had offered, more than once, to come along with on this trip, but Erin had turned him down. Not because she didn't appreciate the offer, but this wasn't the sort of thing she wanted an audience for, any audience. It seemed like it would be easier to talk about the Terminus and what it might have done to her world with an unsympathetic stranger than with a friend. That's how it had been before, anyway, the debriefings were easier than talking to the friendly psychologist. James gave her a ride anyway, dropping her off in a beautiful private library that smelled like leather and old books. Erin clasped her hands together behind her back and looked around, automatically gauging the security of the room before she did anything else.

"That doesn't help," Erin said, impatience beginning to creep in. "That doesn't even mean anything. And whatever happened to by grace you are saved through faith, not of yourself, it is the gift of God, not by works, lest any man should boast?" She rattled the Bible verse off from rote memory, something picked up from plenty of years of Sunday schooling. "I thought the whole idea is that nobody deserves heaven, but you should be good because you love God. That's what I learned in church anyway, not that I really believe any of that anymore. But is that whole idea some kind of misunderstanding?"

"Oh." Despite a certain morbid curiosity, Erin decided she really didn't want to know any more about angel sex, and besides, it was drifting from what she'd come here to learn. She turned the conversation back on point. "I'm not from Prime," she said, "but I'll probably spend the rest of my life here, however long that is. For purposes of argument, assume I go to heaven. How do I know what heaven I'm going to end up in? Is it just that you go to the heaven that's nearest, and since everyone in heaven is happy, you don't care if you went to the wrong one?"

"How can you be an angel and have a mother?" Erin asked suspiciously. It was easier to seize on that bit of nonsense than to try and make sense of everything else he was saying. It certainly didn't sound like anything she'd learned in church, for all he was hanging out with the Catholics and claiming to be a messenger from that particular god. The idea of angels having parents was just weird in a far more mundane sort of way.

Erin's fingers stilled on the muffin as she listened to his answer. It was couched in weird terminology, but she thought she had the gist of it. "So you're saying there's a different heaven for every alternate world. One here for Prime, and the people here go there, and one for, say, Erde, and one for Ani-Earth, and all the others? What about people who travel between dimensions?" she asked carefully. "If they died in a world that wasn't their home, where would they go? Assuming they were headed for heaven, anyway."

Erin wasn't exactly comfortable about sitting down over muffins with someone she wasn't sure she liked at all, but peeling off the muffin wrapper gave her something to do with her hands, anyway. The muffin itself was suspiciously hard, and a rather dark brown, but she wasn't hungry anyway. "I want to know about heaven," she told him bluntly. "Is there only one?"

"He's not here," Erin replied, keeping a healthy distance back. She wasn't really afraid of the angel, not in a fight, anyway. She was confident she could handle anything he might dish out, especially here in a place where he wasn't likely to want to break anything. Truthfully, she was more afraid of herself, and of what she wanted to talk about. "I had some questions I wanted to ask you," she told him, hands still stuffed into her pockets. "If you're a real angel."

"Yeah, but what is it?" Erin blinked at the oddity of the thing she'd caught, but didn't loosen her grip as the dimensional intruder squirmed uselessly. "It looks like some kind of Stay-Puft marshmallow terrorist. In a dress." She hefted the creature a bit, turning so James could examine the cartoonish bomb. "You might want to take this and move it somewhere where it won't blow a hole in the mall while we're standing here." Giving the creature a little shake, she demanded, "And you can start talking. What are you doing in this universe?"

Last week of February. Erin asks Heyzel questions about things.

Lent came sooner than usual this year, what with Easter set as early as it could possibly be. St. Stephen's was decorated for the season with a purple altar cloth and sextet of taper candles, a far cry from the opulent preparations of the Christmas season. The smell of burnt candles and old incense hit Erin first as she pushed open the heavy front door of the church, late one evening at the end of February. She'd half-hoped that the church would be locked and dark, but with one of the heavenly host in residence, it appeared that visiting hours were extending later than usual. Despite wishing for the confidence boost she got from her uniform, Erin had come in street clothes tonight, and she stuck her hands in the pockets of her puffy blue jacket as she walked into the sanctuary. The conversation had ended... poorly last time, but after a lot of arguing with herself, Erin had to come back to the church eventually. She still had questions that needed answers. This time, though, she hadn't brought James. He was a good friend to have at her back, but she suspected that there would be no productive conversation with him around. Her footsteps echoed off the vaulted ceiling, each creak sounding loud in the silence.

Since Erin's skill mastery let her see the moving thing, she's gonna try and catch it. ;-) Attack roll is a 29. Not bad for not being at caps without the bat. Grapple roll is not so good, a 30, but I'll stick with it for the moment and see how it shakes out.

Erin went on alert the moment they arrived, scanning the dim store with eyes and ears. Everything seemed quiet and still, but... there! A rustle of clothes caught her attention, and from the corner of her eye she saw something small and white moving among the racks on the far side of the room. "There!" she snapped, not bothering to explain any further as she launched herself at the moving figure, leaping over racks and mannequins in a single, ceiling-brushing leap.

"That sucks," Erin said, giving him a sympathetic look. "You need any help? I can't do any dimension hopping or anything like that, but if you're trying to pin someone down so you can send them back where they come from, I might be able to help out. Get done fast enough, you might even get that nap in before class," she suggested with a small smile. "Anyway it'd be a nice break from the videogames, right?"

Erin walked into the common room just as James opened his eyes. She was looking far more alert than he was that night, and carrying a paperback novel she'd borrowed from Alex. "You look like you could use a nap," she commented with a smile. "All the new extracurricular stuff keeping you busy?" Although she wasn't exactly clear on what James was doing to help Phantom with the interdimensional bouncing business, she knew it was keeping him off campus a lot lately.

"I'm fine," Stesha assured Derrick, stepping up close to him. It was hard not to be able to touch him at times like this, but she was at least used to it by now and hardly ever put her hands through him anymore. She smiled at the praise from him and Grimalkin, even as she rested a hand against the honey locust and turned it into a fine mulch in the middle of the dance floor. "Thanks," she said, "but I doubt they'd have stopped in this room if everyone hadn't been here to fight them. We all helped." Stesha walked up to Taylor and leaned in close. "You want me to go try and head off your family?" she asked softly. "Or at least divert them from this room? I don't know how much they saw before I moved them out."

Erin leveled her glare on James for a moment before remembering to modulate her expression to something more neutral. "I'm fine," she told him, deliberately unfolding her arms and affecting a more normal posture. "He didn't even get a hit in on me. I don't know how he knew where I come from, but he was just full of hot air." She was quiet for a moment, looking around, then murmured, "Do you think your dimensional guardian friend might know stuff about the Terminus?"

I'd be interested in bringing in my plant controller, but seeing as how you're doing the thread on the water, she'll probably only be around if Cy's character is also around. =) But her teleportation and move object might be quite useful in this situation. Let me know!

"Fair enough," Erin said, heading out of the store and back into the mall proper. "Though you probably need to be careful with all the guys, then. One of them might know, and most of them aren't that good at keeping secrets either. I think I'm about done," she decided, looking at her bags. "You got anything else you need to get here?"

"That sounds like a dare," Erin replied to James, grinning. "If I didn't have so much homework waiting, maybe I'd take you up on it." She knew that he'd know that was a total lie, but there was no sense in drawing attention to her neuroses. They were already obvious enough, really. "So are you coming in before you have to go play host? The water's fine." She kicked off from the side and glided across the pool to where Alex and Mike had jumped in. "Where'd Mark and Faith go?"

Erin had made the run through the portal with everyone else, one slowpoke prole tucked under her arm, but she didn't seem to be paying much attention in the aftermath. Arms folded tightly against her chest, she stood off to one side and glared intimidatingly at her own shoes. She knew, she knew she shouldn't believe anything Steelgrave had said to her, that he had no more reason to tell her the truth than James had when he was freshly back from hell. It was a weak spot, and anyone who knew about it would certainly try to exploit it. But she couldn't help wondering anyway. The things he'd said certainly seemed to put the clincher on the theory that Omega had had something to do with the virus that had wiped out her world. Was there more to the story than that, as Steelgrave had insinuated? Who or what was Friendly, and what did it have to do with her? Even if she wanted to follow up on those questions, she wasn't sure who she'd ask. For now, she was more than ready to just get back to Prime and be done with this place.

Stesha, rather surprised that her vines had worked so well, or worked at all, really, quickly capitalized on her advantage. While Ace questioned the fake Captain Thunder, she grew another half-dozen vines and wrapped them around the captured metahuman until he started looking a bit like a topiary sculpture. "They're obviously not the real Freedom League," she said plaintively, "but then where is the League? And what are we supposed to do with these people?"

Stesha rose from the floor, her evening gown stained with blood and far beyond repair, her shoes long gone. She looked around for Dark Star and started heading in his direction before she paused to answer the doctor's question. "Oh, they're down the street, in Bicentennial Park. I did some work there this fall, it was the only place near enough where I knew there'd be enough trees." Closing her eyes, she extended her senses through those same trees. "They're fine," she reported, her voice a bit distant. "Most of them look like they're heading back this way. It's too cold to stay out long. And the STAR squad is coming as well, but they're not close yet."

Erin chuckled at James' comment. "I think Alex can remind him herself if she thinks it's necessary. Or to refocus him if he starts hyperventilating and falls down." She kicked idly in the water, keeping an eye on the action poolside. "So it's just us this afternoon, and then more people will start showing up later? How many do you think will be coming?"