Electra

"Hey," she said in response, swinging around to sit crosslegged on top of the monkey bars. It gave her the advantage of height, and a little distance, with her face almost lost to the shadows. "I'm doing all right. It's weird, being back and seeing everything so much the same, like nothing ever happened. How are you doing?" The apology part was harder and more awkward to deal with, so she left that on the table for the moment.

Stesha gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I already told my story to Taylor, but as she pointed out, it was mostly what I heard from you, and I have a credibility problem where Jack's concerned. I don't remember much of what happened the night you and I went to see Jack, mostly what you and I talked about later. And he was your friend. It's your story to tell."

Unexpected noise and movement from the agility course caught his eye as he walked past the practice fields. It wasn't unusual to find students putting in solo time out here, but rarely so late, and so late in the year. It was cold out, and dark even in the city, which still seemed oddly subdued after the events that almost no one seemed to remember. As he got closer, the lights from the streetlamps beyond the walls let him see the blue and gold of a Claremont practice uniform, and some small voice inside told him it was Erin. Not that it would've been a bad random guess anyway, there weren't a lot of students who stayed up all night and were cussed enough to practice outdoors all night at the end of November, but it seemed like something more than that, something hard to pin down. Erin was intensely focused on her late-night workout, the darkness just making her work a little harder as she flipped and leapt across the course. She'd been concentrating so much on learning how not to hit things that her form was getting sloppy in the area of not getting hit herself. The lack had cost her recently, and she wasn't going to let it happen again. Besides, she hadn't slept since the invasion, and she wasn't about to start until she dropped from exhaustion. Having any kind of energy left over would just be asking for dreams she really didn't want to see. By now she was well on her way there, sweating and even panting a little after several hours of hard training. It wasn't until she stopped to resecure her headband that she noticed anyone coming at all. Sloppy, she chided herself sternly, crouching on the bars and watching to see who approached. When she saw it was James, she relaxed, but not much.

Spending my 5pp for each character from November: Wander: Done by Sandman XI Add feats: Evasion 2 (1pp) Fast Acrobatic Bluff (1pp) Add Skills: Acrobatics +4 (1pp) Add Extra: Impervious to Protection (bringing total Impervious to 11) (1pp) Remove one rank of Dodge Focus Add 1 rank Defense (1pp) Fleur de Joie: Done by Sandman XI Modify True Resurrection to a 48hr turnover (1pp) Add Feats: Attack Focus (Ranged) 2 (2pp) Dodge Focus 1 (1pp) Defensive Roll 1 (1pp)

Stesha didn't stay in the unpleasant water too long, climbing out to sit on the side when it was obvious that Clingy was having a fine old time on her own. She found a little stash of inflatable toys next to the skimmer, still in the packaging, and stamped with the logo of a pool cleaning service. She inflated a ball and a life ring and tossed them into the pool, making a quiet bet on how long each of those would last. "Hey Jack," she called across the pool, "is the delivery guy gonna be able to find this place?"

Not sure of what else to do, Erin took a seat and watched as the ritual got underway, trying to stay out of the way and out of mind. If Phantom worked for the Freedom League, she had no reason to send Erin back. Erin had papers, and the assurance that she could live here. But she was very... thoughtful, at least, about how much the dimensional guardian knew about her world. No reason to give anybody reason to talk about it. Her eyes went wide and she temporarily forgot about the Phantom issue as the genie appeared. It was.... it was very big, and very loud. "Uh, hi," she murmured when it said hello, hoping it would quickly turn its attention back to Mark.

"Okay, back in a second." Stesha ducked into the bathroom and found a suit that mostly fit, then wrapped Clingy up in her cowl and tied it with a vine, which held the squirmy child just long enough for her to change. By the time she came back out, the little creature was back on her shoulders. "I wonder if they know how to swim." She waded into the pool at the shallow end, using one hand to keep her hair out of the chlorinated water as much as possible. "See, it's nice," she encouraged Clingy as the water rose up around both of them, trying not to grimace from the chemicals.

Stesha took a seat in one of the padded chairs in the powder room, tacitly giving Taylor the door if she wanted it. It wasn't going to help a thing if they chased her through a dimensional portal. "Of course you should be happy, and if you're happy I want to be happy for you," she said earnestly. "But how much do you really know about Jack, after such a short period of time? It's been a pretty intense four months, and I'm sure you feel really close right now, but are you sure that you actually know the kind of person he is, and that he's someone you can spend the rest of your life with? He's not always been a very upstanding guy." She looked to Moira for backup on that.

Stesha paused for a minute when they got to the bathroom, not quite sure of where to start. She wanted to shake Taylor and ask if she was out of her cotton-picking mind, but suspected that the conversation would be unproductive from there. "This is really a surprise," she said instead. "You and Jack have only been dating for three or four months, haven't you? I had no idea it was so serious."

"Hey, you have a pool?" Stesha asked Taylor. "That might be a good idea, at least give them something else to do besides destroy your living room." She wrapped Clingy in her cowl for a moment, toweling her like a small animal at the vet long enough to pry her hair loose again. That earned her a howl of protest from the tot, but won back possession of her braid. "I don't think Jack's house is quite childproof enough to handle them."

Erin was still reeling as James let go of her, brutally disoriented by the quick attack and recovery. For a few terrifying moments, she'd been fully human again, as powerless as her counterpart on this world. Hunger, fatigue, the surprising pain of even small injuries, had all rushed up on her in an instant before she was slammed down by a wave of force so heavy that she couldn't so much as twitch a muscle against it. When James had picked her up, he'd made it all go away, but it had taken something out of her that hurt inside like a freshly pulled tooth. She didn't know what it was, but it didn't seem like something she'd wanted to lose. James was halfway to the gate before she even managed to open her eyes, and his challenge to attack seemed laughable. But fighting was like breathing to her anymore, instinctual when necessary to survival. Pushing every other thought aside, she clenched her hands into fists and ran after James, bracing to leap onto the massive demon. If tonight was the end, at least they would all go together.

Stesha paled, her eyes widening at the sudden announcement. Apparently she'd substantially overestimated the amount of time they had to get Taylor back into a rational frame of mind. She drained half her water glass in one gulp and fixed a smile on her face. "That's just lovely," she managed, with just enough sincerity to possibly fool Derrick. "This seems like the perfect opportunity to pull Taylor off for a little girl talk, right Moira?" She rose from her seat, glancing over at the goddess.

"Okay, good," Stesha said with relief, fielding the toga and folding it like a really long bath towel. "I'm sure she'll listen to you." She repacked her bag and waited for Moira, then headed back out to the living room where everyone was waiting. It looked like someone had broken out the vacuum cleaner and taken care of all the salt lines, leaving only the smell of wine in the air to commemorate the successful ritual. Well, and Moira, obviously. "All right, we're ready," Stesha said cheerfully. "What's the best way to get there?"

Erin took a few steps close to the circle to watch what was going on, though she kept most of its diameter between her and Phantom. She'd been told that the information about her world was classified and she would be able to tell people or not, if she wanted. Hearing a stranger talk about it so baldly was jarring. Dimensional guardians fell under "need-to-know," she guessed. At least Mark hadn't seemed to even notice. Hard enough to try and explain it to someone like Alex, who could live it through her eyes, or James, who had his own world of miseries, she couldn't imagine trying to talk about where she'd come from with someone who didn't seem to even understand bad things happening as an abstract concept. "What's going to happen?" she finally asked. "Is it going to have to stay in that circle when you bring it here?"

Erin tensed at those words, staring back at Phantom for a minute before shooting another look at Mark. What had he gotten her into? Suddenly, the genie didn't seem like the worst problem she might face. She wasn't going to go back, not without a fight. Erin resisted the urge to take another step back and give herself more room to maneuever, but she remained mostly focused on Phantom, wondering what the cloaked hero was going to do. The chair made an alarming squeaking noise, and Erin let go of it before she'd done more than spread white tension cracks all along its back.

Erin rose to her feet, uneasy with the scrutiny from the new arrival. She glanced over at Mark, then looked back to Phantom. Maybe that was just how she treated everybody. Still, it was decidedly less than comfortable when she'd expected to just be a spectator. "I'm Erin, ah, Wander," she finally said, one hand on the back of the flimsy chair. "I talked to you on the phone a few weeks ago."

"Great, that's wonderful," Stesha told him in a voice both enthusiastic and slightly pained from the changeling child pulling her hair. "I'll try and save you some pizza for when you get here, but I don't know if I can make any promises. I'm over at Taylor's place, she can give you better directions that I can." Since Taylor's hands were pretty full, she held the phone up to Taylor's head instead, dodging the grabby hands of Bitey in the process.

Erin took a moment to scope out the room as soon as she walked in, not particularly happy about its lack of escape routes and defensible positions if something bad did happen, but she took a seat anyway on one of the molded plastic chairs. They weren't so far underground that an exit couldn't be manufactured in a pinch. "So why do you want to talk to your grandfather's genie?" she asked. "I thought he's been gone for ages."

"Um, okay," Erin said, sounding dubious, "but are you sure you don't want somebody like Alex or James who knows stuff about this sort of thing? I mean, if you just want someone to be there in case there's a fight, I can do that, but I'm not good at all that magic theory and stuff. I don't even know anything about dimensional travel, really." She rose anyway, running her hands through her hair to smooth it back down into place, then looked at the cat. Oliver washed his front paw, looking as though he hadn't decided whether to come or not. Erin had already discovered the cat pretty much did as he pleased.

He found Erin in an unusual attitude of repose today, stretched out on her bed with the cat and actually napping, but the moment he knocked on the partially open door, she was wide awake. "Okay, what do you need?" she asked, removing Oliver from where he was draped over her arm before sitting up. It was hard to imagine what sort of favor Mark would need that would make him look so comparatively worried, but she did owe him after Thanksgiving and the business with James. And, for all he was beyond weird sometimes, he was her friend.

"Well... it's a little strange," Stesha admitted. "I'm helping Taylor out with this thing, and we really need some stuff from the grocery store. If you could stop by there and get us some Nilla Wafers, and a couple bottles of juice, and maybe some Zwieback toast. Oh yeah, and a box of toddler-size diapers, that's really important." She looked over at Taylor. "Anything else?"

Stesha took the phone and winced as her hair was grabbed once again, but at least Clingy seemed to want it as a security blanket rather than a climbing frame. She punched in Derrick's number quickly, dancing around to avoid getting poked by one of Wingy's little spiked appendages, and sincerely hoping that Derrick wasn't a few hundred thousand light years away and out of cell phone range. When the phone picked up, she breathed a sigh of relief. "Hey honey, are you busy? If you've got a minute or two, I could use a really big favor..."

"Good," Stesha said, smiling with relief as she tugged off her long nightgown and slid into her regular pants and shirt. "Ace told me it would be okay, that they'd treat you well, but it was hard not to worry. I'm just glad you're back." She chuckled. "I'm taking Derrick home to meet my family for Christmas, and I'll need all the moral support I can get. But we can talk about all that later, maybe over some cheesecake." It didn't take long for Stesha to get dressed, but it did take a couple of minutes to straighten and repin her hair properly. She chewed on her lip a minute as she looked in the mirror, then blurted out, "Listen, I know you just got back, but I think you really need to talk to Taylor about Jack. She doesn't know what kind of guy he is, and I think she's really falling for him. She didn't believe me when I tried to talk to her, but I know she'll listen to you. She's my friend, and I don't want to see her make a huge mistake."

Stesha started to volunteer, only to find herself with Clingy firmly affixed to her leg and starting to shinny up her thigh. "Eeeeez? Eeeeez?" the little girl asked, apparently trying to climb into Stesha's armpit. "I don't have any more cookies," Stesha said, giving in and hiking the mostly-humanoid child onto her hip. "We'll have more food for you very soon, Want a flower?" She took a daisy out of her hair and gave it to Clingy, who ate it. Stesha sighed. "It might take all of us to run herd on these three. Want me to give Derrick a call and see if he can pick something up?"

Just for the record, since it may become a factor soon, by my count of the 14 pages of OOC, Edge has only spent 5HP this combat, two of which were accepted to be complication based. So he should have three left to spend where he will. ;-)