Electra

"Tons," Stesha replied with a rueful laugh, pulling slacks and a somewhat wrinkled blouse out of her knapsack. "It'll probably take a couple of days to get you all the way filled in. But I called everyone in to help when you were taken, and we only just now managed to figure out what to do. Were you all right? We were really worried about you. I mean, I know it's your family, but I know you didn't want to go. Are you okay?"

"Different kinds of pizzas, Jack," Stesha reminded him tartly. "Babies don't like taco pizza. Nobody likes taco pizza. Get some cheese pizza and veggie pizza and a meat lover's or something." Returning her attention to the television, she told Taylor, "I have no idea. The TV guide channel is on 19, there's probably something- ow!" She yelped as Wingy decided he was already bored and jumped onto her back, hanging onto her long braid like a gargoyle version of Rapunzel's prince. "Ow-ow-ow-ow!"

"You should pick up some pizzas," Stesha suggested. "That'll be fast, and we can try a couple kinds. Plus, everything's so dark in here, it won't matter if a little tomato sauce gets smeared around. I don't think we have a lot of time to waste before they get, hmm, restless." No sooner had she said that than the biter gnawed all the way through one of the vines and sprinted off down the hallway. Stesha quickly extended a hand, sending a vine shooting out from the center mass and wrapping itself around the little creature. A giant white grapeflower swallowed it up, and a moment later it popped out of another one, back in the cage. "I don't suppose you have any cartoons or something."

Stesha mended the grapevine as it was chewed on, which at least spared the table a little bit of abuse. Cookies were apparently an inferior substitute for a new game, though it was an odd looking game seeing as how the thing chewing on her plants now looked less like a fuzzy toy and more like a prehistoric caveboy. She looked over at Jack. "Hope you picked up some renters' insurance on this place," she quipped dryly.

"Well... that went well," Stesha said bemusedly, wiping fur off her face. "Little ingrate." She rummaged around in her belt and tossed a seed onto the coffee table, which rapidly grew into a lattice of grapevines to keep the little creature confined, then sprang clusters of big purple grapes, to keep him amused. She watched Taylor chasing the winged one around, but since she couldn't fly, didn't have much help to give. "How long do you think it will take to find where they came from?" she asked, quickly rounding up breakables from the shelves and tucking them into Taylor's sad, sad philodendron.

"Be nice," Stesha corrected, "you can both have a cookie, see? There are lots." By now she'd gone through almost half the box, but at least it had kept the peace. "Sounds good to me," she told Taylor. "You might want to order some delivery or something, if Jack still uses his fridge for an evidence locker. Cookies are not going to hold them much longer, I don't think. You want to do the honors?"

Stesha laughed. "I wish I had my camera along," she told Taylor. "They're too cute. Though I'm going to have to get some more cookies at this rate. Hope I'm not going to spoil his dinner, or whatever. I don't know how much cookie alien babies can handle without throwing up." Hoping for an easy extraction from the tree, she fed another wafer to the creature at her side, then held one up for the one in the tree to examine. "Cookie," she said invitingly. "It's very yummy. You want one?"

"Good, that's very nice!" Stesha encouraged the fuzzy creature, giving him another cookie. "I think they're hungry," she remarked, passing a nilla wafer to Taylor for her "baby." "Any idea how long they've been out here on their own?" After giving another cookie to the still "Eeeez!"-ing creature, she added, "They're cute and all, but I can't see not noticing that my human baby had been replaced with one. They are sort of distinctive-looking."

"There you go," Stesha told the little thing encouragingly, reaching in the box and pulling out another cookie. "Can you say please? Say please when you want the cookie. Pleeeeeaase," she encouraged, handing over another cookie. "Do you think they were sent here deliberately?" she asked Taylor, looking around as though she might see another one hanging from the trees nearby. "They seem a little, ah, dependent to be an invasion force."

Stesha was a little nonplussed upon arrival at the look of Taylor's babies, which looked more like cartoon animals than anything she'd ever actually seen in nature. They were kind of cute though, and the one trying to eat Taylor's arm reminded her a little of the fuzzballs she and Derrick had encountered on the planet they'd vacationed on. It was vaguely reassuring to know that not every interdimensional creature was a scaly mountain of wrath or an invisible deadly menace. "Ah, hey Phantom," she said with a grin, approaching the scene. "Some interesting babies you've got." Taking a page from her babysitting experience with human kids, she reached into her knapsack and pulled out a box of Nilla wafers, extending it to the one who looked hungry. "Cookie?"

"Oh no," Stesha said, torn between concern and laughter at the consternation in Taylor's tone. "I can't say I've ever babysat for interdimensional babies before, but I'll do what I can to help out." Holding the phone with her shoulder, she got up from the couch and went to her closet to dig out her costume. Dealing with alien kids didn't seem like a job for a civilian. "Where are you at? If you've got some plants nearby, I can meet up with you."

"Good luck," Stesha murmured, watching as Ace left, knowing she wouldn't see him again. She spent a few precious seconds wiping the tears out of her eyes before pushing herself to her feet, automatically brushing dirt from the tatters of her recently-new costume. Part of her wanted to go back outside, just so she didn't have to look at the faces of the people she had no idea whether she could save. But she was no good there, and the other part of her was terrified to step back into the fight. So she'd do what she could. Touching the dying mankana with her fingertips, she teleported to the flowers she'd grown in the safe room that morning, what felt like a lifetime ago now. "All right, everyone," she said to the crowd of mostly children, struggling to keep her voice steady. "We need to go on a little trip now, to someplace safer than this." She gestured to the flower she'd stepped through and it opened wide, waiting to be walked into. "I know it's scary, but you need to be brave, and go as fast as you can. Everything will be all right." Even as she tried to offer reassurances, she couldn't help looking towards the window, watching death approach.

Stesha had been having a quiet day up until the phone rang, and the greeting wasn't exactly the one she'd been expecting. "What?" she asked, looking at the phone in confusion. It certainly sounded like Taylor, like a very harried, very hassled Taylor, but what an odd question! "Ah, I've done my share of babysitting," she allowed cautiously. "Are you looking after your nephews?" There were some weird noises in the background, but she couldn't quite make out what they were.

Stesha laughed and clapped for the doctor's performance, years of science education giving her extra appreciation for the parody. And he really sold it too, with all the dancing. "I wonder why he doesn't have an accent when he sings," she murmured to Derrick, then smiled at the doctor as he returned to the table. "That was wonderful, I've never heard that before. I need to find the words for that and send them to my dad."

Stesha grinned at over at Taylor. She wasn't blind to her friend's discomfort, but the happiness of getting Moira back made it hard to worry too much right now. It wasn't like Moira was an interdimensional criminal like the people Taylor had to throw out in her line of work. As soon as Taylor realized that Moira really belonged here and wasn't a threat, Stesha was sure the problem would disappear on its own. "What," she asked playfully, "am I not ready for the pajama party?" Disengaging from Moira for just a moment, she gave Derrick a quick kiss to let him know she was glad to see him, then went over to the couch. She'd put a change of clothes in her bag so she wouldn't have to zip home to get dressed. "The toga look is good on you," she told Moira, "but it's a little cold. Want to go get dressed and we'll get something to eat?"

You're up, Quote, Erin's not going anywhere this round. =)

"Moira!" Dropping the formality of the ritual, Stesha threw her arms around her friend, hugging her tightly. "I'm so glad you're back, I was so worried about you!" A few tears trickled down her face, even as she laughed with relief. "Taylor had to find the right ritual, and we had to make sure we were going to do it right, and then... well, a lot happened while you were gone. Are you okay?" she asked, pulling back just far enough to get a better look.

Spending an HP to avoid anyone walking barefoot on glass. ;-)

Biting her lip, Stesha carefully lifted the bottle of wine and poured it over the little altar in the center of the circle, hoping that the towels she'd put beneath it would keep the carpet from being ruined. She'd been practicing the Greek words Taylor had given her to say by rote for a week, but she was still a little bit nervous that she might say one of the handful of words wrong and summon something that was not Moira at all. But she managed to spit them out, and pour the wine, then carefully destroyed the bottle as well. Breaking it probably would've worked all right, but she was a little worried about shards, so instead she dropped a seed into the bottle and placed it on the altar. The seed grew quickly, its strong roots seeming to crumble the walls of the bottle in a matter of moments. Unbound, the resulting flower tipped into the wine and dissolved away. Stesha looked upwards hopefully, as though the ceiling would suddenly open and Moira would fall through.

Stesha walked around the edge of the circle and examined it with interest, careful not to smudge the salt lines with the hem of her robe. She'd dressed up for the occasion as well, since it didn't seem quite right to be a "prophetess" in blue jeans and a blouse. On the other hand, she wasn't going to wear a toga either, or work naked, as Taylor had suggested before all the guys had gotten involved. Instead she'd chosen a long white nightgown with a lacy front and edges, splitting the difference between bathrobe and grade-school angel costume with something she was only a little bit embarrassed to be wearing in public. She'd braided her hair into intricate circlets around her head and added a crown of daisies, in case anything went wrong, and counted herself ready. Aside from the green hair, she was one silver candlestick away from the front cover of a gothic mystery novel, but it sort of worked for what they were trying to do. "So what exactly happens when we start up the ritual?" she asked Taylor, fidgeting with the sleeve of her nightgown. "There's no risk we're going to call up anything besides Moira, is there? We don't want any repeats of what happened a few weeks ago, but with a whole different afterlife..."

The red aura moved with Erin as Alex reeled her and James back from the gate, but it seemed to be content with one target at a time. Alex's hands passed through it harmlessly as she checked Erin's vitals. It was hard to tell whether she was breathing, in the noise and uncertain light, but her heartbeat raced under Alex's fingers. Erin wasn't dead, but she was different. Whatever the aura was doing, it had stripped away inches of height and pounds of muscle, till she was just a rather scrawny teenage girl and nothing more. Beneath the closed eyelids, her eyes were fixed and dilated, brown irises nearly lost behind the pupils.

And as a result: 22:45:00) Cyroa: (whispers) here we go. Will: all non-innate powers are nullified. new will failed: Mental Transform. Effectively, as the sum of both effects: she's sort of frozen/paralyzed. think suspended animation but still cognizant. But she'll appear dead to everyone almost everyone else. Including Psyche since her mental link thing will get nulled too and unless you want the effect to just get transferred back to James, you're probably gonna have to fall on him

Okay, let's roll that beautiful bean foota... that quartet of DC 24 exotic saves! Two failed fort saves. One passed, one narrowly failed will save With the HP from her complication, Erin has 3HP remaining. She will spend two to reroll the fort saves. HP reroll on both fort saves, one pass, one fail. ...Okay, Scratch that, make it one passed fort save, one HP spent, and another failed will save Erin's down to two HP remaining, and failed two will saves.

Erin went to her knees with James as he fell, keeping his head from hitting the ground but not much more. "You're stronger than he is," she murmured again, into his ear this time. She rose then, stepping deliberately into the path of the infernal power directed at James, deflecting it with her own body. Erin opened her mouth to say something, maybe her own words of defiance, but the words were snatched from her lungs with the force of the attack. The effect was instantaneous. As the aura of blood-colored light enfolded her, she staggered, knees buckling as her body visibly grew smaller and more slender. What bruising hadn't already disappeared began to purple again, as her mouth and nose began to bleed. Erin stumbled backwards one step, then two, tripping over James' prone form and falling across him, her body still blocking him from the light, though that seemed about as much from luck as intent. Her eyes were closed as she fell, and she didn't so much as put out an arm to catch herself. Over Alex's mental link there was one moment of overwhelming pain, fear, and confusion, and then nothing more, as the link snapped cleanly away.

Fearless!