Electra

"Not too often," Danica assured Tom, "the headmistress doesn't like getting up on stage much, and the students and faculty are usually too busy. There's always one at the start and end of the year, then one before everybody goes on Thanksgiving break and after they come back from spring break. Plus, you know, if anything really big and crazy happens and they have to sit us all down and dispell the rumors and stuff. But that's pretty rare. Mostly they use this place for the school play and the talent show and stuff like that." She smiled over at the shy looking kid watching her nearby, but it looked like things were about to start happening onstage.

"Peter Pan's a great story!" Danica added helpfully. "He lives in Never-Never Land and fights Captain Hook at the pirates! I dressed up as Tinkerbell three years in a row when I was little!" She turned her attention briefly to the new guy. "Sure, you can come with us! I'm Danica, this is Elizabeth and Pan. I'm a sophomore this year but I've been here a couple years already so I mostly know my way around. I'm probably not going to join a hero team either," she confided to Elizabeth. "I have powers that make it so I don't really get hurt, but I don't really know that I could help anybody, you know?"

"Oh, if you guys like that, you should see the gym!" Danica nudged her handlebars in such a way that she executed a quick 90-degree turn down another sidewalk. "It's got all the regular gym stuff for regular people, but it's got all kinds of crazy stuff for the physically enhanced kids too. You fly, right?" she asked Pan. "You're gonna love the aerial obstacle course above the basketball court. Sometimes I go over there just to watch the upperclassmen working out on it cause it's totally sick." The way she said sick indicated that this was probably a good thing. "They've got the simulator for real combat training, but the gym is more fun. Are you guys going to try and get onto hero teams?" she asked.

"No, I've been here two years, but they were both freshman years so I'm a sophomore now," Danica explained cheerfully, settling down into her seat as though it didn't quite sit right against her back. "Before that I was at Nicholson for awhile too. "I'm so excited that I can maybe do driver's ed this year if I can talk my parents into it! I've wanted to learn to drive for ages, but they keep saying I have to wait till I'm older. Where are you from?" she asked, switching tracks without so much as a pause for breath.

The doors to the hall opened automatically as Danica whirred through the door on her brightly decorated Segway, as accessibility-friendly as most of the campus was to many kinds of locomotion. She carefully parked the scooter by the door and disembarked, then began walking to a seat. And kept walking. And kept walking, very, very slowly. She didn't seem to be doing it on purpose for attention, but neither did she seem bothered by it. All the same, she did choose not to go far, settling into a seat in the back row near Tom and Monica. "Hi!" she chirped to her fellow students. "I'm Danica! Are you guys new this year?"

"Oh cool, you're from another dimension?" Danica asked Pan, glancing over without stopping her forward roll. "I knew some kids at Nicholson who were from another dimension but they've graduated now. Is it a nice dimension, or did you have to run away from it?" She interrupted herself as they passed by what looked like a large empty field. "There's the sports field! We can't play other schools, obviously, but people play all kinds of sports, football, soccer, lacrosse, Quiddich, sometimes even just tag or red rover. There's equipment for pretty much everything in the field house over there." She gestured, then looked to Elizabeth. "It's cool to be from Freedom City, too! I really like it here, except that it's so cold."

(Continued from School Daze) Danica's wheels hummed cheerfully over the sidewalk as she led the group along at a comfortable walking pace. "Oh yeah, we can visit it anytime during the day, it's just that it's tucked in behind the old chapel and it can be hard to find. I didn't have my wheels then either, so walking around really took a long time!" She led them down the main walking boulevard of the campus, pointing out the administration building and one of the classroom buildings as they passed. "So where are you guys all from?"

"Oh no," Danica told Pan earnestly. "Most people don't have a chrysalis stage, but she was infused with butterfly DNA when she was a baby to save her life and now they think she's going to be some kind of butterfly person when she grows up. It was really experimental!" she added cheerfully. "I'm hoping she has really pretty wings when she comes out, that would be radical!" The group was starting to get a little crowded now, definitely more people than she could keep up with all at once. That was okay, at least everybody seemed really friendly! Danica backed up her segway, careful not to run over anybody's toes, and wheeled around towards the campus. "Does anybody want a tour? I can show you where the most important stuff is! The teachers are all good," she assured Kameron, "but I spent two hours wandering around campus the first time I tried to visit the greenhouse and that was no fun. If the rest of you are going straight to the dorms, I'll see you later!" She wheeled off a little, clearly ready to get a move on.

Danica did indeed very much want to see pictures of tortoises, but that might have to wait for later with so many exciting introductions going on! She waved a hand when her name was called. "I'm Danica!" she confirmed. "Are you Selena? I haven't been up to our room yet but it's the same room I had last year and the year before, but my old roommate entered her chrysalis stage and they don't expect her to be out for at least a year and I'm glad I don't have to room by myself!" she concluded, all in one breath. "But anyway," she continued to the group as a whole, "I've been here for two years so if you guys need to know where anything is, I'll be happy to show you! They have snacks in the cafeteria all afternoon on move-in day, plus you can pick up your textbooks if you want to have them early."

Danica shook hands all around, but her attention was clearly riveted on Kameron. "You're from Dakana?" she asked eagerly. "That is so totally wicked! I've always wanted to go to Africa, but I've got stupid passport issues so I've never even left the country. Did you know Dakana is home to the sulcata tortoise, the largest species of mainland tortoise, and they can dig burrows ten feet long?" she continued, barely pausing for breath. "Have you ever seen a sulcata tortoise? I've seen them in zoos but it's really not the same." She seemed to catch herself then, just as the Segway gave a little warning hum that she was leaning too far off center. "Uh, sorry!" she chirped. "I get kind of... I really like tortoises."

Not far from the towncar, a late-model minivan was parked in a disabled permit space with three people standing next to it. The young girl, maybe fifteen or so, was obviously the Claremont student, a fact made even clearer by the oversized blue-and-gold Claremont hoodie she was wearing. The two adults looked to be in their mid-thirties, a bit young for a teenage daughter but not remarkably so. A white Segway covered in glittery decals stood next to the van, waiting. "Mooom, you really don't have to come with me this year!" Danica was saying, waving her arms and making the too-long sleeves of her hoodie flap. "It's the same room as last year and I've already got all my stuff! You guys have already seen everything!" "What, are you finally starting to be embarrassed of us, kiddo?" her mom asked, amused. "I guess it had to happen one of these days, but still! So painful! Ungrateful offspring! Cast aside by my own flesh and blood! Eighteen months of-" "Mooooooooom!" Danica squealed, caught between laughter and mortification. "There are other kids here! Stooooop!" "Are you sure you don't want us to come with you?" her dad asked. "We can help you hang up your posters, meet your roommate... did you remember to bring your measuring tape and level?" "I've got the whole tool box!" she reminded him, laughing. "I've got everything in the whole wide world, and I'm going to put up my own posters and meet my roommate and it'll be fine! Look," she added, glancing over at the others in the parking lot. "There's a bunch of new kids right over there. Maybe they need somebody to show them around, right? I should go make friends." Her mom still looked torn, but finally relented. "All right, but we're picking you up on Sunday for dinner and movie night, don't be late! You're not getting rid of us that easily!" Another round of hugs, and then Danica climbed onto her Segway and whirred across the lot to the knot of students. She was little even given her wheels, probably five foot nothing if she'd been on flat feet, with chin-length brown hair and a friendly, open face. "Hi!" she called to them as she approached. "I'm Danica! Are you guys new?"

Player Name: Electra Character Name: Chelone Power Level: 13 (built as PL 10; 191/221PP) Tradeoffs: Defense -5/Toughness +5 Unspent PP: 33 In Brief: Tortoise totem with timeliness troubles Alternate Identity: Danica Holmes Identity: Secret Birthplace: Albuquerque, NM Occupation: High School Student, Junior Avatar Affiliations: Tortoises, Claremont Academy Family: Stephanie Munson (mother), Arthur Holes (father) DOB: March 15, 1986 Gender: Female Height: 5’0 Weight: 140lbs unshelled, up to 12 tons if she’s feeling truculent Hair: Short, brown Eyes: Black Description: When she is in her most human disguise, Danica looks like a small, slightly stocky white teenage girl with brown hair in a chin-length bob and black eyes just wide enough to make her look perpetually surprised by the world. She likes acid-wash blue jeans and t-shirts for bands that were popular in the nineties and early aughts, and usually wears a huge LL Bean backpack with a camping frame small enough to accommodate her size. In her realest form, Danica’s skin takes on a slightly gray-green tinge too lively to be corpselike and her eyes get even wider, with the white part almost disappearing. She still looks human, but she is very tortoisey indeed. Much of her body is obscured by the large tortoise shell that covers her body from collarbones to thighs, a pale greeny-yellow on the front but with dramatic yellow striations on the black surface of the back. Although it looks quite sturdy and in a dangerous situation can become an impenetrable wall, most of the time the shell is surprisingly flexible to allow her a nearly full range of movement. History: Stephanie Munson loved tortoises more than anybody else. That was a fact. As a child, she became fascinated with the landbound species of order Chelonia, and would angrily correct anybody who tried to say she liked turtles. Turtles were all well and good, but they were not tortoises (at least not in American English!) Growing up in semi-rural Arizona gave her a chance to help the local college students track and monitor tortoise populations even as she absorbed the classes that would let her pursue the biological sciences herself. Through college and grad schools she scrimped, saved and fought to take research trips to the Galapagos islands for their giant tortoises and to India to see beautiful and endangered star tortoises in their natural habitat. She wrote papers, published articles, and worked with the leading lights in the field of tortoise research and conservation until she’d learned everything they knew. When it came time to pursue a romantic partner, she chose a fellow traveler, a handsome man named Arthur Holmes who just happened to be the head reptile keeper at the Albuquerque Zoological park. It was an excellent match amongst like-minded people who loved each other almost as much as they loved their studies. In a world of magic, passion is a powerful thing. Enough passion can shape the world, change lives, even draw the attention of unknowable forces. Since antiquity, humans have acknowledged the power of turtles and tortoises as agents of stability and wisdom, imbued with life force beyond the understanding of mortals. All of that is true in the way that all folklore has a heart of truth that is only strengthened by belief. At the juncture where life and passion and freefloating magic all meet, strange things can happen. Life can be created that is not the same as other lives. An avatar can be created. Not that Stephanie and Arthur knew any of that. All that they knew was that Stephanie’s pregnancy did not go at all as planned, that the fetus was lively but did not thrive, that even after adjusting forward the estimated date of conception several months past when Stephanie first suspected she was pregnant, the size-for-week was all wrong. Stephanie did know that she stopped counting the weeks after a full year had passed since the first pregnancy test and started wondering if this pregnancy would ever end. Normally no doctor worth their salt would let a pregnancy go so long out of fear for the mother, but Stephanie was healthy and the female fetus seemed healthy as well, just growing very, very slowly. They left the choice to her, and Stephanie chose to go on. And on, and on. It wasn’t a great time, but in March of 1986, a full year and a half after that first test, she gave birth to a perfect, healthy, beautiful baby girl just the right size for a newborn half her gestational age. After eighteen months of consulting baby name books, Danica Kameyo Izegbe Mirabella Holmes was probably lucky to not get even more names piled onto her tiny head. The strangeness of this baby did not stop with the delivery. Danica was an amiable baby, eating and sleeping like she should, alert within the limits of her fuzzy vision and hearing, not unduly fussy, but she began missing milestones almost right away. She gained only half a pound in the first month and grew only half an inch. By the time she was four months old, she was only beginning to reach for items above her head or push herself up on her arms, and she was still the size of a two-month old child. Stephanie and Arthur both took a break from their life-long passions to focus all their considerable analytical attention on what might be wrong with their beloved child. After exhausting all the local specialists and everything the Mayo Clinic in Arizona had to offer, they began widening their search. Finally in Southern California they encountered a shaman who said their daughter was special, that she was an avatar. An avatar of what, he could not say, he didn’t have the skill, but it was a clue at least. Cachet in the scientific community didn’t always translate across fields, but by using all their considerable connections they managed to land an interview with Adrian Eldritch, the Master Mage of Earth. They’d have gone to Freedom City if they had to, but instead Eldritch had shown up in their living room and spent almost twenty minutes playing with the year-old Danica, who was just starting to sit up and tolerate rice cereal. Eldritch confirmed that the shaman was right, that Danica was an avatar of an ancient, nameless tortoise spirit that had been looking for a way to manifest on earth. Worship, Eldritch had told them dryly, could take many forms, but it always made spirits stronger. Danica was growing so slowly because she was growing on a timeline much different from humans, not because she was sick or damaged. It wasn’t all bad news, he assured them. She would age very slowly her whole life, and likely live a very, very long time. Think of everything such a child would see! It took awhile for Stephanie and Arthur to sort out all the immediate responses to this, but one question came up very quickly: how would they take care of a child who wouldn’t be grown until they were old? If Danica continued at her current rate of growth, by the time she was ready for college both of them would be long since retired. Eldritch smiled a little and reported that the spirit had granted them a boon as well: as long as their daughter was a child, they would not age as humans did either. Only when she reached maturity would they go back to experiencing their normal lifespans. He couldn’t give them specifics beyond that rather vague wording, but it was something, at least. And at least they knew what was happening now. Eldritch finished by saying that it was entirely likely that Danica would develop some kind of magical abilities at some point, and they should definitely let him or his successor know. So Danica grew up, so very, very slowly as the decades passed around her. Her parents were not interested in spreading the word of her condition around, so they began moving around, first from daycare to daycare, then school district to school district. Danica legally had to be in school, despite the problems that would inevitably arise, so they did the best they could. It was fairly easy in the eighties and nineties to fudge a birthdate here and there, letting Danica enroll with children half her age but the exact same developmental stages. It was also easier in the eighties and nineties to avoid explaining to Danica why she never kept the same friends for more than a year or two, or why the people on the television shows looked different as the years passed. She was a bright and curious child who liked to read and garden, though she wasn’t much for playing outdoors because it took her such a long time to get anywhere. By the time she was fourteen, she started wanting to know why she was different from the other kids, why nobody ever stuck around, why she really didn’t look or act the same as other children her age. Her parents explained the basics of her situation to her in ways that a seven-year-old could understand. It made sense for her to make friends with much younger children because her years were twice as long as other children’s. The 2000s brought an era of electronic recordkeeping with it that made a lot of their previous strategies untenable. Danica turned eighteen in 2004, automatically aging her out of the public school system, so it didn’t make much sense to move around anymore. Stephanie and Arthur settled in and opened a tortoise and terrapin sanctuary in New Mexico and began a freewheeling sort of unschooling that worked well for a child who learned things just fine but took so much longer to mature. She made friends among the local kids, and for awhile it was almost like being normal, with best friends and sleepovers and talk about favorite cartoon shows and books. Inevitably, however, Danica’s friends grew up. By the time she was ten (more or less), her friends were twelve, and when she was emotionally eleven, they were fourteen and teenagers, heading into high school and no longer very interested in the things she liked. This was rather painful, but she did her best to make new friends, often with the younger siblings of her old friends. It wasn’t particularly successful, since now she was known in the neighborhood as the weird girl who liked baby stuff and wasn’t getting taller or starting her period or anything. When Danica was twenty-six, she was a little dismayed to find herself moving slower than ever. She could walk just fine, it was simply that she couldn’t walk fast. Even if she ran, she ran slowly, pedaled a bike slowly, rode a scooter slowly. It only became more apparent as her body got older and she still couldn’t keep up with other kids her apparent age. In retaliation for this (against who is unclear, perhaps just the world) she went through a brief tree-climbing phase where instead of moving forward, she just moved up instead. New Mexico isn’t known for its tall trees, but the neighborhood she lived in had a few good ones and she was able to get a good thirty feet up the one in her backyard, shinnying with knees and elbows, before she fell the whole way down right in front of her startled parents. The impact was jarring, but when she stood up she was completely unhurt and had a beautiful black and yellow shell covering torso and abdomen. The shell could be summoned and dismissed at will, usually appeared on its own if she felt threatened, and was big enough that she could tuck her limbs and head in for maximum protection. Unlike an actual tortoise’s shell, it appeared over her clothing and she could climb in and out of it if she really wanted to. Her parents were fascinated but baffled, and realized quickly that they were beyond their field of expertise. Another call to Adrian Eldritch put Stephanie and Arthur in touch with the Nicholson School, an elementary and middle-school program for children with exceptional abilities. It was all the way across the country in Freedom City, far from their homes and their work, but it sounded like exactly the thing Danica needed. They’d just spend a few years doing other things, that was all. The Holmes family packed up and moved into a little townhouse near the school and Danica began attending. Super school was a lot easier and more fun for Danica, who finally got to just tell other people about her aging issue instead of figuring out more and more creative lies, and it let her be around other kids who were at least as different as she was. They let her stay at Nicholson a little longer than usual, after all what’s a year or two among nigh-immortal friends, but eventually she turned thirty and had to start at Claremont. Her two freshman years there were difficult, as a growth spurt caused more of her magic to manifest in weird and body-changing ways, causing her to miss a fair bit of class and not get to spend much time around other students. She’s feeling much better now, though. Personality and Motivation: Danica is inquisitive, bright, friendly, and sheltered in ways that have nothing to do with her massive shell. She has lived more than three decades now but her emotional immaturity has meant the years do not sit heavy on her yet and she’s still very much a young teenager. She knows she was born for important things but has little idea what a tortoise avatar is supposed to do in the world, so for the moment she’s mostly trying to do good and make friends. Most of the friends she has made in her life so far have long since outgrown her, but she is always hopeful that this time things are going to be different. Powers and Tactics: Fighting is dangerous and everybody should always be encouraged to talk out their differences if at all possible! Chelone is a peacemaker, always ready to try and defuse a situation with diplomacy or mediation. If that fails, she will do her best to protect any vulnerable noncombatants, herself and her friends. If that fails, she has been known to bite pretty hard. Complications: Hero on the Half-Shell: Chelone can blend in with a crowd (and fit in crowded elevators, sit in chairs with backs, use a bathroom stall, etc) or she can be her heroic self, but she cannot do both. She can grow her shell even larger than normal to allow other people to come in if she likes, but she cannot use it effectively for defense if it is smaller than about the size of a 30-gallon tote or a small wading pool. This makes close-quarters fighting complicated. Little Turtle Girl: Danica ages at half the speed of normal humans, always has and always will, thanks to the tortoise essence inside her. Tortoises are also comparatively very slow to reach maturity, and some species do not lay eggs until they are fifty years old. Danica doesn’t know exactly when she’ll reach an age to be interested in that sort of thing, but it hasn’t happened yet. This makes it hard to relate to her more hormonal friends sometimes. Baby It’s Cold Outside: Danica is not quite cold-blooded, but she’s extremely sensitive to temperatures. Hot weather is great, she loves hot weather and barely sweats, but cold is no fun. Bundling up and keeping hot packs in her shell helps, but her preferred indoor temperature is upward of 80 degrees, if she can get it. PL: 10 (180) ABILITIES: 0 + -2 + 10 + 4 + 8 + 10 = 30 pp STR 10 (+0) DEX 8 (-1) CON 20 (+5) INT 14 (+2) WIS 18 (+4) CHA 20 (+5) COMBAT: 8 + 10 = 18 pp Init: -1 ATK: +4 (+10 Tortoise Power) DEF: +5 (+5 Base, +3 Flat-Footed) Grapple: +4 Knockback: -12/-5/-0 SAVES: 5 + 1 + 6 = 12 pp TOU +15 (+5 Con, +10 Protection, [10 Imp]) FORT +10 (+5 Con, +5) REF +0 (-1 Dex, +1) WILL +15/+10 (+4 Wis, +6) SKILLS 64R = 16PP Concentration 9 (+13) Diplomacy 15 (+20) Knowledge (Life Sciences) 8 (+10) Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) 8 (+10) Medicine 6 (+10) Notice 6 (+10) Sense Motive 6 (+10) Survival 6 (+10) FEATS: 14 pp Attack Specialization: Tortoise Power 3 Beginner's Luck Benefit (Status [Turtle God's Champion]) Challenge (Combat Diplomacy) Distract (Diplomacy) Eidetic Memory Jack of all Trades Luck Ultimate Check 4 (Diplomacy, Fortitude, Toughness, Will) Enhanced Feats Luck Ultimate Toughness POWERS: 9 + 20 + 5 + 5 + 3 + 5 + 25 + 2 + 27 = 101PP Dimensional Pocket 1 (shell realm, Extra: Affects Self [+1], PF: Progression 6 [10K lbs]) [9PP] Emotion Control 5 (patience of the ages, Extra: Action 3 [Reaction], Area [Burst], Flaw: Limited [Calm], [Range 2 [Touch], PFs: Inspire 5, Subtle 1 [psionic]) [20PP] Enhanced Feat 1 (Ultimate Toughness, shell, Extra: Affects Only Others, Range [Perception] 3, PF: Luck) [5PP] Enhanced Will Save 5 (to +15) [5PP] Immunity 3 (aura of the tortoise, aging, environmental heat, starvation and thirst, Extra: Affects Others, Flaw: Limited [Half-Effect]) [3PP] Impervious Toughness 5 (shell) [5PP] Protection 10 (testudo, Extras: Impervious 5, Reflective 1 [melee], turtle power) [25PP] Super-Senses 2 (tortoise senses, Acute Scent, Low-Light Vision) [2PP] Tortoise Power Array 12 (24PP, PFs: Alternate Powers 3) [27PP] BE: Impervious Toughness 0 (Extras: Duration [Continuous], Reflective 1 [all ranged]) {20/24} AP: Create Object 10 (testudo 2.0; up to 10 10-ft. cubes, Lifting STR 50; Extra: Movable, Flaw: Range [Touch], PFs: Precise, Progression [10-ft. cubes], Selective, Subtle) (testudo 2.0) {24/24} AP: Damage 10 (spectral turtle bite!, Extra: Penetrating 6 [as DMG 16], PFs: Affects Insubstantial 2, Improved Crit [18-20], Indirect 2, Variable Descriptor 2 [any energy]) {24/24} AP: Impervious Toughness 10 (Extras: Affects Only Others, Duration [Continuous]) {20/24} DRAWBACK: 2PP Disability (2/3rds base movement speed; 20 ft per move action) [2PP] TOTALS abilities 30 + combat 18 + saves 12 + skills 16 + feats 14 + powers 101 - 2 = 191/221 pts

Singularity studied the killbox dispassionately for a moment, even as she continued dispatching the already-weakened Omegadrones who came too close. Some tiny, mostly whited-out part of her tactical mind imagined herself as the threat to be placed into the box to dispatch the inconvenient people inside, but she instinctively shied away from the thought before it could surface. The people needed a way out of the box. Even if they would not take it now, eventually the pressure of terror from remaining inside the box would equal the pressure of terror from leaving and then they would need a way out. Bracing her shield against her upraised forearms, she crouched slightly behind the shield and ran full-tilt at the wall, smashing through it with the force of a speeding car. When the dust cleared, there was a ragged hole in the wall, perfect for escaping through. Without a word to the people inside, she shifted her shield back to one arm and continued fighting, keeping the drones away from the makeshift door she'd made.

The Wanders get 29

Name: Danica Holmes Codename: Chelone Year: Sophomore Pronouns: She, her Roommate: Danica will live in the dormitories but if she has a roommate they will have to to tolerate her need for a warm environment to sleep in (about 80F year round) and her frequent tendency to bump into things in small spaces. Goal: Danica is super-excited to get to high school and start making the lifelong friends she's always heard about in books and television shows! She spent most of her two freshman years getting used to not living at home and spending time in the infirmary to cope with some of the more unusual changes puberty is bringing, but she is all ready to go now! The next six years of high school are going to be the BEST EVER! Favourite High School Movie: Danica thought Clueless and She's All That and 10 Things I Hate About You were super fun when they came out when she was a little girl, but the High School Musical movies are all her favorite now. All of them, even El Desafio and Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure. They are just so good.

Singularity was lost deep in the rhythm of the fight, disabling or killing a drone with every economical movement of her body. Her focus was so complete that she might as well not have been paying attention at all when Sea Devil approached. For a split second it looked as though Singularity would attack her closest ally just for coming into range, then just as suddenly she checked herself, almost seeming to wake up. "People, building, got it," she confirmed. Taking a few extra seconds to clear a circle around herself, she bent her knees and jumped,, taking to the air and using whatever bits of pipe or masonry she could get hold of to direct her travel as she flipped and swung towards the trapped humans or trap for humans, whichever it might be.

Singularity is apparently looking at some butterflies or something, she goes on 22. She is also going to attempt to Interpose for Sea Devil if it should be necessary.

Every instinct in Erin's body wanted her to meet the monster in the air, as far as possible from her comrades and before it had a chance to hit the city. But this city wasn't her city, and the last thing they needed was to draw attention to themselves with a showy battle in the skies. With speed that belied her reluctance, she snagged Edge around the waist with one arm and stepped off the building after Midnight, plunging through the familiar darkness of Midnight Mist as she prepared herself to meet the ground however many feet below. As she fell, she allowed herself a moment to hope that flying sharks didn't travel in packs.

Singularity was out through the floor a moment after Cobalt Templar, though she didn't make nearly so much noise. Without a word or a sound she bounded away and straight into the densest grouping of drones she could find, falling upon them like sudden doom. She fought with great economy of motion, using the shield's surface to block or its edge to slice even as she wielded her bat with expert, deadly grace. The first half-dozen were dispatched in seconds but she was already moving on, her eyes empty and her face nearly slack as she cut a wide swath of destruction through the assembled foes.

She's not ready to put up yet, but here's the backstory for my tortoise girl Claremonter! Stephanie Munson loved tortoises more than anybody else. That was a fact. As a child, she became fascinated with the landbound species of order Chelonia, and would angrily correct anybody who tried to say she liked turtles. Turtles were all well and good, but they were not tortoises (at least not in American English!) Growing up in semi-rural Arizona gave her a chance to help the local college students track and monitor tortoise populations even as she absorbed the classes that would let her pursue the biological sciences herself. Through college and grad schools she scrimped, saved and fought to take research trips to the Galapagos islands for their giant tortoises and to India to see beautiful and endangered star tortoises in their natural habitat. She wrote papers, published articles, and worked with the leading lights in the field of tortoise research and conservation until she’d learned everything they knew. When it came time to pursue a romantic partner, she chose a fellow traveler, a handsome man named Arthur Holmes who just happened to be the head reptile keeper at the Albuquerque Zoological park. It was an excellent match amongst like-minded people who loved each other almost as much as they loved their studies. In a world of magic, passion is a powerful thing. Enough passion can shape the world, change lives, even draw the attention of unknowable forces. Since antiquity, humans have acknowledged the power of turtles and tortoises as agents of stability and wisdom, imbued with life force beyond the understanding of mortals. All of that is true in the way that all folklore has a heart of truth that is only strengthened by belief. At the juncture where life and passion and freefloating magic all meet, strange things can happen. Life can be created that is not the same as other lives. An avatar can be created. Not that Stephanie and Arthur knew any of that. All that they knew was that Stephanie’s pregnancy did not go at all as planned, that the fetus was lively but did not thrive, that even after adjusting forward the estimated date of conception several months past when Stephanie first suspected she was pregnant, the size-for-week was all wrong. Stephanie did know that she stopped counting the weeks after a full year had passed since the first pregnancy test and started wondering if this pregnancy would ever end. Normally no doctor worth their salt would let a pregnancy go so long out of fear for the mother, but Stephanie was healthy and the female fetus seemed healthy as well, just growing very, very slowly. They left the choice to her, and Stephanie chose to go on. And on, and on. It wasn’t a great time, but in March of 1986, a full year and a half after that first test, she gave birth to a perfect, healthy, beautiful baby girl just the right size for a newborn half her gestational age. After eighteen months of consulting baby name books, Danica Kameyo Izegbe Mirabella Holmes was probably lucky to not get even more names piled onto her tiny head. The strangeness of this baby did not stop with the delivery. Danica was an amiable baby, eating and sleeping like she should, alert within the limits of her fuzzy vision and hearing, not unduly fussy, but she began missing milestones almost right away. She gained only half a pound in the first month and grew only half an inch. By the time she was four months old, she was only beginning to reach for items above her head or push herself up on her arms, and she was still the size of a two-month old child. Stephanie and Arthur both took a break from their life-long passions to focus all their considerable analytical attention on what might be wrong with their beloved child. After exhausting all the local specialists and everything the Mayo Clinic in Arizona had to offer, they began widening their search. Finally in Southern California they encountered a shaman who said their daughter was special, that she was an avatar. An avatar of what, he could not say, he didn’t have the skill, but it was a clue at least. Cachet in the scientific community didn’t always translate across fields, but by using all their considerable connections they managed to land an interview with Adrian Eldritch, the Master Mage of Earth. They’d have gone to Freedom City if they had to, but instead Eldritch had shown up in their living room and spent almost twenty minutes playing with the year-old Danica, who was just starting to sit up and tolerate rice cereal. Eldritch confirmed that the shaman was right, that Danica was an avatar of an ancient, nameless tortoise spirit that had been looking for a way to manifest on earth. Worship, Eldritch had told them dryly, could take many forms, but it always made spirits stronger. Danica was growing so slowly because she was growing on a timeline much different from humans, not because she was sick or damaged. It wasn’t all bad news, he assured them. She would age very slowly her whole life, and likely live a very, very long time. Think of everything such a child would see! It took awhile for Stephanie and Arthur to sort out all the immediate responses to this, but one question came up very quickly: how would they take care of a child who wouldn’t be grown until they were old? If Danica continued at her current rate of growth, by the time she was ready for college both of them would be long since retired. Eldritch smiled a little and reported that the spirit had granted them a boon as well: as long as their daughter was a child, they would not age as humans did either. Only when she reached maturity would they go back to experiencing their normal lifespans. He couldn’t give them specifics beyond that rather vague wording, but it was something, at least. And at least they knew what was happening now. Eldritch finished by saying that it was entirely likely that Danica would develop some kind of magical abilities at some point, and they should definitely let him or his successor know. So Danica grew up, so very, very slowly as the decades passed around her. Her parents were not interested in spreading the word of her condition around, so they began moving around, first from daycare to daycare, then school district to school district. Danica legally had to be in school, despite the problems that would inevitably arise, so they did the best they could. It was fairly easy in the eighties and nineties to fudge a birthdate here and there, letting Danica enroll with children half her age but the exact same developmental stages. It was also easier in the eighties and nineties to avoid explaining to Danica why she never kept the same friends for more than a year or two, or why the people on the television shows looked different as the years passed. She was a bright and curious child who liked to read and garden, though she wasn’t much for playing outdoors because it took her such a long time to get anywhere. By the time she was fourteen, she started wanting to know why she was different from the other kids, why nobody ever stuck around, why she really didn’t look or act the same as other children her age. Her parents explained the basics of her situation to her in ways that a seven-year-old could understand. It made sense for her to make friends with much younger children because her years were twice as long as other children’s. The 2000s brought an era of electronic recordkeeping with it that made a lot of their previous strategies untenable. Danica turned eighteen in 2004, automatically aging her out of the public school system, so it didn’t make much sense to move around anymore. Stephanie and Arthur settled in and opened a tortoise and terrapin sanctuary in New Mexico and began a freewheeling sort of unschooling that worked well for a child who learned things just fine but took so much longer to mature. She made friends among the local kids, and for awhile it was almost like being normal, with best friends and sleepovers and talk about favorite cartoon shows and books. Inevitably, however, Danica’s friends grew up. By the time she was ten (more or less), her friends were twelve, and when she was emotionally eleven, they were fourteen and teenagers, heading into high school and no longer very interested in the things she liked. This was rather painful, but she did her best to make new friends, often with the younger siblings of her old friends. It wasn’t particularly successful, since now she was known in the neighborhood as the weird girl who liked baby stuff and wasn’t getting taller or starting her period or anything. When Danica was twenty-six, she was a little dismayed to find herself moving slower than ever. She could walk just fine, it was simply that she couldn’t walk fast. Even if she ran, she ran slowly, pedaled a bike slowly, rode a scooter slowly. It only became more apparent as her body got older and she still couldn’t keep up with other kids her apparent age. In retaliation for this (against who is unclear, perhaps just the world) she went through a brief tree-climbing phase where instead of moving forward, she just moved up instead. New Mexico isn’t known for its tall trees, but the neighborhood she lived in had a few good ones and she was able to get a good thirty feet up the one in her backyard, shinnying with knees and elbows, before she fell the whole way down right in front of her startled parents. The impact was jarring, but when she stood up she was completely unhurt and had a beautiful brown and cream shell covering torso and abdomen. The shell could be summoned and dismissed at will, usually appeared on its own if she felt threatened, and was big enough that she could tuck her limbs and head in for maximum protection. Unlike an actual tortoise’s shell, it appeared over her clothing and she could climb in and out of it if she really wanted to. Her parents were fascinated but baffled, and realized quickly that they were beyond their field of expertise. Another call to Adrian Eldritch put Stephanie and Arthur in touch with the Nicholson School, an elementary and middle-school program for children with exceptional abilities. It was all the way across the country in Freedom City, far from their homes and their work, but it sounded like exactly the thing Danica needed. They’d just spend a few years doing other things, that was all. The Holmes family packed up and moved into a little townhouse near the school and Danica began attending. Super school was a lot easier and more fun for Danica, who finally got to just tell other people about her aging issue instead of figuring out more and more creative lies, and it let her be around other kids who were at least as different as she was. Unfortunately, she was a little too old to stay at Nicholson very long, so after two years she was sent off to Claremont Academy, the super high-school.

"Oh for hell's sake, you stupid-" Scythe Erin had been wrapping a nasty gash on her arm but paused to glare at Aquaria (which was a fairly disturbing sight in itself) before giving the Evil Erin a boot to the side of her head. "The monologue is when they trigger their bomb or whatever they're going to do! Why would you even think-" "Yell at her later," White-Hair encouraged, looking off the side of the bridge. "We've got problems now. Hey Mark!" she yelled at the empty sky. "Get your lucky ass down here and rearrange some probability!" "Does that work?" Jessie asked, looking up at the sky expectantly. Her face was a melange of bruises from being thrown into a bridge support and she'd chosen to sit before she fell. White-Hair shrugged. "Works in my universe." Midnight Erin, who was already bleeding sluggishly from a cut along her side, stripped out of her cowl and attached what looked like a SCUBA apparatus to her mask. "Belt and suspenders," she advised. "Remove the devices, clear the bridge, call in Edge." She did a clean dive off the side of the bridge, followed almost immediately by Deep One Erin and Blue Hair Erin. Erin tried to disguise the limp that was probably a sprained ankle as she moved to divert traffic. It was already considerably lighter than usual, thanks both to the hour and the savviness of Freedom City commuters, but better safe than sorry. The evil doppelgangers words were twisting in her head, despite the obvious unreliability of their origin. No time to think about it now.

"Backstab you-" Erin began, but any combat banter was interrupted by Singularity leaping forward and attempting to tackle the Evil Erin to the ground. She'd been expecting something like that, but was just villainous enough to expect the heroes to allow her to gloat just a bit more. White Hair and Hell Queen lost no time in exploiting the moment of distraction, and suddenly Evil Erin was fizzing with red light and trying to keep her balance with White Hair throwing super-fast punches and Singularity attempting to wrap herself around her legs. Erin glanced at Trevor for a half-second with a "what did you really expect?" shrug before diving in as well. It was a much more pitched battle than any of them might have expected. Even among doppelgangers, the Evil Erin was notably stronger and insanely fast, and she was not at all averse to fighting to kill. In a one on one or one on two fight, it was easy to see how she could've killed her doubles, especially with surprise on her side. But this fight was four on one, with some support from Aquaria and Midnight as well despite being relegated to the sidelines as entirely too fragile for this sort of brawling. Even then, Evil Erin managed to eel out of the scrum long enough to jump off the bridge support... and straight into the other group, with the first set falling behind her like extremely dangerous precipitation. Once the fight was eight on one it was essentially over, it just took longer than it really needed to because Erins are terrible at working together. Finally, though, the Evil Erin was subdued, neatly hogtied with a rope Cowboy Hat apparently kept with her at all times and gagged by something that looked suspiciously like a sock. The other Erins stood around, bruised and bloody, catching their breaths. "What the hell?" White Hair finally asked, speaking for all of them.

"We have to kill them all anyway, right?" Singularity pointed out, her voice flat. "If we can burst up through the floors, we'll take them by surprise without going through whatever outer ring of guards may be posted. Every hour we lose is more time for them to open new portals into the city." She tipped her head back to consider the material that made up the ceiling, then turned to Cobalt Templar. "I'm pretty sure I can get through that floor," she told him. "What about you?"

"Taunting us," several of the Erins said in unison, and the situation was grave enough that they barely bothered to glare at one another over the inadvertent chorus. Erin continued on alone since it was, after all, more her hometown than anybody else's. "The Pramas bridge is a, um, a special site for Trevor and I. We went there on our first date, and now we go there for, you know, important occasions and stuff. That Erin must know that." "She's callin' us out," Cowboy Hat said grimly, her face dark. "But it cain't be just her against all of us, that's suicide. It's gotta be some kinda trap." "Could it be some kind of electronic mirage?" Goggles asked Trevor. "She could be trying to draw us away from the manor and leave it open to attack. She could be trying to pick off the most vulnerable of us first." "I could go look," Jessie offered. "I'm not really an Erin, so maybe she won't want me." Midnight Erin had snorted laughter over Trevor's claim of difficulty before turning her attention back to the larger conversation. She gave Jessie a funny look. "Why would you be any less an Erin than the rest of us?" Jessie paused at that. "I... I don't know," she admitted, blushing. "I could go," Megan volunteered. "I am absolutely not an Erin." "No!" came a chorus from all around the room, and this time all glares were directed straight at Megan.

Singularity was on full alert every moment in the tunnels, though it could mostly be seen only in the tiny movement of her eyes and the way she walked poised on the balls of her feet. This was all very familiar, too familiar, but any attempt to chase down the memories ended only in the blank white emptiness in the center of her memory. Bad, it was very bad to be in tunnels like this, she knew that much. She could practically hear the screaming echoing off the curved walls. The fork was a problem; all three ways were much the same to her, even the dropoff wouldn't provide much of a challenge if they decided to go that way. But somebody needed to tell her where to go, because the only advice her own brain was giving her was retreat. "Left," she repeated tonelessly after Cobalt Templar's suggestion. "Okay." Shield raised, baton ready, she led the way down the corridor.