Electra

This thread is looking pretty crowded right now, and only so many people are going to fit into Zoe's room. =) Erin is not in the dorms tonight, she is off in the gym.

Somewhere during the last round of edits, I let Fleur's dimensional pocket get way too small for comfort. To fix that, I'd like to drop the rank of her dimensional pocket AP to 2, and up the progression to 8, with a resulting capacity of 25,000 pounds. I'd also like to add the Complication: Compassionate, must safeguard lives, even of bad guys, whenever possible. DONE BY SHÆNTHEBRAIN

Stesha turned her head and grinned up at him. "Who you calling combative?" she asked teasingly. Digging into her pocket, she pulled out a granola bar and unwrapped it, offering it to the creature on the flat of her hand. It sniffed at the offering, then snapped it up with a clack of its toothless maw, spraying a few crumbs as it masticated the treat. Stesha laughed, then offered the creature to Derrick. "Here, you hold him. He's soft."

"Yanking is probably not a good idea," Erin said dubiously, still effortlessly holding the pinned guard. "Ch- Geckoman, you want to take a look at that thing and see if you can figure out how to get it out of there safely? Edge, you help him, and we'll keep an eye on the doors." She turned to face the way they'd come in, using the guard as a sort of shield, just in case. She figured he would shout a warning if anyone was coming, so long as he had incentive.

Stesha rolls poorly, spends a hero point, gets a 20

Stesha winced as Taylor drew the attention of everyone in the room. So much for any chance of being sneaky... not that they'd had much chance of that in the first place. She dove towards the side of the room where Taylor had shot the guard, seeking cover behind one of the unused consoles. It wasn't much, but it would hide her from the guards on the other side of the room. She pulled a seed from her pocket and flicked it at the second guard. As it flew, it sprouted into a large and viney plant, shooting out tendrils to wrap snugly around the guard's body.

Stesha yelped at the bites before she realized it didn't actually hurt, then looked down with great curiosity at the strange furballs gumming her bare legs. She laughed. "They're so strange, like little toys. They must not have any predators here. They don't seem afraid at all. Maybe a little aggressive." Reaching down, she scooped one up, keeping her fingers out of the way of the oversized mouth. "Hello," she told it in a cooing voice, like she were speaking to a puppy. "You're a cute little guy. Or girl. Can you be nice?"

Stesha's on 11.

Stesha rose as well, stacking up the things she'd brought for Taylor and setting them on the couch. "I'll just leave this here in case you need any of it," she told Taylor, "and you can bring it by when you come over. I'll take this guy and give him some attention, too." She plucked the ficus off the top of the stack Jack was carrying, stroking the leaves like she would a pet. It seemed to like the touch, greening a little and turning its leaves in her direction. "Just give me a call if you need anything, all right? Get some rest. Jack," she added stiffly, with one quick nod in his direction, before disappearing, plant and all.

Erin hopped back into the car without bothering with the door, landing neatly in the front seat. "All right, where do we go to actually get one?" she asked him. "Used truck dealership or something like that?" That seemed like the most reasonable way to do it, but that wasn't always the way James liked to get things done. His methods tended to be flashy, but effective nonetheless.

"Maybe she'll get help, but it's not help you can give her," Erin suggested cryptically. "Nevermind. All I'm saying is that she did beat the crap out of Nerd Boy, and Summers is letting her into the school. It's a couple of points in her favor. If she asks you for help, that's one thing, but maybe it's better to just let it go for the moment. You'll still have the sample when you want it."

"Look!" Stesha whispered excitedly, darting forward into the woods. "I see them!" Still keeping hold of his hand, she followed the puffball through the trees, dodging around branches and stepping over roots. The barking got louder the further they went, and the woods darker, till their flashlights provided the only light at all. Stesha dropped back at little to stay close to Derrick. "You said they didn't have any teeth right?" she asked.

Stesha's eyes widened a little at that suggestion, but she picked up her knapsack anyway and started rummaging through it. "I don't know if I'll be very good at taking people out," she admitted, "but I'll do what I can to help. If there are some guards, I might be able to get them while you're looking for the real villains." She pulled handfuls of seeds out of her bag and began tucking them into her pockets and into the pouch at her belt. "I'd say we should call someone else, but we can't waste any more time." Little vines were already starting to creep out of her pockets as she reached for Taylor's hand, ready to go.

Stesha changed into her costume as she listened, fumbling a little with the unfamiliar pieces. Her costume wasn't very complicated, but covered a lot more than the basic Phantom ensemble, sans cloak. At base it was a simple green shirt and slacks, with a brown belt and boots. Over top of that was a brown half-jacket that covered her arms and chest, then dropped down her back like a cape to just below her knees. It had a deep hood attached that covered her hair and, when paired with a domino mask, actually did a decent job of concealing her identity. "I'll take my plants with me," she told Taylor, "but we need some kind of plan. Whatever has them must be really powerful, or it never would've caught one of them, let alone both. Maybe I could go in and be a distraction. I'm not very powerful, but I could probably make a pretty good mess, starting somewhere unobserved. If I get them chasing me, maybe you'd have a better chance of getting in and freeing them?"

Stesha looked at Taylor, then shrugged. "We both have secret identities we can't really afford to lose," she explained. "It's one thing to encounter an actual supervillain, because then you really do need to either duck out and back or just take the risk, but there are regular bad guys out there, too. It's important to be able to defend ourselves in civilian getups, too. And then there's always the chance that something will pop up that can't be fought with magic. We don't want to be caught defenseless."

"Maybe she's still trying to decide what to say," Erin offered. "It's been, what, twelve hours since she landed, give or take? I can't tell you exactly what's going on in here mind," for a lot of reasons, "but I know it's not easy to get used to people who are family, but not your family the way you used to know them. Maybe when she's more comfortable, she'll be ready to spill it." Erin wasn't entirely sure why she was going out of her way on Zoe's behalf, but maybe it was just because she knew what it was like to be alone in a strange place and desperate for a little time to catch your breath without people picking at you. It wasn't hurting anything, she figured.

Stesha sat bolt upright at the description, clenching her hands together in her lap. "Derrick, that's Derrick," she said immediately. "In his human form. He must be in trouble, he'd never shrug off his powers in a situation like that if he had any choice. He hardly ever uses it at all." She jumped up from the couch and went to her front closet, rummaging around for the still-unopened garment bags from her shopping trip. "We have to help him. Do you think we can get in there without being seen?"

"Yeah, that is kind of weird," Erin agreed evasively. "But maybe she's afraid to tell the truth for some reason. I figure the headmaster will be keeping an eye on her, to make sure she's not up to anything shady." Erin knew for a fact that she was a terrible liar, but it wasn't so bad just to stretch the truth, or to avoid it entirely. "It'll probably all come out eventually."

Stesha shoved the container of chicken into the fridge and went back to the living room, sitting down on the sofa. "What do you think happened?" she asked worriedly. "Who was that weird guy? Do you think Jack and Derrick might be together somewhere, maybe doing something for the Knights?" For all she knew Taylor needed to concentrate, the questions just sort of tumbled out.

That didn't exactly seem like a ringing endorsement to Erin, but she knew the sort of guy Alex was looking for, and figured she meant it as a compliment to Mike. For her own part, she was hardly concerned about her physical safety, and her emotional well-being was probably shot beyond a teenage boy's ability to make any worse, so that wasn't much of a consideration. "I'll think about it, if he actually asks," she said finally, stuffing her socks and underpants into the top drawer and closing it hard enough to make her picture frame rattle. Turning back to Alex, she asked, "So are you actually going to break into the lab to test that?"

"I'm not very good at having fun," Erin said dubiously, stacking her folded clothes and rising to put them in her dresser. "Not in normal ways, like regular people do. I tried to hang out with Erin and her friends, my old friends, a couple of times before I came here. It was always a disaster. She's really good at all that stuff, but I just forgot all of it, or never learned it, or something. Anyway, maybe after three times, he's not even interested anymore. Or figures he'd have better luck with someone else." She sounded hopeful about the prospect.

"Taylor Chun?" Stesha asked, sounding confused, pitching her voice loudly enough for Taylor to hear. She tilted her head and looked at the man, then at the plant. "Are you hiding in my houseplants?," she asked him with some concern. "You should be careful, there are spiders in there."

Somewhat uncomfortable with that assessment, Erin concentrated on unraveling a stray thread from one of her socks for a minute. "I still don't know what we would do," she finally said. "I haven't got money to pay for anything, and I hardly leave campus. I don't even know what there is to do. And dinner and a movie is great for people like you and Mark, but I dunno. I can't even see it in my head, the picture won't come together. It's too weird." She was more uncertain now than totally disinterested, at least.

"I don't know," Stesha said, setting down the spatula she'd been futilely wielding to try and keep her alfredo sauce from congealing. "He must have had something to do," she said, a little disconsolately. "Help yourself to some food, if you feel like it." She tugged the mitt off her hand then went over to open the front door. "Sounds like Mrs. Everly's dog got out again. She's really bad about that."

Erin gave Alex a skeptical look as she tied her socks together. "There are a lot of girls around here," she agreed, "and a lot of them are substantially less screwed up than I am. He and I just got finished fighting over a few of our many issues. Why isn't he asking some normal girl out? Why isn't he asking you, for that matter? You'd be good practice, you could tell him exactly what he's doing right or wrong every step of the way." She paused for a second with a sock in each had. "What was Plan A, anyway? I think I totally missed it."