Electra

"I seem to recall some proverb or other that warns against daring the gods," Stesha pointed out, her eyes still a little wide. "What sorts of thing could we challenge them in and even hope to win? I don't know about you, but I'm not very good at chess. And I don't think Moira would want us to do anything that might get us all killed, even for the hope of rescuing her. I feel iffy about how worried Taylor is, but I'm sure she'll be able to justify helping us if we can justify getting Moira released. I just don't know if it's worth potentially costing our lives. I wish there were another way to get in touch with her. Maybe the oracle thing she was talking about will let her talk to me eventually," she mused. "Then at least we'd know."

"Yeah, I guess," Erin agreed as they got into the elevator. "It just seems sort of weird. If they're filming and testing and measuring everything we do in there, we could end up being someone else's training exercise someday. I looked up this one villain I had to fight during my placement test and she seemed to be made up, but it doesn't mean they all are. And as long as Archer's not in there, the Doom Room can be a good place to get practice at different things. I must've thrown myself off a hundred buildings in there before I started figuring out how to land without hurting myself. It's a good way to practice fights and jumping and different moves without risking hurting anybody. And when Archer's not at the controls, it pretty much makes sense."

Erin shrugged, then nodded. "It's okay," she said with some ambivalence. "It's not easy, but they're putting me up, giving me classes and training, all that stuff. I like the other students pretty well. And the campus is pretty." With that ringing endorsement, she led the way into the main classroom building, labeled the "Dr. Charles Claremont Building" Inside, it looked surprisingly like any small high school, a long, broad tile corridor lined with classrooms and lockers on each side. It lacked the industrial solvent smell of the average public high school, but otherwise, it was very close. Because it was still summer, only about half the corridor lights were on, but some of the classroom doors were open, and there was plenty of ambient light from the windows at the ends of the halls. "There's tutoring in here in the summer," Erin said again as she led the way down the hall, her footsteps echoing even in tennis shoes. "But classes don't start for another two weeks, and the regular students are just starting to come back. The labs are all up on the third floor, in case anyone blows the roof off," she added artlessly, leading the way up a flight of rubber-treaded stairs.

Stesha wasn't sure she quite believed that, but she wanted to, and the way he said it made it seem easier. "Just keep reminding me of that, okay?" she asked wryly. "Sometimes I forget." Taking a deep breath, she tried to put all of... well, everything, in the back of her mind and move on to happier topics. "So I've got the hamper for this weekend," she reminded him. "If nothing new develops by then, what sort of food do you want me to pack for us?"

Erin stopped off in the locker room long enough to towel off her hair and change back into her everyday clothes, bright blue shorts marked with the Ocean Heights logo on the pocket and a t-shirt for a Labor Day festival she hadn't attended. At least it was much cooler in the hot August weather than jeans and blouses. "I always kind of wonder," she said as she rejoined Mike and walked towards the elevator, "if they model those people we fight after real villains, or if it's all just made up. It'd be kind of weird to fight someone in real life after you've already beaten them ten times in practice or something. Or if the way they fought was really different from how the computer made them fight." That was an easy enough subject, she figured.

"Sure, you can come along if you want to," Erin told James. "I just need to drop some stuff off at my locker first. I, uh, spent most of my park card already," she admitted. "The stores here are cool." She was going to have to work to wedge the additional bags into the locker, but they were clothes, and therefore squishy, and therefore an infinite amount of them could be compressed into a small space. She stood up. "We'll catch you guys later."

"A couple months," Erin told her, "I came in at the beginning of summer session at the end of May, because I had to get tutoring. It's easy to learn to find your way around, though." Upon further observation, Erin seemed to move and react less like an abuse survivor and more like a soldier back from a long tour. She walked lightly on the balls of her feet with her head and eyes moving constantly, and even when she looked back to speak with the teacher, she had some part of her attention diverted to watchfulness. She couldn't be more than sixteen or seventeen though, too young for even a superhuman to deploy anywhere in the developed world. The thing with the hair had startled Erin, but she was recovering more quickly from that sort of thing these days. And at least she'd dropped back instead of trying to hit it, which would've been her original first response. Dr. Marquez would be so pleased, Erin thought ruefully. And having some random student attacking her hair was not exactly the right way to welcome a new teacher to the school. After a moment's thought,she managed to come up with a tour-guide suitable topic of conversation. "They said you're a science teacher, right? What courses are you going to be teaching?"

"The first one should be pretty easy, I hope," Stesha told him. "My sister's birthday is coming up, and I'd like to get her some calligraphy supplies, if you carry them. She's really into that right now, but she's just got the plastic-nibbed training pens. If I could find her something a little nicer than that, and maybe some ink and a blank book with that thick textured paper, she probably won't even mind it arriving a little late." She grinned conspiratorially at him. "I meant to send it last week, but you know how things get. Do you have anything like that?"

Erin looked skeptical of the praise, like she was waiting for the catch, but when Archer was obviously finished, she seemed to relax a little bit. After taking a moment to wring her hair out on the bare floor of the simulator, she looked over at Mike. "Getting in the sky was a good idea," she agreed with a half-smile. "Though I'd have been in trouble if I'd fallen off any sooner. You wanna go grab lunch?"

Stesha really didn't have much idea what sort of testing that would involve, but it sounded fairly impressive. "I've been keeping busy," she told him. "Ace helped get me set up to do a big project at work, and I've been spending time on that, plus other things." She decided not to mention the conversation with Taylor. If Derrick already didn't understand or care about what was going on there, it wouldn't help or hurt a thing. "It's hard not to worry, though. Even when I'm keeping busy. There's nothing new so far."

Stesha nodded thoughtfully. "So even if her parents want her there, not everyone will. We just have to try and find some that want her gone, but don't want to hurt her, and get them to help us..." She let out a long breath, then smiled ruefully. "No problem, right? Sometimes I forget how surreal all this superpowered heroism can be, and then we start talking about enlisting gods to help us retrieve someone who's been snatched out of this dimension by forces beyond our comprehension. It's a lot more complicated than making plants grow because you want them to. But I think you've got to be right, there's got to be a way to get them on our side without putting her at risk."

"I don't know," Stesha confessed. "I didn't even know she had another identity until yesterday. The only one I can think of who might know would be Angel Marks, and I don't know how to get in touch with her. I hardly know her, but I know that she and Moira were very good friends. That would be all I can think of. If you want, I could try looking around her house for papers, see if there's anything that might give us a hint. I'm sure Moira wouldn't mind, if it helped us bring her back." She paused a moment. "What do you mean, intervene on our behalf?"

Erin startled visibly at the sudden movement, jumping backwards and starting a defensive position before she realized that the cloud was not hostile or harmful. She kept a close eye on it nonetheless, as though waiting for something to reach out and grab her. "Um... I don't really have a favorite building, but you'll probably want to see the classrooms and labs and stuff. There's no classes yet, it's all for tutoring and self-study right now. Okay?" She started off at a brisk walk towards the classrooms.

"Oh..." It was hard for Stesha to conceptualize that sort of relationship, but he didn't sound like he was dissembling. If he was telling the truth, well, it gave her a little pang of anxiety about what he might not consider important to mention about his own past relationships, but that way only lay madness, seriously. If nothing else, any serious relationships he might have had in the past would've been when she was a toddler. There wasn't much point in worrying now. "That's good." She knew she didn't sound as though she entirely believed it, but figured that if he were bad at reading people, maybe he wouldn't be able to tell. "Did you get your satellite fixed?"

Erin squeezed into the last open seat, which put her in the front between James and Mike, with her legs tucked up. "I'm not sure anything we do really counts as subtle," she pointed out. "We just better get back before Alex's parents do, or they might notice that we abandoned the party half-done. How long are they supposed to be gone for, anyway?"

Erin sneezed reflexively, a little disoriented for a moment as she went from treading water to sitting on the ground. Climbing to her feet, she looked over at Mike, popping a few vertebrae in her neck as she did so. "I saw that fire guy doing something to the ship," she told him. "Did you catch it?" She'd missed that part, being particularly concerned with not breaking her neck upon reaching the water by that point. "I think the villain was still alive, but damaged and disarmed. Seems okay to me."

"I guess so," Stesha said uncertainly, cuddling a couch pillow as she drew her legs up under herself. "I just... I guess I didn't understand the way you were acting, but if you didn't believe it anyway, then that's okay." She sounded a little bit like she was trying to convince herself. "He's a lot less than perfect, but we all have to work with him. He might come in handy somehow. So you're, you're totally okay with everything?"

Erin had left the gym at a dust-devil raising flat run to be almost on time for her teacher tour, but she wasn't at all winded as she skidded to a stop in front of the administration building. She was still in her blue and gold Claremont uniform since she'd just come from training, but Ms. Dugan had said that would be all right. Erin wasn't much of a one for conducting tours, but she knew her way around the place, and going on the new-teacher tour meant missing an entire algebra tutoring session. It was totally worth it. "Hi," she said, offering her hand to the unfamiliar person. "I'm Erin White, I'm going to help with your tour today," she said in her best friendly voice. It wasn't great, but it was an effort.

Stesha laughed at that idea, even as inside she did a little dance for joy. A regatta at the yacht club, oh boy! Not only would her boss be more than pleased with her, it would be a great opportunity to make some really great splashy late-summer arrangements. It was enough to chase away some of the worry, at least for a moment. "The bath is a tempting opportunity," she told him, "but when you hold out an opportunity like that, it makes me start wanting to draw up ideas right away. Sometimes work is better than anything for taking your mind off things, especially when the things you're worried about are things you can only wait for." "While I'm waiting though," she asked, "is there anything I can do to help? I don't know much about mythology, but I know my way around a library, if you need someone to do research assistant work or anything like that."

"That's all right," she told him, "I know you have things to do." Truthfully, when he was on the other end of the phone, he was just Derrick and far away, which was somehow easier to deal with than someone who was right there but untouchable and inscrutable. "I wanted to make sure you know that those things Jack said... they weren't true. He and I went out on a date, but we were never... we never really did anything."

Stesha pursed her lips and blushed at the insinuation, but couldn't think of any good response to make. She ate a couple more bites of her lunch instead. "I don't know, I think that anyone who isn't good to Moira might be incapable of treating anyone right. But you're right that anything more than a warning and moving on isn't really called for." She rolled her shoulders as though trying to shake off the tension the subject caused, then smiled at him. "I'd hate to ruin a really nice lunch with nothing but talk about Jack, anyway. Are you really planning on throwing a party soon?"

"I'm okay," she said, just a little hesitantly. "I was going to return your call tonight, but I didn't know when you'd be available. I've been a little busy. How are you doing?" She paused for another few seconds, then blurted out, "I was thinking you might be wondering about what happened on Sunday, and if we should talk about that."

This is the OOC thread for Derrick and Stesha's phone call.

It was a slow Tuesday night, without even a good movie showing at the second-run theater, but Stesha didn't mind that. She needed a breather after the past couple of days. At least work was going all right, and her boss was happy with her for scoring a couple of consultations with an important client. Getting an Ace Danger party into their portfolio books would be a very nice little feather in the shop's cap. For tonight, though, she was happy to be at home, fiddling with the bonsai trees she was fostering and tending her other plants. The little trees had been healthy enough, but a little extra pruning and fertilizer would get them back to Moira in even better condition than they had been. She was a bit startled by the noise of the phone playing a few bars of Savage Garden from her pocket. She picked up the phone, a little cautiously. She'd been meaning to call Derrick, but putting it off. He'd left a quick message last night, but she'd been very busy. Flipping it open, she sat down on the couch. "Hi Derrick."

"I'm trying," Stesha promised with a rueful smile. "I keep thinking I'm totally done with him, but then we meet and everything just starts over. Not the relationship or anything," she added hastily. "I'm way over any good feelings I ever had for him. Just being really mad at him. That, and thinking that he's going to hurt Taylor, when Taylor is my friend, makes it hard to deal with him at all. But it's a pretty small world in Freedom City, like you've said."