Electra

"Probably," Erin said with a shrug. "Even when I was in school, some of the people my age were already bragging about it. And guys don't think about it the same way girls do. It doesn't mean as much, it's just fun, and for bragging, if they're jerks. You'd know if Mike had, so probably not him, and probably not Darian because he's real young and a nerd, but the other guys. I hear James is going on a lot of dates, and Chris is always talking about it." She spun the dial, then added a pink peg to her own car. "Great, there's a tuition to pay for."

"Air will be faster, and we won't have to deal with the robotic sea snakes Lilith was talking about. Put it down on a roof and get going," Erin pointed out, wincing a little at the pounding noises from the cockpit. "Depends on how fast this thing can go, but Lonely Point is only a few miles away. If all else fails, we set this thing down and go in on foot or by flying." Leaning out of her seat, she called to the front, "What kind of weapons are on this thing, Chris?" To Mike she added, "If this has decent weapons, you and I could drop out and fight, and leave them to hit from the air."

Erin rolled her eyes and pointed to Alex's little car full of pegs. "It was a joke, Alex. Those little backseat pegs in your Mike car have to come from somewhere, you know. I only went to school through ninth grade and they still taught us that. I don't actually think that Mike's really into that sort of thing. Some of the guys, yeah, but probably not him."

"Wait a minute, what's this pact, and why should it stop us from being able to help?" Stesha demanded, confused. "She lives here, she's one of us, an American citizen, and she was kidnapped. What sort of horrible agreement would make that be okay? You can't just say "Oh, we don't want a fight, so here, have some innocent person's life and do whatever you want with it. That's wrong on every level. It's the opposite of being a hero."

"We'd have to tie a cartop carrier to him or something," Erin figured, "to hold the luggage. But I think he might object to a bumper sticker. Maybe we could just get a car, like a rental or something, and load it up and get inside, and he could carry that. Then, when we got there, we'd have a car, too." She mimed flying her blue car through the air like a little plane. "I was disappointed, when I started thinking about it, that all my jumps come down pretty much right away. Being able to fly would be pretty cool, but I guess we all have out strengths. And if his only talent were to destroy things, I can't imagine how much more depressed he'd be. Not too depressed for a lot of sex, I guess," she added, looking at the rapidly filling purple car, "but depressed."

Erin nodded at that. "I'd like to travel someday," she said, "not with a playboy billionaire, but maybe if I can ever get it together enough to join the Freedom League, or one of the affiliates. I used to feel sad that I'd never gotten to see Europe or Asia or Africa, and it didn't seem like there would ever be a chance, and they wouldn't really be like they should anyway." She was quiet a moment, sorting through her play money, then smiled at Alex. "Maybe we can convince the school to let us take a spring break trip somewhere really exotic, when we're seniors maybe. Someone around here has to have a teleporter or a wormhole maker or something that would save us the airfare, and we could go someplace warm and sparsely populated, with a very blue ocean and seashells the size of your head."

Stesha took his hand in both of hers, wrapping her fingers around his. "Maybe we should try not to worry about it so much," she suggested with a little chuckle. "I promise, you haven't done anything to make me feel uncomfortable or nervous, and if I've felt unladylike, it's only been in the best possible way. If I feel like things are going too fast I'll stop you, and you can do the same thing to me, and we'll just have a good time. You make me feel special, and I really like that. You make me happy." Leaning forward, she brushed her lips across his, very lightly. "I just want to do the same for you, too."

"That seems unfair somehow, but also brilliant," Erin conceded. "Get the guys to do your dirty work, and only have a few of them to deal with yourself at any one time. I like it." She made another move, collected some money from the bank. "For me, I would be able to crash the gates and take shortcuts when the various parts of the path come close together, but I couldn't go to college or have anyone in the car with me. It would be a pell-mell run for the finish line!" She grinned a little. "Which isn't a great strategy in this game since winning isn't really who gets to the end first, but I could at least retire in the nice little house while you and your harem moseyed your way along."

"Yes, I was." Stesha took a deep breath and got her mind back in order. Realizing how quickly Jack had moved on, again, was a bit of a shock, not to mention who he'd moved on to, but that was just going to have to wait. She could always throw something later. She waved everyone into the living room, which was nicely appointed and uncluttered but for an empty cedar box on the loveseat and a yellow knapsack sitting open on the couch. She set the knapsack on her lap and sat down. "I don't know if everybody knows everyone first. Ace, this is Der- Dark Star, I told you a little bit about him when we talked the other week. You know Taylor, and that's Jack, a friend of Moira's." Her voice was completely uninflected on that last bit. "And this is Ace Danger, he's a friend of Moira's and of mine." Figuring everyone could figure everyone else out enough from that much introduction, she moved on, hugging the knapsack as she spoke. "I don't know if Moira talked to the rest of you this week, but she called me a couple of days ago to ask if I'd watch her plants while she went on a trip. She said it was a family emergency, but she didn't say what. It turns out that her birth family, who are actual honest-to-god Greek god-type-gods, decided that it was time for her to be a goddess too, so they just took her away! She didn't know if she'd ever be able to come back, she didn't want to go or stay with them, but she didn't think there was anything anyone could do to stop it. I told her that anyone, any hero in Freedom City would help her, but by then it was already too late. It was like something, some other personality or some other mind, maybe, was overtaking her. I promised I would help her, and she asked me not to give up, but they just disappeared her right out of this room, right while I was watching, and I couldn't do anything." Stesha wiped her face again. "But I promised we would do something to save her. I know all of you work with her or are friends with her, I knew you would want to help."

While Derrick stuttered, Stesha picked up a cupcake and unwrapped it, then handed it to him. He accepted and put it in his mouth to cut off the flow of words. They both sat quietly for a few minutes, eating their cupcakes in semi-companionable, semi-charged silence. Finally Stesha finished hers and wiped her fingers on a napkin. "I guess it's pretty clear the way we both feel," she finally said, a little tentatively. "I really like you, Derrick. A lot. And I really like kissing you." She ran a hand over her hair, fiddling with the hairsticks that held up her braid, now a little crooked after all the kissing. "The thing is, I'm not really very... experienced with things beyond kissing and making out. I had a lot of very overprotective older brothers, basically right up until I moved out here. So I never... you know. Not that I don't want to!" She smiled. "Like you said. But I think maybe we both need a little bit of time to think about it, and make sure. I'd still really like to go on that trip with you next weekend, if you still want to, too."

When Taylor turned back to Stesha, the plant controller's expression had changed substantially. She didn't look so much distraught as pissed, and there was the very faint scent of burning leaves in the air. "Glad you could make it, Jack," she told him. "We're okay, but Moira isn't. I was sure you'd want to help out, since the two of you are such good friends." There was plenty of extra emphasis on those last three words. "Ace should be here any minute. When he gets here, we can all talk."

"Or you could collect all the guys, be like Chris, but with blue pegs," Erin countered. "You could probably get any one of them to go out with you if you wanted, you could collect the whole set. Even have a second car trailing behind with the rest of the boy toys in it. Then you could pass Mike and see if he had the good sense to hop in." She turned the spinner, landed on an income tax square. "Hmm, motivational speech, or peg prostitution..." She sighed, then cleared her throat. "Four score and seven years ago, Parker Brothers brought forth upon this continent a new boardgame, conceived in cardboard, and dedicated to the proposition that all life is a game, and should be determined by random spinny thing. History will not remember long what we did here once we put the board away, but for now, I regret that I have but one phrase to give for my country: no taxation without representation!" She raised her eyebrows at Alex. "Good enough? I don't have to hum The Star Spangled Banner, do I?"

Stesha hung up the phone just as Taylor walked in. "Are you okay?" she asked right away. Even in her more formal Phantom guise, Taylor didn't usually walk like that. "Everyone's going to be here soon, and I can tell it all once. Were you in a fight? I hope I didn't get you hurt when I called." Stesha had obviously been crying recently, her eyes were swollen and her forehead and nose were blotchy pink, but she seemed under control now.

"Wow, it's just like twins," Erin joked, laughing at Alex's attempt at moodiness. "I'm kinda sorry I said no poetry." She rolled and passed the wedding chapel, giving the blue Mark peg a promotion to the front seat of the blue car. "What about for you, though?" she asked. "Maybe you could flip over the cards ahead of time and reshuffle the deck if a bad one was on top. But whenever someone pulls ahead of you on the board, you lose a turn to try and talk them into going back?"

"We could put Chris on the board," Erin suggested, changing the subject as she took her turn and gave herself a paycheck. "One blue peg and five pink pegs, but every few spins, one of the pink pegs gets the driver's seat and he moves to a totally random place on the board. "Or Darian, he could drive two cars stacked up on top of each other and poke the spinner while it was moving to stop it. But he couldn't get married, he's too young." She was biting her tongue over the thoughtless comment about James, but at least she didn't know anyone else's secrets.

"I've already gotten in touch with them," Stesha told him coolly. "You're the very last one I called. We're meeting at Moira's house. I'm sure you remember where it is. Can you be here in twenty minutes?" She wanted to add a few more comments, but now just wasn't the time. Why did Jack seem so insignificant in her mind except when she actually had to deal with him face to face? It was frustrating.

"Thoroughly," Erin replied, her tongue in her cheek. "It does go on the list of reasons to date him, even if only for the right now. With the way the guys around here look, I feel underdressed even when we're all wearing the same uniform." She spun the wheel again. "That's good though, makes it easier to blend into the back of the group. I don't think James would be a good piece for the game, sure he'd start with twice the money, but he could get pulled off the board at any time..." She pursed her lips suddenly, looking like she'd said something she hadn't mean to say. "I mean, with his family and all, they sort of control what he does, even though he acts like a rebel."

With Ace and Taylor both on the way, Stesha hesitated for a minute before calling Jack. Seeing him again was pretty much the last thing she wanted to do, but this wasn't about her, it was about Moira. If there was the smallest possibility that Jack could help, she had to call him. Maybe that was why, in the grand scheme of things, she'd kept him on her phone instead of deleting him with extreme prejudice. Tucking her feet up under her on the couch. Stesha made the call. "Jack? It's Stesha. Moira's in trouble. We need you to help us find her."

Stesha blushed pink, taking a long drink of her Coke to avoid answering. Since she couldn't chug the whole thing in one gulp, this was a necessarily limited reprieve. "It's ah, that's my fault," she told him. It's like, ah, in springtime, how the flowers open up and smell good to attract the insects? I think it's kind of the same idea, but it's me when I'm, you know, enjoying myself. That way." The blush, if anything, got even deeper. "It goes away after I shower." Reaching down hastily for a cupcake, she put about half of one in her mouth in one bite, before she said anything even weirder.

"That's not fair, I don't actually think Mark has any shame," Erin pointed out, giving the spinner a twirl. "He'd lose a turn because he wouldn't stop posing till they actually turned the lights out on him. And sullen looks will be enough, I think. I do want to be able to eventually work with Mike without snickering at him. And part of that means having some tiny morsel of respect for his tortured soul." She slid her car forward along the path, avoiding the college loop and heading for the first Payday. "Superheroes get crappy pay here, too. Sorry Mark, guess you're going to have to shake that blue peg booty when taxes come due."

"Trust me, Jack knows Moira, and he owes her bigtime," Stesha told him sourly. "He can be muscle, or something. But I'll call Ace first." Flipping her phone back on, she looked up Ace's number and dialed that one. It still felt a little strange to be able to do that, but the circumstances were dire. "Hello, Ace?" she asked into the phone. "This is Stesha, Stesha Madison. I was wondering, you know Moira Morley, right? She's in trouble, and I was hoping you might be able to help us."

"Inspiring speeches?" Erin asked skeptically as she chose the blue car, popping a pink peg into the driver's seat. "All right, but if I have to do that, then you have to fold your arms and look sullen while you're missing your turns. And I may have to play Mark, but I'm still driving." She got out a blue peg as well, sticking it in the third row passenger seat. "I would say I should get all my insurances for free, but that's pretty lopsided. Maybe Mike can have a "Change into a swimsuit" move that gets him extra salary from photo shoots." She laughed at Alex's face. "Sure he's annoying sometimes, but he looks good."

"Hmm..." Erin took the tray of play money, dealing it out as she thought about it. "Okay, you're Mike," she decided. "You can go double the number of tiles on your turn if you want, because you can fly, but if anything bad happens to you, you skip a turn. And if the bad thing that happens is skipping a turn, you have to skip another turn. And... hmm.... you can have free Life Insurance, because you're basically indestructible. Like that?" she asked, pushing a pile of money and insurance to Alex.

Erin laughed. "No, really? I never would've guessed that," she teased. Alex's proclivities meant that they already had a small pile of board games that had been liberated from the common room over the course of the summer. Erin crawled over to look through them. "Want to play Life?" she suggested. "You can name your little blue peg Mark, and jam him into the spinner to get the number you want."

"I don't think powers can work that way, even luck," Erin countered. "I think he has to lose sometime. If he wants to be the leader on this new team thing, he's gotta be able to make plans and backup plans and stuff. Why would he do that if he never loses or screws up? If there's anything they've been trying to beat into us here, it's that powers can't do everything. He can't just grow up thinking things are always going to work out exactly how he wants them to. Even superheroes aren't that lucky." Sliding off the bed, Erin sat cross-legged on the floor across from Alex. "But like I said, ten year plans are way too long range. You don't need to make yourself responsible for seeing he turns out right, just because you like kissing him." She glanced over at the alarm clock on Alex's desk. She should be in the gym right now, but she didn't want to go. "You tired?" she asked Alex instead. "We could play a game."