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Electra

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Freedom City Guidebook

Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide

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  1. Electra
    The two not-Jessies looked at each other. Blue Bat's bat dropped a little bit. "Your friend is Wander?" she asked, though it didn't sound like it was really a question. "Or something similar? Looks like me, like us," she corrected when Red Bat cleared her throat. "I'm really sorry if we've caused any problems, but honestly, a guarded prison cell's not the least safe place for her to be right now. As I keep mentioning," she added, an aside that was clearly directed at Red Bat. Red Bat scoffed. "Only thing a prison cell's going to do is hold us in place long enough to get dead. Anyway, it's not like you've ever been able to lock me up before, right, Wonder?"
  2. Electra
    There were indeed two figures on the roof, standing nearly nose-to-nose as they snarled at one another. The second Aquaria spoke, though, they spun with identical speed to face the threat side-by-side. Each raised a long, slim bat that crackled with electrical energy, one blue and one red. "Who the hell are you?" Blue Bat demanded in a voice that was clearly used to being obeyed. That was the voice Jessie's sister used, never Jessie. "Forget who, what the hell are you?" Red Bat chimed in. "I didn't know they had Frogzillas around this place!" Her voice was almost exactly the same, just a little more snide.
  3. Electra
    Despite its name, Riverside was decidedly lacking in pleasant humidity or any dampness at all this time of year, without so much as a comfortable drizzle to make Aquaria's nighttime stakeout more pleasant. It was also a largely residential neighborhood, which did limit the number of possible targets for a thieving not-Jessie, but made it harder to get around or stand around unnoticed. Hours passed and the streets became quieter and quieter, as empty as the city of Freedom ever got. It was after two in the morning when Aquaria, walking past a strip mall with a little bank branch for the third time, heard a whispering voice and the soft jingle of pouches from overhead. Even her sensitive ears could only pick out parts of what was being said, as though the speaker were moving, or maybe jumping. The voice seemed to be arguing with itself. "-can't keep doing this, don't you-" "-do what I gotta do to survive, right? It's not like they need-" "-don't know that, and you're drawing attention! You're going to get-" "-happen anyway, right? Why are you still here if I'm so dan-" "-stop you, and it's always going to be me!" The voice began to recede.
  4. Electra
    Project Freedom was helpful in providing what information they had, though nobody there seemed to share Aquaria's theories. Miss Wainwright seemed more interested in letting Aquaria draw her own conclusions and acclimate herself to the idea that her friend was more mentally unstable than she'd seemed. At least it got Aquaria the same footage Jessie had been shown. It was grainy, blurry in spots due to the high speed movement involved, but there were still more than a few moments where Jessie's face was clearly visible. She looked strange, though. Jessie typically did not display extremes of emotion; even on a bad day her impulse was to shut down and hide rather than stomp around or yell. This Jessie showed everything on her face: anxiety as she ran down an alley behind a bodega, sudden triumph as she noticed the door, positive glee when the knob came off easily in her hand. It was the same way in the other videos too. Even the last one at the bank, where Jessie had gleefully rooted through the vault she'd punched her way into, filled her pockets, then opened the door from the inside to run away. Scant seconds later she was back, looking annoyed and vaguely alarmed, then catching sight of the camera. The feed was disabled mere seconds later. It wasn't until her second watch that Aquaria realized what bothered her about the scene. Jessie had left through the vault door, but re-entered from the broken wall side of the room. That was strange. And it was really hard to tell given the light and the angle, but it seemed like her clothes changed color in just those few moments.
  5. Electra
    Jessie's lips twisted in a humorless smile. "I am the me from the bad world," she reminded Aquaria gently. "Wander didn't do this, and the Erin native to this world couldn't have done it if she wanted." She shifted on the bunk, setting aside one crayon and picking up another one. "Logic says that if you have a bunch of possible answers, the simplest one is usually right. Half my brain is nothing but blank white space, it's not exactly surprising that it's not the most stable thing in the world." Tipping her head down, she began coloring again. "But if it isn't, if there's something out there trying to cause trouble with my face," she mused, "isn't this the safest place for me to be?"
  6. Electra
    Jessie shrugged. "I'm not really sure," she admitted. "I was studying for my sociology midterm and it was really boring, and I fell asleep. Or I thought I fell asleep, I guess. I remember terrible dreams, but not what I dreamed." She looked down at her sketchbook, then carefully closed it and set it aside. "When I woke up, I was in the living room and the police were pounding on the door. They showed me what I had done and said I needed to come in because I'm dangerous." She quirked a half smile, dry and small. "Somebody else got my old room, but this one is very close. Nobody gave you any trouble because of me, did they?"
  7. Electra
    Aquaria's tracking anklet chimed every time she passed through a doorway here, a faint reminder of her own time as a prisoner for all she could leave whenever she wanted now. The psych ward of Blackstone was set off by several heavy doors, each with their own chime, and consisted of a long gray corridor with offset rooms along each side. The first room was covered over by a thick metal plate with only a small window set in it, but the others were more open, more like regular prison cells. Jessie''s cell was wide open like a dollhouse bedroom, one entire wall missing and replaced with a forcefield barrier to keep her inside. Aquaria could remember Jessie talking about that, how in her old forgotten life she had been kept in a small box and could not tolerate the feeling anymore. The barrier, which might have made anyone else feel exposed, made her feel safer. This morning Jessie was curled up on her bunk, sketching with crayons in a plain white notebook. Her tracking anklet had been replaced with power suppression cuffs, though they didn't seem to be active at the moment. She looked up as Aquaria approached, faint concern on her face. "I forgot to leave a note," she said as soon as Aquaria reached the barrier. "I'm sorry."
  8. Electra
    "Not very much," Ms. Wainwright said, shaking off the loud noise and resuming her pouring. "She was back in your apartment by the time we found her, and seemed a little dissociated. But she agreed that she was the person in the video footage, and admitted that she had no clear recollection of the times in question. It's not an admission of guilt," she added, forestalling the likely objection, "but even if she's doing things without knowing what she's doing, it's a serious concern. Jessie learned to take what she needed to survive in a world where it wasn't even stealing because nobody was around to care," she reminded Aquaria. "She may not have even understood that what she did was wrong."
  9. Electra
    "I understand that this is difficult to accept," Ms. Wainwright said sympathetically. She picked up the watering can by the pool and, after looking for permission, poured it out over Aquaria's back. "I've been so proud about how well both of you have adjusted despite very difficult circumstances. It's hard to see someone lose their way, especially a friend. I didn't want to believe it either, until she confessed." She refilled the watering can with careful deliberation. "I'm sure this isn't the end of the story for Jessie," she promised. "We're still going to find a way to help her."
  10. Electra
    The population of Project Freedom was mostly different from when Aquaria had lived here, which meant she got her share of odd looks as she made her way to the guest rooms. Most of the new Surfacers seemed at least a little wary of her, but nobody tried to pick a fight or even talk to her as they passed. The guest room wasn't much, a bed and table shoved up against the walls and the familiar blue plastic pool set in the middle, two-thirds full of tepid water. Not exactly the comforts of home, but it would do in a pinch. Ms. Wainwright came along while Aquaria was still settling herself in. "I'm not sure how much more I can tell you," she admitted. "Jessie wouldn't tell us anything when she was picked up, and none of the stolen goods have been recovered."
  11. Electra
    Her ankle cuff beeped softly as Aquaria crossed the threshold, its color changing from the amber of outside to the pleasant light green of an approved location. A soft chime also sounded, and a moment later one of the staff psychologists appeared, a skinny young male whose name escaped her. "Hello there, Ms. Innsmouth," he greeted her pleasantly. "We have one of the guest rooms set up for you, we're just waiting for the wading pool to finish filling up. Would you like to talk about anything?"
  12. Electra
    "Oh, no, nobody died," Ms. Wainwright reassured Aquaria hastily. "Didn't someone call and tell you what was going on? I'm sure I assigned someone... but then, we were so busy dealing with STAR Squad and Blackstone and the local police this afternoon, it must have slipped through the cracks. I'm so sorry, honey!" There was a moment's pause while the woman gathered her thoughts. "But no, there were no deaths or serious injuries this time, which is a huge relief. Jessie was seen on half a dozen surveillance cameras this afternoon, robbing two museums and breaking into a bank through the back wall of the vault. We aren't sure how she was able to fool the tracking bracelet, but we're going to talk to her more about it when she's a little more rational."
  13. Electra
    Even after the end of the Surfacer "work day" it did not take very long for Aquaria to be put through to Ms. Wainwright's phone. That suggested, in Aquaria's experience, that somebody had probably been expecting her call. Her unexpected calls tended to take a lot longer for people to understand for some reason. "Hello, Aquaria," came Ms. Wainwright's friendly, soothing voice. "I expected we'd probably hear from you tonight. I want you to know that we're going to do everything we can to investigate the situation and understand Jessie's relapse. I know this must be upsetting for you, would you like to come in to the Center tonight?"
  14. Electra
    The apartment was dark, which was not totally unusual. Jessie had good night vision that let her see well in the dark, and sometimes she had bad days where she liked things dim and very quiet. Her sister-not-sister (the relationship was difficult for Aquaria to define, even among complex Surfacer family affairs) had given her a pair of large headphones to block outside noises, so that sometimes Jessie would spend many hours in her dark bedroom, listening to calm music or rainfall. But Jessie's door was open tonight, and her headphones sitting on the coffee table in the living room. There were heartbeats and footsteps all around in this large building, but none of them were close enough to be within the apartment. Jessie was not at home. This was not an immediate cause for panic. Jessie rarely went anywhere without Aquaria's enthusiastic encouragement, but she did occasionally venture out on her own. Aquaria poked very carefully at her phone until it disgorged her recent text messages: none from Jessie for days now. Their shared calendar in the kitchen was also empty. A look into Jessie's sparsely decorated, always neat room didn't reveal a note, but it did look... strange. It took a moment for Aquaria to realize that the walls were entirely bare, without any of the precious family photographs or carefully rendered sketches that usually decorated them. The dresser top was also bare, no stuffed animal or jewelry box. Wherever Jessie had gone, she'd taken everything that was important to her.
  15. Electra
    Raina was panting by the time the portal eked itself closed, the gap in the universe vanishing like the last dot of light as a television shut off. Tension sang up her arms and into the back of her neck, all her senses screaming that the job was not done, or not well done, anyway. She'd seen magic-users like Phantom tear holes in reality and stitch them back up neat as could be, but this wasn't that. The place where the hole had been shimmered like water in front of her eyes, looking as though all it needed was a hand plunged in to open it all up again. She didn't know how to fix it, but she couldn't just leave it like that, either. "Dad!" she snapped as her father started taking potshots at her teammates. "What the hell are you doing? We have to fix this!" She pulled away from both her parents, wresting her magic rudely out of gestalt at the same time. "Stop shooting my teammates and do something useful!" Grabbing her broom from where it was stowed on her back, she extended the handle and took to the air. "Merlin, call the dojo!" she ordered her sidekick. "We need help, we need Phantom or somebody who can do interdimensional portals!"
  16. Electra
    Jessie flinched slightly at Aquaria's bellow and its echoed response, even as her tactical instincts made note of the probable location of walls in the dimness. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to meet the kind of pets that a half-Deep One kept in his undersea lair, but she also didn't want Aquaria exposed to them without anybody to protect her if necessary. And it would be stupid to come all this way and stand in what was effectively a garage while her friend went on what was effectively (maybe) a date. Awkward third-wheeling it was, then. "I don't think I've seen the crown," she confirmed politely. "It sounds nice."
  17. Electra
    "Wait, that was your kid?" Jessie asked, startled by the admission from Aquaria. She knew that Deep Ones didn't have the same sort of family bonds that humans did, but to not even know was weird. Then again, she was hardly in a position to criticize anybody else's weird family relationships. When Aquaria had met Jessie's parents, Jessie had been half-catatonic and hiding in her doppelganger's bedroom closet. She popped out of the ship as soon as the hatch opened, leaping neatly to land on the dock and taking a really good look around at the place. There was no immediate visible danger, but that hardly meant anything. "Does anyone besides you live here?" she asked.
  18. Electra
    With one quick glance at Phantom to make sure SFX was covered, Singularity pulled the shield from her back and raised it. She stepped forward, not quite between Aquaria and the other Deep Ones, but easily in range to block any attack before it happened. And then she just waited. She didn't say anything, not that they'd have understood anything she had to say, but her face was the blank cool of a seasoned soldier or a really good bodyguard, unfazed by the threat of violence and ready to become violent herself if needs be. The etched not-quite-star on her shield seemed almost to glow in the dim light.
  19. Electra
    "Screw you, Dad," Raina spat in her father's direction, grabbing the knife from her mother's hand. "You don't tell me what to do anymore. You think I can't feel what opened that portal? You think I'm as blind as I was when I was fourteen?" She made a noise that was much too bitter to be an actual laugh and shook her head. "I defended you both for a lot longer than I'm proud of, you know. I was... I was just stupid. Anyway, portal now, therapy later." She brought the knife down with all the force she could bring to bear, stepping quickly out of the way of the resultant mess. No matter how loathe she might have been to get too close to her parents, needs must as the devil drives, so it was she who wrapped her own magic around her father's and shoved it into the portal. Pointing both her outspread palms towards the portal, she began slowly drawing her hands into fists and singing softly. "Haven't you people ever heard of closing a goddamned door? No it's much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality..."
  20. Electra
    Raina is going to grab the sword from her parents and attempt to put that poor cow out of its misery herself, let me know if anything is going to require a roll there. I'm also going to spend one of the many, many Complication-related HP she deserves for this thread to queue up her array into a form useful for closing magic portals or assisting in closure of same. Merlin is going to bite the proverbial bullet and call for as much superhero backup as he can swing, probably Claremont and the Freedom League emergency line.
  21. Electra
    Jessie's shoulders twitched under the straps of her new shield, but she did her best not to respond any more than that to Phantom's scrutiny. Phantom wasn't a threat, she reminded herself, Phantom had already signed off on her. It was okay. Really. "It's not underwater," Jessie assured SFX. It had been her first question too, an important one. She did not like going under the water. "It's like an old oil rig that the Deep Ones have moved into. More defensible than a beach, and not too many people interested in fighting over it anyway, so it's a good place to live."
  22. Electra
    "All right," Jessie said, still sounding a little dubious but obviously not wanting to disappoint her friend. "Thank you, it's very nice. I don't know if I'll be able to use it very much, but I'll try it." And that was how she came to be standing back in the butterfly garden with the unfamiliar weight of the shield strapped to her back, still wondering in the back of her mind whether she'd have an easier life if she didn't spend quite so much time not disappointing Aquaria. No time to think about that now, though, not when there was work to be done. She just hoped that the weird star sign on the shield was just a decoration and not some kind of monster-summoning spell just biding its time. She nodded a polite greeting to SFX and waited.
  23. Electra
    Jessie needed no assistance to hop up into the little submarine, though she hesitated for a visible moment before going in. She sometimes had a hard time getting into small, sealed containers like spaceships or submarines, but at least this one wasn't blank sterile white inside. "There was a rock monster," she said simply. "Or an alien who looked like a rock monster. We ended up on opposite sides of a line for a little while, but it was mostly a misunderstanding. Her lips curved as she took her seat, though there was little real amusement in her smile. "Most people out in space think I'm Wander, too. She scares the hell out of them."
  24. Electra
    "Yikes," Stesha laughed. "Well then, in the interest of saving your clients from unintended punctuation marks, I'll definitely use the phone." She handed him her cell phone, an ArchePhone a few models back from current, sealed inside a weatherproof, impact-resistant case. The wallpaper photo was a little girl with hair the color of earliest spring grass and one missing tooth, which she was displaying with great pride. "Just put yourself in my contacts," she instructed, "and I'll text you mine. I do better with text messages than phone calls," she admitted, "voice calls sometimes just drop out in the barrier between universes, but texts almost always get through eventually."
  25. Electra
    Jessie was already unhappy about being out on the beach with Aquaria that day. February wasn't exactly prime beach weather in New Jersey, and just because she could survive great extremes of temperature didn't mean she enjoyed them or that they weren't extremely unpleasant. But Aquaria had found a particularly lethal combination of begging and nagging that saw Jessie skipping yet another class to come third-wheel for Aquaria's not-a-date. She zipped up her wetsuit just as the little craft breached the surface of the waves and turned to try and make a good impression. She stiffened at the first words from Leviathan's mouth, throwing a glance in Aquaria's direction. "No," she replied, forcing her voice to be only a little stiff. "Wander is my sister. I'm Singularity."
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