Electra

Erin shook her head, her face twisting with grief as she stared into the hole. Now Alex could see into the hole as well, where the My Little Pony blanket had become a makeshift shroud, with clothes and toys carefully arranged around it, as though to protect it from the encroachment of the rocky red soil. "I couldn't save her," she said again, choking on the words. "I couldn't save anyone. All this power, all this strength, and I couldn't save anyone but myself. I should have died too, but I couldn't even do that." Dirt began trickling into the hole of its own accord, even as the edges of the dream began to collapse in on themselves as well. In a moment, it winked out, pulling both of them back to consciousness. In the lower bunk, Erin woke to a wet pillow, scrubbing her face as the dream swirled around in her head. She'd expected bad dreams tonight, but this one had been stranger than most. Parts of it had seemed so real, like she was actually talking. She pushed herself to a sitting position, drawing her blanket up around her shoulders. Although she was still tired from the fight earlier, she didn't really think she'd sleep again for awhile.

Erin wasn't sure she entirely agreed with Alex, but Alex was generally pretty good at making people feel better, so she held her peace. "It's supposed to be the best place in the country to learn, so if you make it here, you'll make it anywhere." She stilled the ball with one hand and turned to Alex. "And I guess since you're here, it's time for some tutoring," she asked with a half-smile. "Congratulations on the test, by the way."

The building stopped shuddering as Alex began taking control of the dream, the walls firming up as light began to trickle in from the windows. Erin was startled enough by the change to break off combat for a moment. "What's going on?" The moment she did, the whole scene faded, and they were standing in an empty room of black and gray tiles, one that thrummed softly with electricity. "That wasn't real," she suddenly remembered, and then that faded too, and they were standing outside, back in the dead world. This time they were in what had once been a garden, before a lack of irrigation and the unforgiving sun had baked the grass and flowers to a crisp. Instead of a two-by-four, Alex was now holding a shovel, its head encrusted with hard red clay. A little ways away, Erin was kneeling by the hole the shovel had dug, carefully laying small clothes and toys down inside it. She had the music box next to her sitting open, the tinkling fairy-tale music loud in the stillness of what had been a large city. "This is, though," Erin continued, pulling a stuffed bunny out of the open suitcase beside her and giving it a hug before putting it into the ground. "Even if no one remembers it but me. What are you even doing here, Alex?" she asked suddenly. "You aren't supposed to be here." The scene was starting to fray at the edges, as Erin started focusing on the wrong note in the memory.

"Fine then," Erin said with a shrug, letting the steel ball unwind itself as she watched her own blurry reflection spin past in its face. "Go to music school, or Hollywood, or wherever. But if you don't want to be a hero, and you think you've already got your powers to a professional level, then what are you going to be doing here? This is a school to teach people how to use their powers for good. It doesn't sound like you think you need it."

"It's not a zombie," Erin told Alex, clenching her fists and dropping to a near-crouch. "I can't beat it. You have to run! Get to the window, get out!" With those words of advice, she coiled and leapt, further and faster than an Olympic athlete, launching herself at the new monster. It laughed and disappeared, reappearing a moment later to send Erin smashing into the wall with a careless fist. Erin picked herself up and charged again, then again, but the result was always the same. No matter how often she picked herself up, nothing she did seemed able to affect the superpowered creature. Alex could feel Erin start to panic as yet another lightning bolt hit her, even as the walls of the building began to tremble. From far below them, suddenly the little-girl crying started again. "Go!" Erin yelled again to Alex.

Erin shrugs. "Things are different where I come from," she replies, but doesn't seem inclined to elaborate on how. "You start feeling kind of stupid after awhile when you barely know who this Obama guy is, or think that Evanescence is still really popular. It's a school assignment, but it's stuff I really need to know, so it's better than, say, algebra." A small smile crossed her face before she changed the subject. "So did you go to that tug of war thing?"

Darian can tell that Erin is aware of him well before he starts talking. Even when she's reading, she seems to have one eye constantly on her surroundings. Still, she waits for him to come up before she politely sets aside the old Newsweek she's been reading. "Yes, I remember you," she says with passable politeness. "You made the floating machine. It was pretty neat."

"It's not like they're going to tie you down and make you help people," Erin said, looking a bit annoyed at his attitude. "But if you've got these special powers, why not use them for good? You only get so much time on the planet, you know, and then it's over. Why wouldn't anyone try and do the most good they can in the time they've got?" She gave the metal ball a spin, letting it twirl up its tether on the tips of her fingers. "Sure you could be a DJ or a movie star or a rich Scrooge who has more money and cars and houses than he could ever dream of, but you're eventually going to be worm food anyway. Don't you want to be remembered as one of the folks who gave it all to make the world a better place?"

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Unaware of Jack's regard, Stesha paused on her way out to the van and pulled Paul's share of the tip out of her folder. She had little compunction at not sharing out the entire tip, since she'd done the bulk of the work and most of the tip had nothing to do with the job at all. He was more than happy to get a bigger tip than he'd expected, anyway. As she buckled her seatbelt, Stesha gave the house one more long look, then shrugged and drove away. No use crying over spilt milk, she reminded herself yet again, and she could use all the free time she could get. The city wasn't going to beautify itself.

They managed to clear a path from the dispensary back into the hallway, fighting what seemed to be an endless wave of zombies. Somewhere along the line, Alex noticed that Erin must've picked up a lot of height in her last growth spurt, since in this dream, she was only a little taller than Alex herself. There wasn't much time for observation, though, which was probably just as well, since they were both covered in things it was better not to think about. Erin lost her knife somewhere in the battle but it didn't slow her down. She continued attacking with fists and feet, even headbutting and biting when the situation called for it. She fought with a graceful savagery that was unpleasant to watch, but extremely effective in mowing down zombies one after another. Even with both of them fighting, though, they weren't making any progress. Each corridor was a blind alley, leading only to empty walls and more zombies. From far away, Megan's screams were growing fainter. "Erin, where are you? Don't leave me! Help!" Erin yelled back while she fought, heedless to the hits she was taking as she nearly drowned in the onslaught. "Hold on, bunny, I'm coming! Just hold on!" The zombies abruptly cleared off, leaving Alex and Erin to stumble into a wide, cleared-out space. It didn't look much like a hospital anymore. This place looked more like an empty apartment building with a hole in the roof. Megan screamed again, but her voice was abruptly cut off by the sound of a loud crash. Erin braced. "Oh no. Oh shit." Reaching out, she grabbed hold of Alex's arm and pulled the other girl behind her. A moment later, something crashed through the wall opposite them, bathing them both in an agonizing wash of electricity. "Back for more?" came a laughing voice from the center of the ball of light. When Alex's vision cleared, she could see a zombie, some kind of super zombie, standing in the center of the room. "You'll only die screaming, just like your family. You finally met what you can't beat, right Wander?" the zombie sneered.

Erin buried her knife in the chest of one zombie, sending it reeling, then used her bare hands to break another zombie's neck and rip its head clean off before she took the time to look over at Alex. "It's no use," she said, despair coloring the edges of the dream around them. "I tried so hard. But she was so little, and she didn't get..." She retrieved her knife and split the zombie from sternum to groin, which slowed it down long enough that she could reach in and snap its spine. "She didn't get the powers like I did. She wasn't going to get any better, and there were no doctors. All I could do was let her go to sleep." The dream almost cracked then, the reality of the memory overcoming the illusion of immediacy, but then a fresh wave of zombies distracted her and the world firmed up again. Some of the zombies began to get past Erin, heading for the other living person in the room. To Alex's surprise, when she swung her two-by-four at a zombie that approached, she hit it square in the head, shattering its skull and sending it toppling to the ground. Over the moaning and yowling, they both suddenly heard a little girl's agonized scream. "Erin, help me!" "Megan!" Erin shouted, redoubling her efforts. The press of zombies was now a crush, with bodies piling up against the door as fast as she could knock them down. "Megan, hold on, I'm coming!"

The question drew a visible wince from Erin. "I don't know how to help her," she muttered. "But maybe there's still a doctor, or a nurse, or a paramedic. There's got to be someone, somewhere! We can't be the only ones. I can't be the only one left!" Erin suddenly had a long knife in her hand, one she obviously knew how to use. Leading with one elbow, she crashed through the glass that hadn't been broken already, not flinching or blinking at the shards falling onto her. The smell inside the building was even worse than the stench outside, far more concentrated thanks to the limited space. The corpses inside hadn't been skeletonized by sun and weather, and were instead decomposing in the heat. Most were bloated, writhing with flies and maggots. Some had obvious bites taken out of them. Erin pulled up her shirt collar to cover her nose and mouth and kept going, barely sparing the bodies a look. They'd only gotten to the doors into the emergency ward when the first zombies were upon them. At first glance, they almost looked human. They weren't rotting like corpses, they weren't green, and they smelled like humans who hadn't bathed for weeks, not like dead bodies. But a second look revealed that there was nothing going on behind those eyes. Their heads lolled on their necks, and the groans and howls that came from their mouths were nothing human. Erin was on the first one before Alex had finished getting a look, jumping on it and slicing its head clean off, then splitting it open down the middle. Gore sprayed out, covering Erin and splattering Alex. The second zombie was obviously attracted to the blood, turning and extending its tongue, making obscene noises that sounded almost like "num, num, num." Erin dispatched it the same way she had the first. "This way," she said, "but stay behind me. They don't have any minds."

"Always around the hospitals," Erin agreed. "Some just didn't leave after they got changed. Some just figured out that it's where the bodies are. Oh god, how will we ever get through?" They were suddenly in front of a tall hospital building, in the middle of a scene of wreckage and desolation. An ambulance had crashed into the emergency bay and was still wedged there, its back doors lolling open and ruined supplied spilling out. A short way away was a ruined gurney that looked like it had been torn out of the vehicle for its contents. A skeletonized hand was still strapped to the side, and the white mattress was soaked an old, rusty red, but there was no other sign of the former occupant. In fact, behind the hand, a bird's nest hand been built, with the bone fingers holding it in place. Erin must have noticed all these things sometime, if she wasn't making them up from whole cloth as she went, but she wasn't paying any attention just now. Instead, she threw the jeep into park and unbuckled her seatbelt, then leaned over, moving the blanket for the first time. There was a little girl under it, Alex saw, with dark hair like Erin's and a strong similarity to the man in Erin's dresser photo. She was Megan, the understanding filtered in as Alex watched. Megan was Erin's little sister, and they were all that was left. Something was obviously horribly wrong with Megan, and it didn't seem like any flu. Her head was bandaged, and her arm, and her midriff under her torn shirt, all with bandages that were already stained with blood. Her eyes, half-open, didn't seem able to focus. "Erin," she moaned, trying to lift her head and unable to do that, either. "Hurts so much. Why did you let me fall?" "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Erin murmured again and again, trying futilely to fix the bandages as new blood welled and seeped underneath them. "I'm going to get you medicine," she promised. "It'll make you feel better." She covered Megan with the blanket again, then slid out of the car. There was a lot of movement from within the hospital, shadowy forms behind the broken frosted glass. Erin looked at Alex, her face set. "Are you coming?"

"It's not worth it," Erin said shortly. "Most of them are empty from the flu anyway, and what's left isn't worth fighting for. It has to be a hospital, a big one. I keep telling myself that maybe there are going to be people at this next one, that someone has to be alive somewhere, but there NEVER IS! There's no one! How can it have happened this way?" The steering wheel flexed under her hands and made a dangerous-sounding noise before Erin got control of herself. "I don't know what to do," she said more softly. "Just hang on, bunny, we're almost there." Buildings were suddenly popping up around them, sprouting like plants from the landscape and filling the windows, even as the blanked-wrapped bundle moaned again. The streets were littered with piles of trash, Alex thought at first, but as they got closer, she saw they were corpses. Most of them had been dead a long time, skeletonized in the heat, eaten at by animals, bones torn and scattered. Here and there were piles of bodies, often at the front of churches or police stations. Feral animals wandered the street. As they drove on, she began to catch glimpses of movement up ahead, big things, bipedal things, like living people, walking around.

Erin spared her a glance, but didn't seem surprised to have her along. That was often the case in dreams, the dreamer's mind merely smoothed out the wrinkles in any strange elements that appeared. "Albuquerque," she replied shortly, adjusting her hands on the wheel. "It's the closest big city, there are hospitals there. Maybe medicine... something." She took her eyes off the road for a moment to focus on the blanket-wrapped bundle in the front seat. It was silent for a moment, then something under it twitched and made a moan that sounded human. Erin pursed her lips and drove faster. "It's always too late." Around them, the scenery was blurry, red-brown desert. Only the road ahead was sharp, almost hyperfocused, looking like a photograph that had been manipulated by an amateur.

Alex's dreams started out as the usual melange of a mind settling into sleep. Replaying fragments of the day, walking down familiar corridors, half-heard snatches of conversation as her busy brain began to process all the information she'd gathered during her waking hours.After that, though, instead of taking the familiar route into the world of her imaginative dreams, her mind wandered further afield. Something was pulling at her, some strong emotion from close by, attracting her interest the way a bright light could distract a moth from the moon. Distress, anger, despair, a confusing tangle of feelings that seemed to demand closer investigation. As Alex meandered down the path that led outside the hallways of her own psyche, she could sense things around her beginning to change. The first thing she noticed was the smell. It was overwhelming and horrendous, more acrid than a fridge full of rotting food, fouler than any garbage dump a human mind had dreamed. Even as she wondered what it was, the answer insinuated itself into her consciousness. It was death, hundreds of millions of dead human bodies, rotting in the open air, along with all the food that had once sustained them, the corpses of animals they'd loved, and most of the possessions they'd held dear. This world was full of death, and the air itself was choking on it. As though that knowledge was a key clicking in a lock, suddenly Alex found herself immersed in this world. It was evening, nearly dusk, and the acrid wind was in her face as she bounced along in the back of a moving jeep. She recognized Erin in the front seat, a younger Erin than the one she knew, smaller in stature and softer in the face, maybe fourteen years old. She was driving with both hands on the wheel and her eyes trained on the empty interstate ahead of them. In the front passenger seat was a large lump covered with a dirty My Little Pony blanket. Erin didn't seem to realize she had company.

"Thanks, I will," Stesha promised with a smile. "It's nice to know one of the other people out there in the night. I hope your roommate likes the planter." Stepping out onto the porch, she touched the petals of a geranium in the planter she'd built there. "Goodnight!" she said cheerfully, then disappeared, almost as though she'd been sucked into the plant. A mile away and a moment later, Stesha popped out in her apartment, which looked exactly the same as it had when she'd left a few hours before. Even so, she knew that she was different now. She was a hero, and she knew other heroes! There was plenty to do around the house before dawn, but Stesha took a few minutes to carefully enter Moira's number into her cell phone. You never knew when you might need some backup.

Stesha seemed a little overwhelmed at being hugged by the gorgeous, monster-fighting hero, but she was smiling as Moira let go. "I am too," she admitted. "I don't think I could fight a monster. But I can make things nicer for people's every day lives." She cocked a finger at the plant Moira had pinched the flower from. It obediently sprung a new blossom, as though the old one had never been lost. "As long as there are people keeping the city safe, I want to keep doing this, all over Freedom City. I hope they like it."

"Gold and purple," Stesha repeated, digging in the knapsack and coming out with a handful of seeds. "Good choices," she murmured, more to herself than to Moira, "very hardy." She held out a hand over the ground near the park entrance, watching carefully as dirt spiraled up out of the ground to become a sturdy terra-cotta planter. She dropped some seeds in it, then crossed the path to repeat the performance, then back again a few feet onwards. When she had a half dozen pots lining the path, she stood in the middle of them and gave them the high sign again. Instantly, marigolds and pansies, gold and purple, burst out of all the pots, spilling lushly up and over the sides. "Marigolds keep away the bugs, too." She tossed the seeds she hadn't used in among the roots of the trees, where they sprang up and grew immediately, blossoming almost invisibly in the deep shadows. "What do you think?"

Stesha shrugged. "Make it nice, without letting anyone see me." She raised her hands as though conducting an orchestra. All of the trees around her began to perk up, some unfurling new leaves and growing a bit, some just standing straighter and stronger. Casting an eye upwards to make sure she wasn't about to hit any power lines, she let the effect spread, the trees rustling as though stirred by a breeze. "It's not very exciting, not like fighting monsters. What's your favorite color?" she asked, opening her knapsack and beginning to rummage.

This is the out of character thread for Erin and Alex having dreams. I think this story takes place on June 3. Avenger says that all the placement tests do not take place on the same day.

With her placement test finished, if not the way she would have liked, and her body and mind exhausted, coming back to the dorm was a welcome relief for Erin. The test had taken longer than she thought, into the dinner hour, and Alex was nowhere to be seen. Erin figured she'd probably gone off to eat, but the idea of heading out to the cafeteria was overwhelming. She crawled under the bed and pulled out the box of pilfered granola bars and fruit cups she'd been collecting. It was supposed to be for an emergency, but she would replenish it later. Erin ate two granola bars, then crawled into her bunk and pulled the covers over her head. Despite her exhaustion, sleep was a long time in coming, but eventually her busy mind shut down and she fell deeply asleep.

Erin didn't seem terribly enthused about music or school dances, but she tried to be polite. "You could volunteer to help out," she suggested to Eddie. "The teachers are always saying how we're supposed to use our powers for the greater good. Are you coming to Claremont to learn how to be a superhero?" she asked. That seemed to be why most people were here, but not necessarily everyone. "And be a DJ in your secret identity or something?"

Hmm... Actually if Pomp needs to go on the third, would it hurt anything to make his run take place on an earlier day and move Erin's to the fifth? Erin's not taking her placement test till the start of June, and she needs that before she starts any training.