Electra

Erin gave a smile and a polite hello to Samantha, but couldn't quite muster the same for the intimidating metal man next to her. She sized him up before giving him her hand, automatically bracing in case the handshake were to become a confrontation. Of course that was very unlikely, but his dead eyes rang alarm bells in the lizard part of her brain. As soon as she could, she stepped back from him, towards her own spot in the circle of chairs. Just as she sat down, she saw the new person walk in and sit as well. She nodded in response to the greeting, and was just as happy to not do any more handshakes. "Hi," she said instead. "I'm Erin."

Erin sized him up and returned the handshake, summoning a polite smile as she looked way, way up at her fellow student. He looked familiar somehow, but not in a way that she could place. He didn't remind her of anything dangerous, so that was something, anyway. "Nice to meet you, too," she told him. Releasing his hand, she turned to Marquez. "What are we doing in this session?" she asked him.

Erin arrived early for the meeting, consulting the watch on her wrist once again as she walked in the door. Getting used to schedules and timetables again wasn't easy, but it was one more necessity of fitting in and getting by. Standing at the door with notebook and pen in hand, she scanned the room, checking out who was there and where they all were, and noting the locations of doors and windows. With the initial sweep done, she was comfortable enough to move into the room and take a seat in an unoccupied section.

Upon consultation with the refs, I have realized a few changes need to be made to Fleur de Joie. Sorry. =) Will Save is actually +4 Create Object should be removed from the AP array. Add Feature: Can create terra cotta flowerpots full of dirt. Change AP Healing to "Healing 7 (Extra: 35-ft. Burst Area; Flaw: Plants only; PFs: Regrowth, Stabilize)" The paragraph "Powers and Tactics" should read "Most nights, Stesha contents herself with scattering flowers in parks, healing peoples' sick windowboxes and gardens, and putting the occasional pot of flowers on someone's doorstep. If she gets in a fight, though, she can call the plants to her defense, using them to trip, snare, and incapacitate the bad guys, hopefully before they can hurt her. She has nascent earth control powers along with her plant control, but she hasn't explored them to anywhere near the extent she has with the plants. Right now, all she can do is create flowerpots, but that may change in the future." Updated by Doc.

Stesha watched him go, then took a moment to fan herself off and regather her wits before she started actually ordering the flowers. She'd feel really stupid if after all that, he took his flowers and never called again, but it had been fun to be flirted with, she had to admit. Definitely nice to be flirted with by a guy who wasn't in buying flowers for his wife! Who knew, maybe it would all go somewhere.

She nodded and took his credit card information, then got the specific address for delivery and made sure to set aside the sheet with his phone number. Stesha knew that, superhero or not, she was unlikely to ever have the courage to call, but at least it was an option. "It looks like everything's take care of. Your friend is going to be very happy with this shower, I'm sure. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

Stesha couldn't quite help blushing, the pink in her cheeks matching the daisies in her green hair. "Um, sure, that would be great," she told him. "I get off work at 5:30, so if you call after that, I can give your project my, ah, full attention." She inked her own initials on the estimate, then impulsively inked in the friends and family discount and wrote the new total at the bottom of the sheet. "Go ahead and sign there, and I'll start the ordering today."

There was nothing inappropriate in the words, but something about the way he said them made her shiver, and not in a bad way. "Every step," she promised. "You won't have to worry about a thing." She wrestled with herself a moment, then boldly took a business card from the rack on the table and jotted her cell phone number on the back. "This is my personal number," she told him, passing it over with a smile. "You can call me if you have any questions about anything." A little embarrassed by her own boldness, she quickly printed out the estimate sheet and handed it over as well. "Make sure it all looks like what you want done."

The movie star smile he turned on her was enough to have Stesha gaping for a few moments before she could gather her wits and return the smile with the best one she had. "We'll make it work," she promised him eagerly. "I know the price is steep, but we really are the best in town, and you'll get your money's worth. I wouldn't even be able to recommend another place in town to do the work at all on this sort of timetable. But I'll oversee your order myself and make sure it's perfect." She shook herself a bit, trying to stop her babbling. "Um, if you have blueprints or a diagram of the house we could work with and approximate dimensions of what you're looking for, that will help a lot."

Stesha typed notes rapidly as he spoke, pulling a calculator from her pocket and working some figures. "You're not giving us very much time," she warned him right off. "Most of the work we do comes in at least a month in advance, often as far as a year in advance, and June is, of course, our very busiest season. We're talking custom dye job, flower sculpturing, a fair amount of bouquet work, and in-house setup, while we're working you in..." She pursed her lips, did a little more math, and quoted the price they could do it at and still turn a profit. It was quite high.

"A... birth?" Stesha hesitated, looking up from the notes she was typing. "You want black roses and moonflowers for a baby shower? Are you sure?" She knew it was rude to ask, but she just couldn't help herself. It was the weirdest thing she'd heard in all her years of floristry thus far. "I mean, of course we can arrange with your caterers to take away the arrangements if you like, though most guests choose to keep them. Our arrangement fees include the cost of the glassware, so it's all yours to keep."

Stesha hesitated, but the idea of monsters had caught and held her attention. She got up off the ground and followed the slimy woman, brushing herself off as she went. "Monsters? You saw monsters? Did you fight with them?" She hesitated a little before actually stepping inside, but she was a hero now, and not constrained by small rules like not going into the homes of strange people. If worst came to worst, she could grow something to let her escape. "What kind of monster has slime like that?"

Stesha pushed herself to a sitting position, wincing at the pain in her hands, for all the skin hadn't broken. "How about 'I wasn't doing anything wrong?'" she offered. "I was just, um, doing deliveries. Plant deliveries." She nodded up at the planter on the porch. "From a secret admirer." She certainly didn't look very threatening now, with a rip in one knee of her purple leggings and her hood draped nearly over one eye. "You scared me. Why are you all slimy?"

Stesha, who had been busy curling a trail of ivy artistically off the side of the pot she'd just made, squeaked in alarm at being spotted. Jerking her head up, she saw some kind of slimy...thing shambling at her out of the darkness. Not even stopping to think, she dived off the side of the porch without looking to see what was beyond it, and wound up scraping her hands rather painfully on the concrete apron around the house. There were no plants here, nothing she could grab hold of to make her escape! She rolled to her back and peered upwards, hoping against hope that whatever it was would go away.

"Night blooming? How unusual," Stesha replied, still smiling. "I'm sure we can find something for you, if we have enough lead time. What sort of time frame and event are we looking at?" Gathering up her books and a small laptop, she stepped out from behind the counter and walked with him over to one of the small tables near the window. "Nottingham catchfly is not, I don't believe, cultivated for the flower trade, mainly because it's not very showy and some people find the smell really objectionable. I'm sure we can find other night bloomers, though, and if you're not averse to dyed flowers, we have created some really stunning black roses in the past."

"We absolutely do," Stesha confirmed warmly. "We can create floral themes and viewscapes for any occasion. We have books you can look at to get ideas, or we can work with anything you already have in mind. I'd be happy to help you with that. My name is Stesha," she added, obviously expecting that he would reciprocate with his name. As she did so, she picked up several idea books from behind the counter, stacking them up helpfully.

The inside of the shop was a little surprising to someone used to florist who dealt in, well, selling flowers. There were certainly flowers around, pots of cheerful spring blossoms, elegant roses in bud vases, bursts of stargazer lilies arranged in urns, but they weren't in coolers and it didn't look like they were actually for sale. They looked more like decorations in a very high class waiting room. As soon as he stepped to the counter, a smiling woman came out to greet him. The most noticeable thing about her was definitely her hair, which was green as a leaf in the springtime and pulled back in a bun that was ringed with pink daisies. She brought the smell of flowers with her, either as perfume or simply because she'd come from a back room where all the flowers were. "Welcome to Flowers by Design," Stesha said cheerfully, taking him in with a look. He didn't seem like exactly the type who patronized her establishment, but she didn't like to judge. Sometimes people came in with the wrong idea, wanting to buy a vase of flowers for a girlfriend rather than all the flowers for a large wedding. But she could always steer him to the place down the street. "How can I help you?"

She stuck with the street she was already on, skulking through the shadows and keeping an eye out for trouble. As she went, she perked up windowboxes and tamed gardens, sending runners of ivy running along old banisters and through porch rails, and perking up the dying grass in the median strip. Some of the houses and apartment buildings had no flowers at all though, not so much as a planter on the porch. She decided to fix that. Even though it meant the added risk of stepping up onto porches where she might be seen, Stesha was starting to feel a little more super as the evening went on. There was no one around, after all, this late on a Monday, not in a residential neighborhood. She darted up onto porches, every other porch or every two, pausing just long enough to create a pot full of flowers, then dropped back into the darkness to sneak onward.

Despite her bold words, it took a minute for her to pry her fingers from the trunk of the tree she'd been hanging onto. It looked a little droopy, so she gave it a little boost, then the trees around it as well. Their branches straightened as they grew taller, new leaves rustling as they unfurled from nothing in mere moments. Buoyed by the reminder of what she wanted to do, she planted some flowers in rings around the trees, then moved on, satisfied that that one small patch of nature was more beautiful now. She traced a winding path through the park, keeping out of the way of people, and leaving a trail of flowers behind her. The seeds she'd chosen for this jaunt were the hardy perennial variety, and by keeping them close to the trunks of the trees, she figured they'd be safe from the lawnmower. Digging through the seeds in her bag with the skill of practice augmented by intuition, she mixed up the heights and colors, creating a pleasantly varied look that really brightened up the otherwise sparse landscaping. It stopped looking like a half-hearted effort at a municipal green space, and more like a fairy garden. She was very pleased. In fact, she got so caught up in what she was doing, that she almost didn't notice the policeman coming till he was all but on top of her. She hit the ground with a soft thud, hiding in the shadows until he'd passed by, then dusted herself off and kept going. She'd come too far to stop with the job half-done! When she'd made her way around the park and wound up back at the front, she decided to do something special for the entryway. Concentrating hard, she extended a hand and held it over the ground on one side of the broad sidewalk. In just a moment, dirt began to rise up, swirling like a minature tornado that thickened and widened and darkened, rather than growing larger. After a few moments, the clayish earth separated itself to the outside of the scrum, patting itself down and hardening into a red terra cotta pot, while the rest of the dirt settled inside it. Stesha pushed a dozen seeds into the soil and grew them all, filling the air with the scent of green leaves and flowers as the empty pot was suddenly filled with the color and scent of a summer meadow. She wished she could see it in the daytime, but she didn't want to be caught. Pleased with the look, she repeated it on the other side of the sidewalk, so that the park's entrance was flanked with big pots of flowers. It looked great, if she did say so herself. Turning herself all the way around once to take in her work, she headed onward, looking for more to do.

June 1, 2009 Fleur de Joie joins the roster of Freedom City super(ish)heroes. Learning Curve

Monday, June 1 11:00pm Stesha was ready. Well, she was almost certain she was ready. The little knot of butterflies in her stomach suggested that she might not be quite ready, but she ignored them. She'd moved to Freedom City so that she could become a superhero, and she'd been piddling around long enough. Today had been a day full of mundanity, planning weddings, putting together corsages for a half-dozen proms, paying the rent and balancing her checkbook. It was time to move beyond all that and start doing something extraordinary. She didn't really have a costume, and wasn't sure she wanted one. She definitely wouldn't look good in the spandex that other heroes tended to wear. Even though she didn't really need to eat anymore, she still did it fairly often as a recreational activity, and was displeased at the way it showed up on her hips and her bottom. So instead of the spandex, she settled on purple leggings and her favorite sweatshirt, a dark green one with a big pink daisy on the front. She thought she probably looked more like a Care Bear than Captain Thunder, but it would do. She wasn't out to let anyone see her, after all! And with the hood up, it covered her green hair, the only really remarkable part of her appearance at all. She packed up her bag, checking to make sure she had her keys, her water bottle, all the seeds she wanted, and her cell phone, set to vibrate. Her mom had the superpower to call at absolutely the most inconvenient times. Prepared and attired, Stesha took a deep breath. "I am a superhero," she said aloud. "I am working to make the world a better place. My name is Fleur de Joie, and I am really extraordinary." With those affirmations in mind, she wrapped her fingers around the trunk of her dwarf weeping willow, and in a moment, had disappeared from her cozy apartment. When she popped out, seconds later, she was halfway across the city, standing on the edge of a park in the west end. "Okay," she whispered to herself. "Okay."

This is the OOC thread for the Learning Curve story. Please feel free to post if you'd like to drop in!

Fleur de Joie will be up for a late entry, once she's approved and gets on her feet.

Are the Claremont kids invited, or is it for grown-up heroes only?

Okay, how about I solve both my problems in one fell swoop and lose the immunity altogether, thereby solving my point problem? =) So for this month: Accurate Hearing (normal only) 2 Luck 1 Tracking (the feat) 1 Benefit: Temporal Inertia 1 Ecalsneerg'd