Electra
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Everything posted by Electra
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Any problems with Raina using her Concealment to become invisible as soon as the fighting starts? I'm thinking like slipping into a shadow, poofing, and then unplugging all the things.
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Do I need to roll anything for Raina to be able to unplug the speakers?
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Miss Americana was up and moving by the time the party returned to the dome, giving instructions to the scientists, packing up relics, and adjusting the security protocols in the hopes of somehow moving them beyond their already maximized performance levels. She gave Tarva a long look. "Finding Mandragora is key, but not if it means casting a spell that sets off all the nasties down in that crypt." Her voice was flat, utterly professional, completely affectless. "Can you ramp up the spell by degrees, so that you can cut it off the moment we see it starting to trigger anything?"
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A simple invasion of the hospital by malign time-traveling forces had not been enough to break Erin's veneer of calm, but Mark's announcement had her eyes widening perceptibly. "I really don't think that's something I can help with," she began, lifting her hands as though to ward off the very idea. "I don't know anything about medicine, and I definitely can't help with the whole, you know, pushing... thing." Even so, she took a few steps towards the alarmingly heaving tank with its dangerous and distraught occupant. "Have you, I mean, are you doing your breathing exercises?" she suggested halfheartedly. "That's supposed to help."
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ic (IC) Pop Quiz: All You Have Is Your Fire
Electra replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in The Fens
Raina suddenly lost just a little bit of her confidence at Robin's question. "Not sure, " she said after a bare moment's pause. "There's a possibility they're working with some escaped criminals from Blackstone, but I haven't heard anything about an escape and I try and pay attention. We're going to have to be sneaky when we get there and see what we see. No fighting, no indiscriminate shooting," she reminded Riley. "We have to figure out what's happening before we can stop it. And yeah, we can take my broom." Her collapsible broom was tethered to her backpack, so it didn't take long to unstow it and extend it for flight. "Oh, and there might be magic stuff going on too, so if somebody starts chanting, try and stop them," she advised before climbing onto her broom. -
"Oh yeah, they're good," Raina assured him. "Claremont's fine, but they've got a lot of mouths to feed on a budget. Most of their fruit comes out of a can or a bucket. Getting fresh stuff is nice." Merlin chirruped agreement from the backpack, which Raina was certain was now full of ice-cream-cone crumbs. "But now you've told me we're not stealing it from you, it probably won't taste so good." She was still uncomfortable inside, rubbed raw in some emotional sore spots, but she was definitely finished dealing with them for now. The faster she could get herself outwardly back to normal, the better she felt. ""Tell her I said thanks."
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Raina considered the offer, turning it over in her mind for a moment before tucking it away for later examination. Seeing her parents the once had been good and terrible at the same time, she certainly couldn't have done it without Talya, wasn't sure she wanted to do it again. She definitely wasn't sure she wanted to do this whole venting thing again, but there were worse people than Erik to have a mini therapy session with. And it was a good way to get some free ice cream, she supposed. Tipping her head up to look at him, she gave him what might have been just the ghost of a smile. "i'll keep it in mind," she told him. "But the blue moon here doesn't taste right. Hot fudge sundae next time." Or banana split, Merlin suggested from the bag. "Or banana split. You gonna take some home for the girls?" she asked Erik.
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Raina didn't look up but she listened intently, pulling her arms and shoulders in tight as she stared ferociously into her ice cream. She wasn't sure why she'd said any of that to Erik, not really, not when she hadn't been able to say it to Talya or anybody, except that he seemed like maybe he got it in a way that other people didn't. Or at least he wouldn't get judgey or parent-murdery about like like some people might. "They're supposed to be going to trial soon," she muttered in the direction of the table. "It's been taking forever. The prosecutor wanted me to testify, but they ended up taking a deposition instead because... I don't really know. My lawyer wanted it that way." She shrugged. "I didn't really know anything. But I don't have to go to the trial, and if I don't and if I don't go visit them, maybe I'll never see them again. It's a weird feeling."
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"I just..." Raina poked her ice cream savagely with her spoon. "I don't understand how somebody can get totally betrayed by someone they trusted, somebody who was supposed to be looking out for them and taking care of them, how they can have their whole lives ruined by that betrayal and then still miss the people who did it." Her ice cream was beginning to melt now, pooling sadly in the bottom of the paper bowl like a melted Smurf. "I mean, you got beyond it, right? You learned your valuable lesson, you got your family back together and now you have to think about it to even know what you'd do if you ever saw him again. That makes so much more sense than missing them all the time. Missing the people who betrayed you and were going to hurt you is stupid."
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Raina picked at her ice cream, which was not a color that had ever occurred in nature, and listened to Erik's story. "I get that," she finally said. "You can't trust the guy anymore. Even if there were extenuating circumstances, even if maybe he didn't mean for things to happen the way they did, it was still his fault, and he still completely screwed up all of your lives." She flicked a quick glance up at him, then looked down again. "I guess I just wonder... do you ever wish he'd come back anyway? Just so you can see him?"
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ic (IC) Pop Quiz: All You Have Is Your Fire
Electra replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in The Fens
Raina gave Robin a skeptical look. "Okay, but you're probably going to freeze. It's cold out there!" It was common knowledge that Raina was from the Midwest originally, but her tolerance for cold was more like someone who'd grown up in the tropics. "Merlin got a line on some bad guys doing bad stuff. You remember that mind-control thing that was in Mr. Archer last year? Somebody's selling the components wholesale down in the Fens. Somebody's gotta lock that down, and we need to figure out who's behind it, and where the parts are coming from. You know the Fens better than anybody else around here, right?" -
ic (IC) Pop Quiz: All You Have Is Your Fire
Electra replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in The Fens
Raina was already dressed to travel when she walked in, which for Raina in January meant a stylish red winter coat, a white knit hat with matching scarf and gloves, and sturdy boots. She was also wearing her backpack, which rustled a bit as she walked. "Hey!" she said with fake cheer as she walked in. "You guys look like you must be super bored. Get on your gear and let's go do some hero work before school starts up again. It'll be exciting!" -
Raina listened carefully to his story, taking neat spoonfuls of her ice cream from its paper cup. Every so often there was a faint crunch from inside the bag as Merlin worked on his own (empty) waffle cone. "So the guy who was supposed to get you all set up and help you do the hero stuff was a bad guy at heart?" she summarized when he finished. "Sucks. What happened to him? Is he down in Blackstone now, or did he die in the whole fighting thing?"
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"Okay, but you better bring some home for the kids or I'm not responsible," Raina warned. Merlin hopped into her backpack with the rest of the melon balls in his greedy little grasp, letting her zip it up most of the way. "Did you have fun playing with Vince?" she asked the monkey. Merlin indicated that he did indeed have fun playing with VINCE and that although there was much left to do to make the dojo sufficiently cool as far as technology went, they'd made a good start. Raina just nodded along. McGillicutty's was one of those destination ice cream shops, retro in design and expansive in selection, with a vast glassed-in counter showing off dozens of ice cream flavors that customers could buy and consume in tacky red vinyl booths. Raina hemmed and hawed over her choice for a few moments before choosing Blue Moon, then waited for Erik to get his and pay. It was only when they were sitting in a booth that she spoke again. "Why don't you live in the brownstone house?"
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Raina rummaged in the minifridge until she found the fruit that was usually stored in there, today a little plastic box of melon balls. She wasn't sure if the fruit was left for her or if she was stealing it from somebody else, but nobody had ever told her not to. Merlin came over, still somewhat cautiously, and accepted a few of the treats as well. "Not really," she finally told Erik. "Like you said, nothing makes you feel better about it, right? Usually talking about it just makes it worse. Either they feel sorry for you and it's weird because you've made them feel bad, or they don't feel sorry for you and make you feel like crap because oh boo-hoo they took your pony away because your parents are criminals and some people actually have real problems." She at another melon ball. "What kind of ice cream have you got?"
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ic (IC) Pop Quiz: All You Have Is Your Fire
Electra replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in The Fens
"Fine, Raina sighed, opening her backpack for him to jump inside, "just don't put a backpack inside your backpack or we're going to start doing some Inception-level backpack thing." Merlin assured her that was very funny, which cheered her up a little bit as she packed a few supplies of her own. Not much, what did one pack to go confront one's possibly-escaped-inmate parents? "We're probably going to need some kind of backup on this," she mused aloud for Merlin's benefit. "Somebody who's not going to make a big deal about things or tell on us. I'd call in that favor from Matt but he's got the thing with Fred tonight." Merlin agreed that it would be stupid to disrupt that unless absolutely necessary, after all the work they'd done trying to get it arranged in the first place. "Can't take Cathy, she can't be stealthy if her life depends on it, and who knows what Phae would do in that situation. I guess maybe we can ask Riley and Robin," she decided, somewhat reluctantly. Merlin reminded her that the aim was to not get anybody indiscriminately shot, which might well rule out the archer. "Yeah, I know, but we can keep a lid on him. And he only fires one good arrow at a time, so it's better odds anyway." -
She took the bottle and drank the whole thing in long gulps, fast enough to give herself a faint cold headache, slow enough to let her regain most of her composure before she had to turn and look at him again. When it was finished, she carefully recapped the bottle and tossed it into the trash can. From the corner of her eye she could see Merlin lurking in the shadows by the door, called from his work by her internal upheaval. He'd wait, at least for now. Piecing together her rather battered emotional armor, she managed to give Erik a grin that was only a few degrees short of cocky. "Not nearly as mad now as I will be tomorrow when I can't move my arms," she assured him. "I still think I'm better off with fireballs."
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Raina tried to follow along with the lesson, watching the new move, copying it, trying to keep up, but she couldn't concentrate. How was she supposed to concentrate on the lesson when he wouldn't stop talking? If she could've plugged her ears she would've, but not only was that unfeasible with the sword still in her hand, it was tactical suicide. She knew better than to let anybody know when they'd scored a hit on a weak point. But Erik wasn't content to just score a hit, he had to really smash it home, like knuckles grinding against her sternum, making her lungs burn and her throat close. He knew, somehow he knew, and he wasn't going to just let it lie. By the time he called off the drill, she wasn't even looking at him anymore, not a great strategy for swordfighting. She threw her foil on the ground and shook her head, not entirely trusting her own voice.
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"Pissed? Why should I be pissed?" The sardonic grin was still in place, though there were teeth behind it now, just for a moment. She repeated the forms as well, careful and steady, not as fast as Erik but with increasing accuracy. "I lead a charmed life. I grew up rich and popular, with everything my little heart desired. I even got to be a supervillain for one very exciting night and didn't go to jail for it. Now I'm in hero school and I've got a rich boyfriend who lives a thousand miles away but wants me to be happy and I've got superpowers. Doesn't really seem like such a bad deal, does it?" By now a fine sheen of sweat was visible on her skin. Raina wasn't in bad shape, but she also wasn't used to a lot of sustained physical exercise.
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Erik could see Raina's expression become more closed-off as he spoke, her eyes going wary even as she slipped on a practiced sardonic smile. She was an excellent liar, especially for someone her age, but it was tough to kid a kidder. "Wait, so you're saying that the whole spiel about your crazy superteam shenanigans and rising from the dead and folk hero to bees and all that was to try and show me how alike you and I are?" she quipped, taking the starting stance with her foil. Her positioning was better this time, easier without having to control the existence of the sword as well. "Somebody might be exaggerating just how exciting my life is."
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Raina's stare had by now drifted more toward perplexed than entirely befuddled, though she made no attempt to reignite her sword. "Look, I'll make you a deal," she finally offered. "You put down the tennis balls and show me how to hold and wave around a regular sword, not one made of fire, so I can do the one-two-three-four move without having to worry about burning my own eyebrows off. That way I learn how to use a sword, you get to work through your feelings of misplaced guilt, and nobody gets eaten or decapitated by giant bees. Good?"
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Raina's sword disappeared entirely, flickering out like a snuffed candle, but she didn't particularly care. She was much too busy giving Erik her best nonplussed stare. "You want to introduce me to fire-breathing bees the size of semi-trucks?" she repeated slowly. "Tell me again, is that what I get for doing the thing you want me to do, or the punishment if I don't? Because I think Talya would back me up on that being kind of cruel and unusual. Plus if you let me get eaten by bees you're out a babysitter and pretty much screwed as far as your next date night."
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Raina thought about that for a moment, intently enough that the sword turned from silvery-white back to orangey-yellow and started to droop again. She gave it an annoyed look. "If you throw stuff at me, then I don't have to use the sword anymore, right? Because it's stupid to try and defend yourself with a sword made of fire against somebody throwing things at you when you could just turn invisible and fly out of reach, then fireball them from a comfortable distance."
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Raina narrowed her eyes as she watched him dig the tennis balls out of the equipment. "If you start throwing stuff at me I'm probably going to set you on fire," she warned, then took a moment as his final sentence sunk in. "You got killed by a giant demon?" she repeated. The fact that it was even plausible spoke volumes, she thought, about how weird her life had gotten in the past couple years. Not that it had ever been normal to start with. "You look pretty good for a dead guy, so I'm guessing it didn't take." Her sword, which she had been ignoring now for all of thirty seconds, took the opportunity to roll itself up like a party blower and attempt to regain fireball form. Aggravated, she cracked it like a whip, sending it springing back to attention.
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"Sounds like you were better off without him," Raina opined, tucking her elbows in as best she could. It felt weird, unnatural, but the sword didn't wobble around quite so much. She broke form long enough to firm up the slightly-droopy blade again, then retook her position and went through the steps again. Her patience for this sort of repetitive practice was limited at best, but she tried a little harder for one of the few adults who gave a visible damn about her. "So did you become a superhero so you could get in with a team to help you fight off the House of Swords?" she guessed.