Electra
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Freedom City Guidebook
Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
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Erin hefted her bat in one hand as she approached the door, watching it with narrowed eyes. There had been floods and burst pipes in the Manor before; even the best plumbing didn't last forever against Freedom City's punishing weather and frequent supernatural events, but this didn't sound quite right for that. She couldn't entirely rule out the possibility that Aquaria had left some kind of enormous fish in one of the unused bathtubs for later, but the Deep One was usually more considerate than that. Besides that... she was kind of out of ideas. But an intruder in the house was never, ever a good thing. The fish idea was sort of bolstered by Charlie's presence, actually. The cat was usually more than smart enough to keep himself out of trouble, but here he was, coiling effortlessly around her legs with just enough adroitness not to trip her. "What do you want?" she demanded in a whisper. He gave her a look out of huge yellow eyes, but didn't deign to say anything. Erin shook her head, then gave the door one sharp kick to blast it open.
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Ammy's very excited," Stesha confirmed with a laugh. "She's right at the perfect age to be a big sister, old enough to help out, young enough that she's not too cool for family stuff. I've managed to convince her that the crib should not go in her room, but it took a little bit, and I've caught her telekinetically floating a few of her dolls lately." She turned her attention to Carson. "Thanks for the offer," she began, "I may take you up on that once I stop being able to see my feet, especially if the whole, hm, flower situation continues." She gestured vaguely at the faerie ring around her. "I'll need volunteers to mow my carpets. And honestly," she added, "I feel better now than I have in a long time. It's nice to feel like something new is starting." She smiled over at Ghost. "Nope, not yet! And if i did I couldn't tell, it would disrupt the baby pool. That would be cheating." "Anyway," she wert on, looking at the whole group, "any other important news we need to cover?"
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"I'm mostly working with a midwife on Sanctuary, but I also see Miss Americana for my ultrasounds and such," Stesha confided easily. "She did the same for me when I was pregnant with Amaryllis. It was a little awkward to realize she'd never actually been to medical school or done an obstetric exam before my first appointment, but it all turned out all right." She laughed. "I guess being one of the smartest people in the world probably makes up for a few years of med school, though in retrospect I understand why she seemed a little bit nervous." More relaxed again, Stesha fished a second doughnut out of the box, then brushed aside a tendril of ivy trying to snake its way out of her flower crown. "We don't have too many actual doctors," she told Ashley, "but there are several places you can go if you have questions about how your powers might affect your health. If ArcheTech can't do what you need, the Albright Institute has some really smart researchers, and there's the Atoms and their new thing as well."
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Stesha's face, which started as wryly amused by Gabriel's question, quickly shifted to startlement at Ghost's assumption before settling back at calm and composed. "Okay, to gather up all those questions, no, the baby is not half fear monster, and no, I didn't come back from the dead pregnant. I won't say it's entirely unrelated, since coming back from the dead can really do a lot to make you reevaluate what you want to be doing with your life." She picked up her glass of water, looked down into it, then set it aside without drinking to focus mostly on Carson. "I know you know the kind of rut I let myself get into after everything with Derrick. It didn't feel great, but it was easy to get busy and just coast along until something popped up and made me take a look at my life. I've always wanted a big family, and that doesn't always require a partner." Now the smile was back, if a bit rueful, as she glanced at the ring of flowers and small mushrooms that had sprung out of the carpeting around her chair during the meeting. "You just have to want it badly enough."
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"Okay, creepy thought and creepy that you thought of it," Raina decided, "but I guess that's good. Also if you had another secret identity, maybe you could've, you know, let me know about it before we went into danger? I thought you were all retired and old and stuff, but you could've done this by yourself!" She gave the downed robot a little kick just to vent some frustration, but knew better than to apply too much force to a metal skeleton. She didn't need any more bruises. "So where's whatsisname the fanboy?" she asked, looking around. "Hope he's okay."
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"I'll take the congratulations," Fleur said good-naturedly, "but I haven't got much to give you in terms of gossip and secrets, unless you want all the dirt on the romantic travails of the giant bees. I didn't even think that was a thing bees did, but somebody explained that you can have romance without any reproduction at all and they have taken that and just run with it. Schedule-wise, I'm due in the first or second week of December, so I'm going to be moving to the reserve list starting now, and expect to be entirely off-duty except for apocalypses from October to February or so. But if you need somebody to visit schools or make a goodwill visit, now you have somebody to pawn that off on. And of course I mean the new Patriot," she quipped. "But really, I can still do some work, just nothing in the field unless nobody else can handle it."
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"Think nothing of it," Stesha replied automatically. "We need to know about this sooner rather than later." She'd been paying attention to the briefing, of course, but she couldn't help being a little distracted. She was sure she'd seen the new Patriot before, something about the shape of her face, the tone of her voice... Different costume, maybe? Another heroic identity before taking on this role? There were a lot of heroes in Freedom City, but not a huge number that looked like her and even fewer with that unusual powerset. She was pretty young, young enough that she probably wasn't long out of college, which would've put her in high school back when Stesha started heroing. Wow, she would be getting old if it weren't for that weird immortality. She'd known most of the heroes in the city back then, what with her own work and Derrick's teaching and- "Oh!" she burst out as the face finally clicked with the powers. "You're Copycat! Or you were, obviously. I knew I remembered you from somewhere!" It felt good to get that particular mental itch scratched, even if it might have been a slight faux pas. It wasn't like she was revealing a secret identity. "You were one of Dark Star's students."
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Raina wheezed out a breath from the punch that had come too fast for her to see, let alone respond to. She was abruptly faced with the uncomfortable truth that if that robot wanted her dead, there wouldn't be a damn thing she could do to stop it, and it was just luck that the thing was much more interested in the senior citizen she was supposed to be heist-babysitting. Superfights were not great for a girl's ego sometimes. She shunted that thought aside for later brooding and concentrated on staying alive, harvesting the sparks flying through the air and feeding her power into them until they were a fireball that glowed like a small sun. "What she said!" Raina yelled, then slammed the fireball straight into the robot's lolling head. It detached not-quite-neatly at the neck and went flying off into an entirely different tree, trailing yet more sparks. "Goddamn, that was weird," she opined, still wheezing a bit.
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Raina does a fire blast attack on the robot. It's a 25, and autofire is on.
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"That's fine," Stesha replied equitably, "we don't need to be fully aware of your identity so long as you've been vetted. I know that there will be personal information that members of the League will likely not share, and you won't be privy to all League communications and activities until and unless you apply for full regular membership. So far that hasn't raised any obstacles to us being able to work with government liaisons, so you should share whatever you feel comfortable with." She gave the new Patriot an encouraging smile. It couldn't be easy, she figured, stepping into a legacy that had big public shoes to fill and a ...less than stellar history with costumed heroes. She wondered what Comrade Frost would say, and was a little sorry she probably wouldn't hear it in person. "We should probably figure out, though, how we can best work together before an emergency comes up. What are your powers?"
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Stesha was surprised to feel just a little disappointed at the blase way that her friends absorbed her surprising news, though obviously that was much better than anybody being hurt they hadn't known earlier or getting into awkward questions. Still, her smile for Ghost's interest was bright and genuine. "Thank you!" she replied. "I'm due at the beginning of December, but obviously I'm going to be going on the reserve list much earlier than that. It's one more thing to talk about today, actually. After Patriot's briefing, of course." She poured herself a glass of water and selected a gooey cream-filled chocolate doughnut for herself before taking a seat.
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"Let's get a move on." With her utility belt slung over one arm like a purse, Stesha waved at the only-slightly-cowed wall of flowers. They obediently rearranged themselves into an archway that began glowing with a faint green light and emitting the smell of cut grass. She waved the two men forward ahead of her, and a brief rush of greenness later, they were all stepping out of the stem of a flower the height of an apartment building. It was clear there was a confrontation brewing, with machines, robots, robot bees, regular bees, strange humans and the teenage students all either facing up or flitting around madly, but it was hard to tell who was menacing whom. For the moment, at least, nobody had thrown any punches. They had arrived just in time to hear the man make his speech. "There's no need for threats," she called up to him, her voice calm but laced with disapproval. "Marcus has been treated like a guest, despite the damage he did and the continued damage you are doing to a peaceful beehive. We don't want to keep him or you, but you're also not going to be allowed to scare the bees and children whose safety we are responsible for. I'm Fleur de Joie, this is Gaian Knight, and you know Marcus. Who are you?"
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It had been a little while since Fleur de Joie had attended a Freedom League meeting in person. This wasn't too unusual, since she was a very busy person with a skillset that leaned much more towards specific interventions than general on-call crimefighting. She'd taken some time off after her brush with (or pratfall into) death in the spring, and had been spending most of her work hours directing her thriving and ever-growing refugee community on Sanctuary. Even though she was neighbors with several of her teammates, she hadn't gotten a chance to see anybody for a bit longer than she'd originally planned. It... might be a little awkward. She decided the best way to deal with it would be with a very large pastry box full of doughnuts. Stesha arrived just a couple minutes late but at least not last, and gave everyone a cheerful smile as she walked in. She wore her mask as a concession to the uniform, but was otherwise completely in civilian garb, stretchy black pants and a draping flowered shirt. The reason was apparent as soon as she set down the box of doughnuts: at five months pregnant she did not fit into even the loosest of her uniform outfits. "Good morning everybody," she greeted the room cheerfully. "Ghost, it's so nice to see you've joined the team! And Gabriel, it's been a minute, hasn't it? I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to come by!" She brushed a hand over his shoulder, the touch enough to bring a little ease to a tired and sore body. "And, hmm, I'm sorry, I don't believe we've met," she admitted to the newcomer. "I'm Fleur de Joie."
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"Well, it's been awhile since I flew a drone with my hands instead of my brain, but I think I can come up with some tough little drones to plug those control units into," Miss Americana offered. "Self-destructing, like you said, as well as some sort of defensive capability along with the ability to deliver the payload. I think I can tweak that self-destruct to be "destruct the area around self" as well, just to put a little more pressure on the forge wherever we can manage it. I don't plan on anything we send in there being retrievable or reusable anyway. Why don't we start with plans for the teleporter and the drones, network together on our collective progress, and see where it takes us? I think end of summer is a reasonable timeline, barring more world-threatening disasters." She brushed her knuckles lightly against the wood of the table.
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Raina gets a 22 on her save
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Stesha turned at Marcus's questions and frowned at the wall sprouting behind her. Immediately the wild growth began to calm, the new growth shrinking back as though abashed to have been noticed. Rubbing one hand lightly over her stomach, she returned her attention to the time-traveler. "It doesn't happen in every world," she told Marcus. "In our world, the superheroes didn't really begin to show up in great numbers until the early 1900s, but there were a few before that, back thousands of years. It's possible that your world may not have superpowered people, or their superpowers may look different. Here, though, there are many different kinds of powers, though only a relatively tiny portion of the population has them." Her explanation was derailed by the beep of her communicator. "Uh-oh," she murmured, glancing at Tarrant. "I think we'd better go see what the kids are up to. Would you prefer to stay here," she asked Marcus, "or do you want to come with us? The means of travel will be strange to you."
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"We know almost nothing," Stesha admitted. "Up until now, all we've really wanted to do was rule out certain things that might have made the planet too dangerous to try and reclaim. When I found this world, I just saw it as a place to practice my skills," she explained a little awkwardly. Her skills were on full display right now; the entire log wall behind her seemed to be attempting to come back to life. Besides the flowers and mushrooms, there were even a couple small leafy branches beginning to poke out of knots in the wood. She didn't really seemed to be aware of that as she leaned forward and wrapped her hands around her mug. "We've had a few teams exploring the ruins over the years, but it's very toxic, very dangerous to go anywhere outside of Sanctuary. We believe there was a worldwide war, and that it was waged with weapons that were terrible enough to poison the entire planet. It's possible that this war or those weapons or both were facilitated by a race of alien shapeshifters known as the Grue, but we're only speculating on faint evidence. If you want to go back, we will absolutely give you all the help we can, but I don't know that we have many clues to give you."
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"Unless she realizes she's got a hostage," Raina muttered. Her phone chirped at her, an all-okay-now-what-about-you signal from Merlin. "Outside now," she voice-texted back, "take cover." With that sent, she sped around the side of the building where the garage, which had been sealed up like Fort Knox, now had its person-door hanging open just slightly. "Whatever's in here, I bet she doesn't want it on fire," Raina decided, and sent a blast of fire through the door hard enough to knock it off its hinges. She wasn't quite reckless enough to send in enough fire to burn whatever might be inside just yet, but the door was definitely history.
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Raina will first get in touch with Merlin as a free action. When she knows he's okay, she will move towards the outbuilding and attempt to blast the door open. The time for subtlety is OVER!
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Stesha reached out and put a hand on Marcus' arm, looking like she was about ready to cry herself. "It wasn't your fault," she promised him. "And it wasn't the fault of your science, or at least not entirely. We found evidence of alien influence in the wreckage, um, evil sentient creatures from other planets," she added, in case he didn't know 'aliens' in context. Whatever happened to your world, whoever should take the blame, the fact that they were around seems to have made the difference in why your world was destroyed. On our Earth, we're still fighting them off today..." She trailed off, realizing that she probably made things more confusing by trying to comfort him. After giving Tarrant one helpless glance, Stesha decided to try and fix her own mistakes. At least she'd had to explain this part before. "You're a time traveler, so I'm sure you've thought about the consequences of traveling through time, right? If you were to go back in time, you might change something, and the whole world could be different as a result. Some of our early time travel theorists worried that they could cause paradox that way, change the world so much that they never existed to build the machine that went back and made the change, and so you'd have a causality chain with no proper start or end. What we learned was that you can't cause a paradox and unmake yourself because changing things in a timeline doesn't change the timeline, it makes a new one. We live in a multiverse full of possible worlds, where every choice or change that is big enough has the potential to start a new timeline on its own and we'll likely never know about it. Most times, a timeline will fold itself back into its source, but some timelines become stable enough to continue on their own, sometimes in ways that are very different from the source. "Tarrant and I and all the people here," Stesha went on, "we aren't from this timeline. When we found it, this world was mostly dead and abandoned, but we have been working to fix it up and save the people we could find. A long time ago, we were probably all part of one timeline, but at some point we diverged, and different things happened there and here. If you go back now to the time you came from, things might turn out the same, or you might create a new timeline of your own."
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Stesha took another careful sip of her tea, organizing her thoughts. "No," she told Marcus, "this isn't an embassy, though it is a little bit old-fashioned compared to the way most people live now. It's a colony, where we're cleaning up debris and pollution to make a place that wasn't habitable safe for people again." She set down her cup and steepled her fingers. "Your machine functioned exactly the way you wanted it to," she told him frankly. "The year is 2021, and you are where Freedom City used to be. Sometime in your future, there will be a horrible disaster, and human life will be largely wiped out. I'm very sorry," she added, sympathy writ large on her face. "We don't believe it will be in your lifetime." She stifled the urge to go on, figuring he'd need a moment.
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Since Tarrant's house was a literal floating castle and Fleur's house was only accessible by miles of walking or flower teleport, they wound up with Marcus in one of the small transient dorms. It was a simple log cabin style building, like most of the non-prefab structures in town, with several bedrooms, bathrooms and showers, and the sort of living room/kitchenette that would serve people who did most of their eating and socializing elsewhere. By the time Marcus was clean and the coffee was brewed, Stesha had rounded up a plate of sandwiches and a few of the basic history textbooks that they used to acclimatize new arrivals from very divergent timelines. While they waited for their guest, Stesha sipped a cup of herbal tea and paged through the book. She seemed to be ignoring the way that leafy little branches and puff-topped mushrooms were springing from the wall behind her. "I'm not sure what we do with him," she admitted to Tarrant. "We can't change his timeline; I don't think it's literally possible. Whatever happens to him, he'll either do exactly what he did before and make a closed loop, or do something different and start a new timeline. The world probably doesn't end in his lifetime, but what a thing to live with anyway. What do you do with yourself? How do you make a life, how do you have children?" She ran uneasy hands down her shirt, then turned more pages. "Do we offer him the chance to stay?"
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"Davyd, please," Fleur said, her voice calm but stern. "Professor Wainwright is unlikely to be familiar with superheroes and you're probably going to confuse him. If you could take on a more familiar form, that would be lovely." She looked down at the little metallic bug at her feet, which was nearly lost in the fairy ring of flowers and toadstools that had sprung up around her in just the few minutes she'd been standing still. "That's not a bad idea," she told Ryder, careful not to step on his little friend. "Making a video could be a timesaver, but who'd ever have the time to do it?" She turned her attention back to Marcus. "You definitely seem to have traveled in time, but it's a little more complicated than that. If you'll be patient for just a little while, we'll help you get cleaned up and explain things to you. You said your machine is still in the hive? Beeanca, do you think you'd be able to find it?" she asked the giant bee. "Maybe the kids could go with you and help get it back here safely. To the workshop in Mayberry, perhaps?"
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"I don't know," Jessie said honestly, sitting down in the sand. "I have lots of questions about what's going to happen after we die, and even though Erin's gone to heaven and stuff, her answers are kind of confusing. But eventually if would be nice to be in a place that's just... resting, I guess. Not fighting or worrying or remembering, but just quiet and peace. I don't think I would do very well with any of the ways humans try to live forever. But it's okay," she promised, "because we are friends now. It doesn't make any sense to ruin now because things might get worse later. Any time when things are good is valuable, and we should try to enjoy it as much as we can for as long as we have it."
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That was definitely weird, but Jessie did her best to ignore her old-person self. It was not the first time she'd faced the possibility of herself as an old woman, but it didn't seem any likelier now than it had on the weird future-alternate-dimension planet. No matter how she tried, Jessie did not live the sort of life that led to growing old. The fact that she was nearly thirty still baffled her most of the time, and even another decade seemed improbable at best. But there was no reason to share that with Aquaria, who did not need any more hits to her equilibrium today. "You got really big," she observed instead. "Not like future-alternate-dimension-planet big, but pretty big. I bet you'll need to get a new sleeping pool."