Electra
-
Posts
11,284 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Freedom City Guidebook
Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
Gallery
Events
Everything posted by Electra
-
Raina accepted the box from her lofted perch with the aloof decorum of a queen, but wasn't quite able to hide the lively spark of interest in her eyes. "It's makeup, obviously," she told Cathy without even opening the box. "It's the stuff Fred's been working on for ages." She reflexively passed the palm of her hand over the box as though testing its temperature, but Fred manipulated the elements with science, not magic. Merlin suggested he could get out his mass spectrometer, but Raina thought that would be a bit premature. Opening the box, she began to rifle through its contents with interest.
-
"We should go to Blackstone," Singularity murmured to Sea Devil. She'd been very quiet so far, trailing her froggy friend like a shadow and watching as things unfolded. "Somebody ought to talk to those villains and see if maybe they know any teleporters." It wasn't a particularly well-developed idea, but nobody had ever accused Jessie of being much of a detective. "And I could see my friends," she added hopefully. It had been quite a long time since she'd been back to the prison, or seen any of the people who'd been most of her contact with the outside world for several tumultuous years.
-
Raina snorted and made a show of turning her back on Fred, looking rather like a cat who'd been caught chasing a laser pointer dot. "I'm a woman of many talents, Winifred. I can make any number of sounds, not that I'm likely to." She frowned, realizing that train of thought wasn't going to go anywhere she wanted it to go, and opted to levitate elegantly back onto her bunk instead. Merlin made a noise that was definitely a stifled snicker. "So what is it that you want, anyway?"
-
"Yeah, let's go for it," Raina replied, doing her best to sound entirely confident but also not too excited to be going out on assignment. It was a fine line to walk. "It'll be good to get guys like that off the street, and Rhonda will be happy to hear they can't get at her anymore." She checked her bag to make sure all her supplies were in place, then unstoked her collapsible broom. "How do we wanna get there?" she asked the other three heroes equally.
-
Fred's revelation drew a startled squawk from Raina, her magazine sliding unnoticed off her bunk as she stared. "You got your hair cut!" she announced, very nearly accusingly. "Without telling me or taking me along or anything! What were you thinking?" She sat up and almost bumped her head on her own fireball before Merlin chirruped a sharp warning. Dropping to the floor, she stalked over to get a closer look. "I mean, it looks really good, but you took a big risk there! You know you don't go into a dangerous situation without recon and backup! What if they stylist had been a moron? You could've wound up bald!"
-
Raina gave Fred's shoulder a quick squeeze. "Give it another year, this place will really seem like home," she promised. "You're starting to fit in more and more, and the clothes will help. It's easier when nobody's looking at you weird, things start feeling more normal. And hey, if you can do all that stuff you were talking about, you won't even have to worry about getting a job when they boot us all out of the system in a couple years. You'll be set." Double-checking to be sure she had her own bags accounted for, Raina led the way out of the store as confidently as she'd led them in. "Now you just need to get Merlin to teach you how to use the internet. You might think you know, but he'll prove you wrong on that in like ten seconds. It's a rite of passage."
-
"You've got enough to get by for awhile," Raina assured Fred breezily, "though of course we're going to have to do all of this over again when the weather gets warm and you need summery things. Better hope that Anibal and I are still on good terms by then, otherwise you may have to start dating him yourself!" She laughed and slipped the credit card back into her purse when the clerk handed it to her, along with a hefty bag of makeup laden down with a generous selection of samples. "You guys hungry? We could introduce you to the wonders of the modern mall food court while we're here. If you like soft pretzels or orange-vanilla smoothies, you'll be all set."
-
"Sure, whatever, just so long as you're not doing any animal testing," Raina agreed. She quickly perused the selection of brushes and sponges to find the ones Fred would need for her new beauty regimen, then sent the happy clerk off to ring up their purchases. "Merlin holds a grudge about that kind of thing because of his background, and you don't want to see what a pissed-off monkey can do to your credit score." She nodded wisely. "Maybe you should get yourself into the mentorship program with a superscientist or something. They could teach you stuff you need to know about how to make a living at this sort of thing."
-
Raina was lounging on her own bed, reading Cosmopolitan and sharing choice bits of advice with either Cathy or Merlin, it was never exactly clear who. Merlin was ignoring her anyway, deep in whatever unfathomable project he was pursuing on Raina's laptop. A little fireball floated in the air above the bed, acting as a mystical space heater for that half of the room. At Cathy's words, Raina raised her head. "Come on in," she called, "if you dare."
-
"Sure," Raina said offhandedly, concealing her unease with the idea. Doing a little magical detective work where she could show off her knowledge was one thing, but following a superhero into a possible confrontation was quite another. Still, she'd come this far and put herself out there, she certainly wasn't going to back down now. "Just call into the school and clear us when you find anything, we'll come along with you."
-
"Hey, okay," Raina agreed, not actually taking a step backwards, but folding in her physical presence just a little bit at Fred's visible annoyance. "I don't even know what Byzantine Fire is, but I guess if you can make it in a cave with a box of scraps, you can probably knock together some makeup if you want to. I'm just wondering how you know it's any good if you've got basically no experience actually, you know, using modern makeup?" She capped the sampler she'd been using and gave it to the clerk with a nod that said she wanted a tube of it. "Like, you can use all the ingredients really well and totally make a thing, but how do you know if it's good?"
-
Raina rolled her eyes tolerantly. "Sure, and if I had a needle and thread I could make all the new clothes you just got, but it'd be a lot of time and effort for something that probably wouldn't turn out as well," she pointed out. "Anyway, you need to learn to use color before you go off trying to make it." With a disposable face cloth, she quickly scrubbed most of the makeup off Fred's hand, then replaced it with a few bright swipes of lipcolor. "Nope, nope, maybe, nope, but I like that one, maybe... yeah, that one." She pointed to a color that looked very dark against Fred's skin, but would probably blend in quite a bit better on her lips. "Get you a little gloss too, for when you don't want to wear as much." She turned to the portrait mirror next to her and picked up the tube she'd noped and liked, swiping off a sample and applying it to her own lips. "Yep," she decided with a nod. "Just effortless enough."
-
Raina smirked again, but refrained from further comment as she tested out shades of eyeshadow on Fred's now-liberally decorated hand. She was going with mostly subtle shades, as requested, and a liquid eyeliner that was not too vivid. Mascara was easy enough, though the notion of Fred poking herself in the eye and having an incident was a bit disturbing. The clerk came back and forth with new samples, taking the old ones away and ringing up full-size versions of the makeup Raina selected. Raina passed Fred a couple of the boxes. "Here, these have the ingredients on them, amuse yourself."
-
Raina looked between Fred and Matt, makeup brush still poised in one hand. "You," she told Matt, "that was pretty good. Work on your delivery a litle and you could really have something there. Thinking on your feet is two-thirds of flirting, and you're cute enough to fake the rest." She winked at Matt, then turned to Fred, smirking. "As for you... let's review," she suggested in the exact same tone their Tactics teacher adopted when somebod had just done something incredibly stupid in a tabletop exercise. "In this situation, when presented with an opening, the appropriate thing to do is wait for exactly one and a half beats, long enough to acknowledge the line, and silently announce that you are much too big a person to exploit it. That is the only way to win this kind of social interaction." Raina twirled the brush in her fingers, made a magician's pass with it, and reappeared it in her other hand. "If, on the other hand, you absolutely cannot restrain yourself, you've gotta have the courage of your convictions," she advised Fred, shading a second color of blush on the outside of Fred's wrist. "The only thing worse than calling somebody ugly as a joke is going on and acting like you're afraid they're ugly enough that you'll hurt their feelings. If they do care, it ain't gonna help, and if they don't care, they're just gonna laugh at you. Since you can't fake it, you're just going to have to learn to be smooth." Now the grin was even broader, both her eyebrows raised in a kind of silent dare.
-
Raina followed Fred's glance. "That's fingernail polish," she informed Fred. "It tends to come in way more vibrant colors than most other makeup." She wriggled her own fingers, showing off maroon nails with delicate swirls of white. A home job, but her audience wasn't likely to know the difference. "Even people who like subtle makeup sometimes go crazy with their nails, at least the toenails. Your palette's gonna look more like this." One of the stripes on Fred's hand appeared to pass muster, since Raina proceeded to cover the entire back of Fred's hand with the shade, then began the process over again with pink powder blusher. "Do it right, and nobody'll even know you've got makeup on, just that you look good." She smirked. "It takes a lot of work to look effortlessly beautiful."
-
"She wasn't a member of the coven, for one thing," Raina began, crossing one leg neatly over the other in her chair. "An initiate if that, but more likely just a patsy they were cultivating. She didn't even know their names." Seven would understand the implications of that as easily as Raina did. Some of the wind had gone out of her sails at the revelation that Seven had seen the additions to the circle, but hardly having a leg to stand on had never stopped her before. "We got some descriptions from her that I wanted to run by you, see if they match up with any known baddies. I'd be kinda surprised if they bothered with her again, unless they didn't get hold of her because they wanted an easy sacrifice and it was actually because they don't like something about her personally. So probably better safe than sorry."
-
That drew a laugh from Stesha. "Yeah, the whole getting-superpowers business does sort of throw a wrench into previous career plans. Though if you do have a passion besides plants, don't feel like you can't follow it just because you have powers," she advised. "The powers aren't all of what you are, or what defines you. You can still help out in a crisis or whenever the opportunity arises if you decide a life as a full-time superhero isn't for you. I know Claremont tends to be a little pushy on that, but there are plenty of metahumans who never put on a costume. It doesn't mean they don't help." She offered the girl another cookie. "Any subjects you particularly enjoy?"
-
"All right then, we'll just use the testers and swab your hand, it's not perfect, but you can get a close enough match with nobody poking at your face." Raina seemed a little bit disappointed, but lost no time in shepherding Fred to the MAC counter. "My friend is shy," she told the clerk, who'd come right over at the sight of all the purchases they'd already made. "We're looking for the basics. Line me up with some testers for her skin tone, and let's start the tab with your basic cleaner-toner-moisturizer package. You'll need that no matter what," she assured Fred. "Nobody's immune to zits." Obviously sensing a big sale, the clerk was more than happy to begin fetching little sampler tubs, chirping eagerly about colors and ingredients as Raina took Fred's hand and began carefully swiping stripes of foundation color over the back of it. "You don't want too pale, but you can pick between something that just evens out your complexion, or something that adds a little color."
-
"We're looking into something, yeah," Raina nodded, letting Merlin climb out of her backpack and up onto her shoulder. "The summoning in Greenbank the other night, you and Bowman broke it up and got an injured civilian to the hospital? She's a friend of Woodsman's brother, so he asked us to look in on her and see how things were going. We talked to her and took a look at the warehouse, and I was wondering what leads you guys are going to be following up on." She was in her most laid-back mode right now, deceptively mild as she tried to get her opponent to lay more cards on the table.
-
"Pfft, I can do that by myself," Raina assured him. "You can come along if you want, though, back me up on the investigation and wave the pictures around. First I've gotta find her, though." A couple of phone calls to Claremont and the League got them an appointment with Seven at Freedom Hall, to Raina's evident displeasure. "That place is like some World War II big blocky building monument to Great Heroes of Our Nation. It's creepy. At least I won't be doing a perp walk through there this time," she sighed, throwing another handful of feathers onto Riley's motorcycle. "Let's go."
-
"I got the start of it, anyway," Raina confirmed. "Some clues to track down the other people we're looking for. I'm gonna see if I can get in touch with Seven and rub her nose in this a little, then give them what we've got so they can try and track these people down, too. I don't know enough about the magic scene around here to be very fast about it, and they sound like douchebags who shouldn't be anywhere near magic. So." She shrugged. "Anything else you wanna do?"
-
"Somebody might need to talk with you again," Raina told her, "maybe even try to get a magic trace off you if we can't track these folks down right away. It's a pain in the ass to do, so we'll try and crack it with regular detective work first. The Freedom League's got a sort of survivor's fund going for victims of paranormal and metahuman violence, you might want to look that up if the hospital bills are crazy bad. You're gonna want to find a magic healer, the hospital's probably got one they can refer you to, give your aura a tune-up and make sure you haven't got anything nasty clinging to you from what happened, and then that person will probably refer you to a therapist, if you haven't gotten one already, to account for the whole almost-dying-from-magic thing. In the long run, if you want to keep up with doing magic, be real careful when you pick out a coven. Lots of crazies out there." She took a couple last notes and nodded, pleased at herself for remembering so much from hero class. Her teachers, Raina suspected, would be very surprised. "So anyway, where do you buy your magic supplies?"
-
"Doesn't matter what they saw, the magic doesn't lie," Raina replied with a shrug. "That spell couldn't have happened without six people, Seven will see that once she pulls her head out of her ass and takes a good look at the circle." She pulled out her phone and prepared to take notes. "Whatever names and descriptions you've got, places you met them, times of the month you got together, stores they sent you to pick up your supplies. We'll find 'em." It was easy to sound confident, she was confident. Between she and Merlin, there wasn't a lot they couldn't find out. "So the spell didn't sound weird to you until the thing appeared?"
-
"Names have power," Raina explained, not quite ready to go into magical theory right now. "Giving you fake names when they were making circles and calling magic would've made it harder. Even craft names have to be something true about a person. Did they ask you for anything in exchange for doing the spell with you, or explain how dangerous that sort of magic is?" It was easy to feel sympathy for Rhonda, wanting magic so badly that she'd trusted the exact wrong people, but Raina tried to keep too much of that out of her demeanor. She had a reputation to uphold, and she kind of suspected Rhonda didn't want her pity anyway.
-
Raina smirked a little. "You feel stupid about that? My parents did evil magic my whole life and I didn't even notice until I wound up fighting on the wrong side of a supervillain battle. The Freedom League threw me in superhero reform school instead of jail because somebody realized how completely ignorant I was and felt sorry for me. I know how it feels to get taken for a ride." Raina couldn't help but glance towards the door, making sure Riley was out of earshot. Even now, that wasn't anything she'd say aloud in front of any of her classmates. She sat down in the visitor's chair so she could look Rhonda in the eye. "Feeling stupid is sometimes even worse than the betrayal, or the physical pain, or not knowing what's going to happen to you next. I understand you don't want to talk about it. But anybody who'd do it to you might do it to somebody else, too. Or they might unleash something that doesn't get put down in time. Help me stop them."