Electra
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Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
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Miss America stiffened slightly as the impact of Kimber's words appeared to sink in, her eyes going distant and dull. It only lasted for a few seconds before she shook herself out of it, looking mildly annoyed. "Shifting the scan frequencies now," she told Daedelus, her voice still calm and completely controlled. "Estimate forty-five seconds for first subterrenean scanning cycles. The ground under Freedom Hall in most universes tends to be unusually saturated with strange energies and materials, that could lengthen the time needed for the scan." She flicked the controls again, getting the robot to take a look around with its cameras. "No indication that Hostile noticed the probes."
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She yanked her hands away from him, folded them under her elbows. "If that's the way you feel, then there are obviously things that are more precious to you," she reminded him coldly. "Just remember that if you don't exist or survive or continue, then I don't either. Maybe figure that into your calculations when it comes time to stick your head in the noose. I'll see you in the morning." Turning on her heel, she stalked over to the reinforced door that led to her basement lab. It was too heavy for her to slam as she passed through it, but the click it made as it shut was nearly as echoing.
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"And you think I deserve somebody who's going to throw his life away?" Gina spat. "Those women, one of them is already dead, one might as well be, and one is functionally immortal! They aren't playing the same odds that you are!" She stood and walked around the table so she could put her hands on his shoulders and look him in the eye. "I'm not saying there's nothing in the world that's worth dying for. You know I understand better than that. We've gone into fights like that together before. This, this mission, this objective, whatever it is they're trying to accomplish, this is not worth your life. I won't watch you throw yourself away!" Her fingers tightened on his shoulders painlessly; there was nothing she could do in this body to hurt him physically if she'd wanted to. "Tell me you aren't going to go."
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The delicate servos stopped moving as Gina raised her eyes to look at him. "No," she repeated. "I don't care about anything you did in the past. I don't care that you did bad things once upon a time. You have nothing left to repent for, Steve, and I'm not letting you throw yourself into the mouth of danger because of some misguided notion that you can never make up for your past!" The servo mechanisms clamped up suddenly like skeletal fists, obviously well beyond their tolerances judging by the soft mechanical squeals and burning smells. "I can't stop those others if they feel compelled to go on a stupid, stupid suicide mission for enemies of ours who are probably dead, in search of tech we can get by without, but you can't go." Her real hand shot out, smacking the servo array and sending it flying off the table. "What the hell am I supposed to do if you don't come back?"
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Raina strutted into the lobby leading with her attitude, looking more than ready to go another few rounds with the Headmistress, or Mr. Archer, or the mean girl squad, or... pretty much anybody except Talya, really. She hesitated in midstride when she saw her mentor waiting in the lobby, surprise, guilt, resolve, and then outright rebellion all passing over her face in the span of seconds. Raina was obviously not ready to stand for discipline from anybody, not even someone she actually respected. "Didn't expect to see you here," she said to Talya, her voice fairly neutral but for the faint edge of nerves. "I guess you're who they called when I got detention instead of my real mom?"
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"Of course." Paige handed over the baby, automatically using the nascent mental link she'd just established to send soothing thoughts and calm the anxious newborn mind. Newly-reborn, she supposed, but other than that fading echo there really wasn't much to differentiate this child from her own children as infants. She kept one ear on Will's conversation with his grandmother, but he seemed to be all right for the moment, and Holly at home was still asleep. She looked to Richard and made a subtle motion with her head, suggesting that perhaps he should go comfort his mother.
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Wander dropped back to the rear of the group as they walked, flashlight in one hand and bat in the other. In complete darkness, the soft glow of the Furion metals in the bat was especially noticeable. There was plenty about this situation to ping her danger senses, but something about being inside this cavern, enclosed, in the dark, was especially troubling. There were a lot of way something could sneak up on them in here, and having one hand full was not helpful. "Hey Mark, could you scare us up some overhead lighting?" she asked. "It'd be a lot easier to get around in here."
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Gina was still awake well into the night, sitting at the kitchen table and animating a set of servos to do near-microscopic work on tiny bits of circuitry for her next robot. The dark circles under her eyes spoke of exhaustion, but the twitchiness of her muscles said she was overstimulated and overcaffeinated, not ready for sleep. She glanced at him when he came in, then jerked her head towards the refrigerator. "Leftovers on the second shelf, and there's sandwich stuff." She was quiet for a few minutes more, concentrating on her work. "You can't go," she finally said. "You shouldn't."
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"What's going on?" Jessie demanded from her compartment, panic quickly building in her voice. She couldn't see much of anything, but the ship was going faster, and Aquaria was yelling abut traps, and it was all starting to turn really bad and there was nothing she could do except be stuck in this room (it's not a white room, really it's not it's not) and wait to see what would happen next. "Aquaria? Are you okay?"
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"I think that counts as another point for you guys," Jessie offered, after only grimacing a little at her teammate almost swallowing the ball. "I'm not very good at sports," she admitted. That was something of an understatement, really. Erin had told her about all the practice she'd had to do at Claremont before she could play basketball or baseball at all, and there were still sports she'd probably never be quite disciplined enough to play. Jessie hadn't gotten any of that practice, save for a few impromptu frisbee games at Project Freedom, so it was a lot more hit or miss. She began looking around, wondering if there were any marshmallows to be had and if the food would be ready soon. The darkness was starting to feel a little oppressive, but the bonfire looked very cozy. "What score are we playing to?" she asked, turning back to the net and resetting her stance.
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"Oh, don't be that way," Raina scolded playfully, tugging Anibal along in the direction of Matt's room. High-flirt-mode Raina had roughly twice the energy of regular strength Raina, and even less visible attention span. "We're team-building, right? He's a lot less completely awful than most of the nerds and brojocks around here. Also, I'm going to steal your sweater later, in case you want to buy a new one while we're out." She led the way down the hall and into the boys dorms, checking the wall signs until she found Matt's room. Didn't smell like dog, she noted. Interesting. She knocked firmly. "Hey Matt, you in there? We're going to the mall!"
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Describe Your Character in a Hamilton Quote
Electra replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Off-Panel
Wander: "My mother was a genius, my father commanded respect, When they died they left no instructions, just a legacy to protect. Death doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints, It takes and it takes and it takes and we keep living anyway, We rise and we fall and we break and we make our mistakes And if there's a reason I'm still alive When everyone who loves me has died, I'm willing to wait for it!" Sparkler: "You're on your own, awesome, wow! Do you have a clue what happens now?" Fleur de Joie: "I put myself back in the narrative, I stopped wasting time on tears..." Miss Americana: "When you've got skin in the game, you stay in the game, But you don't get a win unless you play in the game. You get love for it, you get hate for it, But you don't get a thing if you wait for it, wait for it, wait for it!" Hologram "It's a feeling of freedom, of seeing the light, It's Ben Franklin with a key and a kite, you see it, right?" -
For a second, Fred could see an unguarded look of embarrassment on Raina's face, but then it was gone completely under a broad grin. "You know I don't worry about money," she told Anibal teasingly, crossing the room with a gliding bounce as though walking on the moon. She threaded the fingers of one hand through his hair and gave him a thorough kiss, then pulled back to look him over. "But speaking of, you're looking like a million bucks today." For her own part, Raina was wearing a Claremont sweatshirt over artfully distressed blue jeans that were slit and cuffed to capri-length. She had long enough legs to pull off the look, managing to hit ragamuffin chic rather than hobo coture, but just by a nose. She hooked one elbow in the crook of Anibal's arm. "Cathy's busy having sex in my room, so I'm exiled for the afternoon anyway. Gotta find something fun to do. Wanna come out and help me teach Fred about the wonder and beauty of the North American shopping mall?"
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Paige goes on 22
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"Well now you're suggesting that I'd get along well with myself, which is a flawed premise from the start," Raina countered, never losing her troublemaking grin. "But I still think dead ghostly hellhounds rate up there pretty high on the do-not-wantometer, and trying to deal with them at the mall would be basically impossible. We could put the little vests on them and everything, but nobody would believe us." She bounced down the stairs, literally bouncing, touching down on evey third or fourth step in a way that suggested she hadn't ended her spell, just made a good show of it. "The problem is, you need money at the mall. I haven't got much of it these days. You got any?"
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"Those dogs creep me the hell out," Raina said frankly, "but Matt's okay most of the time. We should get off-campus before the weather starts getting too cold. There's supposed to be a big mall somewhere in the city, have you got any money?" Raina dropped her book in front of her closed bedroom door, presumably to retrieve later, and started steering Fred towards the stairwell. "Have you seen a shopping mall yet? They're great, they're probably like the street markets you used to have, but inside a huge building and every store has its own dedicated place and nobody is dumping chamberpots over the balcony and stuff." If Raina had made nothing else clear during their acquaintance, it was that her understanding of historical periods was piecemeal at best. "You'd like it."
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"Hey, my pain is your pain," Raina said expansively, "and I already chased Merlin off, so you're not alone. He has no appreciation for metaphor." She unfolded her legs beneath her and descended to the ground, dogearing her book so she could close it. "So you're sexiled too? Bummer. I would've thought Riley to be more a quickie-in-the-broom closet type," she mused. "But don't worry. I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny, but we can have lots of good fun that is funny." She laughed at her own rhyme. "Who else is around?"
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Upon arriving at Raina and Cathy's room, however, Fred discovered the door closed and a white sock covering the handle. Before she could decide whether to try knocking or not, a voice floated down from near the ceiling, just loud enough to be heard over the headphones. "You'll be soooooorryyyyyy" Raina was floating through the hallway like an untethered balloon, a paperback novel open in one hand. "Cathy and Phaedra are having 'private time' in there, and given the powers involved, I imagine it looks something like a cross between a Bosch painting and what happens when you drop dry ice into hot water." She used her free hand and sound effects to mime a huge cloud of steam. "Whatcha need?"
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"I can hear an echo of him," Paige reported, cradling the hungry infant in one arm and looking deep into the unfocused blue-gray eyes. "Nothing sensible or sentient, more like... it's hard to explain. A sense memory, like the smell of your childhood home, or a few bars of an old song. He reminds me of Bryant, but the person he was, there's no place for an adult consciousness to exist in an infantile mind. He'll grow up again, but I can't imagine him ever being the same person." She looked over to Richard. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. He's gone."
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Paige put her hands in her pockets and studied the wizened shell of a man in front of her for a long few moments, the age in her eyes at odds with her youthful face in this form. "Why should you help us?" she repeated slowly. "Honestly, August, whether or not you stand to gain anything from it is immaterial at this point. The question is what is going to be left of you if you don't? Look at this!" She waved an arm at the room around them, the tattered photos, the dirt, the aging shrine. "Is this going to be your legacy? A criminal mastermind, the builder of an empire, and you're willing to go out a puppet for some jumped up mental virus that's parasitizing your brain? Freedom City is your city too, and don't try to say it isn't. If you really wanted it destroyed it would be gone, but it's your home too. You can't let this thing destroy everything you've worked for and make you a sick, cowardly man who died in the depths of his own weakness. You're a better villain than that."
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Raina gave the headmistress an eloquent look, but at least provided her the service of not flipping her off in public, a show of restraint that Merlin agreed she should be commended for. She watched as her teammates began filing out, then put her hands on her hips and addressed Summers once more. "Oh, and FYI, I noticed that something was wrong with Archer months ago, and all I heard from the faculty was that you already knew and nobody was doing anything and don't talk about it. So hey, I hope nobody dies from this!" She gave a huge fake smile to Summers and the bitch squad, then literally skipped out of the room. As soon as she exited, the jaunty posture fell away. "That sucked," she told the others. "Chocolate time."
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"Defection?" Miss Americana asked, not raising her head from the tetchy, exacting work she was doing in the guts of one of her robots. "The robots certainly aren't about to switch sides, they're nowhere near self-aware enough for that. I have remote self destruct switches on all of them in case they're taken, they'll melt to slag. As for the people... I don't know any of them very well," she admitted. "But the only one I can even imagine flipping would be the Annihilist. It would, in fact, be pretty true to form if she found a situation she thought would be more conducive to her own safety and comfort. If she were to defect, she might take Ghost Girl with her, but I honestly don't think so. Like I said, I don't know her well, but I know of her. She wouldn't turn."
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"Careful, careful, careful, careful," Jessie murmured to herself bouncing on the balls of her feet in the sand as she waited for the ball to come her way. The cool sand felt good on her bare feet, even if it made for slightly imprecise footing. She watched as the ball arced over the net, high and steep and angled just a little closer to her than Aquaria. "Got it," she called, stepping forward and bumping the ball with her forearms, just like back in PE class. The ball flew high and wide, landing out of bounds but still right next to the court. Jessie grinned with relief, proud of her own restraint.
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Down below in the passenger compartment, Jessie hesitated a moment before deciding that she was probably being addressed. "I think so?" she offered, looking around suspiciously at the bulkhead walls. Nothing seemed to be in imminent danger of failure. She was doing her part to ensure safe space travel by staying curled up in her seat with her arms around her knees, not touching anything and thinking good thoughts about being back on Earth where there was so much air and so little vacuum. "Is everything all right up there?"
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"Tell my parents whatever the hell you want," Raina said carelessly, flipping her blond hair over one shoulder. "They're not gonna give a damn that Merlin and I got hold of a bunch of bullies and shoved them in boxes. I just want to hear that the bitch squad over there is going to get some remedial training in how to provide backup when someone sends out an SOS." She gave Madison and company an extraordinarily supercilious look. "Oh, and maybe why you let gym class be taught by a guy who was freaking POSSESSED BY ROBOTS and abusing his students. That should be a real fun investigation." Merlin chattered agreement. With her daily quota of insubordination apparently filled, Raina joined her teammates in their little huddle. "You okay there, Fred?" she asked with friendly sympathy. "Let's get the hell out of here. I stole like thirty cocoa packets from the caf the other day, we can go to my room."