Electra
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Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
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"Oh, you know," Raina shrugged and grinned too broadly to be believable. "I always get by. Hasn't been much interesting going on lately, and the bitches in my class are all busy with their own stuff, so I haven't gotten detention in like two weeks. And since Merlin ordered those down comforters for us, it's been way easier living with my cold-controller roommate. The 'controller' part is mostly honorary these days, so that kinda sucks. And I've been practicing all that proprioception stuff, but I don't know if it's helping that much. When I don't move, I can sense stuff with my eyes closed, but when I try going anywhere, I'm still ramming into stuff." She was speaking quickly, as though laying out enough thoughts end to end in a line would protect her from having to say anything too important. "Oh, and the old Headmaster was in his office the other day when I had to go in for evaluation, he said to say hello. So hello."
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"It's definitely bright," Raina agreed, studying the look. "Yeah,I see where you're going with it, it could work if you're not worried about slicing the coat all to hell first time you get into a fight with somebody. Leather's expensive to mend, and it still doesn't look right aftwards." She took a few steps, walking around him to look at the effect from the side and back. "Needs a hat," she decided. "The trenchcoat and the sword and mask and stuff makes your head look small without a hat or something. Plus, adds mystery. Your call on whether the hat has to be red or not, but it would be like a trademark."
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Wander gave the Deep One she was pinning another quick shake, bouncing its head off the floor hard enough to make it take a nap for a little while, then dropped it bonelessly to the ground. "We can give you protection," she told the more talkative Deep One, turning in its direction, "if the information you give us is any good. What's the Orb and what does it do? And what did he mean, taken by the Trident? Who are the Trident?" She was working hard to keep her voice even and at a normal volume, but the edge to it was impossible to hide. It was obvious she was itching for a fight.
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Jessie looked at Ruby and nodded unquestioningly, then slipped away through the crowd. Unencumbered by Ruby's sudden popularity, and with the sort of aura that tended to make people take an unconscious half-step back, she moved through the crowd like water. Her attention was entirely focused on her target, so that the strange people, the strange music, the strange smells, all of it just faded into the background where it couldn't make her nervous. She caught up to the man in the hood just as he was about to leave the building. Locking her hand around his arm in an implacable grip, she told him, "Sorry, you are not allowed to leave right now."
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"Getting your own apartment, that's exciting!" Paige told Daphne, totally sincere. "Are you looking at places around the city yet? Richard and I thought about renting when we were moving here, but we decided to go with school housing so we could be close to Holly. But there are a lot of nice apartments available." She blinked at the introduction of the matte-black computer block, but regained her equilibrium within a beat. "The pleasure's all mine, Mother Unit," she told the AI. "Daphne is a lovely young woman, it's nice to meet someone who had a hand in bringing her up. I don't believe I've met an AI like you before. Is there anything you need to be comfortable?"
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Stesha blushed a little. "No, it's okay," she assured him. "I don't mind talking about it, I just... well, I sort of started to assume everybody already knows about it," she admitted. "The divorce ended up being so public, it seemed like anybody who'd stood in line at the grocery store knew about us, so even mentioning it started to seem..." She waved her hands again, "superfluous, I suppose. But you've had a lot more important things on your mind this past year, I should've thought about it." She took another sip of her water and collected her thoughts. "Most of the time I think of Ammy's dad as Derrick, but the public knew him as Dark Star. A friend set us up a little while after I moved to Freedom City, and we clicked right away. He was older than me, one of those heroes that don't age past a certain point, and he was more a cosmic hero who saves planets and solar systems than the typical Freedom City superhero, but he'd joined a team here and settled down a little bit, so I didn't really even think about it." Her smile was rueful. "I was really new. We got engaged and I got pregnant with Ammy, and we were both happy about it, but he was starting to be gone a lot. There was a war of some sort going on with the Lor, and the Stellar Khanate was causing problems, and a bunch of stuff in galaxies so far away that nobody on Earth has ever heard of the people who live there. But he felt called to help, and he was saving lives, and it's just really hard to keep track of time in the depths of space, I guess. I called off the wedding once when it was pretty clear he wasn't going to be attending, but he came back and promised to do better, so we rescheduled it and got married. That's what's called ignoring warning signs." Her shrug was humor and resignation and the lingering ache of regret. "Anyway, he was around a lot of the time till Ammy was born, and for a few months after, but the trips got more frequent, and longer. Eventually he was never coming home at all, just occasional calls when he happened to think about it. Ammy didn't know him, and I felt like I really didn't either. He finally came back to help out with the Communion Incursion, and we decided it was time we both just... moved on with our lives." Stesha pursed her lips, her eyes a little bit shiny. "It was as amicable as it could be, I guess, it's just sad when things are over. And the tabloids were a problem for awhile, they were always interested in our relationship, but that's pretty much died down." Her eyes widened for a moment as a new thought struck her. "Which, um, actually might be something for you to think about if we, ah, were to start anything. The League keeps the worst of the vultures at bay, but people might be curious about you and me."
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Miss A's eyes flicked to the truffle structure at Erik's comment, betraying a moment of uncertainty that was rare for the confident paragon. It only lasted for a second, though, before she was all polite friendliness and ready to make introductions again. "I just hope everyone brought an appetite," she told Talya, setting the tower down on the sideboard where a couple of pies already rested. "It smells amazing in here." With her hands freed up, she went to introduce herself to Gina Espadas, all her social graces fully back in place. "Ms. Espadas, it's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for inviting me to your home for the holiday."
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"All my spells are cool," Raina boasted. "Especially on Halloween. It's the night for witches. Everybody wants to get a little scared out of their mind on Halloween." She thought for a second. "Okay, you want something freaky, check this out." She reached for her little purse and pulled out a powder compact and a tube of lipstick, then rose from the couch. "No peeking," she admonished the room, then turned her back and walked into the corner, where she flipped open the compact and began humming. She opened the lipstick as well, but instead of putting it on her face, it looked as though she were applying it to the mirror. It was hard to tell though, with her back to the others. After just a minute, she turned around once more, looking much changed indeed. Raina's pretty face was now a ruin of rotted, sloughing meat, cheeks pulling away from the cheekbones, eyelids drooping away from the orbital sockets. Her nose was half gone, her golden hair crusted with red and black ichor, and the hands that held her tools were all but skeletonized. "Boo!" she proclaimed through what had once been her lips.
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"Young Freedom?" Stesha guessed from the description. "I know some of them, they're good kids. Or not kids at all anymore, really. They're graduating from college, holding down jobs, having lives. I don't think the action figures bother them," she pointed out with a chuckle. "But when it starts getting really surreal is when you see little kids dressing up as you for Halloween. That's about the time I started wondering about all the life choices that had brought me to that point." She laughed and shook her head, the corners of her eyes crinkling at the memory. "Ammy has-" Stesha hesitated, then continued, "she has a plush toy of her daddy that lives on her bed with the bears and dolls." Amaryllis had never shown any particular favor towards her Dark Star toy, but he was there in the crowd, sometimes tapped for pillow duty or tea party attendance. "And for my last birthday, somebody bought me a Fleur de Joie action figure with a little ceramic pot that actually grows a seed when you water it. It was cute." A thought seemed to strike her, and suddenly she had a puffy marigold blossom sitting in front of her on the table and was rooting through it like a purse with both hands. "You'll probably have some merch yourself, depending on how long you decide to work, and how visible you make yourself. It can be hard to keep a low profile in this city, even with so many heroes. People make a hobby of spotting them." She glanced up. "Which is another reason you might want to tell them. If your brother-in-law is in the know, he might spot you one day, and it might hurt their feelings not to have known. Ah!" With a triumphal flourish, Stesha pulled her arm out of the flower and plunked her prize onto the table. The little Fleur de Joie action figure was not a great likeness, being built on the tall-and-skinny superheroine template, and with green tights instead of her sturdy green trousers, but the idea was definitely there. The familiar cowl, the green hair studded with flowers, the bright smile. "There, mini-me."
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"She's good," Stesha replied, always happy to talk about her little girl. "Honestly, the biggest reason I worry about taking her out of the creche is because she's been so happy there. It's like having a bunch of extra aunts, uncles and cousins for her. And that might be different next year when they start expecting her to learn some things," she admitted with a laugh, "but for right now it's nice to have a place where she can be that I know is good for her. Nicholson is a great school too, but it's not exactly the same, you know?" She waved her hands with a rueful smile. "I'm sure I'll probably be dithering about the whole thing right up until the enrollment deadline. The conversation paused long enough for them to place their orders with the waiter. When he'd gone, Stesha traced the rim of her glass thoughtfully with her fingers. "Have you thought about telling Grace and Frank the truth about what you do?" she asked. "I know it feels scary to tell your nearest and dearest the whole superhero thing, but sometimes it's better that way than waiting till something happens to spill the beans."
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"Babies cry," Raina told Eden matter-of-factly. "Saying that a baby shouldn't ever cry would be like saying that you should never talk. Crying is how babies talk and tell people what they want. It would be mean to never let a baby cry. But we'll see if we can do something that makes her happy now, kay?" Still bouncing Mia on her hip, she reached into the fridge and pulled out the cold bottle of milk, then dropped it into the pan of warm water already sitting on the stove. With the crying finished, she cocked her head, listening downstairs. "Huh, I thought I heard voices for a minute. Is there a TV downstairs?"
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Miss Americana lay insensible for several minutes, her eyes closed and her face slack, though surprisingly not much worse for wear after her encounter with the rubble-strewn pavement. She wasn't in her normal heroing clothes, Steve could see, but had instead obviously come from lab work, still wearing her lab coat and with her hair thrown back in a now very messy ponytail. Eventually she stirred and then opened her eyes, blinking and looking around for a moment before she settled on his face. "Steve," she began, reaching up a hand to grab hold of his arm. "You complete dumbass. I told you this would happen if you worked with those guys." Her tone held no heat at all, and the corners of her mouth quirked upward. "Are you okay?"
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"All set," Raina confirmed, slipping into the car with all the grace and confidence she could muster. "Though if you'd told me we were going to be driving around in this, I might have suggested we ditch the other plans and head to Atlantic City instead. Very pretty." She folded her legs neatly, then folded her hands over them, but within moments she was twisting her fingers together as though attempting to braid them. She looked oddly incongruous, with her shiny blonde hair, careful makeup and perfect teeth, bereft of jewelry and wearing the shapeless, colorless coveralls. Really, she was one anachronistic weapon away from being the heroine of a young adult dystopian movie. "Thanks for picking me up."
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"There are assholes everywhere," Raina agreed. She shot a hard look over at the misbehaving table, then turned back to her own business. "Anyway, backpacking would be fun because I have this spell that lets me speak any language, so it would be a lot easier for me to really get into the local culture and experience it. I always envisioned making friends with a bunch of people from different countries, even staying in hostels a few nights just to see what it was like, you know? And then when I started college, I would have all these cool stories and pictures." She shrugged and waved a hand airly to dismiss those dreams, a gesture that cost her slightly to make so casual. "But now I'll become a superhero instead, so I guess the stories are taken care of. Lot more dangerous than sleeping in hostels, to judge by the stories they tell us in class, yeah?"
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"The sheep were not in a pit," Stesha corrected with a laugh, "we had to dunk them in a trough of pesticides and insecticides and whatever else before they could go out to pasture. Sanctuary's got a fragile ecosystem when it comes to animal life, so we have to be careful not to introduce any more pests than we can possibly avoid. So we shaved the sheep and washed the sheep and dipped the sheep, and in general the sheep were extremely annoyed with us by the time we finished with them. Plus we had to put little sheep sweaters on them to keep them warm because it's winter in New Jersey and they haven't got any wool anymore, so that's a little bit adorable. It sounds like we both end up doing a lot of wrangling in our jobs." She set aside her menu and picked up her glass of water. "How are the kids?"
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Raina was in a terrible mood. She had plenty of reasons to be, good reasons. She'd hardly slept at all last night, and trying to wake up with her alarm had been torture, especially when certain nameless parties had apparently spent all night dreaming peacefully of Antarctica and the dorm room windows were frosted from the inside. And Merlin was bothering her. He'd been clinging to her shoulder all morning, and even when she'd forcibly removed him to shower, he hung from the shower curtain rod and glared ever-so-balefully at her for her treachery. She was doing a foolish thing, he'd reminded her a number of times, and potentially putting them both at risk. It would be very unpleasant, probably painful, certainly scary. Modern technology obviated the need for any of this, and why couldn't she just show some sense for once and do things the easy way? She'd ignored him, but the constant haranguing settled in as a throb behind her temples that just made her more irritated. The best reason to be in a terrible mood, though, was that it let her ignore how utterly, completely, piss-your-pants scared she was. It was so much easier to be angry and annoyed with the world than to consider even for five minutes what she was about to let happen to her. Unconsciously Raina rubbed her wrists with her fingertips, remembering how cold the manacles had been when she'd been arrested the first time, remembering how it had hurt, how lost she'd been. Merlin wrapped his tail around her neck and rubbed her cheek with his own, commiserating with her in the poorly suppressed terror department. "It'll be okay," she told him. "We're gonna be fine. It's not permanent. I'll be back before dinnertime. You just... you just stay in here, okay? I've put away your computer already, so it's totally safe. Just wear the diaper and watch TV, and there's plenty of food if you get hungry. It'll be all right, I promise." She kissed his furry forehead. Merlin accepted the affection, but felt compelled to grouse a little more about the indignity of having to wear the diaper. "Nobody's gonna see you," she reminded him. "Cathy's not even going to be here, the place is all yours. And I won't say a word about it afterwards, really." He implied that she had damn well better not, as this was her fault entirely, and also he had plenty of blackmail material of his own to break out if necessary! "I know," Raina assured him. "I remember. I'll see you later. I love you." Merlin replied, only a little reluctantly, that he loved her too, and be careful, and listen to Talya. Raina managed an insouciant grin at that. "Much as I ever do, right?" As Merlin scrambled off her shoulder and over to the bed, she gave herself one last look in the mirror, grimacing at the shapeless, style-free gray coverall she'd been sent to wear. Ugly, ugly, ugly. With more than a little reluctance, she removed her earrings, the rings from her fingers, and finally the pendants around her neck, setting them with great care into a little bowl on her dresser. The pendant glowed slightly from the touch of her fingers, dimming when it left her hand. Feeling entirely naked and extremely vulnerable, Raina picked up her bag of gifts and headed out of the dorm, walking to the large circular driveway in front of the school's administration building. She could feel eyes on her, curious eyes, judging eyes, but she straightened her back and ignored them. Shapeless gray coveralls and rubber-sole sneakers were totally in this year, and they should all feel sorry that they didn't have any to wear.
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"Dare, of course," Raina announced with a laugh, leaning companionably against Anibal's shoulder. "It's so much more fun than truth. And none of that lame 'I dare you to tell me the truth about something,' either," she warned. "That's totally cheating." She unfolded one leg and refolded it more comfortably in front of her, the distinctive red of the sole contrasting nicely with the black of her outfit, not to mention showing off for anybody in the know. "And no more kissing statues, please!"
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Miss A was very quiet for the first two minutes of the drive, staring out the window and cracking her knuckles nervously, little sparks of laser light occasionally flying from her fingertips. As soon as they crossed the bridge, though, she began to worry aloud again. "We probably should've brought a dinner dish to pass, and not just a dessert. Maybe we should've brought two things because there's two of us. I wonder if we should stop and pick up a bag of dinner rolls? She must already have dinner rolls. You can't not tell people what to bring and then just expect somebody to magically know they're supposed to bring rolls!" she insisted to Steve. "Or maybe the truffles were just a bad idea. If somebody in the household is allergic to tree nuts, god only knows what a giant tower of nut truffles will do to them. Really should've thought of that before. Maybe I could've made pudding or something. But nobody takes pudding to a Thanksgiving dinner, that's super-tacky." She hadn't run out of words by the time the car pulled up in front of the Espadas residence, but she was at least able to throttle herself back and paste a wide, beaming smile on her face. Holding the truffle tower at least meant she had an excuse to make Steve knock on the door of what could be rather unfriendly territory.
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Gina's relief was mixed with renewed terror as she watched Harrier plummet from the sky, looking like the wrath of something that definitely wasn't God. He hadn't turned on his holoprojector, and he was making absolutely no effort to put the citizenry at ease. She could hear screams already from people in the cars behind her, as though they hadn't been nervous enough already. This was going to be a disaster... but at the same time she was so, so, so happy just to see him there, scary and imposing and on her side. Something else landed nearby, maybe someone else, but Gina couldn't get a good look, and she was busy anyway. Bending to her work, she finished her rudimentary taser, then stuck it through the broken front window and into the arm of the nearest thug.
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Raina couldn't help but laugh at Anibal's skewering of the homemade alcohol, some of her irritation fading away. Boys were still boys, after all, even with layers of money and polish sitting on top of all those hormones. And he'd followed her into the other room rather than staying and making nice with the new girl, so he was probably at least breaking even. She set her cup down on the table and took Anibal's arm to lead him over to the sitting area where the game was going on. "Come on, gotta make sure we get the dirt on everybody, right?" She sat down on an empty couch, tucking her long legs up under her and managing somehow to not look indecent doing it. Years of practice. She clapped politely for Robin's vocal stylings. "Going for the oldies right off, huh? Pretty good!"
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"Yeah sure, show us," Raina invited, looking at least mildly interested, though slightly less so than at the thought that somebody might be doing something interesting off-campus. "But only if you want actual honest opinions," she warned. "I consider it a duty to not let somebody go out wearing something that makes them look stupid if they've asked for my opinion, so if your costume's a disaster, I'm going to tell you. You can't get pissed, okay?" Raina obviously considered this an extremely reasonable demand in exchange for her sartorial advice. "I haven't even picked out a costume yet, waiting for the inspiration to strike."
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"We're very glad you could come today, Daphne," Paige said, her tone and her face both warming as she addressed the young woman. "And please, you can call us Paige and Richard. You can go ahead and hang your coat up on one of the pegs there on the wall, and I've got coffee going in the kitchen. I'm just about to make the cranberry sauce, and then it'll be time to stuff the turkey. Richard, why don't you get your mother a drink and show her the new speaker system in the living room?" she suggested pointedly to her husband. "So Daphne, what have you been up to lately?" Paige asked as she led the way to the kitchen. "I feel like I can hardly keep up now that Will's gone away to school."
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"I have very little experience with Ethiopian food," Stesha admitted, "so I think I might go with the Wat. The sheep were enough adventure for one day!" She set her menu aside and spread her napkin on her lap. "But late hours don't bother me. As long as I get enough sunlight during the day, I don't really need much sleep. It still feels good," she added with a laugh, "but I can go without. Something about photosynthesis, I think, but I only have a bachelor's degree in biology. It's not nearly enough to start untangling the weirdness." She shrugged unconcernedly. "Can't argue with the results, though. So how was the rest of your shift? Anything else interesting crop up?"
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Raina raised one eyebrow, the corners of her mouth quirking upwards in appreciation of the smooth line. She knew he had potential all along. "Not for very long, I spent a long weekend there once when I was ten or so, while my folks were at a conference. We saw some of the big important cultural sights, but most of what I remember is the party afterwards. It was Halloween, and the circle was doing sort of a haunted house, but only for adults, and it must've been really scary. Every time somebody came out of the basement, they looked absolutely wrecked, and a couple of them even passed out or ran away screaming. I wanted to go down there so badly, but I was too young. But it was creepy cool just to watch." As she spoke, the traitorous little corners of Raina's mind recalled the incident along with her, recast them in the light of what the heroes said they'd found in the course of their investigation. Those little corners started to wonder what had actually happened down in that basement, if not a haunted house, which was kind of a weird explanation anyway in retrospect. What, exactly, had she been watching people live through and flee from? Like most of the unpleasant thoughts in her life these days, Raina found the best way to deal with this idea was to shove it far away and not think about it. "Anyway, I really want to go back someday and do the touristy thing properly. I always figured that once I graduated high school, I'd take a summer to backpack Europe, just to get a really good flavor of it all. And speaking of, how do you feel about spinach, feta cheese, and carmelized onions?" Merlin had pulled out his phone while they were talking and was extremely preoccupied with something on it, so he didn't so much as vioice an opinion.
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At 10:28 precisely, Stesha popped into existence on Earth Prime, disgorged from a knot in the trunk of an obliging chestnut tree. She looked quite a bit different from earlier, now clad in civilian garb and having benefitted from a very long shower to remove lingering sheep smells. After a short period of agonizing in front of her closet, she'd gone with pretty but casual, a long multicolored peasant skirt with a blue scoop-necked blouse and a trio of pendant necklaces. It made her look like a hippy, she knew, but for pity's sake, she had green hair and a crown of flowers. Everything made her look like a hippy, and sometimes it was just easier to steer into the skid. Anyway, it looked good. And she didn't even have to take that on faith, since the instant she'd asked one of her regular babysitters to keep Ammy for a few extra hours so she could go on a date, everyone on Sanctuary somehow heard the news. She'd had no less than four of her female friends and coworkers "happen by" to critique the outfit and give her advice. It was a relief to be off-planet! Smoothing her skirt and checking her hair one last time, she walked up to the restaurant, relieved to see Ellis already there. "Hi Ellis!" she called cheerfully. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting. This place smells delicious!"