Electra

"Apartment first," Raina decided, surveying the house from a safe hundred feet up. "Any weird or valuable stuff he's got is likely to be in the garage, but the bedroom is more likely to tell us what kind of person he is. We need to figure out what his whole deal is, because it's not adding up. Plus, this way you can crack the security on the garage while I'm picking the lock on the house." Merlin agreed with this plan and began hacking into the wifi while Raina landed next to the backdoor. Everything back here was quiet and dark, so she took her time invisibly picking the lock, humming softly into the keyhole as her magic cajoled the tumblers into lining up the way they should.

Jessie landed neatly next to Aquaria but stayed a half-step behind her as the Deep One announced herself to their quarry. It seemed the smart play at the moment; Aquaria was more familiar with a bombastic and physically aggressive society. It was entirely possible that the Maero would understand her better than the rest of them, even if there was a language barrier. It was also entirely possible that she would antagonize them immediately, which did seem to happen with some people, but that was all right too. If the giants were chasing them or fighting them, they were not destroying things or threatening civilians. All they needed to do was buy time, after all. She took the shield from her back and held it loose by her side, not raised but ready, just in case.

Miss Americana nodded. "I've had a team at ArcheTech studying the Doomforge for the past eighteen months, trying to come up with ways to dismantle it safely. There aren't many available. It's monstrously strong, an order of magnitude above anything we build with here on Earth, and full of nasty little traps for anybody trying to break it down or even get into it. I nearly lost this body trying to see if we could just take it apart in small pieces," she admitted, turning her hands over to view the now-unmarred backs. "Sending it somewhere to just implode has a certain elegance to it, but actually doing the removal could be a serious challenge without destabilizing all the land around it. What have you got in mind?"

It was chasing her, Jessie realized as she quickly checked Aquaria's pulse and breathing. It was closing in quickly, too quickly for something that was just searching blindly. By the time she maneuvered the Deep One's bulky armor out of the building or removed the armor entirely, it would be on them again. Whatever the nightmare creature had done to Aquaria she'd survived it, but who knew if she'd be so lucky a second time? "I'll come back if I can," Jessie whispered to her friend, then took a deep breath and let it fill her with cold. Singularity deliberately made noise as she exited the building, punching yet another hole in the side of the building furthest away from where she'd left Aquaria. If she'd miscalculated, the thing might kill Aquaria before she could get back inside, but she was not worried about that. She had not miscalculated. In mere moments, the thing was visible at the hole she'd made, moving with the eerie smoothness of a thing not quite real, dark as a tear in the world. Her radio was making noise again but she wasn't listening, too focused now as she led the thing away from the building, further into the empty ruins of Kingston. It was getting closer, closer... "Your mind is so full of pain," the monster all but sang, its elongated fingers making grasping motions in the air. Any further, and they'd be going back into populated city. Singularity stopped running and turned to face it. "So empty and so full, so much to choose from... ah." It shimmered, and suddenly Erin's friend Mark was standing there, wearing a strange costume and grinning in a way that said he had bad things in mind. He reached out towards her- And nothing happened. Mark's face contorted in a snarl. Something sparked in Singularity's brain, something from behind the white walls. The bad luck man. She shoved it back where it belonged. The creature changed again, becoming people she recognized but did not recognize. A man in a white costume splattered with blood, his face a white blank as he pointed a weapon at her and fired. Nothing happened. "Your memories are filled with death," he snapped, "how can you not remember them?" He spoke with Erin's husband's voice, but sounded nothing like him. Another switch and it was Erin's friend Mike, his huge hands clenched into fists as he pounded the earth in a way that should have sent Singularity flying. "If you don't remember pain, you don't learn anything by it!" he growled. Another shift, and now the thing was tiny, a young woman with red hair, Erin's friend- Singularity didn't remember anything, because she didn't take so much as a moment to think. The muscles in her legs bunched, she crouched, and in an instant she'd launched herself across the few meters separating them, intent on driving her fist through the petulant, scowling face. Her fist connected but only just barely, passing through the thing as it teleported away. She stumbled, straightened, spun to face it again. It was behind her now, and from the way it was indistinct again and rubbing its head with its hands, she'd at least given it something to think about. It wasn't enough. "KIll you," she grated, finally remembering to heft her shield. "No more."

Jessie lost precious moments to distraction at the creature's taunts, wondering how it knew, how it could possibly know. The mockery didn't mean much, it was nothing she hadn't thought herself, but nobody else ought to see it. Then Aquaria went after it, and then it turned somehow, impossibly, into Nereid, and suddenly, too late, she understood. Erin had warned her about this weeks ago, after she herself had been warned by her superhero friends. A strange monster fueled by thoughts, preying on bad memories and using people's worst moments against them. "If you ever see it," Erin told Jessie, her voice grave and her face stern, "you run. Don't engage with it, don't try and draw its fire, just grab anybody with you and go." "That doesn't exactly sound heroic," Jessie had pointed out, though the idea of not having to fight a scary monster for once did have its charm. It was also weird seeing Erin looking so much like Mom giving a lecture, and something about it made her want to assert herself. She was not the child or even the little sister here. "Aren't we supposed to be stopping stuff like this?" "Not like this," and Erin didn't even rise to the prodding, barely seemed to notice it. "Jess, you and I have lived through stuff that most civilians haven't. Hell, most heroes haven't lived through what we have. Both of us have had injuries so bad that only luck and fast medical care got us out of it. If that thing took a swipe at me, I wouldn't survive it without a very quick ride back to the Silver Tree. And you... we don't even know what's in your head, but I don't want to roll the dice that Pathos and Hex never got you hurt so badly you flatlined. It has more weapons to use against us than it does against regular people. You can't fight it and hope to win." Her mind was wrenched back to the present as Aquaria went hurtling through the roof of the building, body limp as a rag doll and her fall uncontrolled. It was just like Erin had said. This thing... it was bleeding, yes, but it wasn't stopping. It didn't look worried. It barely looked slowed down. And it was coming this way. Jessie had to run, but she couldn't go without Aquaria. Without another pause, she jumped to the roof, then dropped down into the hole, hoping that her friend's memories were maybe not quite as bad as they could have been.

The dice are... typical. Jessie goes on 15.

Miss Americana turned to face Steve from behind her desk, but it was Gina's eyes that sized him up before she gave a brief nod. It would be useless, worse than useless to argue that Steve should avoid walking into the scene of his darkest nightmares. He'd had a long time to learn how to deal with the pain of his past, and it had never involved looking away or trying to forget. Action was what he needed, and hopefully erasing the stain from their city would at least lighten his crushing burdens. "Whatever you need to do," she promised, "I'll help you however I can." She picked up her tablet and a handful of holocubes, brushing one hand lightly down Steve's arm as she headed for Voltage's conference room.

Jessie couldn't feel whatever was going on magically that was clearly bothering Aquaria so much, but just looking at the thing was unsettling enough. She hefted her shield and stepped in front of her friend, keeping her eyes focused as best she could on the main portion of the creature. "It's a shapeshifter," she murmured into her radio, "big, about eight by eight but it keeps changing. It's talking about the doomforge, but I can't make it out. I don't think it's seen us yet." "A shapeshifter?" Harriet Wainwright's voice was sharp on the radio. "Does it look like anything familiar to you?" Jessie shook her head before remembering that Ms. Wainwright couldn't see her. "It mostly looks like people, but nobody I know," she reported. "Some aliens, I think, and some animals, maybe? Robots? It's changing really fast. Um... 'no more past, the forge cuts all ties,' I think it's saying." There was a quick intake of breath, almost swallowed by radio static. "Jessie, you and Aquaria need to-" The radio was cut off with a squeal of feedback as the shapeshifter turned in their direction at last. It was nothing in particular now, an inky sort of nebulous thing, maybe half again as tall as Jessie and four times as broad. Even though it didn't have a face, Jessie could somehow sense its regard. "A lost little nothing," it crooned, in a voice that had no real gender or accent, but that made Jessie's skin crawl. "An empty hole, trying to be what it is not." It looked to Aquaria behind her. "And the happy heretic, singing your songs in a foreign land. How unfortunate that no deep voices will ever join you. They'd kill you for apostasy if your metal shell and hollow friend did not protect you."

Jessie immediately went on guard, her eyes scanning the area even as she cocked her head to listen. "It sounds like the subway," she began dubiously, then realized what was wrong with that. The subway hadn't run into Kingston for two years now, so anything under the street.. She picked up her radio. "Something big is underground," she said tersely. "Be careful." Stripping off gloves and mask, she unstoked the shield from her back and began heading towards where the noise seemed to be coming from. Part of her wondered if whatever thing had eaten the building might have stuck around for a second helping, no matter how many times Aquaria promised that her magic didn't work that way. Magic was inherently unreliable.

"Yeah, okay," Jessie murmured, still subdued after all the attention earlier. There were a couple of flashier names among the other Project Freedom teams working on this project, so she could at least hope that most of the attention would be centered there. She slipped on the dust mask and work gloves she'd brought, then walked up to the building. From the way it had pancaked, it was clear that there would be no homeless people or squatters hiding in the ruins, so it seemed safe enough. A couple of well-placed punches had the first wall going to rubble in just moments. It was unpleasant work, bits of rubble and tons of dust, and by the time she'd finished another wall she was covered in concrete dust. At least it was easy to ignore the remnants of personal effects that were scattered in all directions, old photos, toys, bits and pieces of the lives interrupted or ended here. She had much more practice in doing that than in heavy demolitions work. "All right," she told Aquaria as the third wall went and the roof began crumbling. "Your turn."

Jessie did not like being in front of the cameras. Even in her costume, even with her hair different and her posture not at all the same, she was always waiting for someone to misrecognize her, to wonder what an important hero like Wander could be doing here, and then to have the horrible task of trying to explain. She did not like being around Miss Wainwright, who was a nice person but who multiplied the ambient sensation of being judged by approximately 5000%. She very, very much did not like being so close to the Doomforge, which was supposedly quiescent but looked like the embodiment of entropy. Jessie was not the Erin who fought the Terminus and won. When Jessie had fought evil, she had not won at all. She tried to hold very, very still while the Councilman was talking, drawing no attention and pretending she was far away. It was just cleanup, it would not be so bad once the cameras were gone.

"Thanks, but don't worry," Raina told her breezily. "I'm not so much of a hero that I don't have a firm grasp on my priorities. I'll try and help out, but your nudes aren't worth getting myself hurt. No offense." With that she was out of the car and suddenly gone, Merlin along with her. "Forty five minutes, then call backup," her voice floated out of the empty air, then the door shut on its own. Invisible, Raina pulled her telescoping broom from her bag and mounted up, Merlin firmly clinging to her shoulder as she took flight. "We'll go once around the house to check the security first," Raina told him, "then you'll get us through whatever they've got and I'll pick the lock. With any luck, they'll have a sliding glass door somewhere. Rich people love sliding glass doors that look out on absolutely nothing."

"That would be great!" Danica enthused. "It's so nice of you guys to do this for me, even if it wasn't quite what you were hoping to make," she added with a half-apologetic look at Eira. "It's going to be so great to have wheels that work again!" She made her slow way over to the 3-D printing rig, which was still warming up but showed many exploded diagrams of what it was going to be building. "So Ryder and I were wondering what else you guys are working on here. I probably won't get most of it, but he totally would. How do you get internships here or whatever?"

"Oh, yes," Danica agreed, softly but with great feeling. "I mean, most tortoises don't swim at all but that's okay, I still want it to go underwater. And if you can put a winch on it, can it have a tow package? I guess you'd have to soup up the engine a little, I know most minivans can't haul much, but it might be useful! And thematic," she added with a grin, "I carry my house with me. Or whatever else needs pulling." She was bouncing up and down on her heels a bit now, slowly but with clear excitement. "Where would you put it together? Do you do the work here? All your cars here are amazing."

Erin accepted the hugs awkwardly, the way she accepted most hugs, but patted Aarden on the shoulder and ruffled Teledar's hair and smiled down at the baby, who was already looking a lot more lively. She had been steadfastly ignoring the fact that there were people in the multiverse who thought of her and her friends as gods for a decade now, and that strategy seemed to work okay most of the time. (She much preferred her reputation in space, because being the Terror of Garron 9 was kind of cool and had actually made her some friends out there.) "You're welcome on Earth whenever time permits," she told the Furions, "and if you need me or my friends, usually contacting the Freedom League's whole, ah, multiversal communications thing will work. They know how to find us." She glanced at Steve, then at the other heroes, then back at the Furions. "If you want to stay for lunch, you're welcome," she offered. "We're going to get some food in here for Jill and Copycat anyway."

Raina looked briefly startled at Riley's description, then like she wasn't sure whether to be pleased or affronted, and then glanced at Fred and apparently swallowed whatever she'd been going to say. It was a whole face journey in the face of a few seconds, after which she swallowed the rest of her drink. "I have not had nearly enough to drink to start dissecting the love life of anyone here," she decided, "and I'd rather not get alcohol poisoning on my birthday before I even have a chance to go dancing. Except," she turned her attention to Cathy, "what's Phae up to these days? I sent her an invite but didn't hear back."

"There's a park about a quarter-mile down the road," Raina told her, "go ahead and park in the lot there. Nobody street parks in a neighborhood like this at this hour." Raina spoke with the perfect confidence of someone who'd grown up in a neighborhood very much like this. "Somebody will definitely either call the cops or come out and see what you're doing. Just pull into the parking lot and pretend to be playing with your phone or calling somebody. You're fast, right? Quarter mile is nothing, and Merlin and I will fly. We should be back in forty-five minutes or less."

At the bottom of the swimming pool Jessie sat crosslegged, her eyes closed and her lap full of diving weights. It was very peaceful there, warm and buoyant, with noises of Baxter and Aquaria far away but still audible from the other side of the pool. She'd been down there for a little while already but was still okay; she could hold her breath for a very long time when she wasn't doing anything to use up the oxygen in her blood. The weights just kept her from popping back to the surface like a cork. When she was little she'd liked doing this but hadn't been nearly as good at it, plus it had made her parents pretty nervous. Erin remembered that too, but ever since Typhoon had smashed her to the bottom of the ocean and broken a bunch of her bones doing it, being underwater didn't make Erin feel too good anymore. Jessie still liked it, though. Above, Baxter gulped down the treat happily, his tail a wet flag waving on the surface of the water. He loved the swimming pool, and especially loved the foam balls that Jessie kept for him to chase across the water. When they got home, Baxter would need a thorough drying so that the house did not smell like wet dog, a scent Jessie found objectionable, but for now he was pleased to be wet and play with his Deep One friend.

Raina leaned in very close to Merlin and whispered "I have no idea how this stuff is making money. I mean, she's not bad, but just get an old dirty magazine, right? She's not famous, and the authentication is basically zero. Do you think this is, like, bitcoin money laundering or something?" Merlin was of the opinion that the setup was not right for money laundering, but it was kind of weird. It was possible that there were people who knew Anna personally bidding; a known hazard of spending time as a supervillain was that you got to know a lot of assholes. "Point," Raina conceded, "but it's still weird. Anything that ties our guy directly to the sale yet?" Merlin shook his head. "Then I guess we're sticking with plan A for now." Straightening up, she addressed Anna again. "That's okay, comms is mostly going to be "if somebody catches us or supervillains show up, you call Talya."

"For a monkey, yes," Raina said dryly. "He's about a strong as a normal human, when he really wants to be, but he likes to pretend he isn't so I have to carry things. Plus leverage can be a problem." Merlin gave her a glare for that one. "And I'm mostly thinking you'll have your cell phone and a laptop unless you've got some top-secret spy gear stashed away somewhere. It's going to be dark in another hour or so, we can go over then. Might as well do it quick before he manages to line up a buyer." She turned to Merlin,suddenly thoughtful. "Hey, can you dig up whatever's out there about the auction itself? Who's getting the information out, what they're saying, who might be interested in buying?"

"Good," Erin said to Copycat, "not puking is always a good sign." When it looked like she could sit steady on her own, Erin grabbed another bottle of water from the fridge and gave it to Ellie. "Drink that, and I'll have somebody get some sandwiches in here. Maybe it's like giving blood, you get your juice and your snack and you feel better afterwards, and nobody has to tell Mara how risky it all was." She finally took the time to look over at the celebrating Furions and relaxed her shoulders. "Thanks for doing that. I just... I didn't want to turn them away." The tension ratcheted right back up again when Aarden and Serpa started in with the bowing. "That's, um, that's really not necessary," Erin assured them, looking to Steve in a vain hope that he would have a better idea what to do. "The Furions and the people of Earth are allies against the forces of the Terminus. If you know the story of Young Freedom, you know that the Furion Red Falcon gave his life helping us stop Omega. And when I was hurt fighting the Madrigal Martinet and her Hounds, the Furions at the Silver Tree healed me. We're glad we could help Lightbringer today."

Danica, who'd lost the thread of the conversation around the time they started talking about plug and play parts transfer and wireless diagnostics, did at least understand the part about the colors. "That would be cool," she agreed, "having it change colors would be neat! I could have it be part of my costume!" She dug out her phone, a two-year-old ArchePhone in a sparkling purple case, and handed it to Voltage. "And having it be able to tell me what's wrong with it would be really good, too. I didn't know what was happening with the rental Segway til literal smoke started coming out of the motor." As Eira slumped over to start work, Danica began walking slowly around the lab. "This is really neat," she said. "What all do you guys do here?"

Raina gave Anna another look that suggested nothing she was saying was really answering the question, while Merlin opined, very quietly, that that was what had started all the trouble in the first place. That got him a very gentle elbowing from Raina, who stifled a snort as she tried to come up with some kind of response to all that. "Okay, you can run really fast and you can hit people, that's not bad, but not exactly what we're looking for. We can always beat him up and take his toys later if we have to, but I'd rather not go into this guy's parents house swinging, especially since he might not even be our guy." Merlin nodded assent to this summation. "I mean, Oscar's razor and all that, if a guy you've never met in person starts acting like a totally different person, maybe he's a totally different person. It's worth figuring out. I can fly and turn invisible, so I'm pretty sneaky, and Merlin's the electronics guy. You wanna be on comms?" she offered generously.

Raina studied the information Merlin dug up, trying to slot the pieces together into anything that fit. It made her feel a little better to know that Merlin was doing the same thing next to her and also coming up empty, since he was usually the better one at logic puzzles. "He never doxxed you," she mused aloud, "always said basically nice things about you online, even in the places where saying nice things is very rare. From the way he talks, I would think having you for a penpal would pretty much be the highlight of his sad little life. He's blown that to smithereens, put himself at risk of jail, and put himself in physical danger too. He has to know you wouldn't let this go." She looked again at the address Merlin had brought up. "Something's not right," she decided. "We've got to figure out what it is. Are you still in, like, cat burglar shape, or would you rather be on the sidelines for this one?"

Stesha's smile was a little worn, but game. "Don't bother," she told Carson, "I'll listen every bit as well as you did." She pushed herself very carefully to her feet, not too proud to take an offered hand or claw as she did so. "But I think I will take the day tomorrow, if you insist," she added with a teasing look Teagan's way. "I probably do need the rest. Hopefully that thing isn't in any big hurry." "Thank you both for staying with me," Stesha added, turning to them both. "It... God, it feels weird to wake up like that," she admitted. "I'm not sure people are meant to do it at all, no matter what kind of superpowers. But I'm glad I didn't wake up alone." She took a deep breath and found her balance, then squared her shoulders. Somehow it was enough to turn the woman into the heroine, with all the weakness and the weariness carefully tucked away behind friendly, confident competence. "I'm just going to tell everybody I'm okay, then I'll go home." She went through the door and was immediately greeted by a small crowd of people. It wasn't as bad as she'd feared, only twenty or twenty-five people in sort of a vigil-slash-picnic while they waited for her. Amaryllis, who had undoubtedly felt her wake up, was the first one on her when she walked out. "Mommy!" she shrieked, bulleting forward and slamming into Stesha almost hard enough to knock them both over. For a moment they were both floating as gravity took a sudden dip, and then they were standing again, with Ammy hugging her mom as hard as she could. "Hey, sweetheart." Stesha hugged back just as hard, kissing her daughter's hair and closing her eyes tight. "Sorry I scared you. Everything's okay now. Did people take good care of you while I was gone?" Ammy nodded, not releasing her mother for a moment. Even at ten she was already getting more of Derrick's height than Stesha's, and came up nearly to Stesha's nose. Her voice, though, was as little-girly as it ever got. "Uh-huh, lots of people took care of me. They said it would be okay, but I wasn't sure! I could only even feel you a little tiny bit!" "I know, baby, I'm so sorry," Stesha repeated. "We'll go home and talk about it, and how about we have some cocoa and watch a movie? Just let me talk to everybody for a minute here." With her daughter's hand safely caught in her own, Fleur de Joie began to circulate through the group of people, thanking everyone who pitched in to cover the unexpected absence, reassuring worried people that things were all okay and nothing was going to change.