Electra

Fleur is going to toss up her own portal in front of the portal that the antibodies have set up. She'll try and set it in such a way as to completely cut off antibodies coming through the portal from reaching the reactor or getting into the rest of the engine room.Her dimensional portal can be up to 250 x 250 and is a simple dimensional movement to a dimension Fleur knows about where Earth is a charred cinder and there is nothing up in space.

Suddenly, Dragonfly's suit communicator crackled to life with a familiar voice. "Dragonfly, is that you?" Miss Americana asked. "Fancy meeting you all the way out here! I was just out in the Oort Cloud investigating a wormhole and suddenly I'm all the way out here, getting picked up by some kindly passers-by. Lucky for me I brought my luggage with me." There was just a faint edge of strain in her voice over that. "Looks like some really bad trouble out there. Want to put our heads together and see if we can come up with a way to scramble these guys up? I owe them some trouble after last month on the moon."

Miss Americana Reaching Out A Hand It wasn't exactly easy getting into Freedom Hall that day, even with super-powers. By 10am, both the bridges were backed up for miles, one with an accident resulting from a road-rage-fueled duet, the other by an elaborate Circque du Soleil-esque performance piece being enacted by dozens of commuters on the cables. Several less-affected flying heroes were keeping an eye on that situation, but if nothing else, the wave of musical magic seemed to endow its victims with a certain amount of proficiency. By the time Henry Franklin made it into his office, half the morning was gone, most of his appointments had canceled, and he felt in desperate need of a lozenge from the two chorus parts and one solo number he'd gone through already. He settled for a bottle of water from his mini-fridge as he sat down and began to review his notes. The last time a song-wave like this had ripped through the city, he'd been working overtime for weeks afterwards, helping his patients to cope with the secrets dredged up and made public through the music. This phenomenon seemed a little less targeted on dragging truth from people and more on spectacle, but Henry didn't doubt he'd have a number of his metahuman patients needing extra counseling in the next few days. His musing was interrupted by a knock on the door. “Doctor Franklin?” came a woman's dulcet tones. “Are you there?” “Oh, yes, come in,” he replied, rising hastily from his desk and looking at the ledger. “I'm sorry, I thought all my appointments this morning were cancelled.” The door opened to reveal the gorgeous Miss Americana, one of the city's most celebrated scientists and philanthropists, and someone who most certainly did not have an appointment with him. She was turned out immaculately as usual despite the chaos of the day, simple navy slacks and a white shell topped with a lightweight jacket of intricately patterned navy and maroon. He'd always wondered why she only ever wore those colors; was it an affectation of her codename, or were they really her favorites? Could anybody wear that much red, white and blue and never get sick of it? He didn't realize he was staring until her voice broke his reverie. “I'm sorry I don't have an appointment, but this was a bit spur of the moment. Do you have a few minutes?” “Oh, yes, of course, come right in and have a seat. My schedule has opened up today, what with all the excitement,” he told her cordially, gesturing her to one of the seats in the conversational grouping opposite his desk. She walked in, followed, somewhat to Henry's surprise, by an assistant he'd never seen before. The assistant was turned out nicely too, perfectly coiffed hair, nice makeup, clothes that may have been designer, but it was hard to tell by the way she slouched in them. She looked a little bit like a very low-rent version of the superheroine she worked for. She never so much as looked up, keeping her face determinedly turned towards her tablet. “Ah, did you want a private conversation?” he asked Miss A delicately, looking towards the assistant. She followed his gaze, then shut the door behind them. “No, that's quite all right,” she assured him. “You're bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, are you not, even within the League? Nothing that is said to you is anything you're free to share?” “That's correct,” Henry replied reassuringly. The beautiful paragon seemed almost nervous, quite an unusual look for her. “Whatever you tell me will be held in strict confidence. Is there something you would like to talk about.” Miss Americana took a deep breath. “Yes, there is. I have... a problem. A secret. A phobia.” The words were rushed, running over each other. “It's not easy to explain. But it's limiting my life, and it's hurting people I care about. I can't... I can't...” They both looked up as the music began to play out of nowhere, gentle keyboard and chimes presaging an oncoming song. Suddenly Miss Americana's eyes closed, her face going slack, and her assistant looked up for the first time, towards the music that seemed to be issuing from somewhere near the ceiling. “Oh thank god,” the assistant said with great feeling, then seemed to give herself over to the magic and sang. “After all the years I've tried, The way I've lurked behind the walls, The way I've lied, Maybe I might get it right this time. It's been years since I hid myself away And maybe she's the best of me, who's to say? But please, can't there be a new way?” She walked over to the somnolent Miss Americana, tapped a few expert fingers under the heroine's jawline, just beneath her ear. Baffled, Henry first thought she was trying to revive her boss, but then a hinge released and part of Miss A's face opened up, revealing an intricate tapestry of circuits and incredibly fine wires. A robot. How could she be a robot? And this woman singing... The lightbulb went off, and Henry listened harder. “All my life, I've been a dreamer, Now my dreams are tearing me in two. But I still believe in love, And loving Steven, Maybe I can make his dreams come true. Now, I'm not sure what to do. I'm reaching out a hand to you, Help me through, With human eyes I get a clearer view.” The look she gave the robot was one he'd seen before, part affectionate, part resentful, the look a person gave their far more successful sibling when she knew the two of them were being compared. The music swelled again, driving towards its conclusion. “All my life, I've been a dreamer, And I know my dreams may not come true But I still believe in love, And loving Steven We'll keep on dreaming And maybe we'll make something new! We could make something new! Can you Help me? I want to believe in me...” The music faded, and everything was very quiet for a few moments. The assistant's... no, not assistant, somehow this was Miss Americana, and yet not. Her face was tilted down, shadowed by the fall of her dark blonde hair. “Did you come here today specifically for the music's help?” he guessed. She nodded. “Didn't think I could get it out if it wasn't compelled,” she muttered, almost too low to hear. There was another beat of quiet, then she raised her chin, forced herself to look at him. “My name is Gina,” she told him. “I'm afraid of everything. Can you help me?” Henry smiled at her, even as he mentally cleared his afternoon calendar as well. “It's nice to meet you, Gina. I'll do everything I can to help.” (Music Source: "I Still Believe In Love," by Carole Bayer Sager and Marvin Hamslich, from the musical They're Playing Our Song.)

"Let him talk, Monsoon," Wander said with a negligent wave of her hand. "The police will be here any minute, he may as well get a head start on confessing. Everybody says they have a long legacy of crime, but usually what they mean is six months of robbing slushie machines at convenience stores. He probably needs to get the tip money he stole off the tables at a diner off his conscience before he goes to jail." She went back to looking at the now-deactivated controller, wondering if she could dismount it and take it back to the Manor for Trevor to look at. She'd already pulled the boots off the criminals, since they were obviously part of the set.

Fleur was making her laborious way through the hallways, bumping off walls and trying not to hit the ceiling, when the gravity suddenly came back on. She eeped, flailed, and then managed a surprisingly graceful landing on both her feet, bending her knees to absorb the impact. She looked around to see if anyone noticed, but of course she was quite alone in this corridor, with nothing but the hope that she knew where the others were headed. Scurrying to the nearest access ladder, she began climbing down as quickly as she could, a spill of vines tumbling after her like a green waterfall.

Fleur gets a 26

"Yes, just so," Fleur agreed, nodding to Cerulean. "We're not going to learn anything that way. Please, both of you, can't we all sit down at this table like civilized beings and simply talk?" She touched one of the communications panels on the wall. "Celie, can you get in touch with Dragonfly for me and see if she's available for a technical consult on a dimension-jumping device? Thanks so much!" Sitting down at the table, she set the box on the floor at her feet. "All right, like I said, my name is Fleur de Joie, and this is Cerulean. We are superheroes and we protect this planet Earth. I'd like to hear both of you tell your stories in your own words, one at a time with no interruptions. There'll be time for rebuttals afterwards. Mr. Threepio, you landed first, so could you please start?"

Wander looked up from combat as her last opponent fell, wiping the blood from her face so she could stare for a second at the massed army ahead of them. Thousands of antibodies waiting, standing between them and their goal. She studied the layout, waiting for the next advance, but then turned to see all of her comrades concentrated on the hopelessly disrupted, wounded and floundering crowd of antibodies still nearby. "What the hell?" she demanded, waving one blood-soaked arm. "Eyes front, people, we've got work to do! Keep moving, we're nearly there!" There were so many of them, she thought with vague wonder, a shocking number of them. They'd cut her people to bits if they got any closer, to say nothing of the worm behind them and bearing down fast. She spared a quick glance behind her to her squad, confirming that they were doing all right thus far, and then raced forward again, this time with an eerie banshee shriek much different from her earlier silent fighting. "That's right, look at me! I'm gonna kill every one of you f*****s!" Her leap carried her into the front ranks of the enemy like a cue ball on the break, sending a ripple that carried far and wide, and then she was fighting. Everything else slipped away then, her plan to draw attention, the goal of the communications array, none of that was important now. She was fighting for her life, fighting for people behind her that she'd promised to protect. It was hard to remember in the moment exactly who those people were, there were so many that she'd tried to protect and failed. If she stopped fighting, even for a moment, this could be one more failure, and that was unacceptable. She wasn't going to live through that again.

Wander is attacking the heavy brigade, because dammit, somebody's got to! Full power attack. 1d20+7=21 DC 32 Toughness plus applicable autofire.

Paige stared wide-eyed at Emma, unconsciously raising one hand to wipe her already-clean lips. "Yes," she murmured absently, "there's a full normal kindergarten curriculum along with powers training. She'll learn everything she would in a public school, but with superlative teachers who can help her master her abilities." She crouched down to bring herself to eye-level with where Emma was floating. "Can you tell me more about the dreams you have, sweetie?" she asked very carefully. She wasn't sure where Scarab had gone, maybe decided to go on with the investigation outside, but she heartily wished the other psychic were present. "Are they scary dreams?"

Wander cocked her head and studied the truck, then the men, her brain working as fast as it could. She wished Trevor had come along on this little expedition, but that would've defeated the purpose of getting to know Nina better. And really, she wasn't sure he was quite ready yet to be back on patrol. Being smart and fast and strong for a normal human wasn't enough if you weren't focused. Soon, though. The bad guys raced across the floor to check on their fallen comrade, their boots clanking against the concrete floor. Clanking? With one quick motion, Wander angled her bat so she held it horizontally, then dived for the group of baddies as though she were trying to steal third base, her bat in front of her and sweeping at their legs just below the ankles.

"Dragonfly is a lot more conversant with the actual mechanics of dimensional travel than I am, she might be able to figure this out," Fleur murmured back, studying the box in her hands. "Could you keep hold of that?" she asked Cerulean, nodding towards the gun on the ground. "And keep an eye on them both, if one of them goes invisible I don't know how I'd find them," she added, sotto voce. "Thank you both," she told the two robotic sentients, favoring them with a smile. "I'm sure we can get this all sorted out. If you don't mind, I'll take us all to Freedom League Headquarters where we can talk in more comfort, and Cerulean and I will come back later to finish our work. Just one quick second." Fleur raised her hands as though she were about to conduct an orchestra, looking up into the boughs of the trees that had survived the damage of the fire. There was a sound of rustling leaves, and then a gentle breeze wafted through the clearing, teasing playfully at Cerulean's hair and fluttering the edges of Fleur's cowl. The smoke began to clear almost magically, revealing plainly the devastated patch of burnt forest and scorched earth. Fleur closed her hands into fists, keeping them raised, and suddenly every bit of burnt, dead vegetation began to collapse in a soft rain of ash , till the ground was ankle deep in places and the only things left standing were the still-living trees and plants. "There we go," she said with a decisive nod. "Now nothing's going to fall on anyone while we're gone, anyway." She gave Cerulean a quick wink. "Everybody ready to go?"

Erin nodded in understanding, picking at one edge of her own beautifully crafted pinwheel sandwich, three colors of meat, lettuce, tomatoes and cream cheese, all twirled up and very fancy-looking. Janet had not stinted on the refreshments any more than she had any other part of the planning. "Everything looked really nice," she offered, hooking one foot behind the leg of her rocker. "And it all went well. No supervillain attacks or anything." Erin had conscientiously avoided mentioning even the possibility of such until now, not wanting to push their luck. She suspected that some of their friends might have quietly seen to the security arrangements to make sure nothing happened today. "It was kinda weird to have so much that nobody talked about, but I guess these people and this kind of normal life, that was part of his life for a long time." She took a bite of her sandwich, hoping to be a good example.

Paige gasped at the sensation as the eye focused upon her, struggling mightily to hang onto consciousness and identity as her body went soft and fuzzy at the edges for a moment. She concentrated on all the things that make her most herself, her love for her family, the satisfaction of her work, the sensations of her body in a thousand different circumstances, pain and pleasure, rest and exertion. ~You cannot have us,~ she told it, even her mental voice sounding raspy and slightly forced. She turned her attention back to the fight, encouraging her captured Antibody to attack its fellow, then trying to catch another one as well. This one was more resistant, and with her concentration divided, Paige narrowly missed being shot by the badly injured one. She began to worry that they had bitten off more than they could chew.

"That's enough!" Fleur snapped at the two robots. "No more name calling, no more threats of violence or I will put you both in time-out until you can behave like rational sentient beings! If the two of you are going to be here on our Earth, I'd like you to give me your gun," she told Vigil, "and you to give me the device," she continued to Artoo. "We have no stake in your conflict, except that your arrival here has caused damage to our world and is interrupting us trying to get everything fixed. We don't want to bully you, but we," and here she nodded to all the Ceruleans, "have to consider the safety of our world. And we aren't going to let anyone be taken away without first knowing what's going on here." She held out her hands expectantly to the two robots, looking more like a mom waiting for a misused toy to be handed over than any kind of intimidating superhero.

"Cerulean, for pity's sake!" Fleur cried, aggravation breaking through her normally agreeable nature. "Does this situation really need to be any more complicated?" She stepped fearlessly between the two robotic beings, her small forest of vines moving with her like a well-trained magic carpet. "I don't know who either of you are, or where you've come from, or what you want here. But nobody is going to be shooting anybody, or doing anything but standing politely and explaining themselves, until I have all those answers!" she told them, in absolutely no uncertain terms. "Now. My name is Fleur de Joie, this is Cerulean, we are superheroes, yes, you're on the outskirts of Freedom City in May of 2015, and I think you're both a long way from home."

Erin stuck close by Trevor through every interminable step of the funeral and burial, holding his hand or his elbow or wrapping an arm around his waist in silent comfort, watching the proceedings and silently warning off anybody who might be so much as thinking about giving the Hunter heir any hint of a hard time for any reason. She hadn't expected the funeral to be so long. Rick Lucas' funeral had been pretty long, she remembered, but she'd been busy keeping an eye on Rick's old lover and illegitimate kid and making sure none of the artifacts wandered away, and the time had passed quickly. This one seemed to take forever, especially since she was trying to be very strong for Trevor and not cry even when the mortician closed the heavy mahogany lid of the casket and fastened its silver clasps for the last time ever ever ever, and she put her shoulder to one corner of it to help carry it down the long aisle of the biggest church in Freedom City. She'd been placed in the middle of the right side, behind Trevor and in front of Mayor O'Connell, carefully positioned so she couldn't lift too hard and unbalance anything, with Frank opposite her so he didn't have to do more than touch the casket. Ted was opposite Trevor, and in the back left was the curator of the Hunter Museum, who Erin didn't know at all but who'd apparently been a good friend to Travis. It felt like strange company, and she'd kept her eyes firmly to the front as they'd walked through the crowded church. Travis wasn't in the box, she reminded herself, but that didn't keep her from being very careful with it. Being at the front of the church meant a lot of eyes focused on them the entire time, but Erin couldn't help but sneak glances at Trevor every once in awhile. He hardly seemed present at all, almost like he was in a very subtle kind of shock. That was okay, she decided, so long as it made things easier for him. She did her best to remember things about the service, in case he wanted to hear about them later. Ted's eulogy was surprisingly affecting, for a man who spent so little time with his family, describing a few childhood stories and the lessons he'd learned from his father that had let him be successful in life. Erin wasn't impressed, knowing what kind of father Ted himself had become, but she did discreetly wipe her eyes a couple of times. She studied the cross at the front of the church and thought about Freedom Angel, thought about being War, thought about her afternoon in Heaven. At least she didn't need to wonder where Travis was right now. She wondered if sharing that insight with Trevor would help him or make things stranger for him. The drive to the cemetery was quiet, with Redbird handling the cortege driving expertly, her eyes full of silent questions. Erin tried to indicate that she'd try and explain funerals later, without actually saying anything. They'd developed a pretty decent working relationship over the course of their space travels, and Redbird seemed to understand. The cemetery was in North Bay, barely a mile from the Manor, old and stately and maintained in pristine condition. Travis was laid to rest next to Trevor's grandmother, the bare earth covered by a green quilt of astroturf to prevent anyone from having to think too hard about the grave itself. Erin stood near the coffin, her fingers laced with Trevor's, and remembered the communal grave she'd dug at her uncle's compound, huge and deep and largely a blessed blur in her memories, and the comparatively tiny hole in the hospital garden in Albuquerque, short months later. No funeral flowers there, no grave blankets or marble headstones. It was good, she decided, to have a place to go when you had to think about people you'd lost. This was a nice place to do that. Frank put a hand on her shoulder then, and she managed a little smile for him. After the graveside service, Erin nudged Trevor along as quickly as she could, not wanting to watch the casket actually being lowered into the ground. He didn't seem to have an opinion one way or the other, and she vowed to make sure he got something to eat and didn't spend too much time at the reception. People wouldn't really care, she reasoned, as long as they got their lunches. Before Trevor could have lunch, though, he had to run the gauntlet of his family's friends, some of whom were genuinely sympathetic and sad, but far too many who, in Erin's view, were little better than vultures feeding on grief. People were curious about the Hunters, and this was a rare opportunity to see their lives and deaths. Erin snuck away just long enough to fill a couple of plates, and was back by the time he managed to make a break for it, following him out of the room with a look behind her that suggested nobody ought to follow them. They settled down in the crying-baby room off the sanctuary, small and secluded and blessedly quiet. Erin pushed a plate into Trevor's hands and kept the other for herself as she selected one of the several rocking chairs to sit in. "How are you holding up?" she asked him quietly.

Fleur gave Cerulean a smile that was one part reassuring and two parts resigned, then stepped in front of her with a little sigh. "I'm sorry, I think we may have a little bit of a misunderstanding going on here. My name is Fleur de Joie and this is Cerulean, and while we have worked with the temporal authorities in the past, we're not actually affiliated with them and we don't have access to any databases they might have. We came here to clean up the ecological devastation from the forest fire and the collapse of this tower, and we were pretty surprised to find you trapped underneath it. If you have no intent to harm us or anyone else, we'll be happy to help you charge your machine and get back to where you come from. But if you have any information that will help us save lives, we'd really appreciate hearing about it."

Fleur opened her mouth to speak, then blinked a few times as Cerulean jumped in with her constructed story. Time travel? Well, that certainly wasn't unheard of, she had two dozen time-travel displaced refugees sitting on Sanctuary right now. It wasn't impossible. She herself had been about to suggest a dimensional slip, but could admit to herself that her own powers might have influenced her thinking. "Are you all right?" she asked the humanoid robot instead of speaking for or against the Time Police story. She just hoped there were no actual time police hanging around at the moment. They didn't have much of a sense of humor. "That fire burned extremely hot, and you were under a lot of debris. Were you damaged?"

"He's mad at you," Holly told Thaelia helpfully, then immediately defended herself, "I wasn't spying, he was loud! And then he stomped off and everything." She took another bite of her pizza. "He seems like he would be pretty high-maintenance to have as a boyfriend," she told Thaelia. "He's handsome, and he's a telepath like me, but he's not very nice, is he? And he doesn't know, like, basic rules about not being weird to people and he doesn't even care. Gwen says it's better to be the high-maintenance person in the relationship, because then you get to be the one somebody takes care of, instead of having to take care of somebody else. But I dunno, it sounds kinda stupid both ways to me."

"Okay, good to know!" Fleur called back, keeping most of her attention on the robot-man. "You're just outside Freedom City," she told him. "That's in the Eastern United States, North America. You were buried under a pile of debris from a bad forest fire that started here last night." Fleur's posture was casual, her manner informative, but there were still vines snaking lazily around her feet like well-trained pets, waiting to be deployed the instant they were needed. "Do you know how you came to be all the way out here in the middle of nowhere? Or where the fire might have come from?"

"Superhuman is a definite possibility!" Fleur called back, "but I don't know any firebugs offhand, so we're going in blind for the moment. I'm going to start moving debris aside, maybe see if you can spot anything weird starting to happen as it goes?" She waved a hand and the vines began to move, sliding like anacondas across the ground until they reached the large pile of debris. Some of the leaves immediately began to shrivel from the heat, but the dogged plants curled around beams and boards, pulling them aside one by one to carefully expose whatever was concealed beneath. "Hello?" Fleur called out. "Is someone down there? My name is Fleur de Joie! Are you hurt? Do you need help?" The concern in her voice was real, despite the precautions they were taking.

"I bet they teach you at school not to go in the bathroom if somebody's got the door closed," Holly commented archly, picking pineapple off her pizza to eat separately. "Anyway, you're supposed to say you're sorry even if you don't feel sorry, cause that's how people know you understand you did something wrong. Otherwise they have to keep telling you and telling you and telling you about it." She gave a longsuffering sigh. "Anyway, you still know it's wrong to listen to what other people say in private, because you got mad at me when I did it to you in your head at your school. So if you're not sorry about that, it makes you a hibblecrit."

"There's something in there!" Fleur shouted to the others, springing to her feet. "Under the debris, trying to get out." The pleasant, easygoing manner she'd had a moment ago was temporarily submerged under the working superheroine. "It can't possibly be anything human, no human could've survived the fire and the tower falling, but it's something." She reached into her pouch, pulled out a handful of seeds and tossed them to the ground, where they began growing into thick coils of green vine. "This is where the fire started, so it's probably connected." She looked over at Cerulean. "If you're not really heat-tolerant, you should probably get in the air a little ways and keep an eye on things from above. You may need to light this thing up if it's hostile."

"I understand," Miss A told her, voice still very quiet, very calm. "And I'm going to do all I can to help you understand these powers better and get control of them. But it's not at all uncommon for the expression of powers to be linked to emotion, especially when the power is new and developing. It could take months or years for you to reliably control your powers under extreme stress. Managing your completely justified emotions is going to be a part of dealing with your new abilities. If you would like to talk to someone who is used to working with superpowered individuals, I can recommend someone on Terra, but you may find it easier to talk with another Lor. Talking to someone, though, is a good idea. Could you remove the arm piece of your armor for me, please?"