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"Is there room for one more in that box?" Gina Espadas asked, wheeling herself backward in a tight arc with one hand and holding up a framed photo with the other. "It's one of the bigger ones." The retired police officer and single mother of two was in fully serious organizational mode partly in deference to the task at hand and partly to sidestep some of the lingering awkwardness that resulted from being left alone with the other woman in the room. Talya Browning - Gina had enough aliases to keep straight these days without worrying about whether that was the correct civilian identity for this apartment or safe house or what have you - was on the nearby couch with the last new open cardboard boxes, rearranging pictures to pack them as efficiently as possible. The renovations of the apartment Talya shared with Gina's son and daughter-in-law were close enough to completion to move most of her personal effects over but unsurprisingly there was some last minute packing left to do while Erik retrieved the borrowed truck. That left the two of them to sort things out between them in more than one sense.

March 20, 2015 It wasn't that Erik Espadas was expecting trouble, not really, but he subscribed to the idea that it paid to be the one carrying the biggest stick. Or to be friends with the people carrying the biggest sticks, anyway. When they'd worked out the rough schedule for Min's pregnancy nobody had been particularly surprised to find her due date landed on the vernal equinox. After the unexpected 'visit' by his extended family in the House of Swords for the birth of his first daughter, though, a whole different sort of planning had seemed in order this time around, just to be safe. Stesha had offered to host them on Sanctuary, of course, but even with one or two super-powered healers on hand the idea of being in a whole different reality from the closest modern hospital made Erik a little nervous. If he were being completely honest with himself there was also the fact that he wanted his second child to be born in Freedom City's West End just as he had. If was their home and he wasn't about to let anyone chase them out. That said, even if they weren't going to an earth goddess, the earth goddess could still come to them. A good section of the first floor of the Espadas School of Self-Defense and Swordsmanship (!) was covered in toys where Stesha was keeping watch over Eden and Amaryllis laughing and playing, chatting amiably with Gina. Nearby Mara and Liz were engaged in an animated discussion of tweaks and improvements to the building's security over a folding table covered in computer equipment including a laptop displaying Vince's neon-green suit wearing avatar. They'd sent Chris out to get food mostly because it seemed like the only way to keep him from standing watch on the top of the building in full costume while Steve had insisted on standing guard, gargoyle like, outside of the second floor apartment where Ellie was making her sister-in-law comfortable. Yolanda had taken up a position across from Steve, solemnly following the taciturn bald man's example. It was, all told, a small army of love and support. Not that that stopped Erik himself from pacing back and forth with nervous energy, his gaze jumping back and forth between the stairs, the clock and Eden, hands clasped behind his back.

Thursday, November 28th "How's the oven looking, Vince, dear?" Gina Espadas called as she pushed her wheel chair into the front room of her family's home, lap piled with brown and orange seasonal decorations which she began placing about the shelves and cabinets. In the adjoining kitchen one of the most advanced human-designed artificial intelligences on the planet native to that era interpreted data from a webcam jury-rigged to a computer monitor yellowing slightly with age to gauge the temperature inside the closed oven opposite it with precision worthy of laboratory testing. To an outside observer, however, an enthusiastic man wearing a cameo pattern apron over a bright green suit appeared on the monitor, raised a comically long telescope to his eye and snapped a salute as he shouted back, "Operation Bird is the Word proceeding full steam ahead, General Ma'am sir!" "Sure, you she trusts with the turkey," Erik Espadas sighed with exaggerated ire as he methodically worked his knife up and down on the cutting board, rapidly turned fresh vegetables into piles of thin slices. Sweet and hot peppers alike joined a bowl of other ingredients as the chef briefly looked over his shoulder to grin at the monitor. "To be fair, Jack-O," Vince countered, pulling a firefighter's helmet and an extinguisher out of virtual space, "you've set a lot more things on fire than I have." "Don't set things on fire, please," came an earnest requests for waist height as the precocious Yolanda set out plates and cutlery at the table with deliberate precision. The stout eight year old scampered back to the counter to retrieve another stack of dishware, moving with the care of someone entrusted with a precious cargo indeed. "Careful, Yoyo, don't carry too many at once," Ellie cautioned as she returned from retrieving the last of the folding chairs from the attic, one tucked under each arm. Pulling them open, she set them down in front of the place settings before inhaling through her nose. "Mm. Alright, that does smell pretty fantastic." Her mother finished arranging a trio of small gourds on the end table next to the couch in the front room and rolled over to the window to peer outside. "Well it had better! Everyone should be arriving soon."

May 21, 2012 Erik Espadas was a man who had faced everything from alien armadas to demons from the foulest pits, a living weapon honed to peerless sharpness by talent and training, a hero who risked his life routinely with no regard for risk or fear of failure. None of which helped in the least to prevent him pacing back and forth across the living room of his family home, hands clasped behind his back and shoulders set with stress as obvious as the fretting expression plastered across his face. More than half a year of mental and emotional preparation had evaporated the first time Willow had experienced a 'fake' contraction earlier in the week. Now, as the rest of the house filled with family and friends preparing, the knowledge that he was about to become a father had become somehow more real. Running a hand across his heavily stubbled jawline, the fencer redoubled the speed of his pacing. "Try not to wear a rut into the floor too deep for my chair to get over," a wry, matronly voice requested as Gina Espadas wheeled out of the adjacent bedroom and over to her son. Still inside, his thankfully medically trained sister saw to the heavily pregnant dryad in what, surprisingly enough, was not her first experience with midwifery. Although Ellie had made the case for handling the whole affair in a regular hospital, Willow's fairly obviously more-than-human nature presented a problematic risk to their collective secret identities. Compromising, she'd asked her girlfriend to clear a section of the Lab's extensively equipped medical floor, intending to use Mara's teleportation technology to whisk the soon-to-be mother there once they were sure she was about to go into labour. In the meantime, the West End home had accumulated the eclectic assortment of characters collectively known as the Interceptors, including the artificial intelligence colloquially known as Vince running on a borrowed laptop and the quietly precocious six-year-old girl Ellie and Mara had brought back along with more than three hundred refugees of a recently destroyed alternate reality. Orphaned by the creatures who had devastated her version of Earth, Yolanda had been staying with Gina and Ellie since a few strings had been pulled to have the former expediently declared her legal guardian. While Vince had elected to have his monitor left in the kitchen area with a joke about staying out of the way, Yolanda had taken up a cross-legged vigil in one corner of the bedroom, silently watching the proceedings with wide eyes. Erik gathered that this wasn't even the first time the little girl had been present for a birth and considerably better circumstances. He found himself envying her composure.

Ellie Espadas paced nervously back and forth in the foyer of her family's modest home, tugging absently at the bottom of her vintage vest as she made a conscious effort not to look at the clock hanging nearby. Failing miserably, she noted with some irritation that the hands hadn't moved perceptibly from the position they'd been at when she'd checked moments earlier. "You're going to dig a rut in the linoleum, hermaita," her brother noted dryly as he stepped downstairs. Erik Espadas had donned one of his nicer dress shirts at his sibling's insistence, though he'd left the collar unbuttoned. Perhaps more telling, however, was that he'd taken time to shave without being asked. Stopping in her tracks, Ellie turned to give him a baleful look before sighing. "I just want this to go well, okay?" she told him with an emphatic gesture that gave way to running her fingers through her hair. "It's important." "Worried we'll embarrass you, dear?" Gina Espadas asked her daughter, raising an eyebrow as she wheeled herself out of the first floor bedroom, tilting her head slightly to one side with a faint, amused smile. "Yes, exactly!" the youngest member of the family answered immediately, throwing her hands up in the air.

Erik Espadas tugged uncomfortably at the collar of his dress shirt as his sister helped their mother wheel herself off of the bus and onto the sidewalk. "Is this really necessary?" he grumbled as the trio started off toward St. Stephens. "What, running around in tights makes you too good to go to church with your mother?" Gina Espadas countered from her wheelchair. A dark haired woman in her mid forties, she's made a point of maintaining her athletic build regardless of early retirement. Though her features weren't quite so angular as those of her two children, it was clear where they had inherited their mannerisms. Her son winced. "Jeez, Mamá, trying to keep somebody out of the loop on that, y'know?" The young swordsman was still adjusting to the new situation with his family and secret identity as Jack of all Blades. "Nobody's around to hear," Ellie countered, stifling a yawn and absently smoothing a crease in her black pants. "Everyone else is asleep at this hour." With her hair cut shorter and dyed dark, the resemblance to her mother was considerably more pronounced. "You'll live, dear," Gina opined wryly, easily rolling herself up the church's ramp. "Late nights," Erik stated, holding the broad door open for the ladies. "One more reason to rethink this 'sidekick' thing, hermanita." Ellie responded with a snort as the family entered the building. "That's 'partner', hotshot."