ic Spiraling Shape (IC)

[BlazingCoconut]

Alexa had triggered her phone to record Aquaria's response so she could go over it later if needed.  However, she had the gist of it... also she realized she had been outsung by a frog.  She knew her embarrassment at singing was justified, but that was literally the icing on the cake.  Already she was starting to look for some song that had devil ray in it.  Who sang about devil ray?  Wait!  There was a song that had the words devil and ray in it...  she didn't have time to really look at the tone as she overlaid the lyrics and tried to change them so that they made sense.  Again she held her phone up and started to sing a response, singing the words as they flashed up on the screen.

 

"A lie to stray oni..." she started singing so horribly off key and off beat that she stopped as the tinny music from her phone continued, "um... wait, that was bad, I read it wrong.  Do I get a do over?  Let me just restart and..." she mentally triggered the phone to replay the song from the start.

 

"A lie to say, "O my villian has thugs and theives to steal.
500 men with axes and they all steal for me."
A lie to say, "O my river where many fish do swim,
half of the catch is mine when you haul your nets in."
Never will he believe that his greed is a blinding ray.
A Devil Ray not a redeemer will cheat them.
He'll take his gold to where he's lying cold."

 

When she finished she actually covered her face with her hands, "I'm sorry... I'm not really good at this... if you didn't get it from the song, it was someone named Devil Ray"  She shuffled a bit uncomfortably as she realized that the song's tone and mood were perhaps a little more upbeat than she had hoped, but it wasn't like she had a deep musical background to draw on.  Unbidden, an image of the next time she had to talk to a contact entered her mind picturing herself needing to dance in some kind of choreographed number.  Maybe her mother had been right in trying to get her to take singing lessons.  
 

[Avenger Assembled]

Aquaria croaked again, her throat inflating - but this one didn't sound happy. And this time she did not sing. 

 

"I know Devil Ray. He is a monster." He's the one that killed the babies! But what could she tell SFX of that? How could she make her understand what she herself did not understand? Making a decision, Aquaria hopped to her feet - rising until she stood, an oddly balanced humanoid. "A shark who missed his prey once will try again. We will go to the museum and help you hunt," she croaked. "Singularity and I, together. And you. Let me get my space armor, so that I do not frighten anyone who sees us," she added, padding her way towards the door of the butterfly garden. "It is very powerful - but it does not help me sing. We will be fine." 

 

[BlazingCoconut]

Alexa nodded and started to hum, then paused, Aquaria didn't sing a response, and hopefully, she didn't have to sing everything to her benefactor.  "Thank you very much for you help.  I really appreciate it... do I have to sing everything to you?"

[Electra]

"No, you don't," Singularity put in, appearing suddenly at the head of the path. She looked like she was trying very hard not to laugh. "Though Aquaria would probably get a real kick out of it. I don't think anybody's ever taken her up on the whole singing thing before." She looked to Aquaria. "Devil Ray again?" she asked, then sighed. "I'll go get my weapons and call in to Project Freedom." Rather than get back on the elevator, she pushed open the door to the stairs and literally bounded up, hitting the first landing in a single jump, then disappearing from view. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"You sing well," said Aquaria to Alexa as Singularity disappeared, politely not adding for a Surfacer. It was true, after all, and using her machines had been a clever idea. It was good to dwell on something like singing - and not on Devil Ray. That would come later. "You will catch, uh, many friends! We will meet you here soon," she promised before turning and scuttling away after Jessie, running on all fours as she bounded her way up the stairs with a wet shlicking sound as the wet, sticky pads on her feet and hands made contact with the rubberized covering of the steps. For a few moments, Alexa was alone in the stairs by the butterfly garden in the Dutemps Building. 

[BlazingCoconut]

Frankly, Alexa was stunned that her singing had any sort of effect other than a cringe.  Yet, it seemed that both Singularity and Aquaria were going to help her.  No one had given her any task other than wait for their return, which she assumed would be soon, but then again, she should probably stop assuming things.

 

So instead, she forced herself to relax and began wandering through the butterfly gardens looking at the plants and insects which flitted around.  It was really quite something and considering she would likely not be back here, her natural curiosity pushed her into exploring the fascinating space.  It was as she was exploring that a very unfortunate idea hit her, Devil Ray was not likely to be on the surface and more than likely would be underwater for any encounter that they had.  She should really start thinking about how she would function in such an environment.  Finding a reasonably comfortable area to sit, she plopped down and started writing code that she could pull on for various contingencies.

[Avenger Assembled]

Back at the museum, the arrival of the three superheroes temporarily interrupted the ongoing repair efforts of the museum staff. The damage SFX had done to the gallery floor and walls had already been repaired before she left, but there was still the broken display case to repair and the broken glass to pick up. The Deep One armor itself was back in the museum's safe, where a reluctant Dr. Charles Craig (having shed his captain's hat and persona) escorted the heroes back to see it. They were an odd trio amid the mundanity of papers, files, and the various artifacts left behind by nearly 250 years of Freedom City area nautical history. 

 

Anonymous in her armor, or at least not apparently a Deep One, Aquaria lifted the helmet of the now-disarticulated suit with a soft noise. No prisoners survived of those who attacked under Archevil. The one who brought this to Freedom City must be dead. She could see the marks along the side where a mighty blow had been struck, perhaps a superpowered fist or energy blast. "This belonged to a warrior-priest. To help them call upon the Gods Below." She set the helmet back and stepped away from the armor pieces, her posture crouched and tense. "It. It would mean nothing to Devil Ray. The men who came as thieves, did they leave any clues?" 

[BlazingCoconut]

That was a good question.  SFX made a note to herself to check over a scene for clues instead of milling about waiting for someone to tell her what to do.  As odd as Aquaria appeared, SFX enjoyed having someone with some knowledge and experience lead the charge.  Given time, she'd probably come up with many of these ideas, but they didn't come easily.  It was a new life and a new world for here, without the convenience of self help guides on the internet to help her through the tough parts.

 

"I don't know..." she replied to Aquaria, "I didn't think to look," she admitted embarrassed.

 

Searching the area... she thought about it for a few moments.  Certainly she could crawl around on the floor, but while she didn't really care about dignity, that might be a little much even for her.  It took her a few moments before she realized that she could use the nanobots to help her.  Modifying their code on the fly was always a challenge, but a welcome one.  With a self satisfied execute, her invisible cloud expanded around her, mapping out the area and reporting back to her.

 

Slowly, her phone built up a 3D model of the area and she began searching it, looking for oddities and anomalies.  There!  Under the cabinet was a phone.  It should be trivial to crack it and see what was on the device.

 

"What?!  Who put's 128 bit encryption on their phone?"  She had the phone slide along the floor towards her, a cloud of invisible nanites moving it too her.  She frowned at the stubbornly resistant phone, "this might take a bit of time..."

 

Stupid lifehacker articles gave anyone who can read the ability to put some pretty effective security on their phone.  Thankfully, she'd not only read the same articles, but helped a number of people actually research how to implement and defeat the same security.  It wasn't that it was an impossible task, it was just a little more difficult than just accessing it and breaking a pattern or fingerprint scanner.  She acted as the bridge between her own phone, and the one now floating a few feet from her.  Unlike the movies, there were no anthropomorphic depictions of breaking into a vault.  Instead there was a lot of code, and as a nice touch, a progress bar which slowly ticked off the brute force overwhelm she was implementing.

 

As she monitored the phone, she quietly hummed the Jeopardy theme song, occasionally tweaking a bit or a byte here or that.

 

"Ah!  There we go," she exclaimed to her companions when she finally hit on the correct access key and started to scan the phone.  "Oh... um... Tim Rice... Naval recruit.  Huh... has a lot of pictures of weird things."

 

Instead of having them huddle around the tiny screen, she projected the images into the air using her holo projection, "looks like the same thing as that suit.  I can see from his GPS records that he's been to a lot of libraries.  Maybe we should go visit him.  I have his address too."

Edited December 20, 2017 by BlazingCoconut

[Avenger Assembled]

"Oh! Well-done. I know little of those things." Aquaria blinked, staring at the pictures - SFX couldn't see her face with the armor on, but she could imagine those big, bulging eyes as they scrutinized the images. "Deep One things," Aquaria pronounced after a few moments. "Deep One things, all. They have been stealing." None of the artifacts looked freshly-made, she judged, so it seemed as if Devil Ray and his minions had been robbing their fellow Surfacers rather than actually raiding Deep One cities. (An idea that, while it might not have been suicidal for well-equipped Surfacers, would certainly have provoked some sort of retaliation by now.) She told Alexa as much, before the two of them were called outside by Singularity - who'd made a discovery of her own. 

 

At the sight of the Deep One artifacts stored in the back of the 'abandoned' fisheries van, Aquaria made a loud noise that was distinctly a croak. "They have been...plundering us..." She hopped up into the back of the van, staring at all she saw, "Plundering all that was already plundered." She looked back at the two humans, the top of her armor sliding open to reveal the face underneath, a Deep One in a dark, cramped space surrounded by the artifacts of her people - and the books that told their story. "I did not know there was so much."

 

While Jessie did the sensible thing and called first Project Freedom, then the authorities, to report that they'd discovered the would-be getaway vehicle from the robbery and quite a cache of stolen, dangerous items, Alexa became aware of a distinct sensation - somewhere beneath the greenish gold metal artifacts and the mystic tomes inside that truck, something electronic was watching their every move.

 

 

[BlazingCoconut]

It was a tickle really, the itching sensation on the back of her neck that she was being watched.  She looked around curiously to see if one of her companions was watching her and when she realized that they were examining the stolen goods she knew it had to be something else.  While her sense of wonder was practically begging her to fondle the equipment and examine it in detail, she waited, trying to sort out exactly what was happening that was making her so uncomfortable.  It took a moment to realize that something was alive in pile of artifacts, well something alive in an electronic sense at least.

 

"There is something in there, or under there that is alive and watching us," she said as the floor of the van bowed slightly as a barrier reflexively rose between her and the intrusive electronic spy.  "I'm going to see if I can contact it..."

[Electra]

Singularity, who'd just gotten off the phone with the Freedom City police, stiffened immediately at SFX's words. Almost too quickly to see, she'd moved from the side of the truck to the back doors, wedging herself between the two heroines and whatever might be capable of threatening them. She was close enough to nearly be caught by the rising barrier, but her reflexes got her out of the way in time. "There's something alive in there?"" she demanded of SFX, any previous humor now replaced by flat efficiency. "Let me in there, I'll deal with it. You should stay back, it could be dangerous." 

[BlazingCoconut]

Alexa was to into figuring out the camera and triangulating the source, so communicating with people was a challenge.  But what she discovered was alarming, because whatever the camera was transmitting too was traveling fast.  Very, very fast.

 

"No!" she said distractedly, "a camera, live electronics, but... wait, not time!  Move out of here now!"

 

The last bit she said with a real urgency, grabbing a hold of Singularity's hand tugging at her as she started to move away.  "Somethings tracking to the camera... at nearly a mile a second!"

[Avenger Assembled]

Sea Devil frowned (quite an expression on her great mouthed face) but leaped out of the truck at Singularity and SFX's warning. "I did not hear anything alive," she said, eying the inside of the truck with covetousness burning in her breast. There was so much stolen there, and it would all go back to Surfacers who obviously had no idea of its true worth. She doubted that the Freedom League would bother seeking to return Deep One treasures to actual Deep Ones. "Ah, but look at this. I think they have a warrior's shield in there-"

 

Sea Devil put speed together with danger - and thought of sharks, and birds, and things that came on fast. "No! The treasures!" Her armor slamming shut over her face, she automatically threw the truck door shut to protect their contents - and pressing buttons frantically on the wrists of her armor, she generated a glowing green field that suddenly swept over SIngularity and SFX, a bubble of acidly-green energy that caught truck, Surfacers, and Deep One behind walls of impenetrable cosmic energy. Aquaria's armor didn't seem to like that trick, and soon began flashing an alarming shade of even brighter green 

 

Just before an armored figure, dressed all in black, crashed down to join them with speed enough to nearly break the pavement! Devil Ray was recognizable enough, face and body hidden behind his armor. "I thought I'd catch a bunch of sorcerers, but this is even better! You and your mates are coming with me, Deep One," croaked Devil Ray, whose mechanical voice sounded...slightly distorted from how it usually sounded on the news. "I'll cut the truth out of your guts if I have to!" 

 

[Avenger Assembled]

Sea Devil responded with a guttural booming cry that Singularity knew was a gutter oath about how Devil Ray mated with dolphins knowingly and of his own free will - and the battle was on! 

 

Circling around the acid-green dome of energy that protected the heroes, Devil Ray snarled. "You won't stop me with this!" Reaching behind him, he pulled out a long, deadly-looking speargun stowed at the back of his armor - then fired it directly into their shield! The dome visibly _cracked_ as the razor-sharp, jet-propelled spear buried itself in the energy dome, having been aimed directly at Aquaria, and then the armored sea pirate began reloading. "Going to turn your skin into boots!" he promised in a deep, booming bass, "then I'm gonna go down to Atlantis and find every one of those little bastards I missed and do the same to them!" 

 

Her body vibrating with suppressed tension, Sea Devil's fingers worked frantically on her armor's controls, as usual ignoring the voice it tried to pipe into her ear to use its powers for great and terrible carnage. But oh when Devil Ray talked that way she was tempted, especially when she knew that underneath all that armor (even though he'd upgraded it at some point with blades and teeth, looking more like a flying shark-robot than an armored human) he was just a puny Surface man whose bones she could crack with her bare hands if she had to. Her fingers worked faster as the glow from her armor became more erratic, their protection obviously getting thinner. 

[Electra]

Singularity stepped forward, regarding Devil Ray from flat, empty brown eyes. Seemingly from nowhere she'd conjured a slim black baton about two feet long, which she held like an extension of her body. "No," she said calmly, completely ignoring both the gun and the cracks in the barrier. "you won't. If you're very lucky, you will crawl away from here with your own blood in your mouth and your eyes swollen shut, wishing you'd never heard of the ocean. But maybe you aren't so lucky." In a move that was almost too fast to see, she lashed out with the bat, smashing right across the armored faceplate. It rang like a gong, leaving a visible dent in the metal. 

[BlazingCoconut]

People who are in danger often speak about time moving slower as they saw their lives flash before their eyes.  Zhu had always wondered if that meant that she would have more time to react, or was that time purely to regret the choices that were made on this mortal existence.  What she hadn't counted on was putting that theory to practice so quickly.  As the action raged around her, things seemed to crawl along as the creature appeared in an explosion of pavement; each crack highlighted in extreme detail.

 

COULD STATUS: Deployed, 32.6 million bots online.  SENSORY CAPACITY: 100m. 

COMMAND INPUT>

 

She could see what she should do, it made sense.  Use the nanobots to either trap or batter the armored monstrosity.  The code was simple.  Just a quick routine and they would perform their magic.

 

COULD STATUS: Deployed, 32.2 million bots online.  SENSORY CAPACITY: 99.5m.

COMMAND INPUT> #########################..................

#ERROR 1982 - Invalid Command.  Botnet failed transmission of commands

 

Wait.  Assembler... Python... PowerScript.  She knew dozens of languages.  What was the code asking for again?  It was on the tip of her tongue when the spear slammed into the barrier and she let out a very un-heroic shriek.  What had she been trying to do?  Not die!

 

COULD STATUS: Deployed, 32.3 million bots online.  SENSORY CAPACITY: 100.1m.

COMMAND INPUT> Create function Column (var h, w, m; OH CRAP SHE'S RUNNING RIGHT TO IT!

#ERROR 2265 - Illegal parameter found.  Botnet failed transmission of commands

 

Stumbling away from the truck, she staggered back as she attempted to gather her considerable, but scrambled wits, her mouth agape as she tried to force herself to calm.  Of course, that was the moment that several of the bystanders had managed to get phones out, snapping pictures of the action, catching her practically tripping and drooling as she fumbled with programs that she had been writing since she was 10 years old.

Edited January 10, 2018 by BlazingCoconut
Horrific use of the same word in the same sentence over and over... English, it's a thing.

[Avenger Assembled]

Devil Ray hastily took to the sky again, his engines roaring - from the slight fumbling as he stutter-stepped backwards, he was afraid of Singularity, having trouble working his armor, or some combination of both. He fired another round from his speargun at the green force-dome - and this time the razor-tipped, electrical-crackling edge blasted straight through the dome and dug into the underside with barbed hooks. When he yanked the gun backwards, the whole dome shattered, green fragments vanishing like ice, even as Aquaria bellowed in frustration. "You think I haven't heard about you?" he taunted Jessie, seeming not to quite notice SFX or the growing crowd at all at all - which was both a blessing and a curse under the circumstances. "The mad-dog killer and the aquatic predator, isn't that cute? But I'm the king shark here, honey!" 

 

With her dome broken, Aquaria ignited her tridents again - but this time held them opposite each other, concentrating as energy crackled from point to point, building in the space between the two triple blades of energized plasma. "Taste the fires of the Sea of Stars, Surface-Man!" she bellowed a moment before firing a blast of what could only be described as eldritch lightning from her joined tridents! The blast struck Devil Ray and made him howl inhumanely, energy crackling madly from, through, and throughout his armor, his flight cutting out abruptly as jets of flame died and he plummeted to the ground, still on his feet but with smoke rising from his armor. 

[Electra]

In an instant Singularity was on top of him, leaping so quickly it was almost impossible to track her movements. She forced Devil Ray to the ground as his engines cut out, the two of them tumbling end-over end in a brief but intense tussle. They finally stopped moving for a moment with Singularity at a clear advantage, jerking one of the villain's arms behind him in an arm bar while she tried to secure a headlock and he tried to wrest free of her super-strong grip. By this point she'd apparently given up on her own unique attempts at combat banter and was merely hanging on with grim determination so he couldn't use that trident again. 

[BlazingCoconut]

As Singularity and Devil Ray went down in a thrashing ball of arms and legs, SFX finally snapped out of her stupefaction and realized she better do something to help.  The last thing that they needed was any sort of trick or sudden reversal of fortune to swing things the wrong way.  Already Aquaria's dome was broken and SFX didn't fancy her chances against the trident without it.  Collecting her wits, she concentrated on the bot net, calling up some prewritten routines and stitching them together as fast as her mind interface would go.

 

COULD STATUS: Deployed, 32.5 million bots online.  SENSORY CAPACITY: 99.6m. 

COMMAND INPUT> Call GroundWrapMk2{Designation: 3; Exception: *; Autonomy: 1; Source: Ground}

 

Satisfied that she had remembered the basics of her OS, she watched as the ground seemed to writhe with small tendrils of pavement extending up and wrapping around Devil Ray's form.  They shied away from Singularity and anyone else nearby as they insidiously worked to complete their task.  She grinned knowing that the armored figure would be hard pressed to escape the cage she was building  while Singularity continued to fight him.  Now if only she could think of some kind of witty catch phrase.  It just might, and that was a big if, offset how dumb she imagined she had looked a few minutes before.

[Avenger Assembled]

Singularity evaded the bonds just in time as they swept up to ensnare the battered Devil Ray, who despite his injuries was still clearly trying to struggle as Aquaria advanced on him. He bellowed an obscene suggestion at the three women who'd beaten him, a remark that earned him nothing but scorn from his Deep One antagonist. "Your mind is full of voidings, Surface-Man," she croaked with contempt. "I know you. They have told me of you." Igniting her trident again, she shoved it under Devil Ray's chin and began slicing through his armored helm. "New armor or not, behind that you are nothing but a puny-" Aquaria gave a startled croak and actually leaped backwards as the broken parts of Devil Ray's helmet fell aside to reveal - something else! 

 

The left side of his face and neck were normal enough, albeit his rugged movie-star jaw and darkly-complected features set in a look of murderous rage. Around the midline of his face, though, a transformation was visible - skin shading from brown to green and even white, looking smooth and moist to the touch. His mouth was longer on that side too, pulled upwards like half a Glasgow smile to expose triangular teeth in his bleeding gums. Down that side of his neck, cut across the skin, was a slice of three slits that could only be gills. His eye, his eye on that side, was changed too - big and bulging, green and black inside a socket that seemed too small for it. The transition was an ugly one, the skin on that side bleeding and dry, the skin on the edge looking swollen and infected. When he breathed, the green side of his throat bulged alarmingly outward - and his gills rippled noticeably. 

 

Studying the man, halfway between Deep One and man, Aquaria's huge eyes were wide, her three-fingered hands over her mouth. 

 

"Look what you did to me!"Devil Ray bellowed, his voice somewhere between a shout and a croak, his armor still firing somewhere under the covering SFX had wrapped him in. "You bastards! All of you, you misbegotten bastards!" 

[BlazingCoconut]

The ruined face underneath the mask was a horrific visage of transmuting flesh and open sores.  SFX put a hand to her mouth to stop the sudden nausea she felt while looking at the half man half creature.  Whatever had happened to him was terrible and she felt a mixture of fear and pity as she stared at him.  Although, it wasn't enough pity that she didn't reinforce the bonds holding the armored figure to make sure he was completely secured.  The bot net kept responding too her letting her know what was happening and allowing her to tweak things from time to time.

 

She looked over at Aquaria, "what could cause that... surely not just wearing the suit?  ...and I'm sorry for freezing up.  I just couldn't make things work."

[Avenger Assembled]

The subsequent arrival of the Freedom League changed the nature of the encounter entirely. They didn't go back to Claremont or back to the DuTemps Building, or even back to the Project Freedom site - the trio wound up in Freedom Hall, where members of the Freedom League and their civilian staff gently but firmly asked them questions about the museum robbery, Sea Devil and Singularity's consultation with SFX, the subsequent fight with Devil Ray, and everything they knew about his transformation. It was clear that whatever had happened to Carl Mattus (aka Devil Ray) had deeply unsettled the various members of the League, perhaps because the nature of his transformation was so mysterious, and so gruesome. If proximity to Deep Ones led to such a transformation, many people might be under threat. 

 

But this was a friendly interrogation; with a Claremont representative arriving for SFX's conversation with Bowman and one from Project Freedom for Singularity's conversation with Pseudo - who she knew as the 'uncle' of her friend Daphne. Aquaria, for her part, chose to speak to Siren alone - a conversation that dragged on and made her the last person to step out into the lobby where SFX and Singularity were waiting. Neither of them had any answers - but the last of their number to arrive did. 

 

-

 

It wasn't that Phantom had no idea what had happened to Devil Ray; the problem was that first glance gave her too many ideas. From contaminated water flowing through the remains of lost Lemuria to cursed artifacts passed through black market antique dealers, there were too many culprits for her to sort through at first, and too many possible cures. In a humid, heavily moisturized room in Freedom Hall's medical bay, it was clear Mattus wasn't going anywhere any time soon. 

 

"The young one's a private school student," Siren was saying to Phantom as they passed through the halls of Freedom Hall, using the usual emphasis for Claremont around prying ears. "And I know you've met Singularity and Sea Devil." The sea goddess frowned, and admitted, "I know some people here would love to pin this one on Aquaria, but I just don't see that as likely. I don't think she's ever even met Devil Ray before today." Phantom had heard about Devil Ray and the Deep Ones, of course; for all that she and Avenger had barely been living on Prime at the time. Given the way people had thought about Deep Ones in the aftermath of the Archevil invasion, some people had thought it was funny. 

[alderwitch]

Phantom floated along next to Siren, her features shadowed by the deep cowl of her cloak and further obscured by the mask that covered most of her features. The glitter of the golden runes etching her costume - new since her ascension - were the only parts to catch the light of her purple-on-black clothes while the heavy folds of her cloak moved as if caught by a wind that clearly wasn't blowing through the Freedom City halls.

 

"Hrmm," Phantom's response was non-committal but not surprising. She had never been prone to thinking aloud. She shifted a little, finally giving a small shake of her head, "Evil is a construct of character, not of species," Phantom finally pronounced, "Nothing I've heard of Aquaria makes me think she'd utilize this sort of magic even if she were able to do so. Still, I'd like to talk to her and the others. It's going to take some time to reverse the contagion; harder to do if we don't know what it is and I'd rather not make it worse before it gets better."

 

She inclined her head under her cloak to Siren and then to those gathered in the lobby as the pair arrived.

[BlazingCoconut]

SFX couldn't believe it, she was sitting in Freedom Hall!  In her wildest dreams, which, given that she played with nano technology, were pretty big, she never pictured herself here.  The support staff had questioned her a few different times on the events and she had done her best to answer them as accurately as possible, describing everything that happened... including her gaffe at the start of the fight with Devil Ray.  While she didn't really want to describe her abject failure to people who were practically her idols, it was important for them to understand exactly what happened.

 

She had been looking at some of the pictures and accounting of their exploits as she heard the whisper of someone coming in.  Turning, her jaw dropped as Phantom and Siren entered.  She had been in Freedom City for a couple months, long enough to realize that heroes were more common.  However, seeing these two sent tingles down her spine into her toes.  For a moment, her concentration wavered and she issued some garbage commands into the botnet.  Her image flickered a few times before settling back into the costume of the familiar hero.

 

"Hello!" she said, her voice unfortunately choosing that moment to rise nearly an octave due to her excitement. 

[Electra]

Singularity had been quiet ever since her debriefing with Pseudo, though she'd cheered up a little upon receiving confirmation that fighting Devil Ray did not count as a violation of the terms of their probation agreement. The sly humor she'd displayed at the DuTemps building was gone now, replaced by a blankness that didn't look like indifference so much as it did a partial separation from reality. She did look up when SFX reacted to the visitors, jerking her head up to catalog the new arrivals as "not a threat" before returning to her slumped watchfulness. That in itself was progress of a sort; it had taken quite some time for Jessie to begin believing that Phantom wasn't just looking for an opportunity to send her back to Anti-Earth. "What's going on?" she asked.