A Better World (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

Erin was on patrol when she heard the noise, a shimmering tingle in the air just to her left that made her nerves go on end. She took a few steps back, ready to spring, wondering what was about to jump out at her. This was supposed to be a nice, quiet August patrol to stretch her muscles, here in the relatively good neighborhood abutting Lincoln and Bayview! The noise became a shape, then a glow, a rectangle shaped like a door. And a figure walked out, a very familiar one.

Erin White looked at her double, her blue and white uniform oddly familiar and yet oddly alien. It was a morphic molecule costume like Wander's, but the symbol on the chest was a big letter A and an atomic map of uranium: the symbol of the Atom family. "Hello, Erin," said her doppleganger, a look of familiar determination in her eyes. "I know this must be very surprising for you, so I'll try and take it fast. Are you familiar with parallel universes?"

[Electra]

Erin gave the doppelganger a very suspicious look. What the hell was going on here? The double looked a lot like her, exactly like her except for the uniform, but that just made things more sketchy. It could be a villain, or a Grue. "Of course I am," she said, her voice short. "I come from a parallel universe. What exactly do you want?"

[Avenger Assembled]

The other Erin raised a sensor from her belt, a piece of super-science Erin vaguely recognized from her time in Dr. Atom's lab. "Damn, you are a traveler!" She ran her hand through her hair in a gesture Erin recognized from looking in a bathroom mirror. "Listen, we've only got about ten minutes before the local dimension cops zero in on where I am, so we need to work fast. Is the local Erin still in Seattle?"

[Electra]

Erin put her hand on her bat. "Why should I tell you anything?" she demanded. "I have no way of knowing you are who you say you are, or what you're doing here. I imagine there are versions of me in evil universes too. Why do you have an Atom Family uniform on?" Erin had a lot more questions, but that was enough to start with. The last thing she was going to do was put this... whoever this person was onto the trail of a happy Erin who didn't even have superpowers.

[Avenger Assembled]

"You...yeah, let's not get into that." Erin took a moment to settle herself before replying, "I'm in an Atom Family uniform because I'm part of the Atomic Knights. Before the plague, this is what the old Atom Family wore. We're part of the leading volunteer militia where I'm from. I'm trying to get in touch with my doubles because I think that we're being targeted by agents of the Terminus."

[Electra]

"Wait... people lived in your world?" Erin asked, totally taken off guard by her double's words. "After the plague, there were still people alive? Yeah, you probably are being targeted by the Terminus, Physician Friendly and his bastard buddies let the plague loose in the first place. But don't bother with the native Erin here. Her world, this world, is happy and normal, and that means she never got any superpowers. I'm the best you're gonna do, I guess."

[Avenger Assembled]

Erin nodded. "That's what Uncle Aaron and Dr. Atom figured," she said, "but it's not Physician Friendly who's targeting us. It's Shadivan Steelgrave, Omega's armored lackey. He's attacked about a dozen Erins up and down this dimensional axis, and not all of them made it," she said gravely. "The good news is, he's only hitting the Erin Whites who live in Freedom City, and only the ones with powers, so the other Erin here is probably safe." She paused a moment, looking at her double, and said, "Not everyone lived," she murmured, "not even close. But enough people got the vaccine that we got to keep our world, even if we're rebuilding it all ourselves. The Atom Family came through the best of any of the old hero teams, so they were the nucleus, as it were, that we rebuilt around."

[Electra]

"You did better than we did, then," Erin said shortly. "But I've taken on Steelgrave before. He's a coward and uses dirty tactics, but if you catch him by surprise, he's not that tough. I'd have had him if he hadn't leapt into a goddamn volcano to get away from me." She studied the other Erin. She wanted to ask if her mom had made it, if Megan had made it. But she didn't know if she really wanted to know how close she'd been to not losing everything. "Do you know where to find him?" she asked instead.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Steelgrave got one hell of a surprise when he hit us. I don't think he was expecting a world where high school kids can beat an Omegadrone to death barehanded," she said with some familiar relish. "But we're mostly concerned with protecting ourselves," the other Erin admitted. "Two billion people who can punch through solid steel and jump across the Wading River are a handful to deal with as it is. I doubt you'll find anyone with the wherewithal to mount an expedition to the Terminus, not without a lot of prep, anyway. If you do go after him, you'll have a lot of Erin Whites behind you, even if we aren't there."

[Electra]

"Two billion... what?" Erin asked, totally confused for a moment, before the lightbulb went on. "Uncle Aaron's vaccine. That was the vaccine that was distributed, and not the other one. And everyone who was vaccinated had the same thing that happened to me happen? Wow..." She was quiet for a minute, thinking about that. "Yeah, I'd say you're pretty well set if Steelgrave ever comes after you. You'll kick his ass. What do you want me to do, though?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"It's...it's made things very different," Erin said carefully. "Even more different than it would have been with just the plague." Erin noticed that her double didn't ask what had happened in a world with a different vaccine. Maybe she'd missed the hint...or maybe she already knew. "Keep an eye out. Like you said, forewarned is forearmed, and if Steelgrave hits someone who's expecting him, he won't get very far." Short of a full-scale Terminus invasion, anyway, but neither girl wanted to dwell on that possibility. "You're always welcome on Earth E+EV if you ever pass our way. We can always use another hand."

[Electra]

"I'll keep an eye out," Erin promised, "but as soon as I can get the resources together and figure out some kind of plan, I'm going after Steelgrave and Friendly where they live. Better that than waiting for him to get the drop on me sometime and having to fight him on his terms." She hesitated, but knew she couldn't resist satisfying the need to know. "What about Mom and Megan on your world? What happened to them?"

[Avenger Assembled]

The other Erin gave her a long look, obviously fully aware of what a difficult subject this was for her duplicate. "After...Dad died, of the flu, Uncle Aaron had Mom, Megan and I flown out to Freedom City. It was like flying into Hell, so many people were sick, half the city was on fire, our pilot died right there on the plane...but we made it. We all got our vaccines together, right over in the Goodman Building," she said with a little half-nod in that direction. "Things haven't been easy for us, for anyone, but we've come through all right. As bad as things were, we were lucky."

[Electra]

"That's good to hear," Erin murmured. And it was, it was always good when her family hadn't died, but was she the only Erin who hadn't managed to hold onto and protect any part of her family? "I'll keep an eye out for Steelgrave, and warn any other Erins I happen to run into. If you do start a counteroffensive and can get back over here, I'm in, any time and anywhere. Two billion superpowered people... you should have a pretty good base to work from."

[Avenger Assembled]

"It's quite a place," the other Erin agreed. "I couldn't bring along a communicator, but if you do run into Steelgrave, you can contact me through one of the dimensional guardians of this plane. We've got some ourselves, even if they're not the same people." Pressing a few buttons on her waist, she opened that shining door and said out loud, "It was good to meet you. It's not every dimension I get to cross two Erins off the list to worry about. And..." With a familiar awkwardness, the other Erin rushed on to say, "And...you're one of the lucky ones too, Erin. I've seen me in much worse shape."

[Electra]

Erin pursed her lips for a moment. "I... I'm not sure that's very reassuring," she admitted, but her double was gone before she could explain or elucidate, the portal sealing up behind her. It wasn't that hard, she guessed, to imagine worlds where she was worse off. If she hadn't been taken in or been able to stay at Claremont, she didn't know what she'd have done. If she hadn't made it off her own world at all... Well, there were apparently Erins out there who were stronger than she was, and had either elected to go on living anyway, or hadn't figured out how to die. Either way, it wasn't a good thought. And the idea of a world where everyone had her powers... well that was just weird. She wondered what they would remake of that world.

It took a few minutes before Erin was centered enough to resume her patrol, and even then, she was a little distracted for the rest of the evening. She hoped Steelgrave did come, she thought recklessly. Not for Mark, not for the team as a whole, but for her. She had a score to settle, not only for herself, but for the other versions of herself he'd vented his frustration on. Next time they met, one of them wouldn't leave the encounter.