The Sun Shines Night And Day (IC)

[Electra]

It was not a very good day for Stesha. It was supposed to be, it was her day off, finally, after three back to back weddings that had come right on the heels of an all-too-short if very lovely honeymoon. She'd planned to spend the whole day lounging in bed, preferably with her husband beside her. Derrick didn't sleep much, but she had her ways of persuading him to stick around. All those plans had been shot to hell first thing in the morning, when they'd woken up to a very cold, very dark little plant house. Derrick's assessment was that somehow the generator had broken, but mechanical repair wasn't his strong suit, and he had no idea why. They'd had to abandon the bed for the warmth of Stesha's apartment, where she'd gone back to sleep on the sofa while he went out patrolling.

Now it was properly morning, though she hadn't slept well, and she had a dilemma. She needed someone who could fix the generator, someone who was good with machines and who she could bring to her headquarters. Stesha had lots of friends, but they tended towards the magical rather than the mechanically minded... except one! She brightened as she got out her phone and looked up the number for the Hunter mansion. A super-engineer was just the ticket, if only he was available and willing! "Hello," she said into the phone. "This is Stesha Lumins, I'm calling for Trevor if he's available?"

[Gizmo]

Trevor Hunter rose from the side of his motorcycle as the phone rang, snatching up a rang to cover the receiver with as he picked it up, keeping it oil free. The vehicle didn't really need any extensive work; with the exception of damage in the line of duty, it ran remarkably cleanly. Disassembling, fine tuning and reassembling its familiar components had become an almost meditative activity for the young man. "Mrs. Lumins? This is Trevor," he acknowledged, a note of surprise in his baritone rumble. "Is everything alright?"

[Electra]

"Oh, hello, Trevor," Stesha said, her voice warming despite her rotten day. "It was so nice to see you at the wedding. And I wanted to thank you and your grandfather for the lovely gift. It was so thoughtful! But that's not the real reason I called," she added. "You see, I have a bit of a mechanical problem that's totally beyond my ken. You see, my generator's broken. It's not the sort of thing I can just call a repairman for, but I know you're an excellent engineer. I was wondering if you might have time to take a look at it?"

[Gizmo]

"The ceremony was lovely," Trevor responded reflexively, his tone an odd mix of rote and genuine appreciation. For his part, the young man was surprised how much of the newlywed botanist's sunny disposition carried over the phone line. "Generator? Should be able to help, yes. Where is this?" The idea of working on something straightforward to clear his head held considerable appeal, and there was something about Fleur de Joie that made one unusually inclined to help her. Probably the impression she'd do the same for anyone who asked in a heartbeat.

[Electra]

"It's not local, I'm afraid," Stesha told him with a soft laugh. "It's a couple dimensions over, at my, hmm, headquarters, I suppose you could call it. The generator is the only source of power there, so it's awfully cold in my house now that it's off. It's a solar and wind combination generator, so my thought right now is that maybe running the heat with not enough sunny days to power it caused some kind of burnout. I can give you a ride from anywhere you'd like to be picked up, just let me know where and when."

[Gizmo]

"...ah. Can see why you didn't use the yellow pages," Trevor observed after a beat. Since he began attending at Claremont, the youth sometimes wondered if he didn't spend more time in other realities than he did in his own. "Have to get some tools together. If we'll be teleporting via... plant again," he continued, pushing past the oddness of the concept, "may be easiest to go straight from the manor, rather than carrying them to another point."

[Electra]

"That's not a problem at all," Stesha told him cheerfully. "I can pick you up there in, hmm, would half an hour be long enough for you to get everything together? You've got this beautiful old elm tree out in your circle drive, I could meet you there." She laughed. "If you need more time, just tell me, I know I'm overeager because it's so darn cold out today. I knew I shouldn't have moved so much of my furniture out there until springtime!"

[Gizmo]

"Mmn," Trevor half grunted in affirmation. Practically everything in and around the Hunter Estate was set up with rapid response in mind. "I'll be there." True to his word, half and hour later the young man stood next to the elm tree, proof against the cold in a long black coat with a coal grey scarf peeking over its high collar and a matching ushanka replacing his customary fedora. Next to him on the ground were a pair of long, utilitarian looking tool boxes, stainless steel surfaces gleaming in the morning light.

[Electra]

Stesha appeared directly at the appointed hour, the elm tree sprouting one long, non-native seed pod that stretched to the ground and split open to reveal the plant controller. "Hello, Trevor," she said with an immediate smile upon seeing him. "I can't believe how cold it is today!" It wasn't much colder than average for Freedom City in the winter, but she'd dressed for an arctic expedition, in a bulky black coat that looked likely to belong to her husband, a purple knitted hat, matching scarf and mittens, and green snow boots. "Looks like you're ready for anything the generator has to offer. It all needs to come along?"

[Gizmo]

Resisting the urge to furrow his brow at Stesha's unorthodox arrival, Trevor nodded shortly, the contained body language slow enough so as not to come across as terse. "Unless you can come back and forth easily," he elaborated, picking up each toolbox by the handle. "Should have everything here. 'Solar and wind generator' was... a little vague." Between the scarf and a pair of oval sunglasses he'd chosen to wear, it was hard to read his expression, but his tone sounded vaguely apologetic for criticizing.

[Electra]

"Oh, I know," Stesha said ruefully, "and it serves me right for having technology around that I can't even understand, let alone repair, but there are only so many hours in the day, and cells in my brain. It's some half-experimental project that the people out at Lonely Point have been working up for emergencies, and I was able to get a prototype. It uses solar panels and what looks like a really sophisticated farm windmill to harness power without burning fuel. It's worked very well for months, then last night, kaput!"

She shook her head. "Anyway, if it turns out you need something, I can pop us right back here for it. Ready?" Resting a light hand on his shoulder, she touched the tree with her fuzzy mitten. The trunk seemed to yawn open, and in moments they were shooting through a world of green light and the smell of pine needles. Within seconds, they'd popped out in a dim room, lit here and there by windows, but obviously without power. Stesha went to the counter and turned on a battery operated lantern. The light revealed a room much like a living room in a small apartment, complete with kitchenette and living room set, except that the walls, ceiling and floor were made of plants.

[Gizmo]

Trevor snorted lightly. "If people only used technology they understood," he noted in a dry deadpan, "roads would be empty." As they arrived in the dim cottage, the young man rolled his shoulders uncomfortably for a brief moment, still not terribly fond of instantaneous travel as a rule. Moving past it, he observed the walls, his enhanced vision making it easy to pick out details even before Stesha turned the lantern on. "Plant matter construction... impressive precision. Alternate reality?" he asked, abruptly changing topics. "Anywhere I might have been before?"

[Electra]

"I don't think so," Stesha said, "but with the way Young Freedom gets around, I couldn't say for sure. This was a dead world when I got here, just barely habitable, badly polluted, and with almost nothing growing. I've been cleaning it up as I go, using it as a headquarters and as a place to practice." She grinned at him. "Freedom City is a wonderful place, but if you start fooling around with too many plants all at once, people do get a bit nervous. Some of my friends have been helping me fix things up. Supercape put the windows in my house and the roof over the building where I house civilians I pull out of danger, and Gaian Knight was just invaluable for getting the giant beehive built."

It was just warm enough in the cottage that Stesha unbuttoned her coat and unwound her scarf, though she didn't remove either. Without the coat on, it was easy to see the round tummy she'd only semi-successfully concealed under her wedding dress a few weeks earlier. It looked like it might be awhile before Fleur de Joie managed to get her costume on properly again. "The generator is out back, but I do have schematics for it, if you want to look at them." She reached into a flower on the wall, up to her elbow, and pulled out a sheaf of papers. "Would you like anything to drink?"

[Gizmo]

Trevor glanced outside through the windows as Stesha described the process of fixing up an entire world. "Impressive," he restated. "Fought Atlantean vampires with Supercape and Gaian Knight, actually. Both seemed... scholarly. Good builders, I'd think." Setting his toolboxes down, he placed his ushanka atop one and loosened his own coat and scarf. "Schematics would be invaluable," he agreed, "as would coffee." The young man paused for a moment, his posture uncharacteristically uncertain. "Ah... polite to ask after the baby?"

[Electra]

Stesha gave him a brilliant smile. "Perfectly polite," she assured him. "I didn't want to show off at the wedding, mostly because I barely fit into the dress anymore, but it's not exactly something I can hide forever. We're having a little girl in June! We're both so excited. As soon as spring rolls around, I'm going to add another room onto this place for her."

She opened the flower again, reaching in to pull out a silver Thermos. "And I was hoping you would say coffee. Derrick mentioned you usually had some in class, so I made some before I came." She gave a rueful look to the coffeemaker on the kitchenette, now about as useful as a brick, then poured from the thermos into a cheerful sunflower mug. "Cream or sugar?"

[Gizmo]

"That... was very thoughtful," Trevor noted, placing one hand on the back of his neck with a slightly perplexed expression. He recovered quickly, deadpanning, "Probably drink too much. Worried it's stunted my growth. Black, please." He was surprised Mr. Lumins had noticed in the first place, let alone mentioned Trevor specifically to his wife. The idea that Stesha would have remembered and gone out of her way to accommodate him veritably boggled his mind. "Think you will make excellent parents," he told the botanist. "Probably hear that a lot."

[Electra]

Stesha chuckled as she passed the mug to the tall young man. "I don't know exactly how much you were hoping to grow, but it seems to me like you did all right for yourself. I didn't start drinking coffee till college, and just look at how much good it did me." Though it didn't seem like Trevor had much need of it, she brought the lantern over to the living room area so he could sit on the sofa and look over the schematics. "As for the parenting thing, well, I hope so. We're going to need to be on top of our game if our girl inherits either or both of our powers. A baby who can grow a tree to boost her out of the crib and alter local gravity to suit herself could be quite a handful."

Stesha took a bottle of cranberry juice from the fridge and sat down in the recliner opposite the sofa. "How is your grandfather doing these days?" she asked.

[Gizmo]

Trevor accepted the mug with a grateful nod, taking a seat on the sofa. "Hrn. Does sound complicated." Taking a long sip, the young man scanned the schematics to get an idea of what he was looking, absently taking off his sunglasses to reveal glossy jet black eyes with slightly luminescent ruby irises. "Afraid I've no advice when it comes to parenting. Gramps is doing well," he replied still pouring over the blueprints. "More active than most people half his age. Think it helps. Still." Pausing, he looked up at Stesha. "I worry. Not always, or much, but."

[Electra]

"It's natural to worry about family," Stesha agreed, "but I'm glad to hear he's doing well. I've always heard stories about Midnight and the Liberty League, it was quite a kick to meet him in person. And he's so vital and sharp! Some people just seem to have a life force about them, don't they?" She took a drink from her juice and waited patiently while he studied the documents. Even in the cold, little flowers grew around her feet when she sat in one place long enough.

The diagrams themselves were clear if complex, and detailed the specifics of the basics Stesha had given him. They would be helpful in determining how to fix the generator, once it was clear how the generator had gotten broken in the first place.

[Gizmo]

"Think I know what you mean," Trevor agreed, a little surprised that he did. He wasn't normally so poetic in his wording, but it was hard to argue about forces of nature with a woman surrounded by spontaneous flora. Refocusing on the schematics, he tapped his sunglasses on his chin thoughtfully for a moment before realizing abruptly that he'd taken them off. The youth froze awkwardly for a moment until it occurred to him that Mr. Lumins' wife of all people was probably not overly bothered by unusual eye colouration. Coughing lightly he took one last pass over the diagrams laid out in front of him. "Ah, think I've got the gist here. Where is the generator itself?"

[Electra]

"It's right out back," Stesha told him, rising from her seat and buttoning the oversized coat once more before leading the way. The little plant cottage had a bathroom and a bedroom set in a tiny hallway off the main room, and at the end of the hallway, a door led outside. About thirty paces from the back door was a little shed in a clearing, again seeming to be made entirely of plants.A windmill on a metal pole protruded from the solar-paneled roof and extended high, high in the air, above the tree line. Guy wires held the metal pole steady, but despite a bracing wind, the rotors of the windmill didn't turn.

She led him over to the shed, which was occupied entirely by the body of the generator. There was a faint smell of burnt ozone in the air, and red indicators on the main control panel. "It's been like that since last night," Stesha told him. "It looks almost like it overloaded, but I don't know what could've caused that."

[Gizmo]

Trevor wrinkled his nose slightly at the acrid smell as he carried his toolboxes out the back of the cottage "Hrn, yes," he agreed vaguely, setting down the metal cases just inside the shed door. Unceremoniously dumping his coat and scarf nearby, he rolled up the sleeves of the dark brown shirt he was wearing underneath and popped the first toolbox open, neatly organized drawers sliding up and outward. Selecting the appropriate wench, he moved to the panel closest to the red lights and began loosening nuts to access the inside. "Best guess, just overtaxed the output and the breaker failed. Have to find what's burnt out first."

[Electra]

"But how could it have overloaded without something drawing on it?" Stesha asked, looking at the generator in consternation. "We haven't had many sunny days lately, but I haven't been using that much power. The generator powers the house, the well and the civilian enclosure. The enclosure is power-intensive when I'm trying to heat it, but I haven't even been over there in a couple of weeks. Not many disasters lately," she added, rapping her knuckles lightly against the wood of a young tree.

[Gizmo]

Removing the metal panel and setting it aside, Trevor took a look through a series of breakers with a mild frown. "Need to figure that out first," he advised, noting an entire length of smolder wire. It wasn't anything he hadn't expected, but he'd have to open up more of the generator to completely replace the damaged components. "If I fix it, it'll only overload again unless we stop whatever's drawing power. Where's this enclosure?"

[Electra]

"It's about half a mile away, beyond this stand of trees and over the hill," Stesha told him, pointing into the trees beyond the house. "Gaian Knight helped me lay the underground cable to connect it to the generator, so I wouldn't have to worry about aerials or lightning. "I suppose there could be a short circuit there or something. I don't bother to keep it lit or heated when no one is there. We should take a look. Would you prefer to walk or teleport?" she asked him.