The Space Between (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

Early October, 2011

Claremont Academy

Sharl spent the first week of October on restriction, not that he had anywhere to go outside of school. When he wasn't visiting Miss Americana and discussing everything he remembered about the Stratos robot, as well as helping analyze the captured pieces, he was at school, either in classes still taught with dead paper textbooks like something out of the dark ages, following along as teachers explained how modern technology worked, or in his training sessions in the Doom Room with various pieces of high technology, demonstrating that he knew how to possess and operate battlesuits, combat robots, and other pieces of machine warfare without destroying 'innocent' human targets. He took his meals in his computer, since he didn't eat normally anyway, and slept there too when he wasn't sitting up working.

Maybe destroying the Stratos robot had been a mistake. Maybe he'd have regretted blasting a normal person like that, powered or not, especially if the man hadn't survived. But when he thought about what 'Stratos' had said, about the secret knowledge it must have possessed, it made his heart sick. But finally, though, after much consideration (and a few meetings with Headmasters Summers, as intimidating a person as Sharl had ever met), Sharl began to realize why he was so stressed out about his duties and the idea that anything might threaten them: he was the only student who knew about Tronik, he was the only one carrying the burden of fifty million lives.

Faced with the double-choice of being off Young Freedom, and probably being a solo hero for the rest of his career, or of opening up to them, Sharl remembered the dangers they'd all faced together and decided to be honest with them. He couldn't keep the secret of his origin forever, especially if the Curator _was_ again taking an interest in Earth. It was his responsibility to open up to his team, and that meant starting 'at home.' Even if that was going to be tough.

-

Sharl had been a good room-mate for Koshiro; or so he liked to think. He didn't bother Koshiro or try and engage him in unnecessary chatter: he also took up almost no space in the room proper. When he wasn't studying inside his computer, visible as a little 'webcam' on the screen, he sat on the unfurnished bed and read paper books, moving inside the dimmed computer when his organic roomie needed to sleep. Sharl didn't have a lot of physical needs while he was projecting, and he'd been raised in a society that valued privacy: hell, all he had in the room were a few books and a desk covered in high-end, high-security computer stuff like his laptop and the auxilary towers that went with it, that was humming in the corner most of the time.

So when Koshiro came back from supper, still well before lights out, to find his room-mate standing inside and facing the door, it was a little novel. "Uh, hey, Koshiro," said Sharl, looking uncomfortable. He was in his usual black shirt, slacks, and long jacket, switching his shades back and forth from hand to hand. "We need to talk."

[Electra]

Koshiro's eyes automatically flicked around to check out his side of the room, but everything seemed to be in order with nothing for a roommate to be complaining about. When he'd lived at home, he'd been messy as any guy his age, but going to juvie had taught him to take care of his stuff. Even the bed was made today, since he'd had a couple minutes before class. Satisfied that he didn't deserve to have his ass ridden about anything, he leaned against the wall. "Yeah?" he asked laconically.

[Avenger Assembled]

"With what happened during the fight at Freedom Hall, I've been thinking, and I've decided it's time I was honest with you, and everyone else on the team." Nervous at the idea of public meetings, Sharl had planned to talk to them one on one. "I'm not from the Internet, and Miss Americana didn't program me. I'm from a city called Tronik, on a world we call Neo." He thought for a minute, trying to think about how to explain this to the less-than-tech-savvy Koshiro. "2000 years ago, our old homeworld, where we lived before, was destroyed by a supernova. Millions of people died. But in Tronik, we built machines. Machines that we thought were transporters to send us to another world."

Koshiro's attention looked like it was lagging, so Sharl tried another tactic. "But we were _wrong_, because those machines were digitizers!" he said dramatically. "Before Tronik could be destroyed, the machines scanned us down to the last quantum particle and rebuilt us in digital data a billion times more complex than your computers could absorb, in the holdings of the alien supercomputer, the Curator."

[Electra]

Koshiro absorbed all that in silence, trying to figure out what the important part was supposed to be. Something about it was important to Sharl, anyway. He raised an eyebrow at the mention of the Curator, an enigma that nobody had yet explained but everybody seemed to want to talk about, but the rest of the spiel seemed desperately unimportant. "So... he finally said, "you are actually from the internet. Only the programs there think it's the real world? Explains why you dress like Keanu Reeves, I guess."

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl frowned at that, looking down at his outfit, which was as common in the sectors of Tronik as a shirt and jeans were on the streets of Freedom. Why does everyone keep saying that? "We all dress like this where I'm from. The black absorbs heat, and the glasses are for the ultraviolet...anyway, I'm almost certain the people who made that movie had access to some sort of Freedom League files; it's too much of a coincidence otherwise. _Anyway_...to make a long story short, the Centurion rescued our civilization and got us running on a computer here on Earth. That's why I haven't said anything before, and why I blew the head off that Stratos robot when it seemed to know what I was. We're all computer programs, all fifty million of us. All it would take is one big Gauss gun, and we'd be finished."

[Electra]

Koshiro narrowed his eyes and made a good faith effort to pick through all of what sounded like a bunch of nonsense, since Sharl was his roommate. It sounded more like something some bum on the street would yell while Koshiro was busy crossing to the other side to avoid him. "So the Matrix is secretly based on the computer world you come from," he said slowly, "and you all live on a computer that's not actually connected to the internet. Why don't you just make a couple backup copies?" he asked offhandedly.

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl frowned, picking through a number of things to say. Miss Americana would be conciliatory now, so that's what he'd be too. "Actually, we are connected to the Internet. Or we were, until a few months ago when Miss Americana and I closed down the connections. That's how I got out," he explained. "I was exploring in a bad part of the city, and I found...well, it looked like a doorway in the side of what was real." He tried to put into words something he had completely lacked the ability to understand, even to process, at the time. "Like an open space that wasn't just in the wall, but an open space in reality itself. So I went into it, obviously, and, uh, here I was."

[Electra]

"Oh, okay," Koshiro said. "That makes a lot more sense." He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and began folding it, an idle habit Sharl had already seen a few times. "That's good to know." Eventually, Koshiro figured, if he nodded along, Sharl would either spit out what he had to say, or he'd be satisfied with whatever he had said. He didn't want to alienate this guy, especially since he obviously had superhero friends. Koshiro had seen pictures of Miss Americana in the newspaper, and he certainly wouldn't mind getting an introduction sometime. That meant keeping on the computer kid's good side.

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl squinched his eyes at Koshiro and put on his sunglasses. "Okay then. I guess I'll go tell the others." Given the rust-covered hellhole Koshiro had come out of, and what Sharl had heard about his education there, he supposed it wasn't his fault he had no idea what he was talking about. I'd better have visual aids for the others. "Oh, and if you meet anyone else from Tronik, it's most likely to be a woman named Rogue who works for the Foundry and wants to kill all organic life because she thinks they've been keeping us in chains." He picked up his laptop from the desk and started disconnecting it. "So, uh, watch out for that, I guess."

[Electra]

Koshiro put his tongue in his cheek, even as he tried to maintain an appropriately somber expression. "That's good to know. I'll watch out for that," he promised. Once Sharl stopped blocking the door, he stepped inside and dropped his backpack on the bed. "Hey Sharl," he asked suddenly, "I know you're not from around here, but do you know what the oldest neighborhood in the city is? Or like the most rundown one, where the poor folks live?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"The Fens is the poorest neighborhood," said Sharl automatically, "and Lantern Hill is the oldest." He closed the computer with an audible click and added, "Lantern Hill's rich and really well-digitized, so I've been up there a lot. There's a lot to see." The age of the buildings out there didn't impress him much, but the idea that the people on this planet had once lived in those two hundred year-old houses was fascinating. "The Fens is poor, but I hear it's better than it has been. I shouldn't have gone there at night carrying a projector; a guy tried to mug me in the Fens. Didn't do much for him."

[Electra]

Koshiro nodded thoughtfully. Lantern Hill would be too ritzy for anybody to let things stand vacant, but the Fens seemed like a good bet. And after living in Detroit, nothing that tame, hero-saturated Freedom City had to offer was going to faze him much. "Aight, thanks," he told Sharl. "Ah, good luck with, you know, telling everyone else about your...computer...thing." He wondered if the others would understand better than he did, kind of hoped for Sharl's sake that somebody would be as het up about it as the computerized kid obviously was.

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl went around to all of Young Freedom that night, having learned his lesson with Koshiro about keeping things short and to the point: he was from a world of the Lor Republic that had been destroyed by a supernova, the Curator had preserved his home city on an alien computer, and Miss Americana had helped rescue him when he was lost. He felt awkward the whole way through; Dr. Marquez had told him confession was good for the soul, but he told himself that was only true in wide-open, underpopulated Earth-Prime: all he could think about here was what his friends would think of him now that they'd learned what he'd been keeping from them all this time. He obviously wasn't in much of a mood to talk about it, and went from person to person without much hesitation.

When he got back to the room he shared with Koshiro, Sharl found it empty. He told himself he should be celebrating having all that tremendous space to himself, but the realization that Koshiro was out after hours made him curious. He respected Koshiro's privacy, so he'd certainly never tattle on him for being out when he wasn't supposed to. But curiousity was a vice of Sharl's, and one he couldn't quite resist: so with his true origins successfully shared with everyone he succumbed to the urge to snoop: Koshiro had said something about Lantern Hill and the Fens, and so Sharl fired up his computer connection and began connecting to the networked security cameras in the region, directly accessing their video feeds on this dark night to see if he'd catch any glimpse of his erstwhile room-mate.

[Avenger Assembled]

When he found nothing, Sharl hmmed. While not one to snoop into someone's personal effects (he'd never touched Koshiro's desk, especially not with all the 'magic' paper the other teen kept there), he had an inveterate curiosity, especially about the usually taciturn Koshiro. And maybe because, having confessed the secret of his own origin to his room-mate, he was curious about Koshiro's comings and goings as well. He sat in his computer to wait for Koshiro's return, which the other teenager finally did through the window after some hours. Unable to resist the urge, as Koshiro passed the computer Sharl called from his 'viewing window': "Hey, Koshiro!"

[Electra]

The sudden voice in the dim room had Koshiro jumping about a foot in the air, no boon to his already aggravated mood. The Fens had some amazing abandoned buildings, stuff he was itching to get into, but nothing he could touch without a team. No solo exploring, not ever. That was the rule, and he wasn't about to break it ,especially in a strange city chock-full of weirdness. "What!" he demanded, dropping his backpack with a clunk before turning to face the monitor. "I thought you'd be... processing, or whatever the hell you do at night."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I couldn't sleep," Sharl prevaricated, watching Koshiro from what looked like a well-appointed bedroom. "I only sleep when I'm uploaded, anyway." He figured Koshiro didn't need to hear about the ambiguous success of his big moment of honesty with everyone, so he decided to stick with the fascinating topic of where it was Koshiro was sneaking out to after-hours. He took a few steps closer to the 'camera', till it was mostly his face filling the screen. "Were you out in the Fens and Lantern Hill?" he asked curiously. "What's it like out there?"

[Electra]

Koshiro scowled at him. "I wasn't anywhere," he said sharply. "Curfew's ten pm, remember?" he asked the electronic boy pointedly. "If I left campus, I could end up getting kicked back to juvie and joining the Champions after all. I went to the library to do homework, all that happy crappy." He wasn't putting much effort into the fabrication, still irked about his roommate staying up to spy on him. "What are you doing anyway, porn surfing from the inside?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"I'm not going to squeal on you," said Sharl, who sounded more fascinated than anything else. "Especially after a whole week of hearing how I need to be more supportive of my team." He stepped out of the computer to better relate to Koshiro, the overall effect a bit like the monster from The Ring as he smoothly made a transition into the real world. A little defensive himself, he added "Look, I was just curious." He pointed outside. "Look, there's all this weird alien stuff and all these little buildings, but half of them Claremont kids aren't supposed to visit. And after the thing with the lizard men, Miss A kept an eye on me while I was living at her house. You're the only person I know here who actually wants to see what the city's made of."

[Electra]

Koshiro sized his roommate up silently for a minute, considering his options. Sharl was nosy as hell and didn't seem to sleep much. Working around him was probably going to be pretty much impossible. On the other had, he could float through things like locked doors, and Koshiro had just been thinking about how it sucked not to have a group to do missions with. If Sharl really wasn't going to tell on him, it might be worth a shot. "You ever done any urbex where you come from?" he asked. "Urban exploration, getting into abandoned buildings and seeing what's in there?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"There are no abandoned buildings where I'm from," replied Sharl, "but there are places where there are no people if you look hard enough." He smiled thinly. "That's how I found my way out here in the first place; nosing around some place everyone else was avoiding, then going through a door no one was supposed to go through." Focusing on Koshiro, he added, "So yeah, I did that thing all the time growing up. Freedom City's empty, but the buildings are so tiny." He grinned. "Difference is, back home I can't open any electronic lock on the planet that isn't on Blackwater, uh, Blackstone."

[Electra]

Koshiro scoffed. "We don't go places that have electric locks," he told Sharl. "That would mean somebody gave a damn about the place, makes it less interesting. But you can do your floating trick thing and open a door from the inside, right?" He considered the possibilities of this for a few moments. "Two's still a small team, though. Normally you need at least three. If I were going to go out anywhere, and that's not what I'm saying," he added with a scowl, just in case.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hmm," said Sharl, not minding the dismissal of his technical abilities for once at the prospect of going out with Koshiro sometime and getting some action. "Eve is rich so I don't think she'll have an interest in going anywhere secretly, and Corbin seems like the kind of guy who might tattle on us..." He ticked points off on his fingers. "On the other hand, Kimber seems like she'd like the adventure, and Indira's species likes exotic metals so we could use her for cleanup afterwards. I'd stay away from those other kids, the Irregulars, the headmaster is already keeping an eye on them."

[Electra]

"I don't know any of them anyway," Koshiro said with a negligent shrug. "Kimber's way too loud for any covert missions, but Indira might do." He thought about it for a minute. "But I don't know her either. If she rats on us, we're busted before we even start. Dunno if it's worth the risk." He leaned against the bed for a minute, figuring the angles. If Sharl could sound Indira out without letting on exactly what they were doing, that was less risky than just hauling her right in, and if things went south, he'd be a buffer against any really bad consequences. Sharl's powerful friends would keep him from getting in too much trouble, and he himself could say he'd just been speaking hypothetically. And having someone around who could ooze through vents and maybe take a camera as well would be more than cool. "You want to talk to her?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"I'll talk to her tomorrow," said Sharl. He knew Indira didn't sleep, but he didn't want to risk endangering the whole enterprise by wandering onto the girls' floor afterhours. "We're in American Civilization 101 together." Most of the alien students shared that class, along with a smattering of visitors from other places on this gigantic, underpopulated planet, which gave them plenty of chances to talk. Once they'd finished their chat, Sharl let his roommate get some sleep before retreating back to his computer for some actual rest, for all that sleep was tough: finally, some real action, on patrol and more besides!

The next morning, as civics class was running out, the electronic teenager scooped up his pen and paper (he'd decided to try and be as much like the locals as possible, even if it meant writing with chemical dyes on wood pulp) and floated after Indira as they headed out onto the leaf-dappled lawn, the fall breeze whistling through his holographic body. "Hey, Indira!" he said. "Where are you going next?" he asked her sociably.

[Fox]

"Mathematics," Indira replied, with the flat tone of someone who didn't really enjoy mathematics. She turned her head to look at him, if only as far as a human neck would allow a human head to turn (if, indeed, that human neck had a spine running through it, which hers, despite appearances, did not). Not that it mattered too much on a campus like this one, but it was good practice, and it was less distracting to some of the students to have a slightly odd Indian girl in their class, as opposed to a very odd metal monster in their class. "Though I do have a short break between classes - did you need something?"