Electra

Stesha stared at him for a minute, her mind ticking over as she tried to correlate what he'd said with what she knew and had experienced here. She'd had another befuddling conversation not far from here and quite recently, after all. "Do you know Dalkaresh?" she finally guessed. The two looked nothing alike, but something about the attitude rang a bell.

Erin didn't comment or argue, just turned and left much more quickly than she'd come in. Back out in the hallway, she hesitated a moment, then looked towards James and Alex. "Whoever's up for it can go in next," she told them. Rather than retake her seat, she started pacing, doing a ten-step lap in the hallway.

"Who are you?" Stesha demanded, taking a few steps forward and trying to get a better look at him. "What do you know about me?" He looked like an inoffensive old man still, but looks could often be deceiving, especially in a place like Freedom City. If her identity was slipping, or if people were starting to look for her at night, she had serious problems.

Erin heaved a sigh. "I've got to be proficient in US history from the revolution to the Civil War if I want to stay out of freshman U.S. History in the fall, but I'm also supposed to be getting up to date on current events. My universe branched off around 2007, so I don't really know anything that happened after that. Some things a little before are different too, so I've been sort of trying to cover everything. But a lot has happened in a few years."

For lack of any better ideas, Stesha had been doing some jogging warm-up exercises, stretching her muscles as though preparing for a little run around the park while she waited for the old man to leave. She jolted at being addressed in such a manner. "What?" she asked, looking over sharply at the man. He didn't look familiar, which wasn't very surprising. But he sure seemed to expect something from her. Surely he hadn't just guessed... "What do you expect me to do?"

Erin cocked her head for a moment, thinking about the maneuver as she committed it to memory. She shifted her feet slightly and began talking. "We were going out to the baseball game with everyone else. Our van got stuck in traffic, so that by the time we got there, just about everyone was in the stadium. Some villains had taken the stadium hostage and were threatening the civilians with demons and robots. We had the element of surprise on our side, and no way of knowing what damage that field might be doing. Mark came up with a plan of attack and we followed it." She took a deep breath, looking just past the headmaster's head as she continued. "I know I'm not cleared for any combat against living people besides my trainers yet, so I concentrated on taking out the robots and the demon-things that were there before they had a chance to harm any of the civilians. While I was doing that, one of the human villains attacked me with a weapon. It hurt me, so I knew it would do a lot worse to any of the other students. I incapacitated him, while Alex disabled the field and Mike took out its power source. The others helped to stop the last of the robots, and the other human villain." Erin did her best not to shift from foot to foot, still glancing periodically to make sure the exits were still clear.

"I'm already getting a lot of tutoring," Erin says a little hesitantly, "but I'm not going to turn down any offers of help. After you study on your own long enough, your mind just starts wandering. What's your favorite subject?" she asked him. "Since I need extra study in just about everything, anyway."

Erin looked from Alex to James, then stood up. "I'll go." She walked into the office, pausing in the doorway to check the room. Door, area behind the door, window, vents in the ceiling... all the access points and hiding places accounted for. She walked into the room and closed the door. Instead of taking one of the seats, she stood behind them, closer to the door than the desk, hands clasped behind her back as she watched the headmaster.

When it comes to alternate timelines, there are divergences and there are divergences that come from them. For Erin White, her divergence came either much too late or just a little bit too soon. After her world was decimated by a plague, then destroyed by a zombie-creating vaccine, she struggled on for months, inoculated with an experimental serum, trying to keep her younger sister alive until they could find some pocket of civilization in an empty world. Despite her best efforts, a simple accident claimed Megan's life, killing her cruelly over days, until the only thing Erin could do was euthanize her with pills to stop the suffering. Half-mad from the grief and loneliness, she went on a rampage through her empty world, slaughtering zombies, destroying abandoned property, teaching herself to fight in the half-hope that something stronger than her would come along and end the nightmare. Perhaps, given enough time, she would've managed to work through the pain and start rebuilding herself, even found a new purpose, or resumed her quest for civilization. Unfortunately for her, she found something stronger and meaner than her, prowling through the half-destroyed streets of Oklahoma City. A Tyranny League exploration team, trying to decide if whatever had killed this world was something they could use, had noticed her trail of destruction and hunted her down. Rather than being intimidated at the obvious superiority of their strength and training, she took them all on, fighting like something possessed. With five-to-one odds, they beat her to a pulp, but were impressed by her fearless savagery. Even though they couldn't find a trace of the plague anymore, they'd at least gotten one weapon from this dead world. Of course, she was a rather raw sort of weapon, and needed both sharpening and refining before she'd be of any use. Christening her "Singularity," her new trainers put her through frequent simulations in the doom room, till she could no longer distinguish humans from zombies, or civilians from targets. Heavy pain stimulus was employed to condition her out of attacking anyone wearing a Tyranny League uniform, or the insignia of their associated groups. No sense in having a weapon that attacked their own as well. She became a very good, extremely lethal fighter, both unarmed and with any sort of weapon she could get her hands on. There were a few accidents of course, a few casualties, but she more than proved her worth in her first test run when they sent her into a sewage system thought to contain a resistance nest. She was so efficient, slaughtering every man, woman, and child in the place, that her handlers debated renaming her Roto-Rooter, though that one didn't stick. With her lethality ensured, they began looking for a suitable vector for her. The new team forming up at Claremont seemed like a good choice. Every team needs a superweapon, and Hex's unique skills made it less likely she'd start murdering her teammates. For Singularity, being on a team is not really a matter of getting along with the others. She's only half-conscious of her surroundings most of the time, tormented by post-hypnotic suggestions that keep the faces of her dead family and her dead world clear in her mind at all times. She spends most of her time in training, honing her skills and growing further desensitized to the carnage she creates, so there's not much time for bonding anyway. When she is aimed at the enemy and put into action, he teammates know better than to get in the way, lest they become targets as well.

She smiled back at him, pushing herself to her feet and picking up her water bottle. "Sounds good. Definitely a lot more fun than sitting in the library all night. Sometime I'd like to hear you play more on the guitar. See you later." Erin stretched, popping a few vertebrae, and then headed off towards the gym at a good clip. It was still hours till dawn, plenty of time left in the night for both of them. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing was sort of an open question.

He beat her again a few more times before she set the controller down and drew her legs up under her on the couch. "Guess I've got some practicing to do still," she said wryly. "But the controllers all stayed together. I'll count it as half a victory. Something to tell Archer, anyway, when he reads me the riot act over today." Erin sighed and pushed that aside. "Not gonna worry about that now. I probably better get going to the gym and clock some more time, though. I haven't done anything there today yet. It was fun playing with you."

It quickly became obvious that Fleur had already visited many of the parks near to him, thanks to their burgeoning flower populations and wildly healthy trees. Turning his steps further afield eventually brought him to the boundaries of her previous expedition, and a park she hadn't fixed up yet. It was a pleasant night, so it was no great burden to wait a little while and see what happened. His instincts had been quite good, as it turned out. After about half an hour, he heard a muffled sound, like a stick cracking, and looked around to see Fleur appearing from around the back of a large old oak tree. She noticed him right away too, though she obviously didn't recognize him. Nothing about his appearance seemed to set off her alarm bells, though. An older gentleman with a cane in a nice section of town, even late in the evening, didn't appear immediately threatening. She gave him a polite smile and looked around, looking as though she were making up her mind whether to wait him out or move on to another park.

Erin looked up from the intensive study she appeared to be doing of her own hands. "What's Young Freedom?" she asked. Everyone seemed to know what James was talking about except her. "Why are you licensing it?"

Erin gravitated towards the snack table as well, setting her parcel down on the gift table before going to avail herself of food that hadn't been prepared by the health-conscious cooks in the cafeteria. She grazed lightly, more to get the taste of things than from real hunger, and keep a close eye on everything going on. She had a good idea of where all the people and exits were, so it was all right to relax a little. "Alex has a nice house," she commented to Mike.

Erin smoothed out her hair as she walked to the door, still smiling a little from the ride in James' exciting car. She'd been in a subdued mood, even for her, since the baseball game had gone awry, but today was a party and she was determined to enjoy herself. In her hand, she carried a small parcel, wrapped in the Sunday comics and secured with duct tape. She held it down by her leg as though hoping no one would notice it. "Hey Alex," she said as she walked in. "Happy birthday. Thanks for inviting us to your party."

Erin waited till everyone else was filing out of the ship before she rose and got out too. She was a little tall to hide in the back of the group, but at least it meant putting a little bit of psychological distance between herself and Summers. As she stepped out onto the asphalt, she looked around, mentally rehearsing the exit strategies she'd meticulously worked out over the past months. Logically, it didn't make any sense to cut and run, not when there wasn't anywhere to go and no pressing present danger, but it made her feel a little better to know she was prepared.

Stesha hesitated. "I don't know," she finally said. Part of her really wanted to see Moira again, but part of her wanted to stay back, where the heroine's overwhelming force of personality wasn't quite so intense. But that was the coward's way out, wasn't it? "I guess we can meet up somewhere. Where are you?" When Moira gave the address, she checked it on her computer. "All right, I'll be there in an hour." She had to get cleaned up after a weekend of wallowing before she was fit for company.

Erin gave Mark a quick look of gratitude before she caught sight of who was waiting for them. She cursed under her breath. "Mr. Summers is waiting for us already. We're entirely screwed." She rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead, leaving another trail of broken-robot soot across her face. "I guess it's probably too late to try and sneak in on foot."

"Well you certainly saw a hell of a lot more of him than I did," Stesha pointed out sourly. "Don't you think you could've at least clued me in on what your relationship was like before you got me to go over there and make a total fool of myself? Was it some kind of a joke between the two of you, or what?" That last question was more honest than sarcastic, and there was definitely some hurt in it.

"Not too much," Stesha said carefully, sorting a handful of seeds through her fingers as she talked. "Mostly staying at home. How are you and Jack doing?" Okay, there was a little bit of an edge to that one, but she thought she was entitled to that much.

Stesha had been putting off the inevitable for days, but by Sunday, she knew she'd better woman up and give Moira a call. It had taken a few days for her emotions to settle down to the point where she really wanted to be around anyone. Maybe it had been irresponsible to call in sick to work, but everybody else did it when they were suffering romantic reversals, and there was nothing urgent on the schedule. She'd stayed home for two days watching Discovery Channel and Oxygen, and eating Ben and Jerry's as though they were declaring a moratorium on blue jeans. It had helped, a little. At least now she could see a sort of grim humor to the whole humiliating situation. Maybe in another ten years or so, it would be funny. She picked up the phone and punched in Moira's number, willing it to dump to voicemail. If it did, then she wasn't a coward and she still didn't have to talk. Having Moira answer the phone pretty much put the kibosh on that, though. "Hey, it's Stesha," she said, trying to be neutrally pleasant like she was at work. "Can you talk?"

I'd love it if you could do a character sketch of Stesha for her profile when you have time. =) Stesha is twenty-four years old but could pass for a little younger, so she still gets carded in some bars. She's short and curvy, not quite plump, and has very long green hair that she pins up, usually in a bun or a coronet braid around her head, and dressed with flowers. Her "costume" is a dark green hoodie with a big white daisy on it, black leggings, and tennis shoes. She's generally a very happy person. Also, I was wondering if when you're totally finished with the young Freedom pic, I could clip Erin's picture out for her profile. It looks great.

Erin spent most of the trip back to school picking morosely at the burnt patches on her clothing and looking ill-at-ease. Now that the fighting was over, reality was seeping back in. She knew she wasn't allowed to be out fighting yet, but she'd done it anyway, and without a second thought. And maybe those guys were evil and would've killed everyone in the stands to get their way, but such fine points didn't always seem to concern the people who decided what was right and wrong for students to be doing.It was much easier to concentrate on the immediate worry of her ruined outfit than on what would happen if she got kicked out of school. As they got closer, she leaned out the window and tried to see the ground. "Everyone probably saw it, or will hear about it from the kids who were there. Is anyone waiting for us?" she asked aloud of anyone who had a better view.

I understand that setting the requirements for drawbacks is part of running the game, and that you have to draw the line, but I would ask you to take a minute and look at other drawbacks that have been accepted into the game already. I think you're looking at this drawback in a somewhat unjustified light, and it leads to a conclusion that would be inconsistent. The two drawbacks that jump to mind as very similar to this one are Avenger's weakness against holy symbols and Dalkaresh's weakness against cold iron. Both of those drawbacks are of a higher frequency level than the one I'm proposing here, but they are otherwise reasonably close. All three drawbacks encompass two elements, an everyday life complication and a numerically significant difference in a fight. Avenger can't go into a church, Dalkaresh can't sit down on a wrought iron bench, Fleur can't cut or chemically treat her hair. Those are problems for all of them, but on their own, they wouldn't necessarily be drawbacks, because they can be avoided. All of them complicate everyday life, make certain tasks, such as maintaining a secret identity, more difficult. The actual drawback arises, in each case, when the circumstance that hurts them is visited upon them, specifically and most likely in an attack. In all three cases, the threat of an attack using the weakening method is always present. In any given battle, someone could run Dalkaresh through with an iron sword, wave a cross at Avenger, or take a swipe at Fleur's hair. The binding similarity is that all of these attacks are extremely unlikely... unless the attacker knows that this is the character's weak point. That's the reason that Avenger can have a common-frequency drawback and not have it trigger in many months of play, because no one has thought to use it on him. It doesn't mean the threat doesn't exist every time he goes into a fight. In each of these cases, the drawback can be seen as a disaster waiting to happen. The first time an attack is surprisingly successful, the antagonist and his allies have a powerful new weapon that they will surely use whenever possible. You made the point that having one's hair chopped off in battle is a few-times-in-a-career thing. But so is having someone try to stab you with a cross, or come after you with a heavy, inefficient, and hard-to-find cold iron blade. In a normal hero's career, these things don't really happen, much less happen every three to five times the hero goes out to do something. Maybe someone once waved a piece of Kryptonite at Batman to see what would happen, but it surely wasn't a very common tactic. I think that the determining factor in assigning a drawback is how often and effectively it can be employed once it is discovered. I'm all right with having an uncommon frequency because it is a little bit harder to chop off someone's hair than to hit them with a holy symbol. But it can certainly happen, and it certainly would once her enemies figured it out. Making the drawback such that it has to actually be activated every three to five adventures, and that it must be discovered immediately, would be akin to saying that Avenger must be outed as a vampire in his first thread, and have a holy symbol used against him every second time he fights. It would make the drawback a lot more damaging, but it would also make it much less playable, and go against what seems to have been the norm for characters up to this point.

Unfortunately, despite Avenger's zeal to depilate my character, there is a problem with applying the "3-5" adventures standard. Stesha is an active character and gets into at least 3-5 threads every month. If she gets her hair chopped or her head shaved once a month, then she is facing a situation with 42 days of drawback for every thirty day period. She will be bald for the rest of her life, and owe extra days besides. That seems like rather more than "uncommon frequency."