Electra

She actually laughed at that, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she looked up at him. "Between the weather and the kissing, I don't think I'd better get too much hotter," she admitted. "But I don't want to be here if anyone checks the alley. There are tons of good restaurants around here, we could stop somewhere for a drink, or for dinner. It's still early, but I don't think I want to go back into the museum tonight."

He felt her stiffen in surprise for just a second, then she decided to roll with it and melted into the kiss. It all seemed like some story from a TV show anyway, Stesha thought, and having the hero kiss her at the end just added that extra triumphant flourish, like she was a real heroine. And he was a really good kisser, too, not mushmouthed and spitty like way too many of her dates in the past. It was a very easy sort of kiss to get thoroughly lost in, and she was happy to hang on for the ride, resting her hands on his shoulders.

"I don't know... I mean..." she began, then sighed. "You can't tell anyone, okay?" she asked earnestly. "You must know what it's like, right? My parents would never understand, and it would freak out all my friends... I might lose my job, and I really, really love it. So just... let's keep this between us." She paused as they walked by a little patch of dirt next to a lampost, setting the seedling down and letting it take root. Immediately it sent up leaves and a stalk, blooming into a pink tulip as they looked on.

She looked up again, trying to divine what he meant by that cryptic statement. She wasn't very good at reading people, at least any anything that didn't pertain to flowers. "Yeah," she finally said. "It was pretty wild, wasn't it? I didn't expect... I mean, I thought they were just kids fooling with the exhibit! I didn't mean to... ohmigod, I forgot that they shot you!" she blurted artlessly, standing on tiptoe to look for damage to his poor face. "Are you okay? Did it burn you? Are your eyes okay?"

She studied his face for a minute, not quite sure how he felt about the whole business, or how she felt, or about much of anything, really. "Yeah, definitely," she agreed. They walked down the alley together, not quite touching now that they were out of the danger zone, with Stesha cupping the little seedling in her hand and wondering what to do with it now. For the moment, she held onto it. She smelled more like flowers than ever now. "That was weird," she finally said.

Keeping her little plantlet clutched in her fist, Stesha stayed very close to Jack and kept her head tilted down as they walked towards the door. It seemed like the guards had things pretty well in hand, so she gradually released control of the giant vine, trusting that it would hold onto the bad guy while the guards were cuffing him up. It didn't seem to have any intention of loosening anytime soon! It was very weird, people walked all around them, but no one so much as looked her way. Belatedly, she realized that she and Jack had both been keeping secrets from each other.

She gave him a look that suggested she thought he was crazy, but did what he said, crouching behind the statue and trying to think small thoughts. At the same time, though, she snuck a hand into her pocket and began growing another little seed, ready to get herself out of there if anyone spotted him. She'd try to take Jack along too, she decided, but she had no idea if it would actually work. It was better than letting themselves be caught just sitting there like a couple of lunatics!

Stesha sat down with her hands folded on her lap for approximately fifteen seconds, then got up to explore the room. She checked out the bonsai tree first, making sure it would provide a suitable avenue of escape if such became necessary. It was a very nice house, and much cleaner than hers would ever be in this lifetime, but she couldn't say she cared for the muted colors. Like that really mattered, in this bizarre situation! She had no urge to steal anything, but the idea of running out the door and into the night was rather tempting. In the end, though, curiosity won out, and she spent the time while the stranger was cleaning up standing in front of the hallway mirror, freshening up the flowers in her hair with judicious applications of energy. She couldn't do much for her pants, which were pretty much a loss.

At least somewhat reassured that the man wrapped in the vines wasn't going to get up for a few moments, Stesha willed the vine to stretch again, slithering like a bloated, leafy snake across the floor. She aimed it at the feet of the man Jack was fighting, trying to wrap him up like his comrade, but she simply couldn't get it aimed properly in the face of so much motion. She looked around for security guards approaching, wondering if anyone had noticed her, and how on earth they were going to get out of this!

Jack was doing surprisingly well in his fight with the man in the drone suit, moving with speed and strength that looked decidedly better than normal, for all he'd been popped in the nose a moment earlier. Stesha left him to the fight for another moment and began working with her vine, snaking a little tendril down behind the faceplate of the mask and into the first opening it found, probably an exhaust porthole. When it was in, she opened a cluster of bright red flowers on the end, raining pollen down all over the face of her captive audience.

Stesha spends a hero point to reroll her snare. That may or may not eventually be cancelled out by the fact that she is complicating the heck out of her secret identity. =)

Stesha immediately dove for cover behind a large statue of the Atom Family, trying to stay out of the way of those pikes. She couldn't just leave Jack out there, though! Reaching into her dress pocket, she grabbed a seed and threw it as hard as she could. "Grow, grow, grow, grow!" she muttered, willing it to expand and wrap around the ankles of the man who was still bringing his pike to bear. "Jack, run!" she shouted.

"Did someone climb into those battlesuits?" she asked in disbelief. "Those are valuable relics! How dare they? Probably kids playing a prank." With her arm still looped around Jack's and forgotten, she dragged him over towards where the two "omegadrones" were parked. "Hey, get out of those outfits!" she demanded. "Don't you know this is a museum? You're not supposed to play around with that stuff!"

Erin startled visibly while Samantha and Sam described what had happened to their world. For a strange moment she thought that perhaps she wasn't the only survivor from her world after all, but it became obvious that things weren't actually quite the same. The government had still failed to cope with the plague on their world, but they hadn't patently made it worse, anyway. Still, she was torn between wanting to learn more and never wanting to speak with them about the past, because who wanted to remember that sort of thing? She had little difficulty understanding Hope's desire for vengeance, even if the angry girl would be well-served to learn a more diplomatic way to talk about killing all the Nazis. If there's been someone responsible on her world, someone to focus on, she likely would've done the same thing.

With everyone having gone, and Darian's machine still floating around, heads turned towards the psychologist to see what was next.

Erin grinned ruefully. "I hate it like poison, but it's do it now or I won't be ready for classes in the fall. Besides, Mr. Skyler pointed out that if I don't get through algebra, I won't get to geometry and trig, stuff that I'll actually need when we do tactics classes later on. Like if you bounce into a wall, you have to be able to figure out what angle you're going to bounce off it at, or you're in trouble. Personally, I don't think my mind's ever going to work that fast, but you never know." She leaned back against the wall, keeping a finger in the book. "Some people were saying that he's really mean, but he's been nice to me so far. How about you, have you started any lessons yet?"

Absolutely. I pointed out that Mike was also a very strong guy,. =)

Stesha shrugged. "I never really thought it mattered how someone got their powers, as long as it wasn't, you know, evil, like selling your soul to a demon or something like that. But magic or super science or just happening one day, it's what they do with the powers that makes the difference." Still arm in arm with Jack, she was close enough to read the plaque as well, but chose to focus on the statue. "Do you ever wonder what it would be like to get powers? What would you do with them?"

Wander stepped up obediently and balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to fight, but still seemed very uncertain. She looked over to Mr. Archer for reassurance that this was the right thing to be doing, then back to her substantially larger and more experienced opponent. It was hard to say if she was more worried about being hit or hitting.

Erin only got 24, so Thunder goes first. Which is probably just as well, since Erin doesn't know how to start a fight. =)

"Well, maybe he came back from the dead." Stesha replied, looking up at the statue. "But I guess that wouldn't explain why he's female now...but stranger things have happened." She chuckled, looking over at him. "I mean, if you believe in superheroes and magic powers and supernatural beings, coming back from the dead really isn't that much of a stretch, is it? More things on heaven and earth..."

As always, Stesha felt like a little kid at the amusement park when she walked into the museum, but she restrained herself tonight for the sake of whatever image of maturity she'd managed to preserve. The little red flowers in her hair did brighten up a little, responding to her pleased excitement. "Let's see the traveling exhibit first," she suggested. "I've heard it's supposed to be great." The museum wasn't too busy at this hour on a weeknight, so the crowd didn't press as they walked along past the iconic images of the city's greatest heroes. "And I love the heroes of today room, too," she confided. "It's so neat to see heroes that you might one day watch in the air, or even pass on the street!" It was her great ambition to one day get a spot in that room for her name, but of course she didn't say that aloud.

She nodded enthusiastically at the sentiment. "I know exactly how you feel," she told him. "It seems like Freedom City is a place where you can come to be better than you are, because there are so many good examples all around. And sure it might be dangerous sometimes, with the supervillain attacks and things like that, but that's what the heroes are there for, right? And even with the fights, they make the world so much better." She waited till he pulled into the slot to unbuckle, but didn't think to wait for him to open the door. "If you feel like that, I know you'll love the museum," she told him confidently. "It's like a concentrated dose of everything that's best about the city."

"I grew up in Chicagoland," she confirmed, "just on the outskirts of Evanston, if that means anything to you. It all sort of blends together out there. I just moved to Freedom City a few months ago, when I got the job at Flowers By Design. I really like it though. It's always so exciting here. Do you ever get tired of it?" she asked earnestly. "I mean, after you live here for awhile, does it feel normal to see superheroes just flying by overhead?"