the place to be

[point_b]

Bella finds it.

"Alli!" she twines. "C'mere."

"You c'mere. Easier for you."

"No, you need to come look at this, seriously."

"Okay, fine, where are you?"

"Garage."

So Alli comes out to the garage. Their parents aren't home; Charlie's working, Renée is volunteering with some of the refugee kids at a shelter, trying to find which have parents who just wound up somewhere else, which need adopting, which are going to wind up coming of age adrift in the bursting-at-the-seams system. It's just them, not attending school, recovering.

"Whoa," says Alli. "So when you said you were at the garage, you meant that you were at the freakish restaurant that someone put in our garage."

"This isn't somebody's idea of remodeling," Bella says. "It's too big to be the garage."

"Do you think it's safe?"

"I think one of you should go in first, for sure."

"We don't actually know if I work that way," say two Alli voices, but Bella pushes one of them towards the door anyway.

Nothing happens.

The Allis converge, inside the bar. Bella follows.

Comments

[thinkering]

"I'm not mad. Other than that, yes, you have the idea. Some capes ascribe their powers to magic but that's not conventionally accepted."

[alli_oop]

"So what kinda nonmad science do you do? Is your helmet made of nonmad science?"

[thinkering]

"Mostly it's made of not revealing my identity to random people, but yeah, it also has my HUD and most of my kit's sensors in it."

[iamnotpolaris]

"We've got masks," she gestures with the hand still holding hers, "but we took 'em off when we came into Milliways."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"We have costumes with masks but we were caught in civilian garb," Ava-who-still-hasn't-mentioned-her-original-name says.

[point_b]

"We have Junebug accessories but they don't even come with masks. I've gone on international television only slightly more dressed up than this."

[thinkering]

"Not literally every cape at home does the secret identity, but almost all do. And it's sort of an etiquette thing that you don't even unmask capes you've just beaten in a fight." She looks at Flicker again. "So if you don't do secret identities what are your names?"

[alli_oop]

"We do the code name thing. I'm Alli, or Verge, and my sister's Bella, or Flicker."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I'm Emily, or Magnetrix, and my sister's Edie, or Psyche."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"I'm Annabelle, or Helen, or Lumiere. My girlfriend is Ava, or Marie, or Mistral."

[thinkering]

"...Why do you have two civilian names apiece?" She starts fiddling with some of the hardware affixing the helmet around her neck.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"Reincarnation. This is my third life, actually, I suppose you could call me Beatrice if you really wanted to."

[thinkering]

"Cape names are fine. I'm Lorica." She pulls her helmet off. "Seems like it'd be confusing if I went by my civilian one."

[alli_oop]

"Extra Bella!"

[point_b]

"Weird!"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Ooh, alts, those happen sometimes."

[point_b]

"This is a known thing? What does it mean?"

[thinkering]

"Well, I don't have a sister, so it's not particularly comprehensive. And you don't strike me as a tinker. Not enough gadgets on you."

[alli_oop]

"My Bella's a teleporter. You don't have a me? That must be so sad for you."

[thinkering]

"No offense, but it never occurred to me that I needed one. My dad's a teleporter, I wonder if that's a coincidence."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Alts are when one person happens in more than one universe. Edie and I have some, one time Milliways decided to have an Edie And Emily Convention the way it's currently holding a Superhero Convention."

[point_b]

"Do you come in singlet the way I apparently do?"

[whatamithinking]

"Not as far as we've met. And most of our alts had the same powers as us, too."

[point_b]

"Well, gemini doesn't do the 'tinkering' thing, so I couldn't have had hers. Apparently she could have had mine."

[thinkering]

"I should have, actually. When powers run in families - and they often do - subsequent triggers are often in the same vein as previous examples in the family. I'm not even a transport-focused tinker; I do what I'm currently badly summarizing as 'contingent robotics'. And my thinker power is even less obviously relevant."