Dizzy smiled a bit as she worked, satisfied that the injuries were shallow as she tended to them.  She'd been worried, but those psionic shields of Scarab's had apparently done their job after all.  Her smile took a coy twist as Esther thanked her for her ministrations, "You<em>are</em>a girl after all, what kinda friend would I be if I let you get scarred while bailing me out?" she stuck her tongue out.  She wasn't<em>quite</em>sure that she agreed with Scarab's assertion that this was Freedom League scaled ... but this was definitely bigger than anything the three of them had tackled on their own before.  "Is there even anyone left on the League that you used to know?  A lot of the old hands are retiring which ... well, I guess it's natural.  Daedelus will probably be the next to hang up his cape."<br/><br/>"How does that work anyway?  The 'old friends' thing." she asked, "I mean, you've still got those old memories stored away, but there's still years of growing up as a new person before you can reconnect with people, right?  That tends to be a difficult gap for people to manage, even when their old friend doesn't go from being a burly white dude to a svelt Indian girl."<br/><br/>Dizzy pouted slightly, her bottom lip trembling as she gave Esther wide, soulful eyes at her prohibition of surprise glompings.  She tilted her head back and expelled a deep sigh.<br/><br/>"<em>Fine</em>, fine.  No<em>surprise</em>tackle-hugs." she relented, sticking her tongue out.<br/><br/><div align="center">• • •</div><br/>Dizzy made an eager dash around the corner of the mall.  She didn't want to just up and vanish on Harry and Alejandra ... it wouldn't be<em>entirely</em>out of the pale for a girl her age to get wrapped up in something with her friends and fail to think about the people they were leaving behind.  Still, Dizzy liked to think that she was a<em>little</em>more consciencous than here peers.<br/><br/>She didn't expect to practically run into Harry with his arms piled high with electronics.  Dizzy skidded to a halt, eyes wide, practically drooling over the cavalcade of raw materials she was looking at.  The<em>things</em>she could do with all that ... argh, she<em>really</em>needed to get a proper workshop put together.<br/><br/>"Hey, hey!" she said, openning her arms a bit and taking some of the load off of Harry's arms, helping them make the trip to load up the car at least, "Sorry 'bout that, I didn't mean disappear on you, I just got swept up in a bit of opportunistic consumerism." the bag with her hastily purchased outfit still slung over her shoulder as she went back to the clothes she'd originally worn into the mall.<br/><br/>She laughed a little bit as Alejandra snapped at her husband "Oooooh, bus-ted!" she teased, waiting as the trunk was popped open.  She settled her load of electronics along one side of the trunk, holding her arms out to help Harry divvy up and load the equipment into the trunk without having to just drop it into place.<br/><br/>"It's fine, it's fine.  It's a happy memory for me." she said as Alejandra asked Dizzy to forgive him, she stuck her tongue out.  Well, if Esther knew, she'd know, it wasn't like she couldn't just pluck the memory from her mind now that Harry had gone and called it up for her.  That said, Dizzy didn't feel a powerful need to hide things to begin with, it wasn't as though it was her first questionably legal action.  She took the business card that Alejandra offered, tilting her head to the side before tucking it into her pocket.  Tugging the reciept for her clothes out of the bag, she quickly scribbled her own number down.<br/><br/>"I dabble a little ... candid shots that I can't publish because I don't have the subjects' permission, landscapes, that kind of thing." or, to put it another way, she was practicing surveillance ... she could talk about the equipment easily enough though, "It looks like you're more into portraiture?  That's nice." she folded the reciept over and passed it back to Alejandra.<br/><br/>"And here's my number, should you find yourself craving pancakes again." she stuck her tongue out, looking over her shoulder as Amy's car started making its way down the row.  "Have a good day you two!  Thanks again, it was fun!" she called, backing up a bit and waving to the two adults before she turned to dash and link up with her friends again.<br/><hr/><br/><div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 24pt;"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: impact;"><strong>A Ride Home</strong></span></span></div><br/>Dizzy propped her chin up on the passenger side window, watching as the more affluent girls from their school roared off.  She rolled her eyes at the taunting, for some people<em>having</em>nice things just wasn't enough.<br/><br/>"Pft ... give me a week with this car, and I guarentee you it'll outperform that flashy mass produced garbage ... with better mileage and emissions." she grumbled, mostly to herself.  Which was probably true, but it also probably wouldn't be street legal anymore, which would<em>kinda</em>defeat the point.<br/><br/>"Not just a mastermind, but a full blown city-wide criminal conspiracy!" Dizzy said, sounding more excited than terrified ... which was pretty impressive considering her mad scramble for safety barely fifteen minutes ago.  For all Dizzy's aptitude ... she really had no way of knowing how much the Giant Floating Head might've gleaned from her memory.  If he could really<em>read</em>minds from his remote projection, his potential range was<em>absurd</em>, he might be skimming their thoughts wherever they were in the city.  She wasn't really sure how to camoflage her thoughts among the regular people of Emerald City.<br/><br/>"Still ... this<em>is</em>big." Dizzy admitted, leaning back in her seat after Esther helped calm Amy down a bit, "It might not hurt to pull in a little extra firepower ... either of you two heard from She-Devil lately?  If the Golden Dragon Society is tangled up in things, we should probably at least tell her what's going on."<br/><br/><div align="center">• • •</div><br/>Dizzy's attitude shifted a little bit as they rode up the elevator of the apartment complex that she shared with her mother.  The motor of the elevator was silent, stained wood panels and polished brass handrails giving the interior an affluent kind of feeling, if not exactly luxury.  The<em>bounce</em>drained out of Dizzy as she steeled herself for the trial of ... walking into her own home.  When the elevator car slowed, she let slip a resigned sigh that petered out just before the chime, a familiar kind of discomfort as she composed herself.<br/><br/>The key turned easily, and Dizzy turned the knob in a way that seemed calculated, silent, the hinges whispering as the door openned into the apartment.  The floor plan was open, a high cieling preventing the place from seeming as cramped as an apartment might, a single large room dominating the floor plan as the living room and dining room sprawled out in front of them.  Eggshell walls and hardwood floors gave the place a calming, neutral kind of feeling, bolder colored rugs drawing the eye towards the simple, comfortable furniture laid about the place.  A lot of it was arranged in circles or crescents, allowing guests to sit comfortably while facing each other, but there was little in the way of low tables or foot rests.  Less for people to trip on.  Dyanne might be a little more low-key than Dizzy herself, but they both enjoyed surrounding themselves with people, with life.  Dizzy's mother tended to prefer to act as a<em>hostess</em>though, guiding people towards each other, exerting her subtle little controls while harvesting the positive impressions people took away from her get togethers.  Dizzy herself, was more like the wind, drifting in and out of other people's parties, always seeking the next rush when things started to slow down for the night.<br/><br/>For a blissful moment, Dizzy thought she had the place to herself, gesturing for Esther and Amy to follow her in as she passed by a tall, narrow picture frame containing a strange abstract ink stain of geometric shapes that blended together with overlapping shapes comming out darkly.<br/><br/>"ACK!!" Dizzy straightened, her bag falling to the floor with a low "thump", her mother seeming to just<em>appear</em>from behind the island that seperated the dining room and the corner kitchenette.<br/><br/>"H-hi Mom." Dizzy said, stumbling a bit over the greeting, her mental gears shifting at a lurch, "Sorry, I must've missed it.  I had the phone off to preserve the battery, I only started charging it on the way here." which was a bold faced lie, but it was true that while her phone was booted into the Spook Ops Back End her phone didn't have access to its conventional features.  She unlocked the phone and checked ... sure enough, there was a voice mail that she hadn't gotten a notification for because her phone was in the wrong mode.<br/><br/>"Ugh--" Dizzy pinched the bridge of her nose when her mother mentioned the Kiwani's Club.  She had no particular<em>problem</em>with the Key Club, she wouldn't be a part of the High School Heroine Society if she didn't believe in community service after all.  It's just that it represented a possible compromise that she was going to have to make sooner rather than later.  She'd<em>rather</em>focus on her technological projects, or her martial arts, or just putting on the mask and directly pushing back against crime (in her admittedly flashy and self-serving fashion), but no matter how many hours of her life she poured into those things, she couldn't exactly put them on a resume, could she?  So, she had to pay shallow lip service to some truly deserving organization just to<em>suggest</em>her interest in the community to the paper pushers who'd be determining whether or not she was accepted into college later.<br/><br/>Living a double-life could be a pain in the ass like that.  She supposed she could<em>try</em>and get by on her grades alone, but admission boards could be picky about the most annoying things at times.<br/><br/>"I'm guessing you already made the appointment for the fitting?" Dizzy asked, taking long strides through the living room towards the end of the apartment that lead back to the parts of the house where guests were less welcome.  She bumped open the door to her room with a swing of her hips, and it was like a brief glimpse into another world, a riot of colors assailing the senses as posters practically covered the wall.  There didn't seem to be much cohesion to the theming.  A stylized, minimalist version of an earlier Freedom League line-up stood next to a grayscale image of asian women in stylized outfits with a logo that proudly dubbed them "BAND-MAID", with an eye-seering image of a chromed out robot unicorn with a rainbow carving its way through the vacuum of space, swirling dark violet nebula lurking in the background.  Her desk was dominated by a computer with three dark monitors, a few text books from Friday stacked up with papers sticking out of them.<br/><br/>There was a rattle of hangars as Dizzy hit up her closet.  She quickly stuffed a sealed package into her bag, clothes flying around as she shucked her clubbing outfit and tossed it into the hamper to clean later.  As she sifted through her clothes, she paused and drummed out a quick response.<br/><br/><em>--The fitting shouldn't take more than half an hour, I'll grab my bike and catch up to you.  When she gets like this, it's easier just to give her what she wants while being vague about what you're doing.  <br/><br/>--If she presses, say I want to I'm going to grab some parts from Sam's and work on Amy's car, hang out around her place.  Maybe throw a romcom in the DVD player and nosh on an icecream cake, do a little classroom review in preperation for a test.  Pick geometry if she asks which course, her interest should dwindle.</em><br/><br/>She came out wearing a pair of white overall shorts over a black t-shirt, a black and white cap perched on her head with a somewhat derpy looking cartoon panda on it largely hiding her red hair.  It was cute, she happened to really<em>like</em>this silly little outfit.  More importantly for her purposes today, however, it was quick to get in and out of.<br/><br/>"When am I expected?" she asked, adjusting her cap and checking herself in the mirror, taking a half-turn to see how the fit pulled as she twisted at the waist.