21 Questions: Guardians Edition

The Guardians have no set protocol for interviews and team building exercises, but members are encouraged to at least pair up and get to know each other. That is why, to that end, Shauna was paired up with a new member to get to know each other. The encounter of course would be recorded for the sake of the Guardian's archives, though personally knowing each other was still best.

Shauna's joining the guardians with her reputation as the child hero Laser Ladette, of course, meant there was alot more questions compared to the relatively younger members. Easily twice most members' ages, her experiences and insights might prove valuable for the members trying to grow up as heroes. A couple of members also voiced concern over the... darker... periods in her life that have gone under the radar, then her sudden resurfacing as a hero. If she could be encouraged to talk about them, then the Guardians would be grateful- it was difficult to trust someone who had alot of skeletons in their closet.

She would be paired with London Based hero Anne Taylor, aka Firefly. Firefly would be encouraged to bring snacks or drinks, and she would be fetched by the Guardian's chauffer jet service.

The location would be remote for reasons as well. Like, a large piece of ice in the arctic. Shauna took a deliberate interest in somewhere with such ice. She set up a table and a couple of chairs, and waited for her designated company. She was in her full costume, the Tron suit with the green Tron lines, her helmet and chest looking like sun symbols. She was the Sun Queen now, after all.

While she waited, she started with her first glass of Jack Daniels Tenessee Whiskey, carving ice out from the very iceberg they were on.

The last few days had gone by in a blur. Ever since she was recruited into the Guardians, Annie had gone through some...strange things, to say the least. First of all, Jeisen had recommended that she got a hero name. She couldn't be much of a hero if the public just called her "Annie". In relation to her insect-like powers, she took up the name of "Firefly". Short and sweet, not too cheesy.

After that, Jeisen assigned her a sort of "team-building" exercise. It was best for her to get to know her fellow teammates. She was to meet Shauna Masters, the team's oldest recruit by far. As such, Annie was rather excited for a nice and informed discussion. She had even gotten snacks for the occasion. However, as more information developed, Annie gradually grew less and less excited.

First, the meeting was to be held in the freezing arctic. She didn't particularluly like the cold. Second, apparently Ms. Masters wasn't exactly the "informed adult" that Annie had made her out to be. Jeisen informed her that Shauna had a rather dark past, and was prone to anger. Fantastic.

The ride there was smooth enough. Annie hadn't seen much outside of London, so it was at least a new experience She had dressed as best she could for the cold weather, a grey parka, some mittens, and a beanie. She fell asleep about halfway through the flight. She was awoken by Nolan's voice, notifying her that she had arrived. The plane landed on the cold patch of ice.

Annie emerged from the aircraft, carrying a plastic bag that contained chips and a case of diet root beer. Annie noticed Ms. Masters sitting at a small area where she had set up a tabke and chairs. Annie approached her.

"Hello," Annie said in her polite british voice. You must be Ms. Masters. Or, uh...Sun Queen, was it? I'm Annie, or...Firefly." Annie smiled as she held out her hand for a shake.

Shauna looked to her right side to see Firefly arriving. Well, there wasn't any formal direction all the way out here. She put her legs down from the table, seeing as it was probably bad form.

"Oh hello there. Yup, that's me. Laser Ladette. Then Black Tigress. Then Sun Queen. Then Dr. Shauna Masters, M.D. Please have a seat, It's always good to meet new heroes. You're from London then? I passed through there for a semester. Great place to visit, but too expensive to live in for me."

She stood up and offered Firefly her chair, which was a bit unnecessary, and went back to her seat. She offered Firefly something easier- some English brew.

"Well. Let's get this game of 21 questions started. Question one, Do you drink yet?" She asked, offering her the bottle while gesturing for a glass filled with blue ice. Ice that came from the iceberg they were on. Ice that had not melted in a million years. Ice that was now being served in a glass.

Annie smiled as she was greeted. "Yes, I do quite like the city. It grows on you after awhile." Though in reality, she hadn't really seen anywhere else all her life. London could completely suck compared to there cities. She didn't know.

Ms. Masters seemed very polite. She offered Annie a chair, and even seemed to have gone so far as to bring english tea, which Annie graciously accepted. Impressive. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. This would be a nice talk.

This first question was asked. It was...well, something. Of course, Ms. Masters was an adult. She would ask about alcohol.
"Well, er...no. I'm technically allowed to drink in the UK, but...I've had certain experiences with the stuff. It's really not for me.

Some memories resurfaced in her mind, of a certain scientist who always came in drunk back at the lab. He was always the most brutal. And pitiful. Annie cleared her throat. "Next question?"

Shauna let out a brief laugh. "Oh no, that's now how the game works, Firefly. I ask one question, then you ask another." She performed a helpful little parlor trick where the kettle in her hand heated up immediately simply because she looked at it. The kettle glowed slightly on the side where the heat was applied from her heat vision. "Drinks get cold up here real quick."

Yes, um...right, sorry. Annie blushed with embarrassment. I'm still, er...new to this. Annie scanned her mind for a question. This was harder than she thought. She was never the social type.

"Where...did you grow up?"

Shauna took a drink from her shot glass for Vodka. She poured herself another for the next upcoming question. "Hmmm. I was born in a small Luchador gym in Argentina, stayed there till I was 5...  then we emigrated to California to do my Laser Ladette thing. Then I travelled around... did alot of growing up... then, came back to the U.S. To be a doctor." She explained with an expressed honestly, likely the liquor starting to set her at ease.

She thought about what to ask. "What do you like most and least about your powers?" She'd decided to get into the super powers questions. She also wondered if Firefly would drink the superpower heated tea she was offered.

Annie paused for a second, sipping her tea, which was pleasantly heated by her friend here.

"Well...I suppose I like their versatility. I can count on my powers to help me when I'm on the move. Granted, that's based on my accuracy, but still. What I like the least is..." She sighed. "Probably my wings. They're not natural and they're a pretty constant reminder of my, er...well, darker past."

Annie paused for a moment, thinking about a question as she drank her tea.

"What made you want to join the Guardians?" Generic, but a legitimate question nonetheless.

Another question, another shot of Vodka. Shauna seemed fine still as the conversation went on. She could hold her liquor, though she let out a small burp, nothing too overt  or shocking. She also grabbed some of the chips to deal with the taste.

She tossed in a little logic and a little experience into her answer, as well as some chewing. "Much like anyone else really. Allies. Friends. People to watch your back. Being accountable to peers. Sometimes when you're alone... you're prone to making mistakes, prone to finding out things about yourself you'll do when no one else is around."

Shauna then paused to think of her question, swishing her glass around. No, she didn't drink for very question she asked Firefly. "Would you consider yourself a hero? Why? Why not?"

Annie raised an eyebrow as Shauna drank another shot. This lady sure knew her hard liquor. Annie just continued smiling. Just play it cool.

"I consider myself a...hero in training, I suppose. I haven't done anything like, you know, stopped a bank robbery before. Hopefully The Guardians can help me realize my full potential." Annie nodded.

Time to pull out the big guns. "So, I've heard of this...dark time in your life. What caused you to go down that path?"

"Don't worry. I can do training for younger members.. Got the experience to share, though not much muscle these days. Heh." Shauna joked. Of course she could train young heroes. She could teach teamwork, tactics, self-defense, but there were some things only experience could teach, and in this business experience would be inevitable.

So the rookie brought out the big questions early. Shauna put down the shot glass and took a brief drink straight from the vodka bottle. She laid it gently on the table to avoid getting woozy.

"Well. Where do I start? Where did the cheerful and bright Laser Ladette go? Well it started... it really started the second when I was born to Luchador and Sun Queen, the first one, who was my mother." Shauna paused. She fiddled with her shotglass. "It started when, the second I could walk, I was training in combat maneuvers. The second I could talk, I would learn tactical callouts, once I could hold things I'd be training in marksmanship. I know... some heroes... stumble into the business by accident... some deal with it during puberty... but I was among those really born into it. It was all games to me back then. Games dad taught me and my older brother. Good guys, bad guys. Cops and robbers. Helped that I mostly used stun grenades and rubber bullets against mostly lowly street thugs."

Shauna paused there again to take a few deep breaths. "The second I could generate laser beams from my eyes, things really got amped up. I could go with my family on fights against super powered enemies now. We started becoming famous. Doing good... at least, that's what dad used to always say. I was about ten... twelve... when Tijuana happened, and we got involved in one of the major cartels. It was so much bigger than a twelve year old could understand. There were so many guns, so many men. My mother was actually occupied by like... thirty or so metas the cartel had to hire to keep her away, so we had to attack the mansion ourselves."

Shauna looked at her glass it started glowing, then slowly melting in a slow, circular pattern. "Me, my brother and my dad were trapped upstairs with the cartel's family. The drug lord said he had every man drugged up on experimental tech, with his whole mansion rigged with bombs, wired to deadman switches. Dad couldn't disarm the devices in time... so... we started with the drug lord's wife. She was... a retired Brazilian model, but she was well taken care of. The Drug lord was the kind of guy who'd kill a disrespectful puta who mugged a poor man, but would never strike his wife, so she wasn't going to talk."

"Dad held her down to the table. Knowing that killing them was not enough to sway Salvatore, dad pointed at her skull. He knew I could see the parts he described. He home schooled me on anatomy at a young age. He said I could be a doctor some day..." Shauna began to tear up, having to discard the slagged glass she melted. The tone of the story necessitated another swing from the Jack bottle.

"... some day yeah. But right now he needed me for something else. So, not even paying attention to the wife's pleas, since she was a bad guy after all... I started laser drilling till I got to the right parts, then I cooked them inside her brain. Once that was over, next came his eldest daughter. She was wearing a pretty pink dress. I think it was her 18th birthday they were celebrating. I did the same thing. Because she'd also be a bad guy."

"Then finally Salvatore's youngest. A little boy, probably younger than me at the time. He didn't scream, he didn't fight. He just asked me what I was doing. Dad told me don't talk, just do it. He... he looked at his mom and sister, and asked me if it'd hurt. I said it wouldn't. So he just stood there and turned his head to me... that was when... that was when I realized that I was doing something really, really wrong. Salvatore looked like one of the innocent people we were supposed to be helping. He didn't look like a bad guy at all that day. That day, a little girl who could shoot lasers out of her eyes, turned his entire family into brain dead zombies. His family stood there in a line, quiet, absent. The fight was over... and then... and then... that was just the beginning." Shauna fell into a long silence after sharing Tijuana.

A long silence Shauna eventually found her own presence of mind to break. "So uh... Are your parents around? If they are, how are they taking you being metahuman... and if not... sorry. "

By the end of the story, Annie's eyes were wide. So much voilence, and...gore....this lady had obvoiusly been through a lot.  "Wow...sorry to hear that, Ms. Masters. So much for a nice and friendly conversation. And to top it all off, she was asking about her own past. Lovely.

Annie shifted in her seat. Well, um...it is the latter. They're...gone. From what I know, they...tried to hide my powers. Not because they were ashamed, but..for something else. They made some deal with the lab they worked for. Long story short, I was part of that deal. Some guys with guns burst into our house one day, and...well, that was it. I spent the rest of my life up until just recently living in a lab."

Annie sighed. After that last one, she didn't know how to follow up. "So...what happened after...you know."

"Well... Giving credit where it's due, your parents tried to give you something else. Something better probably than what any lab intended." Shauna said, patting Firefly on the shoulder. Somehow the conversation was now close enough that Shauna was seated beside her.

"So you want me to continue. Well. That was when... Laser Ladette retired as a child hero, having been mocked as Lobotomy Lass. Mom and dad got into a serious fight, though when your wife is Sun Queen there's really no arguing or hitting that can get involved. Sun Queen left the earth the day I graduated High School, and from then on I got into some bad crowds as mercenary and tomb raider, Black Tigress. Think I ran a dozen jobs around London alone." Shauna said rather jokingly, now telling of her criminal history as the mercenary Black Tigress, an infamous, competent henchman to supervillains and criminal figures.

"I was up in Europe, East Asia and Africa running and gunning away from my powers, learning how things were so different in the outside world... but a world full of metahumans meant more than a few friends and close calls meant people find out. Taught people how to kill metahumans too, then one day I knew I was never getting away from the death. I stopped, went to school and used my smarts where I hoped they would count- medicine. Death was easy, but saving life was hard, and I finally found something I could get busy with. I passed through London again as an intern and later a resident, treating some of the very people I'd fought and lived. I realized... I realized... people... people just... divide themselves you know... with labels... and ideas... criminals... villains... heroes... good guys... moral guardians... nationalities... religion... gay... straight... deep down everyone just wants to be alive and happy." Shauna paused with her story to drink. She was really being flexible with the one drink per answer rule.

"Once I finished... I knew... I knew being a hero was something... something for me... but I had to find my own reasons... to be myself... Ironic I know since now I call myself Sun Queen."

"So uh... ever killed anybody, kid? Not by accident, but revenge or real cold hearted murder?"

Annie was comforted by Ms. Masters for a breif second, then she asked the next question. Annie looked at the ground. Now this was getting dark.

However, she slowly nodded. "One of my...training exercises, they had me do..." Annie closed her eyes, before opening them again. "There was a girl. She...I don't know, tried to escape, or...something. She...was my target practice for that day. They told me to kill her. No mercy. She sighed. It's....burnt into my mind. Three needles. Two in the chest, one in the neck. Enough poison to take down an elephant. She just...collapsed onto the floor, foaming at the mouth. She died with her eyes open. The worst part was...I didn't feel bad. My mind at that point was just...survival. If I didn't kill that girl, they would have me killed instead..." Annie looked up. "Other than that, there have been some here and there. I mean, I'm sure I at least killed a couple people when I escaped."

If there was any point in Annie's life where she considered drinking alcohol, it would be right here. It certainly seemed to be working for Ms. Masters. She almost made the next question to ask for a drink. But no. Annie didn't resort to the lesser evil.

"If you could go back...just go back in time to change one thing in your life, what would it be?"

"Well... that's neither revenge nor murder, but plain self preservation. I shouldn't judge, but I just feel killing to survive is as natural as a lion eating a gazelle. It was just simply you or her. You or them. No, when you have the opportunity, the choice not to kill, but still choose to kill... that's when it gets hard. I That's what I think anyway. Nobody really knows what to say when you're forced into the deed." Shauna gave her two cents worth of opinion on Firefly's situation. She keeps the drinks to herself.

She downs another shot. "Just... Tijuana. Though honestly, I've learned fixating on your past changes nothing... and changing your past means changing who you are now, changing what you've learned, changing who you've grown into. But sometimes when you're all alone yeah... you can just sit there wishing it didn't happen." Shauna went to get herself a new glass before she ended up drinking both bottles.

"Hmmm. Question... question four...five... I think..." Shauna tried to think of something to lighten the mood. "If you were... a flavor of ice cream, what would you be?" She blurted out.