WHO: Erica & Hermes WHEN: Summer, 1982 WHERE: Detroit WHAT: Cranky thugs trying to get payback.
Erica had learned many things at the side of her father, and one of those lessons was that Hermes was very good at pissing people off. He was very good at slipping out of trouble as well, which meant the two of them were usually long gone when (foolish) ideas of revenge came up, but that didn't mean Hermes hadn't left a vast number of angry people behind him across the continental United States. It was just a fact of life and Erica knew that.
At sixteen she had done and seen more than most people her age could even imagine. She moved in and out of school systems as easily and rapidly as Hermes moved them between cities for new jobs, and she picked up the skills she needed when they were needed. Fitting in with people her own age was one of those skills, and she knew how to lie and manipulate classmates in a way that made daddy proud. Schools she attended always seemed to have sudden rises in unexplained thefts and one school that treated her badly found itself half burned down, Erica and Hermes making their quiet exit from town with gasoline still on Erica's hands.
Like her father, Erica could talk her way out of almost anything. And if she couldn't talk her way out then she could cheat or steal or break her way out. She was his blood and she has spent every year of her life learning anything and everything he would teach her. She was only human, but that touch of godhood and undivided attention had served her well.
But sometimes there were things she couldn't criminal her way out of. Sometimes there were groups of angry men with guns looking for payback and realising that the teenage girl (lover? sister? daughter? surely he must have had her young if it was that second one) important to the man who'd screwed them over was just the right thing to have a hold of.
Erica could talk fast but she couldn't do much about a group of very large men with very dangerous guns.
And so now, in the middle of a too hot summer, Erica sat on a metal chair in a locked room, her hair and clothes plastered to her skin. Her hands were in her lap, the handcuffs that they'd put on her having been picked not long after they'd left her alone in the room. 'Room' was a generous way to put it. It was more of a storage closet. In the darkness she'd examined the lock on the door by touch and it seemed pretty basic, but the problem lay on the other side of that door. She could hear them talking and moving around and busting out of her confines just meant facing a room of angry (and surprised) armed thugs. Erica wasn't exactly built for that. She was nothing more than a teenage girl with a few extra skills, none of which involved martial arts or superpowers.
So she sat in her closet, considering her slim options and wondering how inglorious a death it would be to die of heatstroke.