"So what do you think I should do with all these?" Taylor asked, watching her father flip through the dossiers she'd absconded with. He was wearing a pair of nitrile gloves she'd bought a package of at a convenience store near the restaurant they'd been to earlier, on the way to the taxi back to the hotel. His face was a complex mix of emotions centering around a sort of fury she'd seldom seen before.
Like him, her temper was very hard to ignite, but like him, it burned deep and cold when someone managed that. Sophia had, and Taylor was still very unhappy about the girl, but as she was no longer her problem the brunette would leave her to the PRT. Emily Piggot was, if anything, more furious about that little fucker than she was, which was impressive.
Her dad though… this anger was new and intense. He was not in any way a happy person right now. For reasons she was entirely in agreement with, really. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to dig up literally years of his private life, her mom's, and in fact hers, to put in the twenty or so pages of documentation, for reasons she wasn't yet sure of but was determined to find out. And the documents on Kyle and the others was at least as detailed. Some of them were even thicker too.
"Should I get it to the FBI?" she added, sitting in one of the chairs the hotel room came equipped with, near a small desk next to a window giving a fairly nice view of LA with the Pacific ocean in the distance. Below was the outdoor pool which was surrounded by people enjoying the warm night, quite a few degrees hotter than at home even though the sun had set hours ago. "I can do that pretty easily. Send it from here via courier to New York, for example, intercept it there, and leave it somewhere they can find after letting them know about it."
"You're becoming quite the accomplished secret agent, Taylor," he replied with a quirk of his mouth, still reading. "A strange hobby but it does seem to have borne fruit."
She giggled as he turned the page, scanning it to the bottom, then slowly closing the folder and putting it on top of the stack of them on the desk. "Jesus fucking Christ. Who the hell is behind this? Half my life is in there! Things I'd forgotten about. Kyle's one is even worse. I can only guess at how accurate the rest are, but from what I can see they're horrifically complete. It's like the goddamn CIA were watching us for the last decade or more…." He stared at the pile of folders, then shook his head, turning to her with a sigh.
"Where on earth did those two fuckwits get this? And why were they carrying it around with them, even? What was their plan?"
"I have no idea on any of those yet, and neither does the FBI, although they're really curious about it," she replied with a small shrug. "Both those guys aren't saying much at the moment, but the Denver FBI people aren't giving up."
"While I think about it, can I point out that the fact that you're watching Brockton Bay, Denver, Boston, New York, and half of LA by now I'd guess, all at the same time, is just a touch worrying?" he remarked, inspecting her with mild concern. "Please don't strain yourself or whatever it would be for this insanely ridiculous ability you seem to have. It's not worth it."
"Don't worry, Dad, it honestly isn't a strain," she replied with a smile. "I'm nowhere near my limits yet. I'm not sure if I even have limits in that respect. Certainly haven't seen any signs of it so far. The range issue seems to be completely irrelevant too. I kind of half-expected that but it's nice to have it confirmed."
He gazed at her then chuckled quietly. "You have the most overpowered power I've ever heard of in many ways."
"It seems to agree and is nearly as confused as you are about it," she informed him, grinning.
"Which may be the weirdest part of the whole thing…" He shook his head again.
"That aside, even if it was a strain, protecting you and everyone else would be worth it," she commented a moment later. "Especially you. I won't let anyone harm you."
Getting up he moved to kneel next to her chair and put his hand on her shoulder. "Thank you, Taylor. I genuinely appreciate the thought, and I love you too. I just worry you might take on too much all at once. And this latest thing… It worries me in different ways."
She leaned sideways and hugged him. "Me too. Someone is doing something bad, I can feel it, even if I don't know who yet."
After a moment, he stood and started taking the gloves off. "As far as your question goes… I'm not sure. It's evidence they might need for their case against whoever is behind this, but on the other hand I understand why you took it. There are things in there I really wouldn't want the authorities getting hold of, not so much because any of it is particularly bad or anything, but because I don't actually trust them all that much. There's some awfully personal information in those documents and if it fell into the wrong hands…" He paused, then added wryly, "Other wrong hands, I guess."
"Should I destroy it then? I can do that easily too."
He stared at the documents for some time, thinking. "I don't know. It's a hard problem to solve quickly. We certainly don't want to have it on us on the plane back, in case someone searches the luggage and finds it. There would be difficult to answer questions that could only end up causing trouble. Same goes for showing it to Kyle and the others. We wouldn't have any good explanation for where it came from or how you got hold of it. Sending it to the FBI is… one possibility, yes, but like I said it's not necessarily one I like. But if you get rid of it, and it turns out later to have been something critical…"
"Take photos of everything, store those somewhere safe, and destroy the originals?" she suggested slowly.
"Possible, but then if they did need the original documents to make a case, that could screw things up too. Damn. Tricky…" He rubbed his chin for a moment. "OK. Can you hide them somewhere no one will find them easily for now? Can your little friends arrange that?"
"Yeah, that's not hard," she replied, smiling. "I've found lots of places in the hotel no human can access without dismantling half the building but I can get at."
"Good. Creepy, but good." He smiled back as she giggled. "Shove them under the elevator or something for now and let me sleep on it. We don't want them in the rooms just in case either the cleaning staff are a little light fingered, or whoever is behind this has other people lurking around. You never know. Even a random thief taking them could cause a lot of trouble. It might be that a decent solution is to photograph all the pages then send the originals back home for safekeeping. If they were needed, we'd have access, and if not they could be disposed of. But there might be a better solution so let's not rush into things."
"OK. It won't take all that long to take photos of all the pages though, so I think I should do that tonight anyway, then get them onto a USB stick. I don't want them on my laptop because it's a security risk."
"Fine, that's reasonable. Don't stay up all night doing that though."
"There's only about two hundred pages, so it'll only take an hour or so and it's not that late yet. I don't need that much sleep."
"The benefits of being young and foolish," he smiled. "And an eldritch horror."
"Yeah. It's great." She grinned at him even as a glow-spider carefully put all the documents back into the plastic bag she'd been storing them in, one from the airport gift shop. "Hey… maybe I should let Lisa look at them. She might find out something."
"Your PI friend?" He thought about it. "Can you trust her, though? Properly trust her? You did say she was something of a criminal the first time you met her."
"Not willingly, and she's kept the secrets she figured out then, but you're right, I don't know her well enough yet. I think I can trust her, but…" Taylor sighed. "I'd like to believe I could. Still not sure about telling her anything more about me, though, and I guess those documents give a lot of clues away to someone like her."
"Most likely," he agreed. "Let's hold off on that for now. I need some sleep, it's been a very long day, and even being a young foolish eldritch horror you do too." His smile was fond, making her return it. "We've got all day tomorrow to think about it, although I need to talk to a lot of people too so we can get our plans hammered out before the conference. I expect you can find something to keep you busy while that's going on?"
"Sure, LA is interesting and there's all sorts of stuff around here I want to look at," she replied cheerfully. "I'm looking at some of it right now, of course."
"Of course." He gave her a narrow-eyed look. "I hope you aren't looking at any Oscar statues, despite what Kurt might have said…"
Taylor grinned at him, then retrieved the bag from her glow-spider, which waved at her dad before zipping through the connecting door between their rooms, following it a moment later. "Night, Dad."
A slight sigh followed her into her room, along with a, "Good night, Taylor. Please don't do anything too extreme? For me?"
"No problem, dad," she laughed, "nothing too extreme. I promise." Waving as she leaned back into his room, she closed the door.
An hour and a half later she'd had a shower, while photographing all the pages of documentation, and finding suitable routes to her chosen hidden space between floors of the hotel, as well as foiling a number of muggings, three attempted break-ins, a car theft, and several other small crimes back home. She was avoiding doing anything noticeable for the moment elsewhere out of an abundance of caution and mild paranoia about someone noticing a pattern and tracing it back to her and her dad's travels. Logically the chances of that happening were remote, but Thinkers were a thing, and there was no sense taking stupid chances. Even so, if anything serious happened, she didn't think she could just stand by and watch, but luckily right at the moment she hadn't encountered anything that would force her hand.
Lying in bed, the glow-spider happily lurking in a shallow cable access area about twenty feet above her with the bag of documents, she mulled over plans for the future after the experiences of the last day. It was clear someone was definitely up to something, and had been for a considerable time. The FBI were probably on the right track, and might well work out the truth given time. Lisa could undoubtedly speed that up a lot, so Taylor was going to think up a number of ways the other girl might help there and ask her tomorrow if she'd mind doing it. She suspected the blonde would be fine with it, as she seemed to like the PI stuff a lot and might well welcome something to get her started in her business. Taylor was fully intending to pay her for the work too when she got back, as her dad had always told her that a fair price for doing something you couldn't was important. Expecting people to use their talents for your benefit without a reasonable restitution wasn't only wrong, it was the whole reason that things like unions were so important. Because some people didn't appear to understand it was wrong.
Taylor had a pretty shrewd idea that those sort of people were the architects of quite a lot of the current strangeness she'd discovered. And likely been behind many, if not all, of the problems in Brockton Bay going back a lot of years. The ones that Calvert hadn't kicked off at least…
Possibly he'd even been involved with these same people? It was an interesting idea and one it might be worth asking Lisa to look into… She made a mental note to do that when the other girl was awake again, rather than lightly snoring in her bed as she was at the moment.
Lisa might be a little concerned if she knew that someone was watching her sleep, but Taylor wasn't really paying all that much attention to her as much as she was keeping a general lookout for problems in the vicinity. The vicinity being basically the city, of course. And she was doing the same for a lot of people, starting with her friends. Lisa particularly was potentially at risk if someone with ill intentions figured out she was a potent Thinker, proven nicely by what Coil had been up to. If that happened again, Taylor was determined that Lisa wouldn't have to go through the same experience. With any luck she'd never even know about it…
The potential kidnappers wouldn't get close enough to do more than scream for a moment, she thought with a sort of mildly amused grimness. Not in her city.
Not while 'Vespa' was on the case. The HOUS never slept.
Which wasn't quite true, she thought with a small grin, her eyes shut. Her human body did sleep, pretty much normally, but she'd learned a while back how to keep quite a lot of the rest of her awareness alert and looking for things out of place. It wasn't completely her in some senses but it was close enough that her full awareness could come to attention essentially immediately. A useful skill she'd been quite pleased to work out, and she was hoping that with practice she could develop further.
She also had to tell her dad about the WWM connection to the day all the trouble kicked off in Brockton Bay, before she was born. He might recognize one of the names Lisa had dug up, which could lead to some useful information. After a little thought she'd decided not to tell him tonight, since it had been a very long day and he was in a good mood after meeting his friends, having a really nice meal, and generally enjoying himself as had she. The oddity on the plane was bad enough, she didn't want to bring back memories he might end up finding disturbed his sleep right now. Tomorrow before breakfast would be a much better idea, giving him time to calm down if he found the names sparked things he didn't like. Which, she suspected, they would.
He hadn't been as high in the DWA back then as he was now, but he'd been deeply involved with it for over twenty years, and back in those days the union was bigger than it was now and had even more connections everywhere. Taylor felt it very likely that he'd know at least one of the aliases of this Charles Young character, who she had a decent suspicion might well be the root cause of an awful lot of problems their city had suffered from for all too long. Or at least the tool by which those problems had been started.
Making another mental note to see if Lisa could find out if the bastard was still around, because she rather wanted to have a word with him, she rolled over and went to sleep, at least with the most human body she had.
There were others. Lots and lots and lots of them.
Many of them watching other people around the hotel, and the nearby conference center, because various individuals were behaving in ways that seemed somewhat suspicious...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Staring out the window at the distant bay, the dark brown waves still running high days after the horrendous storm that had caused all sort of chaos around the city, Dean Stansfield pondered the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
He suspected the answer might be something between forty one and forty three, but wasn't sure. He'd never been very good with mathematics.
Beyond that, he was, yet again, finding himself confused as to why he could almost swear he could feel a very faint emotional echo that didn't correspond with any people around him. He'd been thinking that to himself for weeks now, but it was so faint he genuinely wasn't sure if he was simply imagining it or not. Right on the verge of perception was being generous, really. Around people, or even animals like dogs or cats, it was completely drowned out, but when he was alone like this in his bedroom, his parents at the other end of the house and three floors down, no neighbors anywhere close, he could feel it.
Or could he?
That was the really annoying part. He flat out couldn't tell if it was real or something entirely imaginary. Closing his eyes and concentrating, he yet again tried to focus on the sensation, but it was elusive at best and possibly non-existent at worst. Certainly it was impossible to localize beyond 'around him' which didn't help at all.
Turning in a circle he kept concentrating, even holding his breath while he did so to minimize disturbances. But it didn't help, any more than the other times he'd tried this. Whatever it was he was sensing, if he was sensing anything at all which he really wasn't sure of, it was absolutely everywhere. No direction to it, it was simply there, like the atmosphere itself. Above him, below him, all around him… If it was real he wasn't entirely certain he wanted to know what it actually was. And if it wasn't, he had zero idea why he kept thinking he was feeling it. The power-created synesthesia emotional output produced wasn't enormously strong at the best of times, of course, but it was clear. This very much wasn't, it was at best an incredibly faint shading to the world, far below the level of any person he'd ever encountered, or even the background output he got from a crowd in the distance. And unlike that he couldn't even point to where it was coming from, assuming it was coming from anywhere.
Sitting on his bed he wondered yet again if he should report it to Armsmaster or someone. The problem was that he had absolutely no proof at all, nothing he could point at, or even any description of what he might be sensing. He could hardly walk up to his nominal superior and say, "I keep thinking I'm feeling the entire city being quite pleased with life," or something like that. "No, sir, I have no evidence," was a sentence that seemed likely to follow fairly quickly. Along with, "Yes, I think I've been getting enough sleep." Or words to that effect.
Not something he was particularly keen on having happen. Especially since Dennis would end up teasing him for weeks over it…
Worse, the phantom sensation tended to wax and wane unpredictably. During the storm it had increased a tiny amount, changing to a sort of alien satisfaction if he had to put a name to it, and at other times he'd sensed, or might have sensed, or had deluded himself into thinking he sensed, confusion, enlightenment, shock, and pride. As best he could translate what probably wasn't really there into something he was familiar with.
The explanation would have to also convey that it wasn't a human emotion he was possibly maybe but probably not really feeling. He had no idea what, if anything, it was but he was sure it wasn't human. Assuming it existed.
The whole experience was puzzling, mildly worrying, and if he was honest with himself more than a little creepy. About the only positive aspect to it was that if it was really there, whatever was doing it seemed friendly. Again, he couldn't have told anyone why he felt that given a year to consider the problem, but that was the impression he got. Or didn't, depending on whether he was going slightly weird in the head or not.
Sighing, he got up again, feeling the sensation fade away as it tended to at times, until it vanished entirely. Or had never been there to begin with. "Fuck," he muttered, rubbing his cheek for a moment then deciding he needed a shave. "Maybe I'm not getting enough sleep. Too much arguing with Vicky or something…" Heading into his bathroom to get ready for school, he tried, mostly successfully, to put the whole idea that his mind might be going just a touch further into the realms of Parahuman bonkers than was good for him and grabbed his electric razor. Soon the buzzing of the thing in operation filled the room as he turned his mind to the upcoming geography test.
He wasn't looking forward to it. He sucked at geography worse than he did at math…
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
'Aha!' Taylor thought to herself, as she lay in bed with her eyes shut, the light of a pre-dawn LA leaking past the curtains and telling her the sun would soon make an appearance. The change in time zone meant that she felt it was well past time to get up by Brockton Bay terms, even though it was only just after half past six AM here. Her dad was still asleep in his own bed, light snoring indicating he was heading towards wakefulness, but she wasn't going to disturb him. It had been a long day yesterday and he probably needed the sleep, all things considered. She, these days, was much less dependent on it, four to six hours normally being more than enough. As there was no pressing need for either of them to leap out of bed and seize the day right at the moment, she was going to lie here and get on with things elsewhere via all her other selves.
One of which had just located some of the creatures she'd wanted to find, having expanded her awareness into a patch of land covered in scrubby bushes and small trees, some distance down a narrow canyon leading into the hills to the east. There was a narrow stream running down it, which produced at various points ponds of different sizes, none of them enormous but most rich with life. By the looks of it, the canyon sometimes suffered from huge volumes of water, presumably flash flooding during heavy rain, which was apparently a thing according to what she'd read about California. Dry most of the time, sometimes turning incredibly wet, and occasionally going to the other extreme and ending up like a remarkably flammable desert. Right at the moment it was dry but not in drought, so there was a lot of life around.
This area seemed to be pretty much never visited by people, the nearest road or inhabited area being at least a couple of miles away, probably because it was narrow, hard to access, and ended in a near-vertical cliff another mile or so further on. Not big enough to build in, or to attract any sort of real leisure activity, it was nearly virgin territory with hardly any signs of humans at all. Even close to a city as big and sprawling as LA there were lots of places like this, she knew, and had found too.
The thing she wanted from it though was something people in general would probably not even consider. In other words, samples of a number of arthropods that were thriving in the greenery and the water. Hidden down below the cliffs of the canyons, away from the dry and windy higher areas, this little linear oasis was full of bugs of all sorts, along with larger life. The largest of the ponds, only about twenty feet across at most and perhaps eighty long, was fairly deep at around ten feet in the middle, with a slow inflow at the uphill end and several trickles coming out at the downhill one. Almost covered by the branches of the trees growing around it in the walls of the canyon, there was only a narrow strip of visible sky above, dim light from the rising sun shining through the leaves and illuminating the water. Through the damp and warm crepuscular air many insects flitted this way and that, ranging from mosquitoes through larger flies, bees, wasps, quite a lot of small beetles, all the way up to dragonflies. Which were hunting pretty much everything else as they shot hither and yon at high speed, grabbing other insects out of the air midflight with a precision that was astounding.
Taylor wanted some of them.
A smile on her human lips, she monitored all the insects within the range of the crab-spider sitting a quarter mile from the pond, idly creating another one right at the far edge of its range and expanding her awareness still further east. She'd been doing this steadily if somewhat erratically as things caught her attention, not specifically aiming to completely blanket LA as she had done back home, but in the end covering rather a large chunk of the city and the surrounding area. The area near the hotel was of course fully enclosed, as she was damn sure not going to get caught by surprise while here, not with her dad at risk from either the people behind whatever the hell was going on with those guys on the plane, or just general random violence. LA was noted for being a place which had an even higher crime rate per capita than Brockton Bay did, and while the cape density was lower, the absolute number was considerably more as the city was so much larger. There were a lot of people in Los Angeles.
Back home many of these same dragonflies were available, and indeed she had quite a few of the larvae now, doing their thing in several of the terrariums in her room. But none of them would develop into adults for a couple of months now and while she was sure she could probably prod that along easily enough, she wanted to let them develop naturally for now. Here, though, as it was much warmer than in Brockton Bay even at this time of year, there were adults galore, of many species.
She examined a number of the ones she'd found, both inside and out, looking through their eyes and other senses as they went about their business and feeling how they worked. The insects were remarkable in a number of ways, for example their eyesight was incredible compared to most other types of insect in terms of acuity and resolution. Their reflexes were ridiculously good too, the mental processing speed combined with the huge field of view and, for an insect, very high resolution eyes, allowing them to track other insects, predict their flight path, plot an intercept course, and execute that interception within a fraction of a second. Normal human eyes would barely see the motion of a fly zipping across the pond, but to the hovering dragonflies it stood out like a flare.
And their flight abilities were nuts too. Dragonflies held the record for the fastest flying insects on the planet at something just under sixty miles an hour, the highest altitude at nearly four miles, one of the longest duration migration flights at more than three thousand seven hundred miles, could hover, fly sideways and backwards as easily as forwards, and generally were extremely impressive in the air. Of course she was going to add that to her library…
One species she'd wanted to lay hands on was Pantala flavescens, or wandering glider, the species with the widest global spread of any dragonfly. Large, strong, and fast, they existed on the east coast but here there were fully developed adults flitting about all over the place. Not as large as the ones from the fossil record, having a wingspan of a few inches rather than a yard or so, but…
She was fairly sure she could fix that.
A pair of the things left the pond and headed for her nearest crab-spider, merging with it ten or so seconds later. Pleased, she grabbed a few other species including a couple of specimens of Anax walsinghami, the giant darner, which was nearly twice the size of the wandering glider. A number of other insects she didn't have in the library including beetles, wasps, a couple of different bumblebees, and a few other interesting creatures joined the dragonflies. Very satisfied with her finds, she sat up in bed and yawned, before hopping out and padding into the bathroom to have a quick shower before breakfast.
While she was washing her hair, she suddenly smiled. "Ooh. I found one. Excellent…" Grinning, she inspected the species she'd located some distance outside Denver, where her awareness had spread southward in the hopes of this exact insect turning up. Pepsis grossa was one she'd thought might come in handy to have available for certain sorts of problem, especially after her power got through with it. And now she had one. Highly satisfied, she finished her shower, brushed her teeth, and headed into the adjoining room to talk to her dad about a few things he needed to know.
Back in Brockton Bay, one of her local avatars started experimenting with some of the new acquisitions, as there was no reason not to get some work done even while she was enjoying the trip. That was the beauty of multitasking and possibly-global reach after all!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Vicky yawned widely as she peered out at the morning light. It was a fine very early spring day, although there was a fairly decent sea mist over the city, reducing visibility to under a couple of hundred feet. But as a native of Brockton Bay, she could tell this would burn off by midday or so, and the afternoon would be brilliantly sunny. The bright spot representing the sun, dim enough to look at, told her the mist layer was at most a thousand feet thick, and above that it would be bright and likely very calm.
Checking her phone, she noted the time, then thought for a moment, looking back over her shoulder in the direction of her sister's room. It was just after ten in the morning and both of them had two free periods back to back first thing, so they'd decided not to bother going in until they had to. Amy mostly because she needed extra sleep due to working too hard at the hospital the day before, although Vicky had grumbled to her that she was supposed to be cutting back on her hours. And, in fairness, she had, but that didn't mean she didn't sometimes come over all workaholic and want to run around healing people until she fell over. Which had happened again last night, causing Vicky to have to come and almost physically grab her and take her home after one of the doctors she was on good terms with called her and told her that her sister was being weird again.
It was a strange urge that overtook the brunette Dallon on occasion, Vicky mused with a small and slightly sad smile. Their mother had not exactly helped with some of her opinions on powers, and Amy… Her sister was slowly undoing much of the damage, to give her credit, and Director Piggot's healing and all that came out of it had definitely helped that along, but it was, well, 'a work in progress' would be a good way to put it.
So Amy was deeply asleep, making odd little mumbling sounds Vicky could hear from here, which told her that the other girl wasn't going to be waking on her own in the next hour. Vicky herself had slept in, feeling very grateful for the opportunity, but at this point two hours after her normal rising time on a weekday she was pretty much fully awake.
Their mom was at work, and their dad had rather unusually gone to visit Aunt Sarah for some reason. Vicky was quite pleased about that, it showed that his new drugs seemed to be working fairly well, which was a relief. Not perfectly, he was nowhere near back to normal, but he had bursts of almost normality, and they were coming closer together and lasting longer. She was very pleased that Amy had talked to someone at the hospital a while ago and had his treatment reassessed. Hopefully it would continue to improve their dad's outlook on life.
But all this meant that she was currently alone in the house with a completely out of it Amy, and everyone else she might talk to was currently in school. Which left her at a loose end for the next hour and a bit, although breakfast would take up some of that.
She looked back out the window, thinking.
Then at the door to her room, and on the other side of the upstairs hallway, her sister's mostly closed door.
Eventually she shrugged. Breakfast could wait for a little while. She hadn't done any flying just for the hell of it for weeks since it had been too cold and damp, but the temperature right now up in the sun was probably not too bad. Why not have a little fun for an hour? She'd be back soon enough, could have a breakfast with Amy, then get both of them to school just in time for lunch and the afternoon session. Then it was the weekend and they had two whole days off, but who knew what the weather might be like then?
Well, possibly the weather people, but that wasn't important right now, she thought with a grin as she dived into her closet and rummaged around for a couple of minutes, emerging with a warm jacket she'd bought a while back for exactly this sort of thing. It wasn't a cape costume, it was a 'I'm having fun but it's a bit chilly' coat, along with a pair of thin but warm gloves and a neat woolen hat.
She wasn't going to look for criminals to thwart, she was going to go straight up and just have fun. What was the point of having powers if you couldn't enjoy them sometimes, right?
Nodding wisely to herself, as it was a good point, she got dressed, put on the jacket, gloves, and hat, then went quietly downstairs and eased the back door open. Stepping out onto the back porch she looked around as she adjusted her hat to make sure it wouldn't come off. The neighborhood was eerily quiet due to the fog, the traffic on the next street over which was a larger road than their quiet cul-de-sac sounding like it was much further away. There were even a couple of streetlights, apparently not entirely convinced it was day yet, still stubbornly glowing through the mist.
Making sure the door was shut behind her and locked, she walked out into the back yard, looked up, grinned, and shot up into the mist.
The world went completely white fifty yards off the ground, and she was surrounded by damp opaqueness for a few seconds as she rocketed upwards, then above her the mist brightened dramatically until a moment later she burst out into a brilliantly sunny day. Zooming skywards she ascended to a couple of thousand feet as shown on the watch-like device she had on her left wrist, a common accessory for the flying cape who wanted to know where they were. It had a GPS display on a small screen, along with barometric altimeter, inertial measurement, temperature, and humidity sensors, and a tiny transponder that let other flying people or aircraft know your position. This could be disabled if necessary for example during cape activities where it might be a liability. Of course villains were highly unlikely to comply with FAA laws any more than they did other ones, but as a safety precaution every flying cape in New Wave used the things. It made the PRT happier, and their own lives easier. Not to mention that during an actual battle or something like that it would give an IFF function, so she wouldn't get shot at by someone else on her side.
Which was precisely why it could be disabled, since wearing something telling a villain you were on the other side during some sort of altercation wasn't incredibly sensible...
Slowing to a hover she looked around, then slowly rotated in complete circle. The view was absolutely stunning in her opinion. Below her the world was hidden under a nearly flat layer of ground-hugging cloud, the air so still there was no movement at all in it. Off to the west and north the hills eventually broke through it, but before they did that, the mist followed the contour of the land for some miles, rising and falling in a way that so accurately mirrored the surface beneath that she could work out where specific places were just from the phantom topography. The blonde had rarely seen such a perfect example of this sort of weather phenomenon and was wondering if she should go back and get Amy to see it too.
Deciding after a few seconds that her sister needed the sleep more, she carefully pulled out her phone and started recording video, turning slowly to scan the entire view. While she did that she was thinking that she needed to get some sort of good action camera and a head strap or something, like some capes she'd seen used, and a lot of extreme outdoor athletes too. It would be cool to record this sort of thing while she was flying, but it wasn't practical to hold her phone up the entire time. Partly because she might drop it, and it was an expensive one, but mostly because if her mom found out she'd get a lecture about phone use while flying.
Again…
Facing towards the center of the city, she examined the way she could even work out where the larger buildings were. The mist was lifting above them into a near mirror of the structures underneath, a sight she'd only seen twice before. Vicky had looked it up as she was curious what was making it happen, and found out that above something giving off enough heat, the rising air would pull the exact right sort of fog upwards, sometimes for thousands of feet. The Medhall tower was obvious, and she knew from flying over it that it emitted a lot of heat from all the air conditioning equipment on the roof, which ran all year around. She presumed due to having to keep their research facilities and so on at a constant temperature, among other reasons.
Other buildings were clearly locatable via the same mechanism, and she could even see where some of the roads had to be, probably from rising heat from the vehicles on them. Smiling at the sight which was incredible, she took a number of photos, then more video.
Up here she could barely hear the sound of the city. It was peaceful in a way you never really got at ground level, except during a heavy snowfall, where all the sound got completely absorbed. And while she was grateful she'd put the jacket and gloves on, it wasn't really cold, it was more accurately described as bracingly chilly.
Vicky was abruptly very pleased to have the power she had. How many people ever got to see this sort of thing without an aircraft window between them and the world?
Flight really was the best super power, she thought as she put her phone away in her jacket inside pocket and made sure it was zipped up, before pulling the larger zipper of her coat up to her chin. Tipping over into a horizontal position, she grinned widely and accelerated hard, her left wrist in a position where she could see the instrument on it clearly. It showed she was hitting over one and a half g acceleration and very quickly she was near her top speed of just over two hundred miles an hour.
It was mildly annoying to her that she couldn't go faster, but this was still cool as hell. And something she never got the chance to do most of the time, particularly when she was carrying someone. Her force field protected her not them, and hardly anyone liked a two hundred mile an hour blast of wind in the face…
Laughing to herself, she shot through the mist towers mirroring the city below, puncturing the Medhall one in a brief flicker of obscured vision and a flash of chill, then she was out in sunlight again. Arcing around the next tower of water vapor, she leaned over into a roll, pulling over four g around the turn, before straightening out and climbing, heading out over the bay at three thousand feet. She avoided the hump in the mist that represented the Rig as the Protectorate got a little funny about people encroaching on their airspace, but she was well aware of the zone to go around, and her beacon was on so they'd know who it was and where she was. Hopefully that would stop them complaining later.
Heading out to sea, she kept an eye on her speed, pushing as hard as she could to see if she could beat her previous best. The velocity crept up slowly, eventually reaching just over two hundred and forty miles an hour. By the time she concluded that she didn't have any more in the tanks, she was nearly three miles off the coast, and below her the mist was fading, leaving gaps through which she could see dark water. It was close to flat calm down there, the ocean almost mirror-like, something she'd hardly ever seen before. When she reached a large open spot she slowed down, hovered, and started taking photos again.
This was rare enough she wanted to remember it later.
When she'd taken another full rotation video, she smiled and put her phone away once more. Looking up she could see a contrail far above her, a commercial jet heading out over the Atlantic, probably out of JFK from the direction it was coming. Idly wondering where it was going, she turned around, orientated herself, took a deep breath, and boosted as hard as she could manage.
'Three g! New record!' she thought with glee as she leveled off again a few seconds later. 'I wonder if I practice enough I can get faster? Worth a try for sure.'
Zooming along at twenty five hundred feet, she scanned the horizon, checking for any aircraft in the way. In theory her wrist flight information unit would pick up the beacons from other aircraft or her equivalent in the vicinity, on a flight path that she might intersect, but it was still good practice to at least watch where you were going. She could take it if she flew into a PRT aircraft. The aircraft, not so much, and they'd get very upset if she punched a hole in a five million dollar machine.
Which would pale into insignificance compared to what her mom would do, of course.
As she passed over the mouth of the bay, flying right down the middle of it with the ghostly replica of the city off her right shoulder, she suddenly spotted something glittering break through the clouds about a mile away. It was climbing fast, going from the thousand or so feet of the top of the mist to higher than her within a few seconds. Even faster than she could manage it.
Staring, she altered course slightly, aiming roughly at whatever it was. The somewhat metallic effect of the sun on it, reflecting in a myriad of colors ranging from violet to green, suggested a machine of some sort, but she didn't recognize it at all. Tinker-tech, possibly? Maybe something of Armsmaster's? Or Dragon's, more likely, she thought. The Canadian Tinker was well known to be a close friend of their local master of arms, and was reputed to often collaborate on designs with him.
Vicky wasn't entirely sure what the older woman saw in Armsmaster. He was a decent enough guy, sure, but his attitude to everyone was brusque at best most of the time. Amy had told her that in her opinion he was actually nowhere near as obtuse as he came across sometimes, but he didn't seem to see the point in small talk. Not the most social person in existence, she thought with an inner grin.
The flying whatever it was seemed to have leveled off about a thousand feet higher than her and was now moving at fairly high speed at an angle to her course, roughly towards the other side of the bay, having emerged from the mist somewhere up-bay of the docks area proper. Way out in the completely abandoned part of the city, where no one lived or really even bothered to go these days. It was mostly wilderness now, the trees having been slowly reclaiming the old industrial areas since well before the riots of the mid nineties, from what her dad had told her a long time back. The city had been on the downward slope since before Parahumans arrived on the scene, and it had only accelerated after that. The riots and the ship sinkings had been the final nail in the coffin. Although from what she'd heard since the storm, there was a possibility that the decline might actually halt now, and barely a chance it might reverse.
Which would be good, she presumed, although it was hardly her area of expertise.
In any case, she estimated the point this thing had popped out of the mist was approximately three miles towards the head of the bay from the dock workers association location, and it had been moving towards the sea when it appeared, so it likely had come from even further inland than that based on the slope of its climb-out. She still couldn't quite identify it. Squinting in the bright sun, she could see what seemed to be a faint shimmer on either side of whatever it was, and her best guess at this range was it was roughly six feet long and perhaps a foot or so wide, with a rounded front end from what she could see. Something about the shape was vaguely familiar, but she couldn't quite place it, which was annoying her.
It had to be Tinker-tech. What else could fly like that and look like that?
Now very curious indeed, and slightly worried, since she wasn't sure at this point that it was something to do with either Armsmaster or Dragon, which probably meant it was either Leet's work, a possibility that could be somewhat dangerous, or some unknown Tinker's effort. Which might be even worse than Leet being behind it, because while the minor villain was kind of an idiot, he and his friend weren't actually evil. In her opinion at least. Deeply, deeply irritating, but they did appear to be fairly careful not to cause too much damage, and as far as she knew had never seriously injured anyone.
It wouldn't stop her arresting either of them given the chance, but they were nothing remotely approaching the level of threat of the ABB, or the E88. Or even, frankly, the Merchants some of the time…
Mindful that if this was indeed a Leet Production there was a non-zero chance of catastrophic self disassembly, which might prove unwise to be close to, she still kept following it, getting slowly closer. Just very cautiously. Checking her speed she saw she was doing about one sixty, and she was only barely closing on the thing, so it was probably cruising along at around a hundred and fifty miles an hour. Not exactly super fast but a decent speed.
Puzzled and wracking her mind for just why this thing seemed somehow familiar even though she was certain she'd never seen it before or anything like it, she accelerated a little to catch up faster. Her rate of closing increased, and after ten or fifteen seconds she was under a quarter of a mile from it.
A second later she flinched as the damn thing pulled an impossible near-right-angle turn to port, changing direction at a rate that was utterly absurd. She'd never seen any flying machine or cape do a turn that hard at that speed. The object shot across her flight path in a flash of metallic color and headed away from her at right angles to her current direction.
"Oh, no you don't," she muttered, assuming it had spotted her and was taking evasive action. Banking sharply she turned to follow it, although the tightest turn she could make was nowhere near what it had done. Even so her wrist unit was telling her she was pulling nearly five g, which was enough to make her head feel a little weird even though her flight power radically improved her ability to handle g forces. A moment later she was trailing the thing from directly astern, still far enough away that she couldn't clearly make out any details.
After a few seconds, she realized it was pulling slowly away from her as it headed up the coast, as they'd gone past the entrance to the bay again during her pursuit. Gritting her teeth she accelerated too, first matching its speed, then slightly exceeding it. The flying object started to grow larger as she overhauled it bit by bit.
Just as she was thinking she was going to catch up, a few hundred yards behind it, the thing flicked into a vertical climb in mere feet by the looks of it, the turn even sharper than the previous one. She gaped as it whizzed straight up, almost all forward speed lost in a second or two in what had to be a far higher-g maneuver than anything she could possibly manage. By the time she'd slowed enough to follow, it was back to at least a couple of thousand feet away, this time straight up. Glaring at it she followed, pouring on the speed. This was personal now. The thing was playing with her.
Whooshing upwards at over two hundred miles an hour she started closing again. A glance at her altimeter showed her approaching five thousand feet, the mystery machine a thousand feet or so higher. She pushed even harder, reaching her top speed and closing rapidly on the thing.
Which suddenly stopped dead.
"Ahh!" she screamed as she shot past the abruptly stationary whatever-it-was so fast it was just a blur, completely taken aback. Nothing moved like that! What the hell was it, a fucking UFO? It certainly wasn't Legend who was about the only Parahuman she could think of that could come close to pulling this sort of thing.
Slamming on the brakes as hard as she could, she nearly stopped in the air, flipped end for end, and headed back down. Her quarry was now diving vertically at least as fast as she was, descending at several thousand feet per minute. Feeling rather ticked at it, her curiosity had now been joined with a certain amount of grim intention to find out what the fuck it was she was chasing.
Both of them plummeted downwards, until just above the clouds the mystery object did another impossible right angle course change, leveling off at about twelve hundred feet and heading directly towards the phantom towers of mist above the core of the city. She followed in a long arc, aiming for an intercept course. The thing seemed to have slowed slightly, and she was definitely gaining on it now, while being five hundred or so feet higher.
Her target started weaving in and out of the cloud protrusions with an ease that was highly impressive and rather startling, Vicky following and steadily catching up. It took a sharp turn around the formation over the Medhall tower, the blonde following, and vanished around the back of it, the glittering surface reflecting color back at her as it went into the shadows and vanished. Pulling into a hard turn, she yipped as there was a blur overhead and jinked sideways, although by the time she'd reacted it was already gone. Slamming the brakes on she spun around, staring back the way she'd come to see the damn thing retrace its course, having apparently done a one eighty much faster than she could have achieved the same thing.
By now certain the fucker was toying with her she growled and followed.
Twice more the flying object managed to pull off a sudden course change before she could react, never quite letting her get close enough to see it clearly, except when it was going past so quickly it was just a flash of motion. It seemed to have a positive gift for approaching from a direction she wasn't expecting. She was starting to feel rather aggrieved in some ways and kind of amused in others, since this was completely ridiculous. She was sure whatever it was had intelligence behind it, it wasn't some simple drone or something like that. A remotely piloted machine, probably, but why the damn pilot was just playing around she wasn't sure.
Finally she thought hard, then as it went behind another of the cloud formations, estimated the course and speed, made an educated guess at position, and simply shot right through the middle of the mist. Bursting out the other side she halted, looking wildly around for her quarry.
Which was nowhere in sight.
"Shit!" she shouted, spinning around again. Not a trace of the damn thing anywhere. Visibility above the mist was essentially unlimited all the way to the horizon, and she could see nothing but that contrail way off over the ocean, a tiny bright spot at the head moving slowly eastward, some birds flying around near the bay, what was probably a light aircraft way off to the west heading away from her, that fucking enormous dragonfly hovering about thirty feet above her head, more birds off to…
"HOLY FUCK!"
Vicky violently flinched as she snapped her eyes upwards again, so hard she felt her hat shift on her head. She gaped at the absolutely massive insect that was looking at her from far too close. The blur of two pairs of wings beating fast enough to emit a low hum was easily visible now, and she abruptly realized why the shape had looked so familiar; she'd seen something looking exactly like this but much, much smaller flying around over the back yard many times in summers past.
This thing was as big as she was.
And it was looking right at her.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of glittering facets in the head-sized compound eyes gave a dizzyingly pretty effect, the end result both amazing to look at and deeply disconcerting.
"Hi!" the thing said cheerfully, waving at her with one leg. The voice was weird but completely comprehensible, she thought numbly. "You fly well for a human."
"Um…" Vicky closed her eyes and shook her head. Hard.
Opening her eyes she looked again. Nope, still there. Fuck-off big dragonfly that talks. What the hell.
"What the hell," she repeated, out loud this time.
"Are you all right?" it asked, moving a little closer as it descended to her altitude. Her eyes followed it down until it was twenty feet from her, level with her face.
"Um… Yeah?"
"Oh, good, I was getting a little worried. Hey, do you know what time it is?"
She looked at her wrist. "Ten forty seven. AM."
"Thanks. I'd better get back. Nice meeting you. We'll have to have a proper race one day." The thing waved again with one leg then rotated in place, and zoomed off towards the bay. She stared after it, blinking.
"Hey!" she screamed. "Get back here!"
"Sorry, I'm late," a faint voice came back a moment later.
"Late?" she echoed. "Late for what?" Utterly confused she gaped after it, then narrowed her eyes and roared off in pursuit.
Pushing herself to the limit she closed the gap, the dragonfly happily zipping along at over two hundred miles an hour. As she came alongside, the head shifted slightly towards her, causing her to recall how the normal sized insects could turn their heads in a way that always made her think they were watching her a lot more intelligently than you'd expect from a bug. This one was clearly actually smart, smart enough to talk at least. Unless it was some sort of biomechanical robot, of course, but up close it definitely looked like a living insect. She wondered suddenly if it was somehow connected to the HOUS.
It had to be. Somehow.
"Hi again," the dragonfly said cheerily. "We seem to be going in the same direction. That's nice."
"What the hell are you?" she demanded.
"Me? Just a giant dragonfly. Can't you tell?"
She got the distinct impression it was grinning at her despite the complete lack of anything even remotely close to a human expression.
"Where did you come from?" she queried, quite loudly.
"Oh, around." It waved the two front legs rather vaguely at the whole landscape beneath them. "Lots of places. Look, I'd love to chat, but I really have to go, so I'll see you around. Later."
Then it accelerated like it had afterburners, the hum from its wings becoming a roar. As if it had been kicked in the ass by Leviathan, the fucking insect shot forward at a far higher rate than any speed she could possibly match, dwindling into the distance at an absolutely ridiculous velocity. Mouth open, Vicky watched as it vanished into the distance, the reflections from it visible long after the bug itself had disappeared from sight. Moments later even that vanished, although she got the vague impression it had been heading down, so it was probably under the mist now.
There was not a hope of catching up or locating it, she thought as she slowed to a near halt, still staring after the thing.
"What just happened?" she asked the sky.
Then nearly crapped herself as a seagull squawked loudly at her from a few dozen yards away, Vicky whipping her head around to see a flock of the birds flying past and giving her a dirty look for being in their sky.
"Oh, shut up, you shitehawks," she snarled. Looking back up the bay towards where the impossibly large insect had vanished, she wondered what it was and where it came from. Then she remembered her phone and her face fell, before she started swearing, turned, and headed home.
No one was ever going to believe her without evidence, she'd had a camera in her pocket the entire time, and had forgotten to take any photos!
Muttering to herself she flew onwards, not sure if she should even bother mentioning the whole thing.
At least it was a nice day up here, so there was that.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Taylor's dad peered at her as she giggled furiously in the elevator down, only the two of them in it. They were going to meet the others for breakfast, then go out and wander around to inspect LA a little.
"I take it that you just happened to some poor soul?" he queried mildly, making her laugh even harder, nodding.
She'd have to wait until they were in private to explain, but she was highly pleased with her distant experiments with giant dragonflies.
And she owed Vicky a little gift or something to make up for the whole experience, even if the other girl wouldn't know what it was for.
It was a good start to the day, in her view.
