Hero Force United Boxed Set 1
Page 35
A few times a year, she drove out here to the storage facility, which was way out in the middle of nowhere on the edge of the desert foothills. Each time she came out, she put the battery in and rode the bike around between the storage buildings. She always kept it in first gear and never went faster than 10-15mph, but it was enough to circulate everything through the system and keep things lubricated, especially the seals.
Doing this was never a chore for Kristy.
It was like visiting her Dad at the cemetery, but not as depressing. Cemeteries and graves felt dead to Kristy. Riding her dad’s Ninja made her feel like he was right over her shoulder keeping an eye on her. No matter how bad she ever needed money, she’d never once thought of selling the $50,000 bike, but she had considered taking it out on the road for a real ride from time to time. Dad would’ve loved to see her do that.
So far, she never had.
She was too scared of wrecking it.
And a little bit scared of all those horses.
Not anymore.
She was riding it today.
First she had to take it off the service stand and top off the tires with air using a foot pump. Then she put in a brand new battery. Attached a front headlight inside the front fairing, and a rear taillight in back, both from a kit. It took an hour to mount and connect the wiring to the electrical system. She didn’t bother with turn signals or side mirrors. But she did add a side stand so she could park the Ninja whenever she was out and about.
During the install, she figured out she could use her fingernails like screwdrivers because they were super strong like the rest of her.
That was handy.
She also added a little pouch on top of the gas tank for her smart phone. The pouch had a window so you could see and touch the phone screen. If she was driving all over everywhere, she’d need the map app to not get lost.
Finished, she looked everything over.
The front fender and fairing, gas tank, and the tail’d been white until yesterday. Now they had aggressive red and blue shapes arranged to leave gaps that created white striping. The overall effect matched her Lady Liberty costume. Yesterday, which’d been Monday, Kristy’d spent the whole entire day applying the decals. She would’ve rather had it professionally painted at a shop, but that would’ve take forever to get done right, and would’ve been super expensive. She couldn’t do it herself because she’d never painted on metal before. She knew you needed special airbrushes, paints, and clear coats, and she just didn’t have time to do all that.
Dad would be pissed if he saw what she’d done with the decals.
Laughing, he’d say something like, “What’d you do to it, Princess?”
“Made it better,” she’d smile.
“Yes you did,” he’d say and hug her to his side and kiss the top of her hair like he always did.
“Wait’ll you see me ride it, Daddy.”
“Do me proud, Princess,” he’d say, and forget all about the decals.
Now it was time to change into Lady Liberty.
She unzipped her hoodie and pushed off her yoga pants, revealing her Lady Liberty bodysuit. Kicked off her shoes and pulled on racing kneepads. Pulled on her red low-heeled riding boots. They weren’t racing boots, because a girl had to look good, but they were red riding boots made of leather. No red-riding hood jokes, please. These were motorcycle riding boots, not fairytale ones.
Next, she put on the red-white-and-blue Stars & Stripes full-face helmet she’d bought yesterday from Moto’s, who sold everything a sportbike diehard could possibly want.
Last, she tucked her ponytail up under the helmet and put on red leather gloves.
Rolled up the door, rolled the Ninja outside, and went for a ride.
Kristy took it easy at first. She hadn’t ridden for real in almost two years. Circling the Ninja around the storage facilities didn’t count. But you know what?
Super powers made everything way easier on the road.
Her senses were sharper.
Everything moved slower.
And the heavy bike seemed light.
Over the next two hours, she went from cruising casually on first surface streets, then freeways. The more confident she became, the more she pushed the limits. Somewhere along the 15 freeway, when the dark road was empty on a long straight, Kristy pushed it.
Hard.
Without rolling off the throttle or squeezing the clutch, Kristy toed the quickshifter down to second and cranked the throttle to pinned.
The Ninja exploded forward and the engine screamed like an angry warlord, threatening to throw Kristy off the back, pushing her butt into the hip huggers put at the back of the seat for this exact reason. With her super-strength and enhanced reaction time, Kristy didn’t really need them, but they allowed her to relax into the acceleration.
Exploding forward was barely an exaggeration.
Kristy’d never felt anything like it.
She smiled big inside her helmet.
Eff yeah.
Feel the effing speed!
Look at me go, Dad!
She toed her way up through the gears as the speedometer raced faster and faster.
Crouching down over the gas tank with her helmet tucked behind the windscreen, the road lines shot at her like white laser fire.
What few cars there were cruising along at 70mph stood still.
By the time she was in 6th gear, the speedometer was flickering in the high 230s.
She never made it to 250mph, probably because of the wind, which hammered against her helmet, shoulders, hands. And the meandering curves, which’d seemed straight and lazy at 70mph, but hard and sharp at 237mph.
It didn’t matter she never officially reached 250mph.
She was a missile.
—: o o o :—
Natalia Saito was driving home from her late-night waitressing job at the Goal Post, a sports bar in Escondido where she served cocktails. Her dusty old Subaru was heading north on Centre City Parkway toward San Marcos where her apartment was.
The tips had been shit tonight. It almost hadn’t been worth it for Natalia to go in. She couldn’t wait to get home and soak her feet. They were killing her. She needed to get better shoes.
It was 2:45am.
At this hour on a Tuesday night, the streets of Escondido were empty and the lights on the parkway were green as far as Natalia could see.
Out of nowhere, a loud motorcycle roared past her and cut in front of her. It started swerving all over the road, blocking the way.
“Move!” Natalia shouted.
The motorcycle didn’t.
“Move already!” Natalia groaned. “I wanna go home!”
Natalia tried to go around the motorcycle. She couldn’t.
It kept blocking her.
Eventually, the motorcycle slowed in the middle of the street until they were going like one mile an hour.
Natalia could see in her headlights it was a woman on the motorcycle. Not some guy trying to harass her. The woman wore blue and red tights with white stripes and she had a killer body. Much better than Natalia would ever have. Natalia also noticed the light ahead at the intersection for West Felicita Avenue was green. Annoyed, Natalia rolled her window down and yelled, “Can’t you see the light is green, you stupid bitch?! Go already!”
Still rolling along at one mile an hour, the woman on the motorcycle turned her helmet over her shoulder, flipped up the visor, and shouted, “Wait!”
“Why?! I wanna go! The light is green! Move already!”
The brake light on the motorcycle lit up red.
“God damn it!” Natalia barked as she slammed on the brakes of her Subaru to avoid hitting the little motorcycle. “I should’ve hit it,” she grumbled to herself after coming to a stop. “Dumb bitch.”
Just then, even though the light for Natalia was green, a big pickup truck came barreling across the parkway from left to right, going really fast.
“That truck didn’t even stop…” Natalia m
uttered to herself, realizing it would’ve hit her if she’d driven through the intersection just now. “She just saved me…”
The woman with model’s ass on the motorcycle waved goodbye to Natalia and her motorcycle engine growled into a scream as she bolted after the pickup truck.
—: o o o :—
Kristy flipped her visor down and pinned the Ninja’s throttle, taking off after the pickup truck and turning onto West Felicita Avenue to follow.
The speed limit here was 35mph.
The truck was going 58mph, according to the speedometer on the Ninja.
A block later, the road narrowed from two lanes in each direction to one and the speed limit dropped to 25mph. They were now in neighborhoods but the truck was still doing 50.
Kristy’s Disaster Vision had predicted that truck would’ve hit that woman in the Subaru and killed her if Kristy hadn’t stopped her from driving across the intersection. Thank goodness she’d stopped the accident. Kristy wasn’t yet sure if the truck was gonna hit anyone else, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
She shot forward and pulled up alongside it, a big red Chevy crew cab with a front end like an angry Autobot. No, a rolling Angerbot. It was brand new, huge, and loaded with options. A $65,000 truck easy.
Kristy flipped up her visor and shouted, “Slow down!”
The tinted window was closed and the driver didn’t hear or notice or care.
Kristy’s Ninja was hovering just to the left of the double yellow line as they ran a red light at South Juniper Street where the road changed to East 17th Street and started up a hill.
“You didn’t even slow down for that red!” Kristy groaned to herself.
The Angerbot didn’t argue.
Kristy paced beside it as it sped up the hill.
Cars were parked on both sides of the street with the telephone poles. Houses abounded. A lot of things to hit, but no people. That was a plus. But Kristy couldn’t see over the top of the hill. No way of knowing if someone was gonna crest the hill when she did and slam into her head-on.
Best to hug the double yellow, just in case.
She swerved closer to the Angerbot.
“SLOW DOWN!” she shouted. “YOU’RE GONNA KILL SOMEONE!”
Again, the Angerbot ignored her.
Too bad Kristy’s Dad’s Ninja didn’t have autopilot like Lady Liberty’s comic book Ninjette. If it did, Kristy would’ve jumped from her bike to the bed of the Angerbot, busted in the back window, and screamed in the driver’s ear to stop his fucking truck. But, no comic book autopilot.
She had to figure this out from where she sat on the back of her dad’s beloved bike, which she most definitely didn’t wanna wreck. She’d never forgive herself if she did. Her dad’s ghost would haunt her forever and she’d totally deserve it.
“I SAID SLOW DOWN!” she shouted as she neared the crest of the hill.
The Angerbot lurched to the left and jumped the double-yellow.
Kristy swerved to avoid it—
—right into an oncoming car!
HOOOOONK!
Deadly headlights blinded her, but her enhanced reflexes handled it. When the Angerbot went back across the double-yellow just in time, Kristy was right beside it, hugging the truck’s door. Wind whipped into her as the oncoming car blasted past.
“ASSHOLE!” Kristy shouted at the Angerbot.
Still it ignored her.
At that point, Kristy Crawford’s infamous K-Cray temper kicked in. She squeezed the clutch lever with her left hand, released the throttle with her right, jammed her right hand in her left armpit, yanked it out of the glove, and stuffed the glove in the neck of her costume where it made a bulge above her boobs.
Coasting in neutral for even a few seconds had caused her to fall back.
No big whoop.
She twisted the throttle with her right hand while letting out the clutch and caught up with the truck two seconds later. She swerved toward the truck, reengaged the clutch, took her right hand off the throttle once again, and clawed a gash across the driver door. It was the sort of thing only someone with expert riding skills could manage. Super-powered reflexes made it even easier.
Kristy’s super-strong screwdriver nails peeled a squeal of paint and metal that curled off in thin slivery spirals.
The truck pulled ahead.
She twisted the throttle and caught up. Stood up on the pegs, considered punching out the driver’s window, but it was too high to get a good angle. She sat back down. What she could do was punch off the driver’s left mirror. This time, she goosed the throttle to jump ahead. When she clutched and faded back, she took a swing at the side mirror with her right fist. Hit it on the first try.
Crack!
The side mirror went flying into the night and skidded across the road into the darkness.
The Angerbot roared and lurched toward Kristy’s Ninja.
Her right hand already on the throttle, she leaned away and shot forward long before the Angerbot even came close. She crossed over the double-yellow to the far side of the road, braked until the Angerbot pulled ahead, then resumed following close behind, but to the side.
They continued up another hill.
Kristy noticed the houses getting progressively bigger and more expensive. All of them here were positioned behind a uniform and decorative community wall. On both sides of the mouths of each street entering the pre-planned community were fancy fountains beneath fancy signs on fancy walls, and the signs were lit up at night.
Renaissance Hills.
The city street signs all had names ending in Hills. This was the kind of snooty community crammed full of cookie-cutter McMansions that had annoying snooty neighbors with fake snooty smiles and fake snooty lives to go with their multi-million-dollar mortgages.
If the asshole in the truck was rich and driving like he owned the road, Kristy’d kill him the first chance she got.
They were approaching the fourth side street that entered fancy Renaissance Hills.
Verona Hills.
The Angerbot slowed to turn into it.
Kristy caught a fragment of a thought from inside the Angerbot.
—can’t take her to the house… Mom & Dad’ll kill me…—
It was the first clear thought she’d heard from the driver, but she knew it was him, could feel it.
Kristy scowled to herself.
Mom & Dad?
They sure hadn’t done a good job of raising their son Angerboy.
He was a menace.
The Angerbot didn’t turn onto McMansion Avenue. It straightened, the engine roared, and it tore down the main road.
Kristy followed, trying to formulate a plan to stop Angerboy and teach him the lessons Mommy and Daddy hadn’t, one that didn’t involve wrecking her dad’s Ninja.
Two blocks later, McMansion Town gave way to scattered meager houses on large lots. The slick suburb was transitioning to open farmland.
They neared a red light at San Pasqual Valley Road.
Kristy saw there was a car waiting at the light. Expecting the Angerbot to stop behind it, Kristy raced ahead, planning to stop her bike, put it on its side stand, and go confront the driver.
Instead of stopping, the Angerbot revved its engine and cut into the left lane, blew past her, and went around the waiting car and cut back to the right before plowing into the intersection.
SCREECH!
Someone crossing from left to right at San Pasqual, which was a 45mph two-lane country road, slammed on their brakes and laid down rubber to avoid the Angerbot, which bounced into the lane and sped off ahead of it.
“Asshole!” Kristy shouted for her own benefit and rocketed after the Angerbot.
For the next twenty minutes, she followed it. There was no way a V8 pickup truck could possibly hope to lose a Ninja H2R. With Kristy’s enhanced riding abilities, it was a joke. She stayed on its ass hoping the police would see at some point and stop Angerboy and his Angerbot for her.
They didn’t.
Thank goodness the roads in the San Pasqual Valley were nearly empty this late, and it was mostly irrigated farms this far out in the desert canyon anyway. If they weren’t in such a remote location, Angerbot probably would’ve killed someone by now.
When they hit a straight strip of road deep in the middle of the dark nowhere, the truck slammed on its brakes and stopped.
Kristy’d been following at a safe distance, so she slowed to a stop a hundred feet behind and waited. Took a moment to finally pull her right glove out of her costume and put it on while standing on the bike.
The Angerbot’s driver door popped open.
Angerboy jumped out.
Pop!
Pop!
Pop!
He was shooting at Kristy with a handgun!
What the eff?!
She ducked, kicked down the side stand, and jumped off the Ninja. The second she landed, she jumped again, aiming for Angerboy where he stood in the middle of the road. Kristy was still getting used to her strength. Her arms circled the air as she soared 40 feet above the ground and glided down toward Angerboy.
Pop!
Pop!
Pop!
His gun followed her through the air as she came down. He was trying to skeet shoot her with his pistol, but wasn’t having any luck.
She quickly realized she was gonna land short. She hadn’t jumped hard enough. Landed on the road 20 feet in front of him and jumped again.
Pop!
Pop!
This time, she went over his head.
Again, his gun followed as he fired.
She landed 10 feet behind his position, but he’d already turned around and continued shooting at her.
Pop!
Pop!
Whack!
Finally, a bullet struck her dead center in the chest.
Horrified she’d been shot, Kristy jumped up. Went way high. Landed between some desert bushes in the rocky dirt on the side of the road. Rolled. Came up on her feet in a crouch. Kristy clawed at her costume in a panic, looking for the hole in her chest.