Sally hit the street at full speed and as she sped past Sondra, she flipped the disconnect switches from the paint-pellet guns, causing the compressed-air tanks to drop away. Sally immediately reversed direction, looped one end of her cord around a wingtip, and spun it around the winged woman in tight circles. Sondra’s wings wrapped around herself in a feathery cocoon.
“Incapacitated,” confirmed the monitor.
Sondra wavered and tipped over. Sally slipped her hands under the woman’s head to keep it from bouncing off the pavement. “How am I doing?” she whispered.
Sondra winked at her. “Great.”
Taking down Sondra had eaten up almost twenty seconds; Sally had nearly completed her first minute of the training exercise and had only three opponents left. Not bad for a rookie, she thought. The last three were going to take some real time, though. Forcestar’s force-field powers were going to be difficult to overcome and she had no idea how she’d take down Juice and Jason. In her Parahuman Combat classes at the Academy, the instructors said that the best way to defeat a brick was to let him beat himself. Obviously, only another brick could stand toe-to-toe and trade punches. Other parahumans needed to either put the brick in a position where his strength would be no help or use his own strength against him. At the time, Sally had thought it sounded very trite and esoteric; something right out of reruns of Kung Fu.
Now she was desperate for a plan.
Suddenly her time to come up with one ran out as Juice came around a corner and stopped dead in his tracks. He glanced around quickly to locate a likely source of electrical power. Sally knew she couldn’t let him draw a full charge if he wasn’t already carrying one.
She sought inspiration in her surroundings, hoping to find something that would help, and spotted a hardware store. An idea struck her like a thunderbolt and she ran in and out of the store in a second. In one arm she had as many bungee cords as she’d been able to hold; in the other she carried a can of red spray paint.
As Juice reached toward a street lamp, she ducked inside his guard and let him have a face full of spray paint. He coughed, choked, and reached for his wraparound glasses to yank them off his face. As he raised his hand, Sally moved faster than she ever had before. She wrapped the bungee cords around his arm and looped them once around his arm to draw them behind his head. In a blur of motion, his arm was tightly strapped to his head. The bulge of his bicep strained across his nose and the back of his hand pressed against the back of his neck.
He glared at her from behind his paint-spattered glasses. When he reflexively raised his other hand to try and free himself, she wrapped another batch of cords around it. Soon Juice’s head was completely covered by his arms and a mass of bungee cords.
“Can you still breathe?” asked Sally, concerned. This was something she’d never done before and had no idea if she might have hurt him somehow.
“Grmph,” Juice said in a muffled voice. He sounded surprised but not particularly upset or panicky. For good measure, Sally wrapped a few dozen more bungee cords around his legs. Then, since she still had most of a can of spray paint left, she took a couple seconds to write MUSTANGSALLY WAS HERE with a flourish on the ground around Juice. She accented it with a smiley face inside of a heart.
“Incapacitated,” said the monitor system.
She’d completely depleted the store’s stock of bungee cords, and would have to figure out something else for Jason.
Just her luck, he was running up the street towards them in a plodding, slow-motion gait. She hesitated and slipped out of her accelerated perceptions to watch him approach. His muscles moved enticingly under his training suit and she shook her head so as not to become distracted. She sped up her perceptions again so she could take in every detail of him while telling herself it was strictly for the exercise and nothing more. As he passed a small bistro, an idea came to her and she charged up to one of the outdoor tables.
Jason skidded to a halt as she caught back up to him. She waited until she saw his chest begin to expand with a heaving breath and then tossed a handful of ground black pepper into his mouth and nose. His eyes bulged out and filled with tears. He coughed, spluttered, and issued a braying sneeze forceful enough to knock himself over.
“Incapacitated,” said the monitor.
Sally’s own eyes blurred for a moment as she realized what she’d done, miserable at the thought of the discomfort she’d caused him. “Oh, Jason, I’m so sorry,” she cried.
A glowing blue cylinder appeared around her. She yelped in surprise as it formed a floor underneath her as well as a ceiling. In a moment, she found herself lifted off the ground and suspended in mid-air.
Several yards away, Forcestar grinned at her, his arm extended as he controlled the field in which she was enclosed. “I think that we can consider this exercise complete. Sixty-eight seconds and you took out most of the team.”
“Is… is that good?”
“Are you kidding? I’m the only one right now who can take down everyone and it takes me a good ten to fifteen minutes of hard work. I bet if I hadn’t sneaked up on you, you’d have figured out a way to stop me as well. You can color me impressed.” He lowered her back to the ground. He looked at Jason, who sneezed so hard that he cracked the side of the building against which he had fallen. “Medical,” he said aloud. “I think we’ll need your assistance with Mastiff.”
Released from the force field, Sally ran up to Jason’s side and seized one of his hands. “Jason… I’m sorry. It was the first thing I thought of. Please don’t hate me!” Although he couldn’t speak, Jason managed to give her a weak thumbs-up in spite of his streaming eyes and nose.
Two technicians in white lab coats ran up; one toted a device, which resembled an unholy mating of a vacuum cleaner and a metal detector. One of them adjusted some controls on the machine while the other swept it back and forth across each member of the team. Jack said to Sally that it was a nanobot cleaner, designed to remove material and residue from the team without requiring cleaning, chemical solutions, or hacksaws and cutting torches. The tank on the back of the device filled with sludgy liquid as the nanobots removed the paint from Juice’s face and the pepper from Jason’s sinuses, particle by particle. The flagpole cord around Sondra dissolved into nothing.
Juice dry-scrubbed his face, as if he still had paint caked on it. “Well…” He looked across the rest of the team. “I suppose we all needed that. It’s been far too long since we had any real challenges as a team. Thank you, Sally, for reminding us that we’re not infallible.”
“Uh, you’re welcome,” she said. “Did I do all right?”
“Are you kidding? I can’t remember the last time anyone took us all down as quickly as you did,” Jack said. “You’re tops in my book.”
“All right, Jack, don’t go and give her a complex or anything.” Sondra rubbed her wing where the tennis ball had hit it.
“Very impressive debut, Sally,” said Doublecharge. “Does anyone besides Jason require any medical attention?”
Jason shook his head, a grin spread across his blotchy face. “I’m good to go, boss. Just feel like I stepped into a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Nice move with the pepper, Sally. Don’t let that one get around or everyone will be trying it on me.”
Sally shrugged. “It’s not easy to take on a brick when you’re as fragile as everyone else.”
“Much less two of them,” said Juice. “If everyone’s all right, we’ll move on to the next Round Robin. Jack, you’re up.”
Jack was fearless in his turn as the Robin. Of course, mused Sally, it helped that he was completely invulnerable. He took on the fliers first with surprise, grappling hook, and rope. Like Sally, he was halted by Forcestar, but not before he’d laid out Glimmer, Sondra, and Doublecharge.
Glimmer took his turn as the Robin and brought down both bricks with his telekinetics. He put Sally to sleep with a sneaky telepathic attack. When the drill was over, she discovered he’d managed to also nab Forcestar before exhaustin
g himself. The curse of his psionic abilities was too much use fatigued him.
Forcestar rounded up virtually the entire team in short order, clearly determined to improve on his time after Sally did it so quickly. His tactics were simple—he surrounded his victims in bubbles of force and kept them held aloft in the glowing blue spheres of energy. He saved Doublecharge for last, as her electrical powers could disrupt his force fields, and closed with her to fight hand-to-hand over the street. She fought him off and caught him inside his guard with a point-blank electrical blast. He spun away and cursed aloud as the monitor declared him incapacitated. He grumbled as he released the others from his force bubbles, left with a zero for a score.
Jason seemed to delight in going toe to toe with Juice and Jack. The former was physically stronger but not as quick. Juice’s strength drained rapidly when he fought and the younger, faster man eventually overpowered him. Jack cheerfully taunted Jason and soaked up everything the young man had. Eventually Jason picked him up bodily and wrapped a light pole around the man. He didn’t get any further than that as Glimmer zapped him to sleep. He grumbled when they woke him and asked if maybe Glimmer could do that little trick again so he could catch up on the missed sleep from the night before.
Sondra used straightforward tactics—telescopic vision in conjunction with her highly polished pistol skills took out Doublecharge, Glimmer, and Forcestar. She incapacitated Juice and Mastiff by well-placed shots that struck eyes; even bricks could be temporarily blinded by impacts to the face. She fired a few experimental shots in Sally’s direction but to no avail. Her talents were likewise wasted against Jack, but she used another, sneakier tactic against him that had him crying foul for hours afterward. As she glided toward him, she holstered her pistols and yanked the front of her vest down to spill out a breast with a star-shaped pastie over the nipple. Jack dropped his rifle in surprise just before Sondra landed in front of him and wrapped him up in a feathery kiss. When she pulled away, she left one of his own tangler grenades stuffed down his pants. It went off and wrapped him in sticky tendrils that required multiple passes of the nanobot cleaner to remove.
“She cheated!” Jack said, pouting.
“Wardrobe malfunction,” said Sondra.
Juice laughed so hard he had to call a ten-minute break.
Doublecharge took down most of the team in a cool, professional manner. She started with Forcestar and worked her way through the others until only Juice and Sally remained. Eventually they called a stalemate because she couldn’t hit Sally, and all her blasts did was feed Juice’s strength. In the field, that was actually a planned tactic.
Finally, Juice took his turn. He used the environment to great advantage. Well-flung awnings caught Doublecharge and Sondra in mid-flight. He hung Jack from a flagpole by his belt. The monitor system declared Glimmer unconscious after a stop sign clipped him in the head. To her own surprise, Sally bit on a skillful feint on Juice’s part and she dodged at high speed right into a fist the size of an Easter ham. Unlike when Glimmer knocked her out, there was nothing gentle about it.
She awoke on a bed in the medical wing with her ears ringing and persistent blurriness of vision. The rest of the team waited in the room with her while the medical techs checked her over. They diagnosed her with a mild concussion.
“I’m very sorry, Sally,” said Juice. “Honestly, I didn’t expect that feint to work so well. You’re excused for the rest of the day.”
“No,” she said through lips that didn’t seem to work quite right. “Wanna c’ntinue.”
“Sweetheart…” Jack sat down at the foot of her bed. “I’ve seen people take hits like that and never get back up again. We’d rather you not die in your first week on the team.” He raised a remote control toward a monitor screen overhead. “You’ve got to see this, though. This is better than any highlight reel on ESPN.”
“Right now?” Jason asked, and Sally realized her hand was in his, which felt kind of nice.
Doublecharge nodded. “She’ll never fall for that trick again if she sees how it happened.”
Jack pushed the button and Sally saw a slow-motion replay of her contact with Juice. He had just hurled a stop sign at her, which she had dodged easily. She then ducked under his spinning kick and rammed her forehead right into his left hand, which clearly had been his intention. She winced as she watched the replay. Her feet continued forward and her entire body flipped up into the air to pivot around her head. She smashed into the ground like a rag doll but bounced up a heartbeat later.
“Pause it,” said Doublecharge. Jack complied. “Look at her. Look at her eyes. She’s not conscious at all, but she’s still preparing to run. If Juice hadn’t caught her right after, who knows how far she’d have run in reflex.”
“I’ve never seen that happen in anyone,” said Juice. “It’s like your super-speed is controlled at a fundamental level of your brain, like respiration and heartbeat.”
“Like sleepwalking,” said Glimmer. “You ever do that?”
Unpleasant memories surfaced in Sally’s mind. “Uh, once or twice, I guess.”
“How far did you get out of the house?” Jack asked.
“Tucson,” Sally said.
“All right,” said the medical technician. “Enough. She needs some peace and quiet. You can question her tonight if we’ve cleared her to leave by then.”
Juice motioned to the others. “All right, guys, you heard the doc. Out. Jason, you can stick around until afternoon training if you want to and Sally says it’s okay.”
Sally smiled, causing her whole face to hurt, and closed her eyes. “It’s okay.” She felt Jason’s hand around hers and hoped it would still be there when she awoke.
Chapter Twelve
“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”
-Woodrow T. Wilson, 28th President of the United States
January, 2004
Denver, Colorado
“Do you feel any pain?” The doctor worked Sally’s head to one side and the other with gentle motions.
“No.” The truth was that her whole body felt like a truck had hit her. At least a more generalized body ache had replaced the acute head pain, but she didn’t want the doctor to know that. She tended to heal from injuries at a rapid rate thanks to her parahuman abilities, so if she was still exhibiting symptoms, she must have really gotten her bell rung.
“Hmmm,” said the doctor the way doctors do when they know someone is lying to them. He took a penlight and shined it into her eyes.
Two days spent anywhere with little to no activity for a speedster ought to count as cruel and unusual punishment in most jurisdictions. At least Jason had spent most of the first day with her. They played Uno and he brought in his iPod so she could hear some tracks from his band’s CD. The next day he had monitor duty and couldn’t come see her. Juice and Sondra had stopped in to check on her. The wait for medical clearance was stretching out into hours of interminable boredom. Channel-surfing was bad enough when she had the attention span of a goldfish, but when it was all she was permitted to do, it nearly drove her crazy.
“Well,” said the doctor at last, “I’m going to release you. But…” He held up a warning finger and glared at her over his bifocals. “Light duty for a week. No training sessions or deployment before I check you over again next week. And keep the super-sprinting to a minimum. Concussions are funny and we still don’t know how they’ll affect parahuman abilities.”
“Thanks, Doc!” Sally grinned and gathered up her things.
“One week,” he said. “Light duty until then.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sally skipped out of Medical. She felt like she could fly as she scampered up to her room. She was so lost in her happy feelings she nearly bowled over Harris as he came out of the elevator.
/> “Oh, hey, there you are.” He picked up the boxes he had dropped in their near-collision. “I just heard from the Doc that he cut you loose and I figured you’d wanna see this.”
“What is it?”
“Your new costume—redesigned to official Just Cause specs.” He opened the first box with a flourish and showed off a pair of shiny yellow boots.
“Ooooh!” Sally reached out to touch the smooth polymer with such low friction coefficient that it felt greasy. She started to peek into the other box, but then paused and glanced at Harris. “This is really for me? You’re just giving it to me?”
“Yep, that’s right,” he said. “Tell you what… you go and try it on real quick and then I’ll come in and you can give me any notes about problems you need to have resolved. I’ll take them back to the Costumes department and let them wrangle ‘em for you. We can’t have you running around in a substandard outfit when you’re out and about town at your charity functions.”
“Charity functions?” Even with her advanced perceptions, Sally found it tough to keep up with Harris’ sudden subject changes.
He raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t anybody tell you? Well, part of your job with Just Cause is to keep up a good relationship with the public. And the way we do that is by associating ourselves with various charitable foundations. You’ll need to pick a couple and spend some time volunteering with them. Keeps us looking good in the public eye, and these days that’s critical, since many government stooges don’t like parahumans too much. Wouldn’t take too much negative publicity for ‘em to re-enact the PRA all over again.”
“The Parahuman Registration Act,” said Sally, nodding. After his retirement, her grandfather had devoted much of his time to his fight against the laws enacted in the paranoid Fifties that had kept parahumans from enjoying the same rights as other citizens.
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