I really hope Mom doesn’t mind her catering getting delivered by military copter.
Ten minutes later, I was grabbing a harness attached to a Knighthawk helicopter. The crew carefully winched me up into the cabin, where two (blessedly well-briefed) sailor boys grabbed a large towel and formed a discrete changing screen for me. Another tossed me a ready-made “modesty bag” that the General must have sent. I chirped a grateful “thanks!” to the embarrassed young men (it wasn’t the first time I had made sailors blush). Quickly (and discretely) de-morphing, I toweled myself off, and slipped into the swimsuit bottom provided by the pack. I rifled through the bag for an energy drink, popped it open, and covertly tried to check for a wedgie (pulling on a swimsuit over damp skin is hard). The pilot banked the chopper towards the Ocean Front as one of the sailors tuned the chopper’s comms to my earbud frequency and began to brief me on the situation.
“Ma’am. At approximately 1330 hours today, tourists reported hearing a loud cracking sound coming from the King Neptune Statue on the Boardwalk. Witnesses saw the statue break free from its foundation, point its trident towards the crowds of beachgoers, and said, quote, “MOTHER NATURE WEEPS AT HER DEATH BY CAPITALISM,” end quote. The statue then proceeded to crush several taffy stands, hot dog carts, and cabana rental stations under its feet as it marched towards ocean. Current status reports from Virginia Beach Police say that it is ripping up beach umbrellas and generally destroying anything in its path.”
I grimaced. “What about Cold Front? What is his location?”
“Cold Front is currently flying recon above the Ocean Front. He will rendezvous with us shortly to plan your attack strategy.”
“Understood!” I yelled back, wiping my arms and legs while chugging the rest of my energy drink. Cold Front could harness hurricane-level winds to speed him wherever he wanted to go, and while I was used to riding in the eye of his storm, I still got cold when I was wet and that high up.
A loud thunk sounded behind me.
“Hey Nikki, how’s it going?” a deep voice yelled over the noise of the chopper’s blades, “…Swimmingly?”
I grinned and turned. “Charles! That depends on weather you’re ready to go or not.”
“CODENAMES!” barked The General in both our earbuds.
We rolled our eyes at each other. The General was a stickler for security protocol—a left over from his covert ops days in the Middle East.
“Report, Cold Front.”
Charles nodded politely to the four Navy boys. “Looks like a typical automaton to me, sir. Doesn’t seem to have any sort of extra firepower or anything; it’s just really damn big. Also, the trident’s kinda pointy, and covered in bird droppings.”
Muting his earbud for a second, he turned to me and grinned. “So look sharp, Nikki.”
I could practically hear the General gritting his teeth over our coms. “Any civilian casualties?”
“No, sir. King Neptune seems to be more fixated on structural damage, not human beings. And he doesn’t really move that fast; people have been able to get out of the way. It’s just the potential for mass panic and further property damage.”
“Nightingale is in charge of crowd control, Cold Front. You and Typhoon are responsible for minimizing property damage.”
“You got your lightning under control yet, Cold Front?” I asked.
He shook his head ruefully. “Not good enough with this many civilians around, Typhoon.”
I nodded grimly and strapped my goggles back on. “Guess it’s up to me to provide the shock value, then.”
“Now approaching the Ocean Front.” The pilot’s status update buzzed through both our earbuds.
“Roger that,” Cold Front said. He stepped out of the helicopter and floated in place on a whirling platform of wind and reached his hand out to me. “Ready for action, Typhoon?”
I cracked my neck from side to side, “Let’s storm this beach!” I yelled, and slapped my hand into his. Gripping my arm like a taut spring, he launched me into a steep fall towards the ocean.
I took a deep breath as I punched through the surface of the water like a missile. Fifteen feet ahead of me, the tacky, bronzed King Neptune smashed up and down the surf yelling “SMASH THE CAPITALIST PATRIARCHY!”
Breathing deeply through my gills, I sped towards the marauding statue. Along with the HUD, my goggles improved my underwater vision (I could do it by morphing, but I preferred to save my energy). Spotting the muscular bronze legs of the statue stomping about 15 feet in front of me, I flared my webbed hands out in hard stop. Gritting my teeth at the thought of getting that close to King Neptune’s crotch, I zoomed under my target and popped up between his legs, gasping as my gills sank back into my chest.
“Hey, you dirty hippy!” I yelled, as I popped up through the surface. “Why don’t you just get a job?”
King Neptune didn’t pay any attention to me—which told me that he was definitely not an AI, but probably being controlled by an actual person through some sort of remote. I grimaced—an actual AI would have been easier to clean up (overcompensating dorks are easier to scare than bronze automatons). I quickly morphed my arms into something resembling electric eel skin and slammed my fists into King Neptune’s bronze, muscled legs.
“FEEL THE BURN, BIG BOY!”
The automaton creaked, crackled and froze. Just as I was about to congratulate myself on a job well done, Charles yelled, “TYPHOON, GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THERE!”
Aww, fuck. In my rush to stop the statue from stomping on civilians, I had forgotten about one very important thing: gravity. Frozen in mid-stomp, the 20-foot tall obnoxious merman monstrosity toppled forward like a felled tree. Desperately wishing that seagulls counted as “aquatic,” I frantically morphed my legs into a sailfish tail, then went for fullbody manta ray as I dove because dammit dammit dammit not enough time too slow piece of shit vertebrate skeleton—
CLANG.
Diving as deep as I could into the water, I winced as my half-morphed human pancake shape scraped against the rough sandy bottom as I flapped away from an impact…that never arrived?
I cautiously bobbed to the surface, breaking through the waves with a disgusting schlorp-pop sound. Spitting out a mouthful of foul-tasting, briny gunk, I was greeted by the sight of a tiny blonde girl in a seriously cute bright blue bikini supporting the entire weight of King Neptune with her bare hands.
Her very small, perfectly manicured, bare hands.
“Hey!” she yelled down at me. “Need a lift?”
Nodding weakly, I watched her casually float downwards, gripping King Neptune by his waist. “So, what should I do with him?” she asked, eyeing the statue critically. “And, um, are you okay?”
An embarrassingly flatulent sound came bubbling out of my flattened mouth-slit, and I realized my flattened manta-shaped face was high-octane nightmare fuel. Shaking my head furiously, I quickly re-inflated my features.
“I….I….ummm….” Imminent death made words hard. “Are…what?”
“’Scuze me, Astra, ma’am.” Charles had swooped down to check on me and make sure I hadn’t been turned into a sea pancake.
“…ASTRA?” I hissed to him. “Are you fucking serious?”
He frantically shushed me and pointed towards the Navy chopper. “There’s a Navy crew right here who have a real strong harness, ma’am. If you could be so kind as to strap King Neptune in, we can move him somewhere safe.”
Astra (Seriously?! Astra?!) nodded and slowly flew upwards, keeping her grip on the statue as the helicopter buzzed over to us, slowly lowering a large harness down. Astra nonchalantly gripped the straps and started buckling them into place, like she disabled enormous socialist automatons every day.
“You OK?” Charles asked quietly, checking my arms for any damage.
“Yeah…I’m fine, I think,” I mumbled, still in shock. “Did I get hit on the head, or is Hope Corrigan flying around King Neptune in a designer bikini?” I paused, squinting my eyes. “…A Marc J
acobs designer bikini?”
“Well, I’m not sure if you’re brain damaged or not, seeing as you immobilized a giant statue while you were underneath it,” Charles quipped. “But yep, that’s definitely Astra, in the bikini-clad flesh.” He double-checked my pupils. “You good? I’m gonna help her buckle up King Neptune and guide him in.”
I nodded, dazed. Charles left me treading water with my tail as he and Hope guided King Neptune in midair to prevent a big, dangerous splash.
The loud, angry buzz of a jetski interrupted my big-dumb-brush-with-death reverie.
“HEY GIRL HEY!!!” a familiar, cheerfully demented voice called out.
I looked to my right. A muscular girl with a bright pink buzzcut and several piercings splashed to a stop next to me, a big red megaphone in one hand, throttle in the other.
“Hey, CeeCee,” I said, tiredly. “Where were you?”
“I was making sure that y’alls butts didn’t get trampled by a rampaging stampede of panicky tourists,” she replied, gesturing to the megaphone. “While you were busy getting pancaked and staring at Astra’s bikini, I was hypnotizing beachgoers into “please form a single file line towards the nearest exit where emergency personnel will assist you shortly.”
I blinked, impressed. “Wait, I thought your voice only works on like, one or two people at a time?”
Cee Cee—Cecelia Tyler, code name “Nightingale”—had super siren powers. Her voice could seriously damage a person’s body, and hypnotize them to do what she wanted. She was only 21, but several private military companies were already courting her. Which was ironic, because she was basically your typical hippy, vegan, feminist, anti-war college kid.
CeeCee giggled. “Turns out that when my voice is amplified, so’s my powers. Some local DSA Verne-type totally hooked me up.” She slid her megaphone in a customized bag hanging from the jetski’s handle and then slipped it over her shoulders. “Want a ride back to shore? I think the General may want us to escort Super Girl over to HQ for a debrief.”
“Great, more chances for the General to yell at me on my day off.”
She shrugged. “Either you get barked at over comms, or you get barked at in person, first thing tomorrow, with an extra lecture on promptness, timeliness, and responsibility. You really want to put up with that for, like…” she checked her watch, “8 more hours of freedom?”
I gave a long-suffering sigh. “You’re right. Totally not worth it.”
She tossed me a waterproof bag. “Here, make yourself decent and I’ll give you a ride to shore.”
I gratefully caught the bag, fished out a pair of bikini bottoms (seriously, my life would be so much simpler if public nudity was acceptable), and quickly demorphed my tail into legs. Shielded by CeeCee’s jetski, I covertly slipped on the bikini bottoms, grabbed her hand, and swung myself onto the jetski behind her.
“So…you talked to Astra yet?” I yelled over the buzz of the jetski, “How did she even get involved? Where the hell did she come from?”
CeeCee gunned the jetski towards shore, yelling over the roar of the engine. “I dunno, dude! I think she was, like, sunbathing on the beach or something? King Neptune started yelling about, like, the Hegemony of Consumerism and she just sort of tapped the nearest cop on the shoulder like, “may I assist you in this situation,” or whatever? By the time I got there, she was already flying overhead, to like, coordinate evacuation routes, or some shit.”
“Show off,” I muttered. “Who shows up on vacation and says ‘you know what I should do? Coordinate an evacuation plan for the locals when a giant marauding statue takes over the beach. Following instructions and taking a back seat to things, nope, not at all something that makes sense.”
“Sorry if I stepped in your sandbox,” came a chipper voice overhead. “As my friend Jacky always says, I have a compulsive need to save anybody, ever.”
Oh Shit. I looked up. Yep. Of course. There she was—Astra, in the flesh, just in time for my petty rant. “Um…errr…” How do you apologize in this situation? “Sorry I was a raging bitch and talking about you behind your back right after you saved my life because I was embarrassed about trying to turn into a sea pancake and thus incredibly defensive?
CeeCee shot me an amused, shadenfreude-laden grin over her shoulder as she docked the jetski into the pier.
Astra shrugged apologetically. “I get it, I do. I’m an interloper. You guys are the local crew, and since I was first on scene, I ended up running the show. I didn’t mean to step on anybody’s toes. Or fins.”
I turned bright red. CeeCee just casually jumped off the jetski and tossed me a rope to tie it in place. “Don’t mind Typhoon over here,” she told Astra in a conspiratorial whisper. “She’s just pissed off because the General called her in on her day off.”
“You guys get days off?” Astra asked. “And people actually respect them?”
CeeCee laughed. “Yeah, for the most part. It’s not that busy of a beat.” She grinned lasciviously, giving Astra and her bikini a long, appreciative stare. “You coming back with us for the de-brief, hot stuff?”
“Um…yes? And…Thanks?” Astra’s blush was even redder than mine.
I winced and heaved myself off the jetski. After that many rapid morphs, my body felt like jelly. “Don’t mind CeeCee. Her sexual preference is ‘all of the above.’”
CeeCee smacked me on the forearm. “Don’t scare her! All the blogs say she’s a good girl.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not scaring her. I’m warning her.”
Astra gave us a quizzical look. “…Are you guys always this casual over group comms?” She silently tapped a finger on her ear.
“What?” CeeCee and I yelped in unison.
I grabbed my earbud, desperately wishing I could morph a foot into my mouth.
On cue, the General’s voice barked in my ear. “Typhoon! Nightingale! Your jobs are done. Escort Astra to wherever she requires and report to HQ at approximately 0800 hours.”
I glared at CeeCee.
She rolled her eyes. What’s the big deal?” she scoffied, “The General packs you go-bags filled with underwear. My sexuality is so not the most embarrassing thing he’s had to overhear.”
Astra looked at us, confused. “Who?”
“The General,” I said. “You talked with him before stepping in to run the show, right?”
Astra still looked puzzled. “Um…I talked to an abrupt, older gentleman on the police channel? He told me to proceed with caution and rendezvous with the local DSA team?”
“Yeah, sounds like The General. He got trained out of extraneous emotions and social niceties during his long and mysterious military career.”
“But he’s actually super serious about everything, including letting us blow off steam after what he calls “a successful campaign,” CeeCee added. “Speaking of which, wanna get drunk and sing really loudly into a microphone in front of strangers?”
I face-palmed “CeeCee, could you please at least try to seem semi-normal to the very famous visiting Super Girl?”
“….I honestly cannot tell if you’re joking or not,” Hope replied. “Like genuinely, one hundred percent, I feel like this could go either way.”
“Does that actually make you fifty percent?” CeeCee asked cheerfully.
I glared at her, got an unrepentant goofy face in reply, then turned to Hope. “Does it matter to you if it goes either way?”
Hope cocked her head to the side, as if listening to somebody. “Well, the little voice inside my head says to trust you and not be such a wimp. Not that she’s always right.”
I grinned. “Well then, Super Girl, we’ll show you a good time.”
Chapter Two
“I believe in three things: the necessity for absolute social equality between human beings, the power of music and poetry to foment social change, and jello shots. Lots and lots of jello shots.”
Cecelia “CeeCee” Tyler, aka Nightingale
7 PM, March 31
After droppi
ng off some spare equipment at the local DSA offices, I took Astra and CeeCee back to my my place to clean up (and wasn’t that a fun thing to explain to my parents: “Hi Mom—Astra, the most famous young superhero in America, needs to use our spare bathroom; do we have any extra towels?”). After some seriously necessary showers, we dragged our (super) girl Friday over to Frankie’s Place for three out of the four B’s: beer, bourbon, and barbecue (obviously, we supplied the bitches).
“So what exactly makes good pulled pork anyway?” Hope asked as I navigated the car around clumps of roaming, bathing-suit-clad tourists to get into a cramped parking spot.
CeeCee shrugged. “I tend to just suspend my veganism to support local businesses, so I’m really the wrong person to ask.”
“…What?”
I rolled my eyes. “CeeCee here is vegan except when being not-vegan will simultaneously benefit the local proletariat and also get her schwasted.” I explained. “But to answer your woefully Yankee-ass question, it’s the tenderness of the meat and whatever secret is in the sauce. Good pulled pork is juicy, falls apart on the fork, and melts in your mouth like a meaty rich snowflake.”
“Ah…that sounds…really, REALLY delicious.” Hope replied. Her stomach growled audibly, totally agreeing with her.
I grinned. “You got a weird, hyperfast metabolism too?”
“Not exactly. My super-duper strength isn’t based on anything biological. But when I’m hurt, I heal real fast and then—“ She giggled as her stomach made another loud, grumbly noise. “One time I ate ten bags of beef jerky without realizing it. Super-stomach.”
“You’re in the right place then. Frankie’s is the best barbecue joint in the city…AND their portions are the biggest.”
“Also, tonight’s karaoke night at the Salty Mermaid next door,” CeeCee piped up.
Hope snorted. “I can’t possibly drink enough alcohol for you guys to get me to do that.”
I smiled wolfishly. “Challenge accepted.”
As we all got out of the car, my cellphone started buzzing in my back pocket. I pulled it out—aaaaand crap. It was my mother. “Y’all go on ahead and get us a booth. I’ve got to take this.”
Wearing the Cape 6: Team-Ups and Crossovers Page 38