by Chad Kunego
It’s not Crusty Kettle’s fare, but it’ll just have to do.
He smiled at the thought. Being a bit over six foot and, because of how his powers converted kinetic energy into extremely dense muscles, weighing closer to four-fifty rather than a solid two fifty, food was always a priority. All that muscle demanded massive quantities of calories, usually to the tune of around eight thousand of ‘em when he was taking it easy. Any type of real exertion pushed that intake through the roof. The main thing to take away from the situation was, it plain sucked being hungry almost all the time.
Grabbing several bacon, egg, sausage, and cheese sandwiches, he glanced at his watch.
Crap… I’m running behind.
Using a trickle of his power, he pulsed away, sliding through the base at a casual pace while munching on one of his sandwiches. Rounding a corner, he reflexively flipped over someone kneeling on the floor in the middle of the hall, cursing up a storm in Russian. Spinning around, he noticed a bunch of stuff scattered across the floor of the hallway. He almost pulsed away when he realized he knew the person cursing like a sailor while scrambling to gather everything up.
“Zarina?”
The woman angrily tossed her braided hair over her shoulder.
“Da!” she snapped without looking up, completely focusing on repacking everything.
“Mind if I give you a proverbial hand?” he asked, expanding his aura and encompassing all her supplies. Floating it into the air, he collected it together, depositing it rapidly into her gear bag.
“Thank yo—”
Looking up, her voice cut off abruptly. Falling backward in shock, she landed awkwardly on her butt.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”
He stepped forward, holding his hand out to help her up while grabbing her bag with the other.
Zarina hesitated a moment before tentatively reaching out for his hand. Grasping it gently, he helped her to her feet. He stood quietly while she dusted herself off before handing the gear bag back to her.
“Nervous about your first field mission?”
She hesitated, looking at him without responding.
“If it makes you feel any better, I still get a case of butterflies before a mission.”
Her look changed to one of disbelief.
“YOU get nervous? With what you can do? You are pulling leg now.”
He held his hand up with three fingers extended.
“Scout’s honor. It’s when you don’t get nervous before a mission that you run the risk of getting killed. It’s better to be too wary and be wrong, than to be too relaxed and get taken by surprise.”
He watched as she considered his words. Finally, she nodded once and smiled slightly.
“Da, makes sense.”
Her front pocket lit up slightly, followed by an alarm going off.
“Bozhe moi! I’m going to be late on my first day!”
She turned and started hurrying off toward the garage. A smile broke across his face as he came up with an idea.
“If you’d like, I can get us both there on time.”
“Da?” she asked, a curious look on her face.
Allowing his senses to expand, he enveloped her in his aura. Her unexpected gasp when it expanded around her caught him by surprise. Nobody had ever reacted like that before. It was something he’d have to ask her about later, which shouldn’t be too hard since they’d be together for at least several days. For now, he wanted to make sure they didn’t keep the major waiting.
“Just relax and enjoy the ride.”
Before she had a chance to respond, he pulsed them forward, accelerating away in a blur.
§§§§§§§§§§§§
Kaitlyn glanced down at her watch again. It was unusual for Rick to be late, but not something to worry about, really. With his speed, as long as he was somewhere on base, he could make the trip in just a few seconds.
On the other hand, Zarina being late was a bad way to start off her internship. According to her watch, it was just now turning eight with neither of them in sight. She debated contacting the operations center to have her located. Looking back up toward the entrance to the garage, one moment it was empty, the next instant both Rick and Zarina were standing in front of her like they’d just been teleported in. Their sudden appearance caused her to flinch slightly.
“Been waiting long?” he asked with an impish smile on his face.
“God, I hate when you do that.”
Glancing past him, she noticed Zarina looking slightly green, one hand covering her mouth.
“I see you picked up a stray along the way.”
“Sure did, can I keep her?”
She noticed Zarina turn from green to a bright shade of red at his response.
“You know that could be considered harassment, right?”
She smirked inwardly at his sudden change in expression.
One point for me.
“Just fucking with you. Now we’re even.”
Turning toward Zarina, she gave her a serious look.
“You know, it doesn’t start you off on the right foot being late, right?”
Before the other woman had a chance to respond, Rick interrupted.
“Entirely my fault. I held her up in the hallway talking. That’s why I gave her the impromptu ride.”
“Fine, whatever,” she said, turning toward Zarina, “So how’d you like your first time riding on the Newton express?”
“It was, how you say… terrifying.”
She looked back at Rick.
“Stop scaring the interns.”
He held up his hand in surrender while giving her a mock look of contrition.
“I shall try to keep that under advisement, ma’am.”
Letting out an exasperated sigh, she motioned for them to follow her. Walking across the garage, she headed toward the civilian motor pool, an area where they kept cars that were highly modified but still looked like standard vehicles.
“Wait until you see what they let me select for our ride.”
She clicked a button on the key fob she pulled from her pocket. Looking back over her shoulder, she watched her teammates to gauge their reaction.
“We are taking convertible?”
“A ‘66 Ford Thunderbird? Are you serious?”
She noticed Zarina casting a confused look between her and Rick. Kaitlyn looked back at Rick, nodding while a smile spread across her face.
“So who’s going to be Thelma and who’s going to be Louise?”
Kaitlyn noticed the other woman looking even more confused when her and Rick broke out laughing.
“I do not understand,” Zarina said, her head cocked to the side. That only caused them to laugh louder.
“If either of you ladies are driving, try to stay away from cliffs, okay?”
Zarina gave them an exasperated sigh before turning away, throwing her hands up in frustration.
“Americans… I give up.”
Chapter 6
“Are we there yet, Papa Smurf?”
Kaitlyn smiled at the reference.
“Not yet, my little Smurf.”
So far, the trip had been relatively uneventful, other than making frequent stops to get food for Rick. Ever since their first mission, which culminated in his powers becoming drastically more powerful, his metabolism and appetite had increased almost to the point of becoming a liability. She remembered him mentioning something about it before, but this was the first time she’d witnessed it first-hand. If she’d known it was going to be this bad, she would have talked to R&D about developing something that could deal with his almost endless requirement for caloric intake. Maybe something they provided speedsters would be enough.
“So really, how much further do we have to go, anyway?”
Kaitlyn glanced at the GPS display, tapping a few buttons.
“Well, according to this, we should be at the event site within the next half hour or so.”
“Good, I’m starting to become a bit antsy. I
think this is the longest I’ve ever had to travel since before I joined the military.”
“Really?”
She watched him flex his neck back and forth, the joints popping loud enough to sound like sticks cracking.
“Yeah. Once I joined, we either flew in, parachuted in, or humped in. A few times we rode in, but it was usually only a few hours drive. After my powers got boosted in Skywatch, I’ve rarely needed to ride in any vehicles anywhere. So this is kinda an odd experience for me.”
“Odd good…? Or odd bad?”
“Odd different, although I have to admit, having the wind blow through my hair is pretty nice.”
“Yeah, it is kinda nice. Never thought about you not feeling the wind whip by while flying though. I only slightly notice it because of my flames, but I bet it’d feel strange if it wasn’t there.”
Rick nodded before changing the topic.
“So what’s the plan when we get there? I don’t know your process for investigating something like this. It’s a bit outside my wheelhouse. My training’s more along the lines of smash and grab or scorched earth.”
Kaitlyn gestured in the direction of their destination.
“Well, pretty much what you’d expect. Honestly, we pretty much go from the standard law enforcement playbook. Examine the scene, see if anything sticks out, like weird burns, bent bars, that type of stuff, question any witnesses, then determine if there’s enough evidence to do a more in-depth investigation.”
“And this case in particular?”
“Well, we have the path the storm took, from where it started to where it ended, and we have at least one surviving witness to the event. Realistically, I’m expecting this to be a case of the witness and her crew just got too close to the storm and now she’s suffering from shock. I’ve seen some online videos of people like this. They seem to get off on taking unnecessary risks to do their job, like getting really close and putting themselves in the path of the oncoming storm. I’m guessing they miscalculated and got killed because of it.”
Rick grew quiet as he digested the information.
“So where do Zarina and I fit into this shindig?”
Kaitlyn glanced over at him before responding.
“With you, it’s just a case of being overly cautious. In the very unlikely chance this is caused by someone with powers or advanced tech, you’re the one best suited to deal with it. You are kinda the team’s swiss army knife after all. As for Zarina,” she said, glancing at the woman napping in the back seat, “I want to see how she handles herself in the field. Plus, she has some interesting skills and abilities that might come in handy.”
She noticed Rick glancing back at her.
“Yeah, I’ve been meanin' to ask about that. What is she, exactly? Other than her little glowing necklace, I can’t really tell what she does. With most supers, I can get a sense of their ability from their physical characteristics and stuff, the way they move, things like that. With her, I can’t really tell. She almost has the build of a speedster, but not the fidgeting or reaction speed I’d expect. And why is she always jumping when I’m around?”
“She’s a psionisist.”
“And, uh, what’s that? I mean, I get that it’s something to do with the mind, but like what? She really smart or something?”
“Da, but much more as well,” Zarina said, cracking an eye open to look at them before sitting up.
“I guess I’ll let her answer your questions herself.”
Rick turned slightly around in his seat to more directly face Zarina. Kaitlyn peeked in the rear-view mirror and noticed Zarina turning red again. Rick waved his hand for her to continue.
“Well, I can read places and things to see what happened in past, move things with my mind, things like that. I also have experience investigating crime scenes. It is department I am coming from.”
“So you’ll be able to tell if this storm was natural or artificial?”
“Possibly,” she said, looking unsure.
“Well,” Kaitlyn said as they crested a small hill, “we’re about to find out. We’re here…”
§§§§§§§§§§§§
Rick glanced forward when he noticed Kaitlyn’s voice drift off. Before them was a devastated landscape. His first impression was someone had dropped a MOAB or another thermobaric type weapon, but then noticed the terrain had a noticeable swirling pattern to the debris.
“Someone actually survived that?”
As best he could tell, the damage path was well over a mile across. The reality of a storm being big enough, strong enough, to cause that level of damage was a little hard for him to wrap his mind around. It was nothing like the ones he’d seen growing up on the farm.
He knew, under the right circumstances, he could possibly come close to duplicating that level of destruction, but he’d have to work at it. Maybe lifting a large, heavy object up several thousand feet and slamming it into the ground at high speed could do it, but he wasn’t sure. Studying the terrain, he noticed something odd.
“Do tornadoes normally change direction like that?” he said, pointing toward a spot in the distance where it looked like the funnel had stopped and reversed direction, almost at an 11 o’clock direction based off their perspective. It reminded him of the path a rubber ball took when bouncing off a hard surface.
“Not sure,” Kaitlyn replied after studying the spot for a moment, “I know they can change direction, but that seems rather drastic.”
Rick nodded in agreement. Reaching out with his senses, he checked the area to see if anyone was coming. Satisfied they were the only ones around for at least a mile, he jerked his thumb upward.
“Think I’m going to get an aerial view of the damage, see if there’s any anything that sticks out.”
Before she had a chance to respond, he gathered energy from the surrounding environment and launched himself skyward, a pillar of dust chasing after him.
I’m never going to get used to being able to do that without getting tired. Or getting a splitting headache.
Leveling off at what he guessed was approximately a thousand feet, he extended his senses outward while slowly rotated in place. A moment later, he began drifting forward, concentrating on the visible track the storm took. Studying the path, he he could determine from the patterns how the funnel had actually rotated. With a start, he realized there had been multiple funnels on the ground at once. Trying to make sense of what he was seeing, he tapped his mic.
“Hey Kat, do tornadoes normally have more than one funnel?”
Rick noticed a lengthy pause before she responded.
“I’m, uh, not sure about that either.”
He thought he detected a sheepish tone in her voice with the admission. Smiling to himself, he decided to take several aerial photos of the damage while he drifted further along. As an afterthought, he flew higher to get several more panoramic shots before returning to the group. Landing, he noticed a look of frustration on Kaitlyn’s face.
“Okay, we’re getting nowhere. None of us have a clue what to look for or even know what’s normal and what isn’t when it comes to one of these frickin’ storms.”
Rick nodded, glancing around.
“How about Miss Cleo… She find anything?”
“Who is this Miss Cleo?”
He caught a tiny smile flashing across Kaitlyn’s face before responding.
“Uh, nobody important. You find anything?”
A puzzled expression crossed her face before responding.
“I am sensing… something. It sort of feels like… confusion, anger, possibly hatred. Some of it I could attribute to storm people, but I am not sure…”
She trailed off for a moment, a look of frustration growing on her face while she unconsciously chewed on the end of her braid.
“It does not make sense. I keep feeling that storm itself was angry. How can storm be angry?”
Rick glanced at Kaitlyn from the corner of his eye, catching a slight nod from her.
So maybe there IS something to this after all. Either way, we need to get more info on tornadoes before we’ll be able to realistically investigate this site. All we’re doing right now is stumbling around in the dark.
“So, other than it being an angry storm, do you know anything about tornadoes?”
“Nyet. If town has library, I can do research.”
Rick opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by his stomach growling loudly. Kaitlyn glanced his way before spinning around, heading toward the car.
“We’re flying blind here. Let’s head to town and get some lunch. Then figure out where to go from there.”
Chapter 7
“So what’s the plan?”
Rick took a bite of his burger while watching Kaitlyn.
“Well, way I see it, we’re suffering from a distinct lack of information to go on. None of us are weather experts, so we can’t make any type of critical examination of the site. What’s worse, the person most qualified to assist us is possibly having a mental breakdown, or even suffering PTSD. We don’t have a lot of options to work from at this point,” she said, accentuated her point by stabbing a french fry into a puddle of ketchup on her plate.
“What about you Zarina, what’re your thoughts?” he asked, taking a sip of his soda.
Not getting a response, he glanced over toward their Russian teammate. He noticed a distant look on her face as she stared out the window.
“Zarina?”
Zarina jumped slightly before responding, gesturing toward the window.
“I think I can address one of those issues.”
Rick looked out the window in the direction she was pointing. Across the street from them was an old brick building that looked like it’d been there since the last gold rush. Hanging over the entrance, he noticed a small sign indicating it was the local library. Turning back, he realized Zarina was already heading toward the door. He looked at Kaitlyn, who only shrugged her shoulders.
“Maybe she’s going to get a book on tornadoes or something.”
“She’s a strange one, isn’t she?”