NOVEL WEB 03: Flying Colors
"I just talked with my superiors and they agreed to a meeting in our New York facilities," the agent told me after I came back from retrieving my wallet and shopping bag. "We need to get there anyway to process the guy you beat."
"How are we getting there?" I had my suspicions given what had landed on the other side of the Mall but confirmation would be good. "And what's your name? I can't keep calling you 'Agent'."
"My name is Stone, John Stone," he told me with a straight face, straightening his tie and offering me his hand to shake. We did, very official-like, then we both smiled. "As for the coming road trip, all our teams travel by air. Driving is simply too slow to cover all the incidents while we're still stretched thin."
We made some small talk as we walked, but my mind wasn't in it. I wanted to fly ahead, or at least run, because the whole day so far felt like it had been too slow. It was the hardest part of getting used to doing things like a normal person, especially after months of training with my powers. Imagine a highly energetic but otherwise normal person having to move at a literal snail's pace; three and a half hours for a trip to the bathroom, two weeks of travel to get some groceries, a legendary journey of forty years to get from Egypt to the Levant.
It was a good thing that the difference in mental speed could be largely made up by texting on the dozen cell phones in my bag at the same time. Handling them was good training for the telekinesis skill I wanted to develop, which for some reason sucked no matter what I did. Oh, it could do texting, juggling, or even slapping a guy across a street but trying to exert any higher force than that had it collapsing into uncontrollable shock waves... and I had no idea why. My awareness of forces didn't reveal anything; since it was at least as good as my normal vision even working through objects, it should have. At least the texting was not going entirely to waste.
"John Stone, huh?" I asked my escort as we approached the weirdly shaped aircraft at our destination. It had a broad, flat tail with two stubby vertical fins at the sides, two thick, only slightly less stubby main wings, and huge, helicopter-like rotors on the ends of those wings. From what I could see of the mechanism they were meant to tilt forward, making the aircraft a hybrid of a helicopter and turboprop plane. "Any relation to the WildStorm comics character of the same name?"
"...OK, you got me," the redhead agent that had to be at least twenty years my senior said with a self-deprecating smile. "In my defense, my first name really is John."
"Nothing wrong with wanting to use a cool line," I told him, marking the cell phone experiment a qualified success, if not in the goal it had been intended for. The sound and wind was picking up the closer we got to the were-helicopter, the rotors already powered up even before a quarter of troopers in military gear rather than SWAT had packed Mr. Shirtless in a harness of inch-thick cables. Frowning, I checked the harness and the comically oversized handcuffs again, looked up some cable specs online then shouted enough to be heard over the craft's engines. "Speaking of lines, are you sure that handcuffs-and-harness getup is secure? Because finding it isn't when the guy wakes up mid-flight and decides to flee would be inconvenient."
"Don't worry," John shouted back, the wind making his short-cropped hair shift in odd patterns in time with the rotors' beats. "The cuffs are rated for superpowered prisoners and without leverage he's not getting out of the harness either."
"You don't know that," I told him, stopping before boarding the aircraft and turning to face him. "In fact, you can't know that unless you're certain you've accounted for the entirety of his powerset." This being a newly powered person, nobody would know but them. "Those bindings are only two inches thick so they can safely hold a sixty-ton load. They can handle only a hundred and fifty at the outside, and briefly at that. And that's if he doesn't have a corrosive touch or other power to directly attack them."
"...'only' a hundred and fifty?"
"Let's just say I've fought stronger." Way, way, way stronger. "It would really help if you had someone with powers geared towards crafting make better handcuffs for you." The suggestion made John scowl as if he'd chewed on something bitter.
"The LA group recruited a guy like that right after the invasion. It took him only a week to flip them and we nearly lost two more groups bringing them down." Beneath his ever-present sunglasses his eyes were glaring at things only he could see. "Post-battle investigations showed his metal enhancement could do more than just reinforce what he built. He could infuse metals with anything thematically appropriate. Something like steel could get enhanced toughness. Gold could get enhanced beauty and perceived value. But heavy metals? Turns out he could make those more poisonous, literally or metaphorically. He poisoned the whole team with infectious ideas like some sort of superpowered cult. We had to put the survivors on suicide watch for months until his influence faded." During the telling of the story his fists had clenched so hard his knuckles creaked, nails biting into his palms. "And that is why we don't use power-wrought gear."
We got into the were-helicopter with no more advice on my part.
xxxx
I crossed my legs, uncrossed them, tried to settle the belt in a way that would fit comfortably... failed. The designers hadn't accounted for seven-foot-plus amazons, or comfort in general. I stared at the guy on the seat across from mine; he was somehow listening to music despite the cacophony of the engines and chewing bubblegum. Or maybe just chewing in time with some song he'd memorized.
"Are we there yet?" I asked Agent 'Stone', using my powers to be heard. He turned around and looked at me as if I'd asked something stupid.
"We only took off a minute ago!" he shouted back to my great disappointment.
I settled back in my seat. Then fidgeted. Then fidgeted some more. I reached out for my cell phones but there was no signal and I'd never been a fan of Solitaire or Minesweeper. Argh, this was taking too long!
Looking around with more than my eyes, I followed the play of forces over the contours of the aircraft. The intensity surpassed anything human bodies would normally be exposed to but as far as complexity went... they were simple. That was drag pushing us back, slightly compressing and heating the air all around. Aerodynamic lift and the plane's weight balanced against each other. The propellers turning air resistance to forward impulse to pull the plane ahead. The balance of forces within the engines themselves, along with turbulence sending vibrations through the plane's frame. The forces holding the frame itself together. The individual components were far more numerous of course, but all that mattered was their collective result.
Hmm... what if drag was adjusted a couple dozen times down? Same with the weight of the plane, since now there was less aerodynamic lift. And then impulse magnified by the same margin... no, that would break the propellers wouldn't it? But they wouldn't break if we also adjusted cohesion forces along the entirety of the were-helicopter's frame, making it a couple dozen times stronger...
"Sir! SIR! Something's wrong with the Osprey!" the co-pilot shouted and John got up to see what was wrong.
"Show me!" the agent demanded over the sound of engines... that wasn't as loud as it used to be?
There was a good idea; why endure all the cacophony when you did not have to? Sound was just vibrations propagating through physical mediums and with the hull being basically held together far more firmly they were partially impeded. But why rely on a side effect? There, the forces caused by sound vibrations were reduced by a couple dozen times and suddenly everything was as quiet as in an underground cave.
"...can't rely on our instruments, sir! They're reporting a speed of fifteen hundred knots!"
Hmm, the hull was beginning to heat up. The engines too. This was probably bad for people that weren't super-tough, so time for another adjustment. At its core, heat was no different from sound. Its vibrations - or collisions in case of fluids - were just a bit more chaotic. They also couldn't be adjusted willy-nilly. Or rather they could, but then you had to deal with spontaneous combustion or absolute zero, depending on which side of the mark you missed and how much. So a small adjustment - a tiny one really - so with each movement atoms would lose a tiny bit of their internal energy until they settled into a lower equilibrium at... say... minus twenty Centigrade? Yeah, the process was still imprecise.
"What the Hell are you DOING?" I found John shouting right in my face the next time I opened my eyes.
"I'm making us go faster," I told him with more than a bit of satisfaction. "It's two hundred miles from Syracuse to New York, it was going to take us forever with this slow were-helicopter thing you got. Now we'll be there in a minute or two." He stared at me. I stared back at him. He stared at me some more. "You're welcome," I added when it became clear he was at a loss for words. His response? He wordlessly turned his back on me, walked back to the cockpit and slammed the door behind me.
Some people have no appreciation for a good speed boost.
xxxx
"...violated seventeen different laws and air traffic regulations, tampered with a machine you clearly were not qualified to fly let alone alter, put the crew and your fellow passengers at risk and under considerable emotional stress, and did all that without asking for permission or even warning anyone of what you were about to do," a man in military fatigues and so many medals I did not bother counting berated me through an eighty-inch plasma TV. Why would a secret underground facility hidden in an abandoned subway tunnel beneath New York City had need of an eighty-inch plasma TV, I was not sure. Maybe it was so people of high rank would look bigger and more impressive through it than they were in real life. The guy in his sixties doing all the talking - dubbed General McWhat'sHisFace since if he'd said his name I didn't catch it - certainly seemed to believe himself impressive, but compared to several miles tall demonic invaders he had a long way to go.
"Well?" he finally demanded when his overly-long tirade was finally over.
"Well what?" I asked him, faking confusion.
"What do you have to say to justify yourself?!" he insisted, apparently missing my point while thinking I'd missed his. Behind me, Agent John Stone facepalmed white at least one of the two technicians my age was struggling to contain his mirth. But since subtlety was apparently lost in remote communications, full explanations it was.
"Why would I say anything at all?" I flew off the ground to be at the same level as the old man's face in that giant screen, stared him in the eye and let the weight of my superhuman presence add to my words and said. "General, you seem to be laboring under the misconception that I work for you, answer to you, or have to follow your orders... or that I came here to do any of those things. I don't." His expression soured and I bet it was far from the only one; if our conversation was not being recorded and analyzed six ways from Sunday then listened to by far more than just one guy, I'd eat my hat. And my hat was made of diamond... and about two hundred million miles from Earth.
"The only reason I came here was because I wanted to help people. Because if I didn't come to you first, told you what I'd be doing at least in general terms and opened some level of negotiations you would send your soldiers and military vehicles and that would mildly inconvenience my efforts to help." He did not deny it, of course; he was a military man and this discussion had caught him by surprise. Bald faced lies was more a politician's job. "You, the government in general, could also do away with all the legalistic and bureaucratic inconveniences that would inevitably turn up when helping people." Because they would. "Like flight plans or crossing state borders when a supervillain is about to level some town in the Midwest. Using my powers to apprehend lunatics or prevent disasters when a legion of armchair analysts would be fear-mongering about what else I could potentially do with them. Or waste months trying to re-establish my identity or get a home when there's so many more important things to do."
"Laws exist for a reason, young lady," the old guy said. Contrary to my expectations though, he was neither angry nor laughing at my demands. In fact, his current expression of polite interest was making me think I'd somehow been tricked. "What makes you think we would bend them for you?"
"Two reasons." More like five, but I was reserving the other three for when public relations failed. As the more cunning than his initial attitude would suggest general looked on, I retrieved two basketball-sized objects from my second bag. The first was an iron disc with a spike through the middle; when set on the ground, it started turning by itself balanced on the spike. The second was a shiny golden metal sphere a lot heavier than iron would have been. "The disc is enhanced with perpetual motion; it will keep turning forever and would take considerable force to stop. The sphere is obviously gold."
Powers could help in a lot more than just punching things.