Superhero life? Super-Sized troubles!

"I could have flown in," I said ten minutes into the traffic jam. "It would have taken ten, maybe fifteen seconds." Thousands of cars took up the street further than the eye could see, standing bumper to bumper in what I was beginning to realize had to be normal traffic conditions for New York; the drivers were not nearly angry enough for it to had been uncommon.

"And violated half a dozen laws in the process?" my driver for the evening asked then shook his head. "You've yet to receive authorization for low altitude flights over cities except in cases of emergency," Agent Stone quoted General Rinaker's very specific refusal back to me. "Besides, do you even know where our destination is? New York is not as easy to navigate for first-time visitors." Well, there was that... and at least I'd learned the General's name in the process.

"All I know is that when I asked where my room was, I was told the base is not suitable for long-term habitation. Something about underground construction and concrete particulates, was it?" Not that it would have mattered to someone that had literally breathed plasma and survived, but they'd insisted. "And what's with the brand new base? The government had half a year to get into gear since the invasion, this superhero outreach can't be a new program."

"It isn't." The traffic broke up next to an exit and Agent Stone turned the company Prius into it. The tiny little car was in its element, taking openings larger cars would never have fit through, slipping through the lines like an eel... and at about the same crawling speed, unfortunately. Better than being stuck in traffic still, but not by much and the way the car's doors and roof seemed to close in against my seven-foot frame made the trip more of a chore than ever. Fortunately, a distraction presented itself at just the right moment.

"Agent Stone, why did a full Agent volunteer to drive me to my new home and not some... well..." I did not say the word 'grunt' but both of us heard it. I kept an eye on Stone's reaction to the question, and two more eyes on my surroundings. "Turn left here, by the way; the street is empty."

"Huh, so it is. Your super-sight can turn around corners then?" the redhead asked as he followed my suggestion.

"Force Awareness is not actually sight," I explained while looking both ahead and behind. "It is more like Proprioception. Oh and take the right, right again, do not slow when you see the red light as it'll turn green by the time we'll reach it, then no matter what ignore the idiot going the wrong way." He did as I asked and when we finally came bumper to bumper with the red pickup truck I shoved it off our path, killed its engine and bound the driver to his seat with invisible bonds of force. "Yeah, he was stupidly drunk but he's not getting moving for at least two hours. Want to call the cops on him?"

"No, I'd rather we got to our destination sooner than later," the very by-the-book officer told me and seeing an open road stepped on it. Curious and curiouser. "What were you saying about your Force Awareness?"

"It works less like sight and closer to a database; it's more knowing instinctively what's around me than seeing it though it gets closer to sight when concentrating on specific things." Hence the many eyes. "Also, pull to the left after three blocks and rapidly speed up as much as you feel comfortable."

"What?" He took his eyes off the road and the car swerved hard before he corrected it. It worked even better than I had in mind.

"Never mind, we missed the exit. Keep going and I'll tell you when something changes," I fibbed and he must have caught it because his eyes narrowed and his hands clenched at the wheel. It turns out not all government agents were good enough drivers for a highway chase. And now that I thought about it... "How come we're using me as a GPS instead of a cell phone?"

"Mobile phone use has been prohibited within ground vehicles in motion in the states of Alaska, Ohio, Illinois and New York, as of the month before last," he told me as we slowed down due to another traffic jam and I laughed. I could imagine how much grumbling and curses that particular law had caused. One more thing to put on the list for powers being great; never having to deal with this kind of bullshit myself

"Hah, that was good," I said, wiping a fake tear as I settled on the seat and reached for my powers. We would be cutting it close but hey, I'd only come up with the plan two and a half minutes earlier; Agent Stone should be happy there was a plan at all. "Now, whatever happens, whatever you see or hear, do not stop until we get out of the city and keep all your limbs inside the vehicle."

"What- no, I don't need to know," he muttered under his breath and I nodded my agreement. Explaining would have taken too long, made it too obvious and could have messed everything up so instead of doing it I reached out to my powers fully for the first time in weeks. They all responded like little twinkling lights in the back of my mind, some of them dim, others blazing bright but all of them vibrant and instantly responsive.

Once upon a time, my powers had been far less instinctive and closer to the dry and cumbersome mechanics of a page full of math. They had been rigid, set, measurable to the point I knew exactly what they could do. A near-death situation, an epiphany and six months of training later, they had become living things and far stronger for it. More extensions of myself - extra limbs - rather than something concrete, they had gained in many ways but somewhat lost in others.

Proximakinesis, the ability to exert force on everything adjacent, and Force Adjustment, the ability to magnify or reduce existing forces on or around me flared instantly. Of all my abilities, they and Force Awareness were what I used the most. Immutable Force, the ability that resisted any changes not on the physical level slotted in almost as easily for it, too was becoming second nature. What wasn't nearly as easy to grasp was Field Creation, the ability to apply other force-related abilities to a volume rather than their normal application. My powers shifted, not quite meshing as they should, then rearranged themselves so Field Creation and Force Awareness formed a pair while Proximakinesis, Force Adjustment and Immutable Force linked together in a trio that somehow gave off a sense of completeness.

If bringing out Field Creation felt odd, the next power sent tremors of dissonance through me. Lasting Force; the ability to extend the duration of any force effects, possibly even permanently. The power tried to link to the trio of Proximakinesis, Force Adjustment and Immutable Force and was summarily rejected, bouncing off around my mind and ringing my brain like a bell. Then slowly, almost tentatively, linked to Force Awareness and Field Creation, forming another triad radiating completeness.

"Are you OK?" the redhead Agent asked, but I was too busy intertwining the two triads and get what I wanted from them to pay much attention.

Comics depict force fields as physical things, objects made of some "force" or "energy" yet obtaining solidity. Actual force fields did not work like that. Picture the area a magnet can affect iron in or the Earth's gravity well; that's a standard force field. What I could do was similar, a volume where forces applied or were altered, intangible and also shapeable. This time I did not see a reason to shape said volume in anything but the standard spherical shape, with our car in the middle. Within that sphere, Proximakinesis would repel anything harmful moving above certain speeds. Making the sphere last for the next ten minutes was similarly if slightly less taxing than holding up the sphere myself for those ten minutes, as long as it was done slowly. Since this was a rush order, anchoring it to reality over a few seconds was more like mild exercise for the same time.

That done, I raised a second field. This one would not exert force itself but adjust existing forces. The aforementioned Proximakinesis? Magnified. The cohesion and durability of the car? Also magnified. Any force on the car from external, non-environmental sources? Those would be greatly reduced, as would be any force speeding up anything towards the car. Those and a few other surprises were baked in and with another sacrifice of effort the second field became a lasting , intangible, invisible construct around the car itself.

BOOM!

The explosion shattered windows, cracked brick and mortal, upended cars and scorched everything nearby as something akin to a thunderbolt struck the car from the side... and fizzled pointlessly. No, not fizzled; the blast dissipated all around us, crackling lightning burning through the air. A thousand, a million or maybe more azure fingers reached for the car but turned aside before they touched it. Score one for force fields.

POP!

Compared to the prior detonation of thunder and lightning, the sound of the next attack was nothing impressive. The black bolt passing through the recently raised defenses entirely unimpeded, drilling through the car as if it weren't there and clipping Agent Stone's right ear was far more alarming precisely because it was nothing. More specifically, one moment I could feel air and glass and flesh in that volume, the next there was a vacuum air rushed in to fill. The car's rear glass had a perfectly round two-inch hole cut into it and Agent Stone's lobe-less ear was bleeding.

POP!

"Shit!" I drew the parking brake and held the car with Proximakinesis at the same time, stopping us so quickly our belts and the Agent's ribs nearly failed. We did miss the second black bolt going through three cars, a tree trunk, a dog and the outer walls of a nearby building without slowing down. "MOVE!" I shouted at Agent Stone as I ripped both our seat belts off then blasted both our doors off their hinges. We got out of the car and a split-second later a third black bolt drilled through it lengthwise from bumper to bumper.

"What..." the agent puffed as he dived behind a line of more parked cars. "What the fuck was that?!"

"Null Lance," I told him as I peeked around the car to the right. The fourth attack clipped the side of my face and sizzled like acid.

"What the fuck is a Null LaaAAA-" I dragged the confused agent along as I vaulted over several more parked cars, more black beams fired in our direction.

"A beam that makes all matter it touches disappear," I explained, pointing at my cheek. Instead of instantly negating it, the attack had been slowed down by my resilience and defenses, leaving the skin, fat tissue and even muscle pockmarked with holes that hurt like they were on fire. "Did you see where it came from?"

"No! All I saw was holes turning up where they shouldn't." He touched his now slowly bleeding ear and hissed. "What's going on?"

"I was hoping you'd tell me." More black bolts, black not because they had a color but because they disappeared all light passing through them, shot out from our pursuer. "I noticed we were being followed halfway through our trip, thought it was a minder the General set after me or something." At least if Agent Stone could not see him it explained why most bystanders just looked around in confusion instead of screaming at the top of their voice.

"General Rinaker doesn't have the resources to waste on theatrics." He drew his gun, a tiny little thing that wouldn't have done much against a zombie let alone our current attacker. "The attacker is fucking invisible, isn't he? God, I hate super-snipers."

A pair of clawed, scaled, digitigrade limbs pushed against one roof, then another, pushing a bulk the size of a bull elephant from skyscraper to skyscraper even as four limbs aimed a huge rod of gleaming silvery metal in our direction.

"He cannot be normally seen, yes," which was a good thing; he was fugly. "Whether he was also breaking public decency laws... eh, fifty-fifty." The monster, for that definitely wasn't and had probably never been human, stopped on another vantage point. "How close are we to my new house?"

"How can you be thinking about houses while under heavy fire?" he demanded with incredulity.

"It's fun; everything you do should be fun otherwise why do it?" I smiled at him and gathered my powers for a different defense bubble. This would be the first time I tried to apply Immutable Force to something other than myself. I hoped it worked but if not... eh, we'd burn that bridge when we got to it. "Now how far is it?"

"Four blocks? Six? You're the human GPS, not me!" Agent Stone shouted, his eyes too wide as I pulled him aside from another bolt that skewered a trashcan and would have done the same to him. "Why?"

"Because if it's my neighborhood it is also my job to make bad neighbors shut up and sit down!"

And with a laugh, I took to the skies...