Raven & Josie - Chapter 14

A journalist has a surprising realization, and Josie is enjoying herself while using her powers.

+++

Roderick Gushbal's head rotated from left to right as his eyes took in the disarray that erupted at The First Voice – a somewhat renowned newspaper company in Gladstone, his hometown. Journalists darted around him, their eyes alight with urgency as they tucked papers and notes beneath their arms, shouted things, and waved hands frantically in the air at each other. It was a hive of activity.

He would have thought that some mentor would show him the intricacies at leisure on his first day as an intern – sitting next to him with a cup of coffee while explaining things to him and answering his questions.

But his mentor was nowhere to be seen. Mr. Goodwill – who'd chosen not to give glory to his name on this day – stormed off to vanish among his colleagues on the fritz when Roderick opened his query about his mentor's time as a war correspondent in the Middle East.

The moment a potentially big story can be smelled in the air, a true journalist dives into it with relish, much like a hungry hyena would pounce on an enticing hunk of meat.

Roderick glanced at the laptop standing in front of him on the desk. On its screen, he saw the photo of a youthful lady beaming from the screen. Upon scrutinizing the picture of the girl with the gleaming wheat blond strands and cute tilted nose doing her best to look all innocent while her mischievous spirit glinted plainly through her eyes. He thought he recognized her from somewhere.

After a short moment of contemplation, a light bulb flicked on in Roderick's head. They both went to the same school, Meadows High. 

 Well, being a few years the girl's senior, Roderick had graduated a few summers back and was studying journalism now at the university. 

But he still vividly remembered the car crash this girl was involved in some years ago. It happened right before his nose when he saw the girl crossing the road while absorbed in her phone. At the same time, a car, loud with blaring music, raced up towards her and was barely able to evade the girl as it skidded to a halt on the grass verge. Though its driver prevented a frontal impact with the girl, the back bumper of his car collided with the girl's legs.

Roderick could still hear that thudding sound that filled his head as he thought back on that day. Whatever happened after that was even more mind-boggling. The moment she got hit by the car, she merely stood there, unfazed and looking a bit annoyed at the driver for not watching where she was walking. 

Until she began to notice Roderick and a few other bystanders gaping at her in shock. Then, all of a sudden, she quickly plunged herself on the floor and began crying uncontrollably while grasping her leg. Where, by the way, no injury could be seen from Roderick's perspective. 

Just moments later, the startled driver emerged from the vehicle to survey the harm he had caused. But, when the girl spotted him approaching her, she quickly sprang off the ground and sped away in an unnatural haste, disappearing within seconds.

It was the weirdest thing Roderick had ever seen up until that day. But now it all started to make sense.

This girl was none other than the beloved Infinity Woman's daughter! He could see the resemblance now. But why was this girl turning the whole world upside down with her frisky behavior?

She wrecked a bridge and threw a cement truck in the air that collided with an oil tanker many miles away. And today, she was doing many other inexplicable things in far-flung places across the globe.

+++

Earlier that day.

Soaring in the air at about thirty thousand feet above the planet's crust, Josie's eyes snapped open when her super-hearing caught the roaring sound of what appeared to be an airplane. It broke the soothing breeze caressing her face, waking her from the dream she was having. 

Still a bit drowsy, while floating effortlessly in midair in a posture like she was lying in bed with her hands intertwined behind her head, Josie peeked over her shoulder and saw a dot appearing on the horizon. Regular people would only be able to see just that, a dot. However, Josie could, with her super-sight, even distinguish the object's characteristic shapes and colors. 

Making it known to her that it was a long-haul jet flying its way up to her. Her penetrating vision allowed her to glance effortlessly through the plane's aluminum alloy hull to see who were the lucky ones about to see a cute looking teen girl floating into the sky among the clouds. 

Josie saw four boys in the lounge area - one more braggadocious than the other - in their early twenties playing some card game while passing along a bottle of booze. From picking up their conversation, Josie learned that one of them was the spoiled son of the plane's owner, a billionaire who spared no expense regarding his lavish lifestyle.

A mischievous grin tugged at the corners of Josie's lips as she thought up a plan to tease these overly privileged offspring.

Jason, son and heir to his father's highly lucrative tech company, took another long swig of a bottle filled with alcoholic beverage. His eyes jerked to the side when some movement beyond the window vied for his attention. He froze, then choked, and had a loud coughing spree when he saw a young blond girl waving at him while perched leisurely on the plane's wing. 

In an instant, Jason's hands exploded forward to grab one of his friends by the collar while yanking him to his face. "I swear, if you drugged me, Quint, I'll chuck you out of this plane with nothing but your shit-smeared underwear as a parachute." He breezed with alcohol-infused breath.

"I did not do such a thing," Quint spoke through his teeth. "Now, let go of me before your horrible breath makes me barf in your face."

Jason gave his friend a not-so-friendly shove, hurling him in his seat while spilling booze over his shirt. Quint muttered words that would have earned him a slap from his mother.

"But who is that wench then, huh?" Jason pointed at the window. "Am I the only one who is seeing her?"

Frank, one of Jason's other friends, took a long drag from his cigarette and squinted to try and make out what Jason was pointing at. "What wench? I don't see... Blimey, what do my eyes behold here!" His thick English accent wavered with disbelief as he finally saw Josie waving exuberantly at them all. 

Gregory, another friend, returned from taking a leak. His eyes widened as he noticed what his buds were looking at. "It's a girl! On the wing!" He pointed.

"No shit," Quint said.

Frank grinned lopsidedly, puffing out a cloud of smoke. "She's hot!"

Gregory snorted in derision. "She looks like a goddamn child. I bet she still plays truth or dare with her friends."

                "On the wing of an airplane? Now that takes guts!" Frank said.

                "Guys!" Jason's voice made all eyes pointing to him. "Quit the meat-inspection, will ya? Don't you think it's a more relevant question to wonder how that girl got on the wing?"

                Gregory gazed thoughtfully at Josie. "And she's sitting there leisurely nonetheless. It's like she's enjoying some rays of warm sun on a park bench. How fast is this thing flying?"

                Jason narrowed his eyes and squinted as he made a guess. "Uhm, about 550 mph, I think?"

                Quint shook his head. "She should have been blown off by now."

"And yet she isn't," Gregory said.

“She should not even be there, idiots!” Jason said.

All four boys stared wide-eyed in awe at a 16-year-old girl who was completely unfazed by the plane's speed, leisurely perched on the edge of one of its wings.

Quint snapped his fingers. "That's her! I know it is - it's Infinity Woman's daughter! You know, the one who threw that cement truck like a shot putter that pierced an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf? and she also wrecked that bridge. I saw videos of her on YouTube."

Frank rubbed his chin. "Then who is that other girl? How did they call her again, Kim Pelso?"

"Kim Kelso," Gregory corrected.

Jason shrugged. "No idea, but they are probably related to each other. Seeming they can both fly and shit."

"It's my sister!" The boys were stunned into silence by hearing a girlish voice. All heads turned around as they saw Josie - wild-haired by the wind - sitting in far too tight-fitting raffled denim shorts with her bare legs crossed and a sleeveless black shirt on the couch in the plane. Scratching their heads, they quickly glanced back to the wing to see if that blond girl wasn't there anymore. She wasn't. She was on the plane now.

                "And her name's Raven," Josie added while taking a swig of a bottle of booze standing next to her on a table. She drew a filthy face and spat it all out, spraying a mix of alcoholic beverage and saliva over an open sushi box.

"Ugh! Disgusting!” She wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Anyway, I'm Josie; nice to meet you all!" She held out a hand as if to shake with a gleaming smile, which none of the baffled boys answered. "But you boys can call me Dark Tempest. Heck, the whole world can call me Dark Tempest now because my darkness is hard to temper. Get it? The word 'temper' is almost like 'tempest'." Josie laughed as the only one by her own joke. "Ooooh, there should be a death penalty for something like that, shouldn't it? Anyway, let me leave you guys my signature here so you will never forget my name."

The boys gasped with surprise when, in a swoosh, Josie vanished and was found outside atop the plane's wing. She waved at them before focusing her gaze and using her heat vision to burn her signature in the wing's metal. She did it also on the other wing. Then blew the boys a kiss and blasted off.

                Startling a few billionaire's sons was the least of the mischief she pulled off that day. After that, she made a trip to South Africa, where she rendered a diamond mine useless and subsequently rained down the gemstones above a slum area rich with grasping hands.

Then, she blasted off towards Saudi Arabia, where she destroyed dozens of pumpjacks on an oilfield as a so-called act of environmental stewardship. Her day trip ended with a superpowered dip into the South China Sea, whereby she unknowingly flooded kilometers of beach on the east coast of Vietnam with a tidal wave.