The Owl in the Abyss - Chapter 6

The conundrum that was presented to me as the morning dawned was whether I should tell dad about ‘15 immediately or wait until he came back home from work later. He usually gave himself under an hour to get ready for a workday and I knew if I sprung 15’s appearance on him at breakfast, he would run late or even call in for a day off. This was, after all, something directly related to me and concerning me. Even if he made it to work, the worry would gnaw at him.

Stopping myself from falling into the old trap of that line of thinking was a close thing. It was me not trusting my father, taking the decision out of his hands. Assuming that he would not be able to do anything or not doing the right thing. Thinking I knew better. In other words, the awful thinking that those three bitches had molded me into adopting.

It also helped that my sleepless state forced me to address and approach my own thoughts. There was no blissful sleep oblivion for me anymore to put off thinking about anything or making a decision. This would have the negative side of me potentially becoming obsessive and angry when my thoughts went in circles when no solutions to a problem became apparent.

So about fifteen minutes before dad’s alarm would ring, I finally emerged from the basement to the kitchen, with ‘15, my notebook and the seemingly endless fire, to begin making breakfast for him.

Thankfully all the ingredients for mom’s special version of French toast with bacon was there.

The bacon was a problem. I couldn’t wear a kitchen apron and the hissing oil jumping off the frying pan in small droplets hit me alternately on my stomach or breasts. It didn’t hurt or burn me as such, but it was annoying. I was forced to distance myself as much as possible from the stove, turning my side towards it to present as small a target area as possible. Of course, that meant my arm was in the line of fire, but I bore it.

It was this scene that dad walked into and he clearly struggled to keep the amusement off his face.

“Good morning, dear.” His eyes danced with merriment.

“Morning, dad,” I grumbled in annoyance, retreating from the stove and allowing him to give me a peck on the cheek. “Sleep well?”

“Fine thanks, though I know I dreamed something weird, just don’t ask me to remember,” he shook his head in frustration and sat down at the table.

“Yeah, well my night was… weird as well,” I returned to the stove and gestured to ‘15 then to my notebook.

“Uh, honey, why is there a pipe in the kitchen and where…” His question was interrupted when ‘15 let off a distinct series of honks that was almost musical in nature. The pipe was definitely learning to get better at that.

Dad blinked and his jaw was slightly unhinged in astonishment and shock.

“Dad,” I flicked my fingers to snap him out of it and pointed again at the notebook. “Open at the bookmark, there’s a condensed summary I wrote out for you.”

Intelligence flooded into his features again and he shook his head incredulously. “Good grief, something else was delivered to you out of nowhere?”

“Yes,” I pulled the pan off the hot plate and switched it off, beginning the coffee brew.

He opened the book and began to read my ‘report’ on ‘15, occasionally throwing a glance at the innocuous pipe. A method had dawned on me to allow him to get the pertinent facts I had deduced and get it in a quick digestible fashion - by simply writing an almost essay style report format that I had learned in middle school then adapted a bit, appending my morse code style interview with ‘15 afterward.

His full breakfast was placed on the table and he began absently eating with his mind fully captured by reading the report.

I sat down across from him with a glass of water and made sure to keep SCP 15 in my sightline.  Trying to deduce what those three letters could be an acronym for was still an ongoing process. Made even more complicated by the fact that it was definitely government style bureaucracy at work, trying to designate something as clearly impossible as a sentient, growing pipe network. The numerical designation was even more alarming, indicating the possibility that the pipe network was the 15th such impossibility cataloged.

What about the previous fourteen?

Could there be more than fifteen impossible yet possible things?

Dad sighed and closed the notebook, leaning back and absently sipped his coffee.

“That’s a pretty good report, little owl,” he eventually said. “I almost wish some of the Union paper pushers would write like this.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ve spent more time with… ‘15, than I have. So I’ll trust that you can keep it contained and with you. I’ll think about it today, see if I can’t figure out something about all this and what we’re gonna do. Have you thought about what you’re doing for your own… food yet today?”

“Somewhat, I’ve been distracted with ‘15 for most of the night.”

“Understandably,” he nodded. “But this is more important, it’s your survival.”

“As all my plans for doing this legit need things we don’t yet have, this week is still going to have to be under the radar. All I’ve determined is that I definitely don’t want to roam our neighborhood. Too risky.”

“I’ve got an idea,” he declared. “I need to make a few indirect discreet enquiries just to confirm, but when I come back from work this afternoon, I’ll drive you there.”

“Where?”

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The answer to that turned out to be a twenty minute drive in the evening rush hour traffic towards the southern part of downtown Brockton, a stone’s throw from the coast. We had to use dad’s truck this time and it forced me to awkwardly sit in the footwell of the passenger seat. This rather frustratingly left me with very little view of anything going on outside.

Finally, dad found a spot to park and with the sun almost down I felt somewhat confident of getting out of the footwell and sitting normally.

The downtown coast was a mixed residential and commercial zone, with the northern bits of it dominated by apartment buildings and communal title housing, whilst the southern bits held the businesses. These were mostly the occasional small shopping mall, restaurants, small businesses and so on. This was the less nice part of downtown though, one whose criminal side was dominated by the ABB or Azn Bad Boys gang.

As their name implied, they were made up of Asian minorities; Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese. It was a mistake though to think that only racial Asians were members, as evidenced by the arrest of a young white guy a few months ago who was peddling their drugs and visibly had the ABB tattoo on his arms. It naturally made the headlines and was eventually seen as a cunning play by the gang’s parahuman leader to throw the authorities and their rivals a curveball. Introducing the niggling doubt in everyone’s mind that now anyone could be a member of the ABB, no more easy stereotyping or profiling.

Their parahuman leader, Lung, was someone I definitely didn’t want to encounter down a dark alley.

His power was enough to give pause to entire teams of heroes and his rival villains. That power was surrounded by a lot of speculation on its mechanics, but it was known that he could gradually transform into a literal dragon and on the way presumably gain a lot of other powers. The longer he was in a fight, the stronger he got and the more he transformed, until it eventually became almost impossible to fight him.

The most well known of his feats included a fight against one of the Endbringers - where he fought Leviathan to a standstill and a pyrrhic ‘victory’, forcing the beast of destruction to retreat. In the process, however, the large Japanese island of Kyushu was destroyed and subsumed into the ocean - which devastated Japan in general as a result of the massive disturbance.

“Dad, why are we here?”

He looked clearly unhappy, tapping the steering wheel in agitation, then pointed towards the south. “This street, Samoset, going south east, for a few kilometers until you reach Long Pond Road, roughly - is the Red Light district of the bay.”

My eyes widened and I gazed out at the streets and buildings that surrounded us, feeling distinctly small and out of my depth all of a sudden. The idea that there were other girls and women out there, working in prostitution with all its pleasant and mostly unpleasant associations, suddenly went from abstract theory to a much more hard reality.

“If you want to pick up a working girl, roughly after seven in the evening, you just have to drive the streets of this district, generally going about just 20 miles per hour. The girls will get the message and step out so you can see them and pick.”

My mind raced, connecting the dots and I saw what dad was going for. Roaming in my mist form and identifying cars containing potential clients then… appear in them, hypnotize them and there was my meal.

Was it really as simple as that?

Probably not, but it wasn’t as if I had a choice.

My body shook as I took a deep fortifying breath.

“Easy there,” he placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Know that whatever happens, whatever you have to do, no matter how unpleasant or even unthinkable, I will be there.”

My hand grabbed his and squeezed lightly. “Thanks, dad.”

“I’ll remain here for half an hour after you leave, then drive home. You think you can fly home from here?”

My eyes glanced towards the coast and the roads. Whilst they weren’t completely familiar, I knew the general direction and as it would be easy to spot the boardwalk from the air, I could simply follow the more well known route home from there.

“Yes.”

“I’ve set my alarm for four in the morning. If you’re not home, I’ll drive to this spot and wait. If you need to phone me, mist yourself into any location you can find that’ll have a phone and call, no matter what time. Understand?”

I nodded, my throat feeling not at all up to the task of talking at the moment.

A distinct tension was welling up in my back and despite myself, my foot was bouncing nervously in agitation.

“Don’t overthink things,” he advised.

I swallowed, took a deep breath through the nose and let it out through my mouth. It gave me enough calm to say, “‘If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well. It were done quickly.’”

“As your mom would say,” He nodded, his smile was melancholic.

My hand grabbed ‘15, awkwardly bringing it to rest next to me, with one of its ends in the footwell.

“I’ll see you in the morning, dad.”

“Yes, you will.”

I misted and with a thought, propelled myself into the twilight.

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The first thing my mind was caught up in, was the sheer exhilaration and freedom of flight. At the hospital, I’d only done baby steps and only through sheer force of will kept myself from going on extensive jaunts in the air. The idea was just too new then and the nagging fear of my mist form and flight abilities failing me suddenly because of some limit I had not discovered yet was just too great.

Not anymore.

I kept myself at about six hundred feet and at a leisurely speed, probably more akin to a glider than a powered aircraft. This was hardly stretching my limits at all, but going faster or higher meant losing more track of what was happening on the ground.

That first hour in the air I would probably rate as one of the best moments of my life. That such joy could even be a thing that a person was capable of feeling, I had never known. That I was still capable of it in the face of my torments of the last few years, was a victory.

The joy was interrupted, when the first pangs of need began hitting my body.

With my altitude at about a hundred feet and only going slightly faster than a human sprint, I began tracing the roads of the Red Light district.

At this point my nose, which I had learned to keep just real enough to sample the air around me yet remain technically invisible, began to report the presence of many elements.

The dominant one naturally was the pollution from cars, but with the sun down completely, the inversion layer had disappeared and released the accumulated pollution, leaving fresh atmosphere behind. Then there was the emissions from the businesses, the restaurants in particular were very pungent. If I were still capable of eating normal food, I’m sure my mouth would be watering at this point.

Then the scents of humanity began reaching me, each one unique, yet all blending together in a commonality. The English language really didn’t have words for this, simply because humanity didn’t have a nose like this - I was probably going to have to take the time and invent them.

Then the first ‘working girl’ was spotted.

She was simply leaning casually against a building, with an alleyway immediately to her right, presumably to dive into at the first sign of trouble. A quick investigation of that alley revealed a slightly open door and it wasn’t a dead end, giving her a choice to flee to the next street over or into the building, if that became necessary.

In fact, it quickly became apparent that this was the case for most of the buildings in the area. There were no dead end alleys anywhere and perhaps one of the reasons this was the Red Light district of the Bay.

The first customers for the night were also becoming evident. Cars ranging from standard sedans, SUVs, pickup trucks and even fancy ones, such as long body Mercedes were entering the area and driving slowly through it.

Some were just passing through and perhaps just driving slowly because they were looking for an address or specific place, but it was quite clear that most were ‘on the hunt’, looking for a prostitute.

My interest was piqued on the class and types of people looking for a working girl, so I started to poke my head into the cars.

At first, it was what I imagined. Mostly men in their mid-thirties and forties. Their clothing and cars suggested a mid to high degree of wealth. Some were also here despite being married, and even others who also had children. They had policed their cars of most of the obvious signs, but my nose picked up the scents of young children permeating the back seats and their aura were stained with guilty feelings.

Then there were the surprises. I spotted a woman driving a SUV and she was clearly looking for some action, judging by her aura. Another car actually held an entire group of women, who were driving around and picked up a guy, an actual gigolo.

That by itself was quite a revelation.

Fascinated by it, I spent another hour zooming about the district looking for other gigolos.

I found only three, so they were a distinct minority, but they were there.

My treacherous inner monologue came to the fore, I was procrastinating. Yes, it was strangely fascinating observing this part of the city, a small part of the ‘underworld’ but I was burning time and energy flying around like this.

The first car with a likely prospect was picked. This one happened to be a rather fancy and sporty Ford Focus. I misted into the back seat and began inspecting my choice.

He wasn’t particularly handsome, just a guy next door sort of look. His dark brown hair was still vibrant and he was getting some early male pattern baldness on his fringe. He was dressed in a loose sports tracksuit with some trainers, either because it was quite easy to get out of for his activities tonight or he had just come from the gym. His aura came under inspection next; straight, quite eager and just driving around the place was giving him the beginnings of a hard-on.

I de-misted in his back seat, immediately pulling his mind into my influence.

The one thing I didn’t want to cause was a car accident by startling him.

“Drive slower and park.”

“Yes, mistress,” he replied eagerly, his eyes and aura showing him clearly under my spell.

He found a streetside parking spot next to a closed shoe store.

“What’s your name?”

“Stuart, mistress.”

“Pleased to meet you, Stuart.” He was staring at me through the rear view mirror with wide adoring eyes. “Put your seat backrest down, get comfortable.”

My orders clearly had to be phrased more precisely in the future. He complied with my first order readily, but Stuart’s idea of comfort was to immediately begin stripping out of his clothes. He hadn’t even been wearing any underwear and was now nude save for his shoes.

He clearly worked out, but it was a lean runner’s body and shaved everywhere.

His erection pushed into the final stages and it looked almost too big for the body he had. The enticing smell hit me and my final bits of apprehension and caution vanished.

I lunged eagerly forward, taking his manhood into my mouth and began working to gain the sweet nectar of my existence.

My wits were retained enough that I managed to keep a rough awareness of the car and occasionally open my eyes for a glance around. It wouldn’t be wise to be caught unawares in this part of town.

Now I also tried a technique I had researched for better and faster stimulation, making sure to angle it so my tongue grated on the underside of his glans.

That instantly produced a reaction that made it seem like I’d shoved a live wire down his spine.

He lost control over his own voice and started groaning in effort and pleasure. It seemed he had quite a bit of experience, as he was fighting to keep prolonging things and doing so rather well.

Instincts guided me to begin gently cupping and playing with his testes, while my left hand joined in my milking efforts on his penis.

It took nearly two minutes of work like this and finally I overcame his control.

“Fuck, urgh,” he grunted and twitched, while I greedily kept my mouth over his manhood and gulped in every bit of cum he could produce.

Finally, his ejaculation ended. I broke contact and sat back feeling very satisfied and somewhat sated.

My intention next was to wait for about five minutes for him to recover and move on to the even more fun part, but my attention was drawn to movement across the street.

A woman, who was clearly a working girl, wearing a very short skirt, strappy top that showed off a nice bust, open jacket and high heels that I always despised trying to wear, was in a clear argument with someone.

Her interlocutor was another woman, this one also dressed provocatively and showing even more skin with a midriff baring top. She was also slightly taller than the other.

The next thing I saw was that the tall woman had the other by the throat in one hand, shouting and the other hand had a small pistol she had produced from somewhere.

Barely aware of myself, my body misted and I shot across the distance towards them.

My hand just barely clamped down on the wrist holding the gun before its barrel could level with the now screaming smaller woman’s head. My knee instinctively came up to plant itself in the taller woman’s back before I pulled back on her harm.

The gun didn’t go off thankfully and I reached out mentally to pull the ‘bad girl’ in this situation into my mind web. She was snared, but exerting control on a female mind that clearly didn’t want it and fought back was another kettle of fish.

The only words I had for it was a mental tug of war, with will, focus and emotion being the determining factor on how the competition went. There were no problems with the first two in comparison to my opponent, but I was floundering badly in matching her emotional strength.

Even while this was happening, I wrenched the gun out of her hands and pushed her down onto her knees with my superior strength, position and leverage.

My righteous anger and determination was a welcome arrival as it allowed me the final leverage to fully capture her mind.

“Stop!” I snapped at her.

All resistance ceased from her and she fell forward onto her hands.

“Okay, what the fuck? Thank you, but… what the fuck?” the smaller woman breathed, holding a hand to her chest and breathing hard.

Now that she was so close, I could study her aura and while no saint, she was a generally good person in a shitty situation. It was weird that I could make such judgments just from an aura reading but my skill with it was evolving with each person I studied. She also had something there… something she seemed to share with my dad… it was as if there was a potential, something waiting or even something looking?

“Sorry for the fright,” I said reflexively.

She was coming down from her adrenaline inspired fight or flight condition, and now leaning on her knees. “‘Sorry’ she says,” she said incredulously, looking me up and down. “You’re new.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. She was correct in two ways: new to the cape business and the prostitute thing. I jerked my thumb down to the prone woman, “Who is she?”

“That is Mistress Bao,” she rolled her eyes at the name. “And she’s this street’s pimp.”

My eyes blinked in astonishment, “Excuse me?”

“A pimp doesn’t have to be a guy, you know,” she replied wryly to me, slowly getting her breath back. This close I could see Bao was indeed Asian, with a darker hue of skin tone than you’d see from Japanese or Chinese.

“So I see,” I looked up and took in my rescuee’s details; very white, fair skin, red curly hair. If she dressed a bit more conservatively I could imagine her being some college girl at BBU. Her accent was definitely local too.

“Did our little altercation catch you with a customer?”

I nodded and gestured to Stuart’s car. He was still just basking in post-coital bliss.

She clicked her tongue in disappointment, “The guys in those are usually good catches. Name’s Delores Moore, by the way, call me Del.” She stuck out her hand.

I shook the offered hand briefly, “Let’s go by Tay, for the moment.”

“Still not sure of a street name?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t think that working girls also adopted aliases, though it was obvious in retrospect. If some client got a bit too clingy and ended up being trouble, you could simply relocate elsewhere in the city, change your look and change your name. Though I always imagined that pimps were usually the ones who handled those cases. “So why did she attack you?”

“I owe her five grand,” Del shrugged and stared at Bao in confusion. “Why is she still…”

“She can’t get up, I’m not letting her.”

Del stared at me for a moment, then laughed, “Oh wow, you really are one of a kind. Cape and a working girl? Damn, I thought you just had some nice kung-fu moves there.”

“I don’t know any kung-fu, beyond a bit of self-defense basics… Bao, on your feet, stand still.”

The female pimp got up off the ground and stared rigidly into nothing with a blank face. Her mind was still fighting its place in my web, but it seemed once I had gotten the upper hand, there was no escaping until I let her go.

Del slowly got a very satisfied look on her face and smiled as she saw the pimp’s condition. She walked right up to the woman, “Not so fucking tough now, are ya, bitch? Can I punch her?”

“No,” I answered quickly. “Why did she use a gun? Is five grand worth killing you over?”

“Girl, you really are new to the street,” Del laughed. “She’s ABB, they’d kill over much less. They’ve got their saving face thing or street rep and that’s dead serious business to them.”

“What did you use the five grand for?”

“I could just lie to you, you know. Invent any sob story. It’d be amazing to get someone like you in my corner.”

I laughed, “You usually don’t tell a person you’re intending to manipulate, that you’re going to manipulate them.”

Del just smiled at me, “Telling you that is also a manipulation.”

“From that point of view, everything you ever say to anyone is manipulation. I’ll ask again, what did you use five grand for?”

“Bought drugs and sniffed my brains out.”

If I couldn’t spot the lie in her aura, my nose and eyes told me that she was no drug user, “Lie, try again.”

“I’ve got a little brother who I have to support. I’m his only family.”

“Nope.”

Del slapped her own thigh in frustrated annoyance, “That’s such a good one usually.”

I just glared at her in response, “You’re wasting time. I’m missing getting my nymphomaniac urges satisfied.”

Del paused, frowning rather prettily in thought, “Are you an actual nympho?”

I rolled my eyes, “Somewhat, it’s complicated. Truth please.”

“Fine, I just needed it to get my apartment fixed up after some damage from a busted water heater.”

Of all the stories that would ring true, something so mundane just didn’t compute for a moment.

“And that was worth the risk of using your pimp as a loan shark?”

Del shrugged, “Hey, I could’ve lost the apartment if I didn’t get it fixed. Homeless working girl is not on the cards for me. That’s a ticket straight to Lung’s farms.”

I weighed things for a moment, coming to a decision. “Fine. Answer this, imagine you could give Bao an order, she would be forced to obey no matter what. That one order must get her off your back. What order do you give?”

“Wow, that’s not an easy thing to answer,” Del scratched her jaw in contemplation. “Besides forgetting that the past ten minutes have happened… she’d need to change her finance books, but she’d spot missing money in a week or so and go on a rampage trying to discover who had apparently stolen from her.”

“Interesting,” I mused then turned to Bao, pressing down hard on her will. “You will return home and reevaluate your finance records and realize there’s a five thousand dollar error. You will forgive and remove Delores Moore’s debt from the books. After you have done all this you will consider the state of your records normal and nothing out of the ordinary. You will then forget me and the last fifteen minutes. You will not leave yourself any clues or notes. You will then rethink your life and see if you can’t find another job. Understood?”

“Yes mistress,” the words were hissed in anger. She turned on her heel and marched off.

When she reached the edge of my range I let her go.

Bao stumbled slightly, her head twitching this way and that, looking around in confusion before she shrugged and walked away with purpose.

“Wow, that’s amazing and rather scary. You can do that to anyone?”

“Essentially,” I confirmed and walked across the street back to Stuart, who I noticed had gone flaccid in the meantime. I handed the gun to Del as Stuart opened the rear right door for me.

In the car, no time was wasted straddling him.

“Uh, mind if I just watch, Tay?”

My itch really wanted to be scratched at this point. “Fine, get in, close the door.”

She did so, as I was lubricating Stuart again. I gave him a few hand strokes and he was up and ready. I manipulated his dick a bit, brushing his length with my prominent lower lips, which were engorged and leaking.

Finally, I angled him and sat forward, and sighed with satisfaction at the penetration into my core.

For a long few moments I just sat there and basked before beginning my hip gyrations.

Then began to alternate it with pumping motions.

I got so into the experience that after a few minutes of this it was a surprise to see that Del had joined in, in her own way. She had her top pulled down, exposing lovely plush breasts that she was massaging, along with a hand buried beneath her skirt.

Seeing her masturbating to my activities quickly served to push my own arousal much faster than normal.

“Oh f- f- fuck,” I gasped, body twitching and burning with pleasure.

“Holy shit, a squirter,” Del gasped in delight. “You’re even a rarer unicorn than I thought, honey.”

My mind was mush. So I didn’t really care about her comments. My orgasm eventually subsided and I resumed riding Stuart’s wonderful cock. He didn’t take much further prompting to reach his own climax.

I absorbed it all, willing the wonderful nectar up and pulling in the power release.

My senses came alive and it took but a glance to realize that Del had reached her own orgasm from seeing me do it. Her only outward sign was clenched teeth and slight twitches that caused her breasts to jiggle.

In the confines of the car, I dismounted Stuart and took a seat on the forward passenger side, while Del straightened herself out to look ‘presentable’ again.

“Stuart, how much did you budget for your trip? Oh, do sit up.”

“Five hundred, mistress.”

“Give me three,” I ordered after a moment’s thought.

“At once, mistress.”

He pulled his wallet out of the glove box and handed three, hundred dollar bills over. I folded the bills up into a small wad.

“Okay, that is such a broken power, I’m officially jealous,” Del declared with wide eyes.

“Stuart, you will remember that you had a good time and got your money’s worth. You noticed nothing odd, I’m just another working girl.”

“I understand, mistress. You are much more than that, though.”

“Thanks for the compliment, but make sure you dress before driving and this is where we must part ways.” I reached over and grabbed ‘15, before exiting the car.

Del followed quickly, her aura and eyes alight with curiosity and fascination.

“Say, where’s your clothes, Tay?”

“I don’t wear clothes.”

Del was gobsmacked at the answer and only recovered when Stuart started his car’s engine and drove away.

“Seriously?

I nodded. It was the best way I could see to shield what was obviously my primary weakness. If someone attacked me with some sort of net or weighted cloth that could wrap around me, I was fucked. So I would take refuge in audacity and never say that I couldn’t wear clothes, but instead make it simply a choice. The list of people who could understand the assertion for what it was, was small and none of them would have motivation to blab.

“That your idea of an iron?” she pointed to ‘15.

“It is much more than it seems,” I smiled, then promptly pulled her mind into my web. She wasn’t expecting it at all, letting me bulldoze through the tug-of-war battle to win dominance. “I’m sorry, Del, you will not speak, type or write about what you’ve witnessed tonight. Understood?”

She smiled rapturously at me. “Yes, mistress.”

“Good,” then I let her go.

She swayed a bit on her feet, glared at me ruefully, rubbing her head. “Was that really necessary?”

“Did I ever say I trusted you?”

She sighed, “I suppose not. Now you’re really giving me mixed signals, Tay. You’re suddenly as jaded as a street veteran.”

“Let’s just say that my capacity for trust has been thoroughly beaten down and leave it at that. Oh, what are you going to do with Bao’s gun?”

The gun was tucked in the waist strap of her skirt.

“Clean and dispose of it, first chance I get. It’s definitely got blood on it and if the cops catch me with it… bad news all around.” Her aura rang with truth about her intentions.

“Good. Well, it’s been an interesting evening, Del. A pleasure to meet you and I wish you luck with the rest of it.”

My feet turned me around and carried me into the darkness of an alleyway.

“Wait! Uh, here…” She hurried forward to hand me a card with a simple phone number listed on it. “This is my work cell, just in case, you know.”

“I’ll definitely be back, Del, not tomorrow but…”

“Yeah, but who you know is important in this business, networking and so on.”

“I have yet to acquire a work number, but it’s on my to do list,” I folded the card in with the money. “See you round.”

With a bit of dramatics, I stepped backward deeper into the shadows until I was invisible to her eyes and misted, shooting upward to the top of the building in a relative instant.

I saw from above she was shaking her head in amusement and walking forward, “C’mon Tay, none of that… okay, she can actually pull that disappearing bullshit from the movies too. Great.”

Giggling in my head I took off into the night sky.

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There were still hours of the night left and the prospect of just going home wasn’t appealing at all. The freedom of flight and to just keep going was practically irresistible. This wasn’t just freedom from a relatively short hospital stay, I realized. This was freedom from more than two years of purgatory that had been my existence at Winslow High and everything that went with it. It felt like I had finally shaken off the last chains of that existence and it was glorious.

But what could I do with it?

Find another ‘client’?

Perhaps, simply round off the night with one.

Could I… patrol? Search the night for evil-doers and save the day.

I giggled at myself. That internal voice had been in a distinctly pompous, overly dramatic tone. It definitely had its appeal. It was the dream of many to step into the shoes of heroes like Alexandria and Legend. The problem of practicality and that it was just asking to heap trouble on my shoulders stopped me. I still felt so unequal and unprepared for the task. How could I be a ‘hero’, if I didn’t even know the bare basics of the law? What if I stepped into a situation that I didn’t know how to handle? What if I fucked it up? What if…

My thoughts grinded to a halt as the rhythmic distinct chopping sound of an in-flight helicopter reached my ears. My absentminded flight had carried me to within sight of the ocean and below me was a double-carriage three lane highway.

I had just moments to react and zoomed forward as the helicopter in question blasted through the space I had occupied.

It would’ve gone just straight through me to no ill-effect, but there was no overcoming the instinctual reflex to dodge something coming at you that fast.

There was a bright flash from the helicopter and it projected a searchlight down onto the highway.

The light searched, highlighting several passing cars beneath, until it finally focused on a car that was going distinctly faster than the speed limit.

Now the sounds of police sirens reached my ears and coming from the south the flashing lights of multiple police cars were racing up the highway.

A police chase.

Was this the universe’s way of giving me a choice or throwing a very tempting morsel in front of me?

Screw it.

My will carried me to my max airborne speed, flying low along the highway in chase of the culprit car.

I ran into the immediate problem that this car was doing well in excess of a hundred miles an hour. There was no way to overhaul or catch up. The best I could do was keep pace and that was only thanks to the crazy maneuvers the car was pulling to avoid traffic that was slowing it down slightly.

The car itself wasn’t anything to write home about. It wasn’t a sports car, but was a green hatchback of some make that was very nimble and quick.

The police were pursuing with three cars from the rear and two more raced onto the highway from an interchange ahead that would soon box in the hatchback.

This turned out to be both good and bad.

The hatchback’s driver became more desperate and took more risks to evade.

The inevitable happened.

The hatchback clipped another car. It seemed like it had barely touched, yet the delicate balance of the wheels at that high speed turned everything into a disaster. It flipped and began a wild tumble down the highway, spending its unforgiving momentum on itself and everything in the way.

One car clearly tried to dodge, failed and was slammed hard enough to lose its own traction.

The panicked driver lost control.

What followed was a cascading chain accident of over ten cars. The movies didn’t prepare me at all for the awful, grinding, explosive claps of crumpling bodywork being smashed together at high speed. My enhanced eyesight catching brief glimpses of the people inside being ragdolled, possibly dying on impact.

I was as powerless as the police to do anything about it.

Their pursuing police vehicles turned off onto the shoulder of the highway, one racing in the emergency lane to start closing off the highway and warn motorists to stop.

The idea hit me like a ton of bricks.

My flight halted and I turned around.

I found the first car that was still speeding into the massive accident and appeared in the back seat. The driver’s mind was snagged, mercifully this one was male, and I wasted no time in a mental battle. “Hazards on! Begin braking slowly! Forget I gave you this order after you stop.”

“Yes, mistress.”

A painful few seconds was spent to make sure he was complying before misting and flying to the next approaching car and repeating the process.

Thankfully only six cars had to be halted in this fashion and it was causing a chain reaction of slowing cars all the way down the highway.

My will carried me back to the main accident and I was gratified to see the police were out of their cars and helping as much as they could given the limited manpower that was available at the moment.

Two of them had carried the driver of the now wrecked hatchback to the side of the road and were performing first aid on the bastard. In the darkness and flashing lights I couldn’t see much detail, but I did feel that it would be better served using those two police officers to aid the victims of the crash, rather than the cause of it all. It was a rather vindictive thought. Criminal the bastard might be, but he didn’t stop being human.

Speaking of victims, the survivors were emerging from the wrecks of their cars and soon a small crowd of them were strewn alongside the highway. A number of brave souls out of that number were moving among the car wrecks and helping those injured out of their cars. It was also inevitable that there would be those who couldn’t be moved without paramedic assistance. A few police were among the helpful samaritans and were taking those cases in hand.

Soon the question hit my mind, could I do anything more?

My mind blanked completely on the answer. Anything I did would require me to materialize. My presence would immediately distract anyone who saw me.

Perhaps at a critical time.

Any thoughts of finding another meal fled my mind as I shot into the air and headed for home.

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“You did more than could be expected, dear.”

I could only stew in annoyance with folded arms at his perfectly logical arguments and reasoning as I sat at the kitchen table.

“Yeah but…”

“You managed to stop the traffic flow safely at night. That’s something quite difficult to do normally in an emergency. You probably saved dozens of people from being injured and quite a few lives.”

The living room TV, visible from the kitchen, showed aerial footage of the accident scene and the prominent scrolling headline was clear.

Four dead, twenty injured.

The man being chased in the hatchback had been due to be arrested by police for aggravated assault and attempted murder charges. He had managed to elude the initial police arrest and hijacked the car he used in the chase.

“I suppose.”

“Let’s play a thought experiment. A fully trained and experienced Protectorate hero is in your position, like Alexandria, what would she have done?”

“She would’ve easily caught up to the car, lifted it right off its wheels and carried it to waiting police.”

Dad sat forward intently, “One of the drivers was surprised at seeing it happen and jerked the wheel in fright. He crashed, causing a chain accident. Same result.”

“You can’t know that would also happen,” I disagreed.

“At night, with weary drivers at the wheel, oh yes it could, dear. So let’s assume Alexandria recognizes the danger of her intervention and just keeps pace with the car, again same result. The suspect misjudges a high speed evasion, clips and crashes.”

“At which point she lands and can help rescue people out of their cars, which I was too chickenshit to do.”

Dad shook his head, “No. The still incoming cars which have no idea of the situation ahead of them keep coming, they see the police lights flashing but it’s too late - they pile into the mass of wrecked cars. Alexandria can probably stop these cars dead, but that would only lead to more accidents and she is only one person who can be at one place in a point in time, no matter how fast she is. Don’t you see, little owl? You were actually the perfect hero for this situation.”

I breathed a deep sigh, trying to shed myself of the emotions that were boiling up within me and wiped away the treacherous tears from my eyes.

“If you could still sleep, I’d order you to bed,” he continued with a sad smile. “You’re a witness to trauma and death. A person just doesn’t brush that aside. So I want you to find the next best thing, go to the house library, find your favorite book and immerse yourself in it, escape from reality.” He reached for a shopping bag next to the kitchen door and produced a box from it, then placed it in front of me.

I blinked in surprise…

It was a brand new smartphone.

“Everything you need for it is there. The data plan isn’t great, but as long as you don’t go crazy with video sharing, you’ll have more than enough each month.”

I swallowed, “Thanks dad.”

“Good, now go escape from the world, I’ll be calling in a day’s leave at work. Not leaving you alone like this, dear.”

With a surge of affection I stood and hugged him as hard as I dared.

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It took me nearly six hours of just constant reading, snuggled up in bed before I began to feel something approaching normality. It also left me feeling up to the task of setting up my new phone. The PIN number and the phone number wasn’t too crazy to remember, though it was something that would take time to get used to.

Now I was at a loss on what to do.

Do I start some new social media accounts in my own name again?

No. Reattaching myself to that side of the Internet wasn’t on the cards and Emma would definitely notice.

The step I did take was to create a new PHO account that I would use for my parahuman persona. This naturally led to the question of my hero name. That was put off and I focused on a forum username - which didn’t have to be the same as my future nom-de-guerre.

A few minutes spent throwing ideas together and eventually my mind settled on something.

Filling out the electronic forms was quick, but adding the ‘unverified cape’ tag to my account was the final point of no return. This would be my first purposeful official step in the wider cape community.

I tapped the ‘OK’ button and was presented with the formal warning that pretending to be a cape when you were not was a very bad idea. The extra hoop was jumped and I confirmed that ‘Yes, I am sure’, also going through a small visual puzzle to prove my status as a human and not an Internet bot.

The next option presented was the option to submit evidence for getting the ‘verified cape’ tag. It also warned that while PHO’s data security was paramount, no evidence that could compromise my true identity should be submitted.

A few moments thought on what to do for this and I quickly settled on an idea.

Using the smartphone video camera, I filmed my hand picking up my bed sheet and then selectively misting it into invisibility. The bed sheet fluttered down and my hand reappeared in view. This was further demonstrated with a few more innocuous everyday items, long enough that it would hopefully convince the mods that this would be beyond the effort a visual FX artist would put in. A few basic edits and I uploaded the video in the form field.

Finally, everything was done.

My thumb swiped on the screen, looking for anything related to the crash. Such an event was bound to have some discussion on it, even on PHO.

As it turned out, all my efforts at subtlety were somewhat for naught.

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♦ Topic: Police Chase leads to massive Pileup on M3 - new parahuman saves the day?

In: Boards ► East Coast ► MA ► Brockton Bay

Bagrat  (Original Poster) (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)

Posted On Feb 16th 2011:

Anyone local who turned on the news this morning would've seen the report of the pileup caused by the police chasing that attempted murder suspect.

Most of you would shrug and write it off as yet another day in Brockton. I, however, have come upon some info that it could've been a lot worse, if not for the involvement of a parahuman in the event.

How was this determined?

Traffic cameras of the highway spotted cars visibly putting on their hazard lights and slowing down way before their cars would've been in visual range of the pile up.

The police rushing forward were quite astonished that they hardly needed to do a thing to stop oncoming traffic.

We only have preliminary interviews on the scene from the drivers who stopped, but all of them have generally the same story.

They just felt and knew that it was extremely important for them to switch on their hazards and slowly brake, but could give no explanation on where the thought came from.

One of the drivers in question had a dashcam that he kept for insurance purposes. It only looked forward, but the interior microphone barely managed to pick up the voice of a woman speaking to the driver briefly just before he applied the brakes. What she said is unfortunately too distorted to really make out.

The driver swears that no one was ever in the car with him.

So what are your thoughts? Do we have a new parahuman in town?

My preliminary thoughts: Definite Mover with Shaker elements, to appear in multiple cars with the doors and windows being no obstacle. Master, to convince the drivers to stop.

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“Oh… great.”

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A/N: No new SCPs introduced in this chapter.