After unpacking their belongings into the dorms, he’d gotten the others to go explore the city. The pull of all this life around him left him breathless. He’d have to harden himself to the surging sensation of the world.
He watched Liz pull out her phone to pay for Carnival Mysteries You Can’t Believe, as the freshmen pushed inside eager for a bit of distraction. The air she’d been summoning to keep the stench of the city at bay fell away with a wave of her finger as she tugged her phone out of its spot in her purse. The lobby was cool, reminding the young Jotun of home. His real home, not this city or the place he’d supposedly come from, where the real Josh was going to a community college and working to help support his family. This Josh looked like him. And while these mortals thought of identity theft, they had no idea the extent to which he could steal their identity. Josh had never seen San Francisco, but he’d also never seen Wichita or wherever he was supposed to have flown in from. But that didn’t matter, the real Joshua James was going to school somewhere in the Midwest and had no idea that this Josh was even here. His handlers had done their research.
Josh smiled as he watched her. He enjoyed the banter and the flirting with the super who controlled the winds. She would work well for him to find out more about the Super Commission’s plans.
----------------------------------------
Violet was moving past a fake mermaid made of a duckbill platypus and papier mâché when her AI chimed in her earbud. She stifled a groan and fell further from the group.
“What is it Minerva?” she cupped her hand to her ear. The others would think she’d gotten a call, but they couldn’t hear what the AI said either.
“Portal activity has been detected at your location. I will highlight the location on your goggles once you are in uniform.” Next to a picture of a bearded woman, Liz’s eyes narrowed, and Violet knew her AI was giving her the same message. Chances were it was just a new super with portal abilities making a tiny portal. Since the event two years ago, those were super common.Then again, the Eldritch wanted in, but when they bored through, it took time. So, wherever this portal event was, chances were it was too small for anything truly dangerous to come through. Though, the Eldritch were one of the few things that could hurt Vi.
“An Agent Mann has already been dispatched with anti-Eldritch weapons and will be arriving shortly,” Minerva said. “Be prepared to contain.”
Violet groaned. She hated working with the weird robot men.
Josh grabbed Liz’s arm. That’s what her friend got for being so noticeable and flirting so much. A nice guy worried about why she looked worried and what the phone call meant. Violet, on the other hand, could nip away quietly.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Anna asked her.
Or not, she thought.
“Nothing,” Violet said. “I just need to go–”
“You just got a phone call and now you need to take off? Is everything okay?”
“I, um... It was an alert from my phone, not a call. My blood sugar’s low and I have to go get a snack,” Violet lied. She hated lying, especially about her diabetes this way, but it was the first excuse that popped into her head.
Some people’s powers had no repercussions, others caused weird food cravings, and hers had caused her to stop producing insulin, or maybe that was the stress of everything that had happened. No one knew exactly how the powers worked, though everyone agreed powers were related to what you most wanted when the Eldritch were near you.
Her apartment building collapsing in the attack had definitely left her wishing she wouldn’t get hurt. Whatever that had to do with food, who knew?
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Usually, I bring something with me, but I didn’t bring my bag.”
“What about insulin? Don’t you need that too?”
Violet tapped her pocket where her insulin pump sat. “I have a pump. Usually, it keeps everything stable... I’ll be fine. Why don’t you go take some pictures with...” Violet looked around the room for something, and pointed towards a red bench with a statue of a woman whose neck was two feet long on it. “The stretched neck woman.”
Anna laughed. “Really?”
“I’ll be fine, and I’ll meet up with all of you later, okay? I’ve got my phone.”
Anna shrugged, but Violet could feel Anna’s eyes on her back as she hurried back towards the entrance. Liz met her around the corner, shaking her head.
“That guy–”
“Likes you,” Violet said, looking for somewhere, anywhere, that felt private where they could change into their super suits without drawing anyone’s attention. While supers were sanctioned by the government and licensed, most supers had learned it was best to keep your powers secret otherwise, people wanted constant demonstrations and demanded things of you. The Commission in its wisdom kept supers’ identities secret by default.
“He’s cute, I guess.” Liz rolled her eyes as they ducked into a public bathroom.
“And what? What’s so wrong with a guy that likes you?”
“Have you seen his stupid thumb print tattoo? It takes up his whole tricep! Seriously, who is that dumb?”
“I do wonder...” Violet stepped into a stall. The ground here was gross and damp. And no, she didn’t like the stupid thumb print tattoo, though she wasn’t into guys. “Is it his thumb print or just a random one generated to look cool? And should you keep your thumb print on your arm like that? Like what if someone wants to copy it to make it look like you did some crime or something?”
Her clothes swarmed over her, becoming her super suit, turning from the comfortable shorts and t-shirt she’d been wearing into a skin tight mesh that protected her identity and her already indestructible body. When she’d applied for her super name – Indestructigirl – she’d chosen purple to match her name. Patterns adorned the whole suit, and over her chest sat the Super Commission logo and her super name was emblazoned across her back. Her insulin pump, of course, was secure in the same spot it had been, though somehow the nanites hid the bulge. Her hair blew free, but had turned a brilliant violet. Something about the hairless look with no face weirded people out. The commission had done studies. So, most new super-suits coated their supers’ hair to match their costumes and gave the appearance of goggles over their eyes so that they didn’t hit that uncanny valley and freak people out. Her phone had moved from her pocket to press against her lower back. While she couldn’t get to it, Minerva could respond to any texts or anything for her.
When she stepped out of the stall, she saw Liz at the mirror. The nanites of Liz’s supersuit had transformed into a sleek, teal creature with dark blue hair. They emerged from the bathroom, and people stopped to stare. Where no one had noticed them going in, now everyone stared at them emerging.
“Indestructigirl and Storm Rider?” a woman said loudly. “We got some new supers.”
“I’m giving you the coordinates for the portal now,” Minerva said in her ear. Her goggles showed a map in the top left of her vision. Of course, the portal was out over the water.
The wind around the two of them picked up, making the brilliantly colored hair whip around them.
“You better not drop me again,” Violet said. “I’m not the best swimmer.”
“That was an accident. I’ve been practicing,” Liz said as the wind picked up. “Besides, your suit has emergency flotation devices.”
“Yeah, I’ll blow up like Violet Beauregard in Willy Wonka? In my suit, I’ll look like a giant blueberry.” Violet’s feet lifted off the ground.
Liz didn’t say anything, as she concentrated on bringing the wind underneath them, lifting them both into the air in a mini-tornado. She had to focus to keep them high enough off the ground and away from the other people so that no one else was in their path. Normies weren’t supers and didn’t have any protection against any debris that they might drop.
“Bouncing was not fun,” Violet shouted over the mini tornado.
“That was an accident. I already apologized.” They rose above the buildings near the docks. At least they were on the Embarcadero and not downtown where the skyscrapers were. Or as high of skyscrapers as were around in San Francisco.
The wind whipped around them as they moved toward the portal activity. Violet’s stomach clenched. Not at the thought of falling, but at what they would do if there were Eldritch coming through the portal. Neither of their powers could do much against the creatures. Liz could send more tornadoes and storms at them and disrupt their flight and keep them away from the city. Violet could punch and tackle them, but not much else. And they were one of the few things powerful enough to hurt her. That Agent Mann better get there soon with the anti-eldritch devices. She really hoped it was just a new portal super, but what were they doing out over the water?