When they reached the George Washington Bridge that crossed from New Jersey to New York, Jess refused to cross. "This is insane, Sam. We can't just rush in when we don't even know what's happening over there. What if your girl is dead? Going off of what you've told me, you're not good enough to avenge her."

"And what if Cassandane is two miles that way, having a victory party? Not literally a party, of course. She might do a slight half smile in celebration."

"We need to watch the news again. Find a sports bar so we can get some free TV time."

Sam dutifully circled back to street level so that they could search out a public venue with televisions. After finding the first three bars closed and noticing that even casual restaurants were shut down, they formulated a revised plan and put it into action. Sam charged Jess up, then the two of them flew towards a tall apartment building with balcolnies. They carefully selected an unoccupied unit and Sam opened the door with her corona. Once inside, they moved a desk to block the door leading into the apartment. Then, sure that no one would barge in to discover them camped out illegally, they turned on the television in the living room.

For several hours, they caught up on everything they had missed. Jess grumbled when she learned that they had come all the way east for nothing when they could have stopped at Pittsburgh. That wasn't all her friend picked up on during their intelligence gathering. "Mike. You think that's short for Michael?"

"Chill it with this guy, Jess," she said. "You haven't even met him yet." Though based on what they had just watched, they would meet and work side by side with him. "What if he is a creep or an asshole?"

Jess leaned into her. "Based on the interview, he's either funny as hell or a complete douche."

"Still -- the ears. Don't they bother you?"

"I didn't even notice them, Sam. Who walks around looking at people's ears? I just notice he's got an intensity to him that's really interesting."

Sam bit back the comparison to Brad, the loser asshole ex of Jess. If her friend was finally over Brad, then she should support that. "Hey, Jess, do you want me to teach you some of what I learned about the talents?"

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"Do bears prefer Charmin toilet paper?"

"Only in commercials, Jess."

"What are you, a zoologist?"

"I'm a badass paragon." Sam pushed a charge of precursor into her friend. "What should we try first? Synergies are hard. After flying for most of the day, I don't think you need a lesson on the kinetic talent. Let's do some teleotic work."

"Sounds good. What's teleotic?"

"You can change the way matter interacts."

"An intriguing but vague description."

Sam shrugged. "I used it to make carbon rain out of the air of our spacesuits so we didn't run out of oxygen."

"That explains the soot that was on me. So . . . it's a chemistry talent?"

"Or you can harden your skin so that you become bullet proof."

"Sam! Why didn't you lead with that? Seriously, you were doing a shit job of selling this teleotic thing before you mentioned the hard skin."

For the next two hours, Sam tried to teach Jess the basics of the Teleotic talent. The efforts weren't wasted, exactly, but neither were they particularly productive. At the end of the time, Jess could cut her nails without touching them, just forcing a pattern onto the keratin so that a smooth break formed. Her friend's high opinion of the new talent cooled rapidly based on her initial exposure.

They showered and put back on the same clothes, careful not to leave too many signs of their presence behind. Then Jess claimed the couch while Sam sat back in a recliner. They kept the television on, which in addition to the unending loop of building catches, interviews, and talent fights, now included photos and cell phone videos of two flying women wearing leather biker gear.

"We made the news!" Jess laughed. "That's our fifteen minutes of fame, Sam."

"I think the two of us will have more than the standard fifteen minutes of fame."

"Probably," Jess said. After a moment, "do you think it would be a bad idea to use the phone to call home?"

"You mean do I think it would be a bad idea to leave evidence of our illegal entry that could be traced back to us?"

"So bad idea. Got it. It's just . . . we ran away from home. That's a shitty thing to do, Sam. I know I had the Brad thing that I was trying to leave behind and you were really not feeling the college thing anymore, but our parents had no clue we were leaving forever. I feel bad about it. And now we're back on Earth. Our families deserve to know."

"Yeah," Sam said. "We'll get to a phone soon enough. Promise."

"In Pittsburgh."

Sam shook her head. "We'll see if we stay there for long. Of all places, Cassandane, Pittsburgh . . . ?"