The sound of loud, twangy country music filled the warehouse as an assortment of workers steadily loaded several trucks with metal crates, under the watchful eye of armed guards, and a few men dressed in pristine suits that undoubtedly cost more than the workers made in an entire year. The armed guards were there to make sure none of the underpaid grunts got any ideas about making off with the valuable contents of the crates. Not that they would have been able to open them anyway, but still. The men in suits, the owners of said crates, were there to watch their possessions get loaded onto the trucks so they could assure themselves that their valuable property was on its way. And, of course, to make certain that none of their compatriots got any ideas of their own. Every rich man here had thought of ripping off one another and blaming it on some accident. None of the three trusted one another any further then they could have thrown one of those trucks. So, their safest recourse was to stand right there and watch their property get loaded. Then be at the other end of the trip to watch as it was taken off and opened. They would hardly leave one another’s sight until that time. Not that they would drive with their property, of course. That would have been a thirty-six hour endeavor, and they were all far too important for that. Instead, they would take a private plane and relax at the resort hotel on the other end until their employees finished making the long drive.
In most cases, there would be various Star-Touched and police escorts for transporting cargo that was this valuable. Not to mention it most likely would not be done in the middle of the night under the shroud of darkness. But then, that was for legal cargo, and laws, to these men, were barely more than polite suggestions. If their property was on the up-and-up, they would have shipped it via plane. Or even hired a Travel-Touched to get their property where it needed to be almost instantly. But none of them trusted any such person on the Fell side of the law not to make off with their expensive cargo. And given its… illegalities, they couldn't go to one that was above-board. The government very carefully watched such transactions and required verification of transported cargo before it could be teleported.
On the other hand, they could have gone to the Ministry for help. But that would require paying an exorbitant amount of money in ‘tax’ for the privilege. These men had not made all their money by bowing to such pressures. Especially when they weren't planning on spending much time here in Detroit anyway. This was simply where they had come to pick up their property.
One of the men, a black guy with a perfectly-tailored blue suit and matching sunglasses, checked his watch. “Exactly how much longer is this supposed to take? I thought we paid these guys extra to move their asses. They should have had this shit loaded five minutes ago.”
The Caucasian man with dark blond hair and a white suit next to him frowned, looking not at his watch, but at the stereo sitting on a chair next to one of the trucks, still blasting that loud country music. “Yeah, and haven’t we been listening to this same shitty song for ten minutes now? I know it all sounds the same, but I swear it just keeps repeating.”
The final man, another white guy (this one with a dark suit), took his own sunglasses off and cleared his throat while taking a few steps that way. “Hey, if you guys think you're getting paid more to slow-walk thi--” In mid-sentence, the man completely vanished from view, his words cut off entirely, as though he had fallen through a hole in the universe.
Eyes widening as they saw that, the other two rich guys, accompanied by a few more bodyguards, went dashing that way. For the first couple of steps, everything remained the same. Then, at the third step, the view in front of them completely changed. The air seemed to shimmer a bit, before they saw the real view of the loading dock. Their companion in the dark suit was the only person still standing. All of their workers were sitting with their hands cuffed behind their backs and their mouths gagged. The armed guards that had been right next to the trucks were lying on their stomachs, hands and legs shackled, while their weapons were nowhere in sight. The radio had been turned off, and two of the trucks themselves were gone. Only one remained, its rear door open to show the assortment of metal crates carefully stacked within.
As the men stopped short and stared at this baffling sight, a thick red smoke began to fill the air. It obscured their view of everything around them, making the men recoil while coughing. In the next moment, several loud fireworks exploded, along with a handful of strobe lights, shining out through the thick smoke. And on the heels of those fireworks, a very different sound filled the room. That of loud laughter, pumped through the warehouse speakers so that it seemed to be coming from every direction.
Finally, the smoke cleared, leaving the reeling men facing a single figure who had appeared in that time, standing right at the open back door of the truck. The girl was small, clearly no more than nine or ten. The costume she wore, and it was clearly a costume, consisted of a red bodysuit with slightly darker red armor panels across her legs, chest, and arms. Black boots and gloves covered her feet and hands, and she also wore a long black cloak. A cloak which was steadily billowing out behind her in defiance of the utter lack of wind. The hood of the cloak was raised over the black helmet that covered her entire head. The only distinguishing feature of that helmet to break up its pitch-black smooth surface was a pair of glowing red lights to simulate eyes.
“Well jeez, guys!” the girl called out, voice projected loudly through both the helmet and the surrounding warehouse speakers. “It's about time. I thought I was gonna have to give you a nudge or something. I set up that whole fun holographic illusion thing and it was so good you didn’t even notice for like… ten minutes. Aren't you supposed to be, like, super-duper perceptive and stuff to succeed at this whole amoral rich guy thing? I’m starting to think movies lied to me.”
“Who th--” The black man was the first to recover from his surprise, jerking his hand up to point. “Grab that fucking kid! I dunno who the fu--aaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!” In mid-sentence, the man's blurted demands turned to a scream as he was yanked off his feet, flipped upside down, and flew six feet higher in the air, his feet attached to a large, glowing silver orb that had flown down from the ceiling and hovered there. His wallet, phone, keys, and assorted other objects fell from his pockets to clatter across the floor while he struggled uselessly. But none of his efforts mattered. His feet appeared to be solidly stuck to the silver, beachball-sized orb as he hung there upside down. The air was filled with the sound of his violent cursing and threats.
“Come on guys, I know this is a really stressful time for you, but could you not swear so much?” the girl complained. “I’m not old enough to go to PG-13 movies yet, and you’re making it really hard for me to tell my uncle I was a good girl tonight.”
“You’re literally fucking robbing us!” the white man in the white suit blurted. “Does that sound good to you?”
“Dude, you’re getting robbed by a kid,” Joyride pointed out. “It sounds hilarious to me.”
Growling angrily, the man jerked his own hand toward the armed guards standing around them. The ones who hadn't already been disarmed and manacled, anyway. “What’re you cocksuckers waiting for, get the kid!”
“Pffft, screw that,” one of the guards snapped while dropping his gun. “You know who that kid is? That’s Joyride. You try to fight her and lose, you just got your shi--stuff wrecked by a ten-year-old girl. You try to fight her and win, you just beat up a ten-year-old girl. It’s lose-lose and I, for one, do not feel like losing. See ya.” With that, he pivoted on his heel and began to walk straight out of the warehouse. “Have a nice life!”
Of the remaining few guards, two more joined him. Leaving one of either particular loyalty or a lack of care, who took a couple steps that way while raising his pistol. “Okay, kid, I’m sure you’ve had a lot of fun with your toys, but if you don’t let my boss down right n--” Once more, an interruption came. This time, in the form of his gun being yanked from his hand to land at her feet. Accompanying it were the pistols each of the three rich guys carried for their own protection, and those that the departing guards had dropped.
All of the weapons hit the floor in front of Joyride, who casually stepped over them and raised her hands. As she did so, a half-dozen more silver orbs, these ones the size of softballs with a blue lens on one side and a red one on the opposite, flew out of the truck to surround her. “Quick question, do you guys know why I'm still here and didn't run off with all your stuff already?” Her voice was cheerful, as she looked around excitedly, clearly hoping someone would actually answer.
As the only bodyguard who had stayed with them gave a helpless look toward the guy in the black suit who employed him, the rich man himself snarled, “Cuz those crates are locked. You can't get in them without our fingerprints and retinal scans.”
“Yup!” Joyride chirped. “And boy, I gotta tell you, I misheard retinal the first time. You guys should’ve gone with that, cuz there's no way I would have had anything to do with this if you did.” She made a disgusted noise and visibly shuddered before straightening. Her voice went back to being happy. “But you didn’t! And I have learned to be very careful about making sure people enunciate. So we’re all good!”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“No, we're not good!” the man in the white suit blurted, “you’re trying to fucking rob u--aaaahh!” His scream was joined by his companion’s as both men were yanked off their feet and hauled upside down in the air to be attached against a couple more of those beachball-sized metal orbs. The contents of their pockets joined that of the first man’s in clattering loudly across the cement floor.
“Didn’t I say something about watching your language?” Joyride complained with a sigh. “I could’ve sworn I did.” Shaking that off, she added, “But yeah, you're right. I need your fingerprints and your, uhh eye prints? Whatever, I need those to open the crates!”
“Guess that means you're out of luck, kid,” one of the men snarled. “Cuz we ain't giving you anything.”
With a voice that made it clear she was smiling broadly, Joyride replied, “What makes you guys think I need your permission?” As she said that, several of the smaller orbs around her began to float that way. The men recoiled as much as they could in their upside down position, and their last remaining bodyguard tried to jump in the path of the orbs. He, however, was abruptly yanked to the floor by an unseen force, held flat there with a blurted curse.
“You guys can close your eyes if you want to,” Joyride advised. “It doesn’t really matter. My friends here can do a… uhh, think of it as a holographic model of your whole bodies that are good enough to fool those crates. It’ll just take a few minutes. Don’t worry though, it won’t hurt!”
The men snarled, cursed, and threatened, but could do nothing to stop the orbs from projecting their bright scanning lights over them from the blue lenses. As promised, the scan didn’t hurt. Well, aside from their pride, as the rich and powerful men were left to hang helplessly upside down while this child had her machines scan their bodies in order to successfully steal what they firmly believed belonged to them.
In the midst of all that, however, a very different sound abruptly filled the air. It was a loud kathunk as something heavy landed on the roof of the remaining truck.
“Kathunk?” Joyride echoed, turning that way. “I don’t remember planning for a kathunk.”
Her musings were interrupted as a new figure leapt down from the roof of the truck, landing between Joyride and the open back. The sudden arrival, along with the figure’s… unique appearance, was enough to make the girl yelp and stumble slightly in surprise.
It was a giant praying mantis, standing a good five-and-a-half feet tall. Its forward ‘arm-like’ legs clacked warningly through the air as though telling the girl to stay back.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Joyride exclaimed abruptly after recovering from her surprise. The orbs floated up around her once more. “I know you, you’re--”
But then it was her turn to be interrupted. In this case, by a loud squeal coming from above, just before the glass of the skylight was shattered by a form crashing through it. A reddish-blue moth, body as large as a motorcycle and with a wingspan to match, slammed into the glass, broke through, and then came into land on the cement. A tiny figure, even smaller than Joyride herself, was perched there. She was the source of the loud squeal, which turned out to be one of delight.
“Lightning Bug!” Joyride blurted out loud. She took a second, staring at the very obvious Touched child. The five-year-old had dark red skin that almost matched the armor panels of Joyride’s suit, along with bright white hair and her own set of insect-like wings.
“Whee!” Bug herself was still blurting, hugging the moth around the neck. “Oh my gosh, that was fun! We gotta do that again, Fuzzbutt! And maybe we could do a loopty-loop and--” She blinked up toward the other girl before seeming to remember what was going on. “Oh!” Hurriedly, the girl scrambled off her moth friend, using her own wings to hover briefly before landing. Striking a dramatic pose, or her best approximation of it with a fist on one hip, the tiny child pointed that way. “Halt right there, supervillain! You have terrorized this city long enough! Your reign of… uhhh… umm, terror stops right now! Wait, no, your reign of villainy! Your reign of villainy ends right now! Wait, nuh uh, dastardly deeds! Your reign of dastardly deeds ends right now!” Seeming to silently consider her own words briefly, she finally gave a firm nod, apparently satisfied.
“Okay, seriously?” One of the upside down men muttered in complaint while they all stared incredulously, “we have got to get a more secret place to do this shit at next time.”
Joyride, meanwhile, had recovered by that point. She looked back and forth between the two giant bugs and their diminutive owner a few times before slowly straightening. “Oh… oh.” Clearing her throat, the girl retorted, “And what makes you think you can stop me, Lightning Bug? I am Joyride, the Passage Princess! The Tycoon of Transit! The--hang on.” Tilting her head, she made a couple quick gestures in the air that looked as though she was turning invisible pages while staring at empty air, the view obviously different within her helmet. “Wandering… motility… loco… that’s it, the Leader of Locomotion!”
Even as she said that, the sound of a new crash came, as a slightly smaller (yet still relatively enormous) bug zipped through the nearby window and came flying up on her left side. It was a bright metallic purple Orchid bee, about the size of a cat. Completing the image, he even wore what looked like an old-fashioned World War One pilot’s cap and goggles, wings steadily buzzing as he hovered there on the far side of Joyride as though covering her from that angle.
And a moment later, the main door of the room opposite the loading dock was knocked down, as a three-foot-tall, six-foot-long beetle with a neon green shell slammed into it before crawling inside.
“Good job, Kenobee, Snugglebug!” Clearly delighted by her friends’ arrivals, Lightning Bug straightened to her full (quite tiny) height once more. “I’m only gonna tell you one more time, villain! Surrender, or face the full might of… of… umm… Lightning Bug and her Insect Armada!”
“Oh, you might have me surrounded, goodie two-bug!” came the quick retort, “but I’m not captured yet! Get ‘em!”
With that, the orbs split off from her, flying out to, in at least some sense of the word, ‘attack’ the bugs. Small stinging-like beams shot from the orbs. A few hit here or there, while others missed as the giant bee, praying mantis, beetle, and moth dodged and weaved around them. One of the orbs was smacked to the ground by a quick strike from Cinnamon the mantis, even as another one was taken down when Kenobee expertly barrel-rolled around its shots and crashed into it from the side. Three of the orbs flew straight up, chasing after Fuzzbutt as the moth went soaring back through the hole in the skylight before performing a daring aerial battle with one another. A battle that was soon joined by Kenobee, as he abandoned his own target to lend aid to his wingman. Or rather, wingmoth.
Meanwhile, the two girls themselves lunged at one another. What followed wasn't exactly an epic duel to the death. Not that one would know that going by the sounds the pair were making. The rich men, helplessly hung upside down, were forced to listen as the two young girls hummed their own combat music and sound effects while exchanging ‘blows’ that barely connected. They fought like children on the playground engaged in a game, albeit with more fairness than many of those tended to display. When one of them ‘hit’ the other with a punch, the struck person staggered backward in exaggerated reaction, flailing and making loud pained noises before retaliating in kind. The two of them dodged, punched, and kicked as though acting out an incredibly well-choreographed battle from a movie, all while making their own sound effects for the blows and humming musical accompaniment.
Finally, after a particularly epic two-fisted punch from her five-year-old enemy, Joyride threw herself a good seven or eight feet (assisted by a bit of a boost from her boots) to land on the floor, sprawling out in exaggerated fashion. “Oooof! Noooo.” Rolling over, she whistled, summoning what remained of her orbs (all of them technically remained, though the ones that had been ‘defeated’ simply vanished from where they fell and returned to their home base) to hover over her.
With her own enlarged companions gathered on all sides of her, Lightning Bug stood proud and tall. “Like I said, your evil is over!”
Making a show of panting heavily, Joyride shook her head. “Not this time, Lightning Bug! You might have stopped me from taking the last truck, but I still have the other two, and my little friends managed to finish their holographic models of these jerks!”
“Wait,” Bug blinked. “Other t--” In mid-sentence, a bright flash of light filled the room, forcing the girl and everyone else to recoil and shield their eyes. When the flare died down, Joyride and her orbs had all vanished. Including the larger balls that had been holding the three men, leaving them to fall unceremoniously back to the floor. All that was left, where the other girl had been, was a large manilla envelope.
Recovering quickly, the man in the blue suit showed himself to his feet while blurting, “What’re you idiots waiting for? Get our guys out of those cuffs, get the crates off the truck, get--”
“Hey, what’s this?” Stepping over, Lightning Bug reached down to grab the envelope before picking it up. She read the message scrawled across it. “T-tuh… to… to… who… it… may… what’s this word?” She asked, holding the envelope up.
“Concern,” the remaining bodyguard distractedly replied while trying to pick the lock of the cuffs keeping one of his companions trapped.
“To who it may concern,” Lightning Bug read, before smiling proudly. “I read it, yay! Huh. I’m concerned.” Curious, she opened the envelope, before taking out several pictures and papers. “Hey… this looks like you guys.” She compared the pictures to the three rich men who were still collecting themselves. “And that looks like… uh oh.” Jerking backward, she blurted, “You did bad things!”
“What--” The man in the white suit tore his attention away from frantically demanding that the truck with the last of their belongings be hastily unloaded, not trusting that Joyride hadn’t trapped the vehicle. “What’re you--” He saw the papers and photos, eyes widening. “Hey, gimme those, you--” But before he could do or say anything else, the man was abruptly knocked forward by Kenobee slamming into him from behind.
“Bad guys!” Lightning Bug blurted. Her hands rose, and blueish-white lightning-like blasts shot from her outstretched fingers. The man, as well as his two partners and their remaining guard, all collapsed on the ground with a collection of yelps as the same power the girl used to empower insects or heal people she liked, was used to hurt those she deemed ‘bad.’ Taken completely by surprise, all four men were on the ground before they knew what was happening.
“Hold it!” The new voice interrupted, as a woman in a costume of dark gold pants with black lines, black boots, a dark purple scale mail shirt, gold leather coat, and black helmet with purple lenses strode into the room. “Okay, someone needs to explain what’s going on, because I was just getting in my car and all of a sudden I’m standing in front of this--Bug?!”
“Hiya, Mama!” Stopping her electrical blasts, the girl proudly declared, “I beat a supervillain! She ran away. Oh, and I found these bad guys too. They didn’t get to run away. But I have a nemy--a nemuh, a namysus!
“Can we have ice cream now?”