Emily floated in the crystal clear waters on her stomach watching the tropical fish swim by under her. The fish were bright and colorful and they were the type where people back home went to see in aquariums There were thousands of fish swimming around the reef below. She loved floating here gently rocking as the waves pass by. Emily let her arms and feet dangle as she floated completely relaxed.

She looked slightly to her left to see an old anchor chain resting at the bottom of the ocean floor left there since World War Two when the allies landed to retake the island back from the Japanese. There was a ton of World War Two stuff around the island and it wasn't all that hard to bump into some war relic.

In fact a couple of weeks ago she had taken a tour to the middle of the island where there was a bunch of Japanese tanks left to rust where they had run out of gas so long ago. As she wandered down the beaten path during the tour to see the tank graveyard, the group she was with had passed several crashed Japanese and American airplanes along the way. They were mostly just hunks of junk now but it was still cool to see.

Emily watched without fear as a tiger shark swam thirty feet under her hugging the sea floor as it went about its business. It would take a lot more than a tiger shark to scare her. She took a breath through her snorkel and continued to float along. She followed the canyon like coral with her eyes spotting a blowfish swimming close to the bottom of the sea floor. The tiger shark had spooked it and it looked like a big balloon now. A big balloon with spikes.

Emily's eyes were drawn to a man swimming towards her under the water. He had on very long swim fins and a diving mask without a snorkel. He looked like he was naked but Emily knew that he was not. He was wearing very short tan swimming trunks. Tied to his leg was a combat knife. He swam under her about twenty feet down and stopped to give her a big grin and a thumbs up. Emily gave him the finger.

“Friggin Navy Seals.” She grumbled to herself mentally. “Always showing off.”

The Navy Seal clutched his stomach and acted like he was laughing his butt off. Emily lifted her head out of the water and spit out her snorkel. Taking off her mask she looked around to get her bearings. To her left was turtle rock island. A small but steep rocky island with a bunch of trees on it. To her right was Old Wives Beach. A small but scenic beach inside the Naval Base. It was one of the best places to snorkel on the southern side of the island.

The man surfaced beside her and began to tread water. “Hi Never. Whatcha doing?” He asked her.

“Relaxing until you showed up.” She told him giving him the evil eye.

“Ah don't be that way. Me and some of the guys are heading to Tiger point to hang out. We were wondering if you wanted to come along.” He said giving her the puppy dog eyes.

Emily shook her head but smiled. “Yea don't want to jump off a rope into shark-infested waters. No thanks. I'll just float here.”

“What are you afraid of? You're a super and not just any super you're a Main type super.” He asked treading water.

“Just not in the mood to play around with a bunch of tiger sharks. It's just not my thing.” Emily told him shrugging. “What happens if we come across a super shark. What if that shark is a Main?”

The Navy Seal laughed. “Jaws isn't real and even you didn't think Sharknado was real. ” He told her.

“Tell it my childhood.” She returned.

“We are going to have a barbeque later on and drink some beers. You sure you don't want to come along?” He asked her pleadingly.

“Still not old enough to drink,” Emily said shaking her head. “Maybe in a few months.”

“The barbeque is a block party that the Chief's wife and her family are throwing on the windward side of the island.” The Navy Seal said tilting his head sideways and smiling.

“Is the Chief's wife cooking?” Emily asked looking thoughtful.

“Yup. Traditional stuff like that dry spicy red rice and ah, fish stuff.” The Navy Seal guy said struggling to remember what other dishes the natives cook up on the island.

Emily laughed and shook her head. “Ok, I’ll call the Chief and see if he can give me a ride.” She told him.

“Ok cool see you there.” The Navy Seal smiled before turning diving under the water and swimming away. Emily shook her head. Tiger point was about two miles away if you swam it, but it was much faster to just walk. You have to walk up three flights of stairs cross a small park then go down another three flights of stairs and your there. If you swam it you had to swim around the point which was much longer. The idiot was going to try to go the long way around swimming in shark-infested waters under water. There’s was no way he would make it the entire way underwater but she knew he would try.

She turned and started to swim back to the beach. The beaches on the island were not like beaches back in the states. For one thing, the water was only knee high for about two hundred feet until you reached the breakwater. On top of that it was all coral so you had to wear special shoes otherwise you would tear your feet apart. Well anyone who was not a super that is. After the breakwater, the depth fell off fast. The island sat on the edge of the Mariana trench.

Emily waited until a large wave crested over the breakwater and body surfed over the edge of the breakwater. She quickly dropped her feet and stood up. She walked the rest of the way to the shore. As she walked she took off her floatation-jacket that she was wearing. It's not like she couldn't swim, she could. In fact, she was a great swimmer but because of her superpowers her body was very dense and if she was not actively swimming she sank pretty fast. For snorkeling out past the breakwater Emily found that she needed the floatation jacket if she wanted to relax.

As she walked back to the beach she dodging the numerous sea cucumbers thingies that littered the coral floor. If you accidentally stepped on them they puked up a dark sludge. It was gross and according to some people Emily talked to it could cause blindness. The beach was mostly deserted with the exception of some slightly overweight Navy wives at the far end of the beach sunning themselves.

Emily put her snorkeling gear away in a blue mesh bag and dried herself off with her towel. Grabbing her stuff she headed back up the jungle path towards the street. She passed a wild banana and two wild coconut trees along the path. It still made her smile when she saw something like that in the jungle. It never occurred to her that she would see something so cool in her life. As she stepped onto the street a bird honked at her. Frowning she turned around but saw nothing. There were very few birds left on the island because ages ago Europeans had brought tree snakes to the island and without a natural predator they wiped out the bird population on the island by eating all the bird eggs they could find.

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She could have made it back to the barracks in under two minutes but she was under orders not to expose herself as a super unless she had no choice. Running around at almost sixty miles an hour at full sprint would certainly expose her as a super. It wasn't like she was a speedster, those guys could run in the hundreds of miles per hour, but seeing someone run faster than the posted speed limit on base would make some tongues waggle.

Emily's roommate was out at the moment. She was a Navy Petty Officer that worked with torpedoes at a small base in the middle of the island. She was also a gifted photographer in her spare time and she had a bunch of pictures hanging on the wall. Emily had to admit she had a good eye. Dropping her stuff off in her locker she went and took a shower in their shared bathroom.

When she got out of the shower Mandy, her roommate, was home and laying on her bunk in her blue-gray camouflage BDU uniform. “I wish I had your life,” Mandy said opening her eyes and turning to look at Emily.

“No, you don't,” Emily said very seriously.

“It would be great to work three hours a day and get weekend rides on a submarine every month or so,” Mandy said turning to look at the ceiling.

“It's just Temporary Assigned Duty (TAD). I could go back to my unit at any time.” Emily said defensibly. She did feel kind of bad though. Aside from the trips on the submarine, her time here on the island had been like an extended vacation. All she had to do was muster with the Navy Seals when they were not deployed and do morning physical training (PT) with them. After that most of the time, she was released to do whatever she wanted to do. She didn't even have any duty days. Well, that and learn more languages. She knew all the European languages now.

“Still it would be awesome to have that kind of job,” Mandy said still staring off into space.

“Hey, my boss is having a barbeque on the windward side of the island by Black Sands Beach. His wife's family is cooking and shes a native. You want to come?” Emily asked her trying to change the subject. “The word on the street is that there will be alcohol there. I can be your designated driver.”

“Oh, hell yea.” Emily's roommate said perking up. “Are the Navy Seals guys going to be there?”

Emily laughed. “Well, yea,” Emily said shaking her head.

“Crap I need a shower. When is this supposed to be?” She asked Emily.

“I am texting him now,” Emily told her roommate as Mandy raced to her locker.

Mandy's car was a pass down car. That meant someone in the Navy had brought the car over from the states years ago and it changed hands every two to three years as people left and arrived on the island. It always ended up in someone from the military's hands. There were a few cars like that on the island. Mandy called it the beast. It was a nineteen seventies Ford Galaxy with a single bench style front seat. Emily thought it was the coolest car she had ever ridden in. Someone in the past had really done a good job fixing it up as it ran like a dream.

Emily slid into the passenger side of the car while Mandy slid into the driver's side. The car gave a deep growl as it started up. While the car was not a muscle car it sounded like it was. Emily smiled as her roommate backed out. Her roommate paused before leaving the parking lot of the barracks to turned the old fashion dial radio on. The radio was so old it had a cassette player built into it but it played the one cassette that came with the car well.

The island had one major highway that circled the outer part of the island. It had a bunch of different names but it was the same road that circled around the island. In the southern part of the island, it was called Highway 4. Once they passed the gate to the base Mandy took a right to the eastern side of the island which was also called the windward side of the island. The other side of the island, the western side, was called the leeward side. If you don't stop you can circle the entire island in about an hour and a half to two hours depending on the time of day. Emily loved to drive around the island. It was very relaxing and scenic.

The barbeque was at a place called black sands beach. It was where the Inarajan river, which ran from someplace in the middle of the island, came together with the Pacific ocean creating the Inarajan bay. The river dumped a lot of rich dark soil into the bay creating a really nice black sandy beach. There was a rock by the edge of the bay that looked like a chipmunk to Emily but everyone else said it looked like a bear. The best part of the area was that it was far away from the tourists. Only locals and military people knew about the beach.

The barbeque was on the south side of the bay in a really nice green grass park that had a few coconut trees. The barbeque was already underway when they got there. Someone had set up a bunch of folding chairs and a huge bonfire was already lit. There were a lot more people than Emily expected at the barbeque. Looking around she noticed that most of the people there were locals but she did spot a few Navy guys hanging out by the beer cooler.

“Never!” Someone yelled as they got out of Mandy's car.

Emily looked up to spot the Chief walking up to her. She smiled at him as he spread his arms to hug her. He grabbed her and lifted her up into the air. Emily blinked in surprise and not because he could lift her. While she looked like she weighed about a hundred and ten maybe a hundred and twenty pounds she really weighted close to seven hundred pounds.

Being dense as her body was meant that she weighed much more than she looked. She gained about a hundred pounds just after she was in the hospital after nearly getting hit by a Super Killer (SK) shell fired from a cannon while she was in Afghanistan. She had already been about six hundred pounds before getting hit. The near miss nearly took her left leg off and did some major damage to her hip. It took nearly a month for her superpowers to heal all the damage and for her healing powers that were a really long time.

Her superpower was what the eggheads call progressive self-healing. Meaning that whenever she got hurt her body healed her at an accelerated rate. Her superpower also tried to prevent further damage by changing her body in some way. It was the reason why she weighted so much. While she was training to be a Super Soldier they kept hitting her with rubber balls with increasing speed and made her lift huge amounts of weights to make her stronger. The upside to the training was that she was mostly bulletproof. The only thing that could penetrate her skin was an SK round fired from a cannon or higher.

It was also why she was on this island. She had two near misses with an SK round in the past year and a half both time putting her into the hospital. Some geniuses decided that it might be possible to make her immune to even SK rounds. So they decided that dropping her into the Mariana Trench from a submarine to some really deep depths might help her. They thought it might trigger her power to make her fully bulletproof. It didn't work.

Although when there was an accident with her oxygen regulator and her powers did change something in her lungs so that she could now hold her breath up to an hour and a half. She had been on at least six trips on a submarine into the depths of the Mariana Trench. She was getting tired of it and halfway hoped that they would give up. While she did like the eight-month vacation she really didn't like her time in the Mariana Trench. It was so cold that even she could feel it and it was completely dark. She found the Trench creepy.

“Hey, Chief,” Emily said gently pushing away from the man. He laughed and put her down. The Chief was another Super Soldier. He was a Brute. Brutes were the most common powers in supers. Something like Seventy-eight percent of all the supers in the world was Brutes. They were super strong and to some extent, depending on how powerful they were, invulnerable to projectiles. Their strength came from a form of touch telekinetics. That meant that they did not use their bodies to lift things but they used their minds. 

The Chief was classified as a Class three with a very high-class B immunity. That meant that he could lift somewhere between two to ten tons. Normal Class B was immune to all low caliber and low velocity as well as all medium caliber and velocity weapons. That meant that someone with this classification was immune to pistols and medium caliber rifles. Anything higher than a .50 cal bullet fired at slightly higher than normal velocity he would be in trouble.

Emily was not a Brute but due to her healing powers and the fact she had to use her muscles to lift something she could mimic one. She was classified as a Class two with a Class A immunity. She was bulletproof all the way up to but not including an SK round. She could also lift just over seventeen tons but it was her immunity that made her a Main type super. The premiere super combat classification.

The reason why Emily was surprised that the Chief had lifted her was that the Chief was not a touchy-feely kind of guy. “Something up Chief?” Emily asked frowning. 

“Nope.” He told her obviously lying.