Summus Proelium

Young Flea Helping Young Echo Get New Sounds

Seeing two small, twelve-year-old girls walking on their own through a construction site in the middle of the night might have caused alarm in the area’s assigned security guard. That was, if said guard hadn’t already left his post in order to get a midnight lunch at an all-night Mexican place a couple blocks away. Sure, he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere, but what could happen? There was nothing valuable on the site, just huge construction equipment that couldn’t possibly go anywhere, a few holes in the ground, and a half-assembled building. And if anyone did show up with big enough trucks to take or do anything, he’d see them drive past, considering he was sitting out on the cement patio enjoying his burrito and rice facing the only road that went up that way. So what difference did it make if he was sitting in the truck up on the site itself, or down here having a nice meal?

Well, obviously it meant he didn’t see those two girls come in off the field. They knew the guard was down there, they’d watched him head out in the truck, and one of them had done a couple quick jumps to see where he went. Now they were satisfied that he was going to be busy for awhile, so they came into the site itself to look around. Each of them held a rope that was attached to a single large bag they were dragging behind them, which slid noisily through the dirt and gravel in a way that made it clear that it was quite heavy.

“I dunno about this,” Irelyn Banners, the diminutive girl who stood a couple inches shorter than her companion, put in while frowning thoughtfully. Though smaller than the other girl, her somewhat enhanced strength meant she was carrying the bulk of the bag’s weight. The girl wore a baggy black sweatshirt with grayish jeans, her brown hair tucked back into the raised and cinched hood. If anyone saw them, she didn’t want any descriptions getting out. Sure, they weren’t doing anything too bad, but she still knew just how upset her dad would be if he heard she was jeopardizing her future for what he would call ‘dumb thrills.’

But it wasn’t about thrills. They weren’t just screwing around and this wasn’t about having fun. They were here on very important business. Superhero business.

“What’s not to know?” The girl beside her, with dark blonde hair that was cut fairly short and an expression that was far more determined than her friend’s uncertain gaze, replied easily while continuing to march straight to the construction equipment ahead of them. “We’re superheroes, right? And we wanna help as many people as possible. Which means having as many options as possible.” As she said that, Haley Torres gestured to the equipment and boxes of tools ahead of them. “These are options. Trust me, Ires, we’ll be able to help a lot more people if I can record more sounds. And you can practice your aim with those leaps.”

Following the direction of her best friend’s gaze with that last part, Irelyn squinted at the half-assembled four-story building ahead of them. There were partial floors, girders sticking out here and there, lots of places for her to leap to and from. She wasn’t really supposed to jump in a place like this, outside of the regular training facility with all of its mats and nets. But she could do this. She wasn’t a baby, no matter how the other members of the Minority treated her. She contributed, she helped, she wasn’t holding them back. And if she trained even more than the worrywart adults wanted, she could learn to pull her weight even more. If the two of them worked hard enough, they could actually make the older teens treat both of them like actual real members of the team instead of little kids they had to babysit. And, more important than any of that, maybe she could actually make her dad happy. No matter what she did, he always seemed to think she had made a mistake, or not done enough, or even that she was wasting her time with this whole group. At first he had been completely against the idea of Irelyn using her newfound powers for this sort of thing. Then he had decided it was a good thing after all. But that didn’t make things any easier. Her dad deciding that her being a hero was a good thing just meant he was involved. Which meant he was always pushing her to spend more time practicing in the facility, he’d hired people to build a whole home gym for her to work in (under his supervision or that of his personally-chosen instructor of course), and he was constantly arguing with the people in charge of the new Minority team to give her more focus. To the point that it caused friction with the other members of the team who thought Irelyn herself was pushing for that focus. As if she didn’t already have enough problems just from them treating her like a little kid. Now they treated her like a little kid whose dad kept trying to force her into the spotlight no matter what the situation was.

In short, having her dad involved in this stuff made Irelyn feel like a young child star with a domineering stage parent who liked to scream at directors for not giving her enough lines.

With all that running through her head, Irelyn exhaled before giving a little nod. “Okay, but we have to be really careful. You know what’ll happen if we get hurt out here.”

“Hey, I’m not dumb,” Haley insisted. “We’re here to get better at all this so we can make the people who think we’re useless babies shut the fuck up. And help more people, you know, that sort of thing.” She shrugged a bit before adding, “Point is, you and me, we’re gonna show everyone who thinks we can’t do this without having our hands held the whole time. Then they’ll have to start taking us seriously.”

Glancing over to the empty one lane road that led up from the main street to make sure there was no sign of any headlights (they would see the security truck approaching long before the guard got anywhere near close enough to notice them), Irelyn agreed, “Right, okay. Let’s do it.” Her voice started off slightly uncertain at first, before settling into a firm tone by the end. “That guard’s gonna stay down there for at least another hour. He always does. I’m pretty sure he’s trying to hit on the lady that makes the burritos.” She knew all that because she’d been out to this place multiple times, though mostly just taking walks to get away from everyone and clear her head. It wasn’t that far from her family’s house. Not for someone who could jump like she could.

More to the point, the construction firm itself and the security company were both owned by her father, which was another reason she really didn’t want to get caught out here. They would definitely tell her dad, and that was just… a whole other thing. But she’d found out (thanks to being stuck in the car with her dad while he ranted on the phone about costs and wasted time) that this wide-open site was close enough to her house to run to, almost entirely abandoned at night, and the half-finished building was perfect for jumping around on. When Haley had brought up the idea of finding a place to work and train that was away from everyone trying to tell them not to do something, this had immediately leapt to mind.

With a grin, Haley dropped her rope and bounced up and down a couple times. “Great, let’s start off easy. It’s grapple time. That one looks good.” Her hand rose to point to the highest part of the four-story building, where a metal beam stuck out from the partially-finished floor. “I mean--” She hesitated, glancing to Irelyn. “Unless you think we should start lower. Can you jump that high even with the weights?” In the midst of that whole thing, the girl had abruptly realized she might be pushing her friend too hard and backtracked a little.

Irelyn, however, gave a firm nod. She wanted this just as much as Haley did. Both of them were tired of being treated like little kids. And, in her own case, being stagemothered by her father. Not that Haley really had that problem. Her own parents barely paid attention to her. Well, her mom did anyway. Her dad wasn’t in the picture.

To show her friend she was just as committed to this plan, Irelyn dropped her own rope and marched to the enormous bag. The thing looked like something that someone would carry a full-sized tent and all associated supplies in. Mostly because it had been exactly that before they commandeered it from one of the equipment rooms in the Banners’ basement. Unzipping the bag, she rooted around inside, past everything else they’d filled it with, before coming out with a long, coiled-up wall-climbing rope and harness. Together, the two of them attached the harness to the other girl and got the rope looped into it. Once it was secure, Haley slid a pair of climbing gloves onto her hands and gripped the rope tight. “All good!”

“You’re sure about this, Hales?” Irelyn tentatively asked, giving that high beam one last look while taking another object from the large bag. This one was a backpack with a few heavy weights in it, which she slipped onto her shoulders before letting that extra weight settle.

“We got this, Ires,” her friend insisted. “Remember what happens if I fall?” She held out both hands and opened her mouth, creating a remarkably accurate sound of someone falling into a movie stunt airbag. That had been one of the first things the two of them had found a way for Haley to ‘record’ even before they’d actually planned to try this. “If it goes wrong, I’ll be okay. But it’s not gonna go wrong.”

With that, the girl picked up the end of the rope, which had a small grapple attached to it. She started swinging it, taking in the sound of the weighted line spinning through the air, while Irelyn took up her own position a few feet away. “You ready?!” Getting a quick, determined nod in reply, Haley sent the rope flying toward the beam in the distance.

She, of course, had no super strength. As a physically ordinary twelve-year-old, there wasn’t the slightest chance in hell that she’d be able to get that rope anywhere near the beam over sixty feet up. But at the very second that she released it, Irelyn was already running forward a couple steps before leaping that way. The other girl’s hand snagged the grapple in mid-flight, carrying it with her all the way to that beam. She didn’t land on it however. Instead, Irelyn literally jumped all the way over the beam before dropping down on the other side. The rope, which had been loudly uncoiling that whole time, went taut as it caught against the beam. Irelyn probably wouldn’t have been enough all by herself to pull Haley off the ground with any speed. But she had the backpack full of weights. So, as she went plummeting back toward the ground, the force of it was enough to almost violently yank at the harness Haley was wearing. The other girl went sailing upward with a yelp, barely managing to hold onto the rope with both hands. The sound of the rope whistling through the air and against the metal beam was automatically filed away by her power. Which was a good thing, since she was mostly focused on watching for the right moment. Just before passing the third floor, before she could collide with the beam about fifteen feet higher, the girl made a sharp cutting motion with her hand, her mouth producing the recorded sound of a blade slicing through a rope identical to the one they were using.

Immediately, just as Irelyn landed smoothly on the ground below, the rope attached to Haley’s harness was severed. Her momentum still carried her up almost halfway to the fourth floor, before she dropped back down to the third. With a grunt, the girl rolled across the wooden platform, tumbling head over heels before coming to a stop in a heap that was giving off some loud noises.

“Haley!” Irelyn leapt back to that spot, skidding to a stop nearby. “Are you okay?!” Only belatedly did she realize the other girl wasn’t crying, but cackling.

“Oh yeah--wait, let’s find out.” Interrupting herself, Haley quickly unbuckled the harness and got herself out of it. Rising, she took a breath before miming the same motion she’d made before, this time without any actual rope to spin. That same sound emerged, as she aimed toward a different extended beam. With a flick of her hand, she sent that imaginary rope outward, almost holding her breath.

It worked. Even without Irelyn actively grabbing the rope, the sound she had recorded of it flying out still worked. Just like that, Haley was yoinked off the half-finished floor and sent sailing toward the beam off on the far side of the construction site. Even better, at any point she could replay the sound of the rope cutting, which would release her. She did that just as she was passing over the last bit of extant third floor, feeling the invisible ‘rope’ go slack in her hands as she dropped and rolled once more.

It hurt, landing like that. But it was oh so worth it. Again, she cackled in delight, popping back up. “It worked! It worked, it worked, it worked! Dude, do you have any idea how fast I can get around now?! I can grapple around like Batman!”

Once Irelyn had hopped over to where she was, both girls hugged one another and jumped up and down a few times, giggling and talking over each other about how cool that was. But soon, it was back to business. Irelyn had brought the severed rope with her, along with the harness. They reattached it to Haley along with a rappelling tool, before hooking the end of the rope to the edge of the open floor they were standing on. Irelyn hopped back to the ground then, watching as Haley rappelled her way safely down, recording the sound for later use. Now she could not only grapple her way up to any spot, but also get down again quickly and safely.

But that was only the beginning. As soon as Haley was on the ground, she unhooked herself and the two of them put the ropes, harness, and other things back in the bag before looking back at the road to make sure the distant security guard hadn’t finished flirting yet. Once they were satisfied that there was still plenty of time, they went back to the bag and produced what appeared to be an old-school Super Soaker, though this one was made of metal and had a glass container for its very not-water liquid.

Irelyn was cheating a little bit with this one, but it wasn’t like her dad would miss the prototype in just the few hours they were borrowing it. Besides, he wanted to sell the gun (tool, she reminded herself) to security firms just like the one that worked out here at this construction site.

“Okay, ready?” Holding up the thing against one shoulder, she took aim at the ground and pulled the trigger. The liquid came out with a steady, high-pitched whistling sound, sort of like a tea kettle. It was blueish-white, and quickly created a circle three or four feet wide.

“Here goes nothing!” With that, Haley took a running start and jumped into the middle of the circle. Immediately, she tried to hop out again but couldn’t budge. “Nnngngn… oof, that’s strong stuff. You try, grasshopper.”

“It’s Flea, not Grasshopper,” Irelyn retorted before jumping onto the circle next to her friend. Gathering herself, she tried to leap up. But even with her enhanced leg strength, she couldn’t budge. At least, not at first. It took her a few tries before she finally managed to rip herself free. Which left Haley still stuck.

“I still think Grasshopper would be better,” the other girl shot back before gesturing. “Okay it works, erase this stuff so I can try.”

Making a show of checking the tool, Irelyn grimaced that way. “Oooh, what if I forgot to bring the solvent with us?”

“Then I’ll kill you,” Haley informed her with a straight face. Both girls stared at one another before dissolving into giggles as Irelyn switched the tool over to the ‘dissolve’ function and shot a different spray of liquid that turned the incredibly sticky glue into a soft mist.

Newly freed and with no trace of the glue that had been there before, Haley turned to point at the ground. “Ready, set, go!” She began imitating the sound the spray-gun had made while indicating the ground between the two of them.

Irelyn, meanwhile, tried walking forward. Three steps in, once she was right where the other girl was pointing, she stopped short. But only for a moment. After coming to a sudden halt for a second or two, she abruptly stumbled forward, off-balance. “Oh! Uh, yeah, it worked but not for very long. It was like the glue was there and then gone.”

“Just like when I spray water at people,” Haley noted thoughtfully. “You feel like you’re wet, or glued down, for a second or two then it goes away. I guess it could be better, but hey, if someone’s running away it could really trip them up, you know? You knew why you were being stopped and it still made you stumble. Actually, gluing them for a second and then ungluing them might work out even better. They’ll fall all over themselves!”

“Yeah!” Irelyn agreed eagerly, head bobbing up and down. “Then we pounce!” This, of course, led to both girls holding their hands up like claws while baring their teeth and making exaggerated growling sounds that quickly became giggles.

Of course, they weren't satisfied with simply giving Haley a way to get up and down across the battlefield or very briefly make someone stumble. She needed a way to hit people hard enough to make them fall down. She had already watched people at a gun range enough to record several calibers of that for an emergency. And from tests she had done on her own, the mimed bullets could do some nasty damage. She'd hit several targets with them in an area of the city where few people would report the odd gunshot or two.

Neither of them were exactly certain how her power did its thing. The best guess was that it was some sort of very limited and specific telekinesis that was dictated by the sound she duplicated. That would cover a lot of it like being yanked around by the grapple, or the telekinesis temporarily holding someone's foot to the ground to imitate the glue. But no one seemed to know how telekinesis would make someone briefly feel wet when she threw an invisible bucket of water at them.

But in any case, it was obvious that she couldn’t go around reproducing gunshots to stop criminals. That wouldn't go over very well. She needed other options that wouldn’t make everyone get all upset. To that end, the two girls dragged another object out of their big bag. This one was a man-sized dummy, the sort used in police ballistic tests (spending so much time around the police training center had its privileges). They dragged the thing over near a cement wall and carefully set it up. Then Irelyn dug around in the bag for a moment before coming out with a long metal tube with an open hole in the side near the top, and a leather handle near the bottom. It looked sort of like a baseball bat with a hole in the side near where it would hit the ball. Taking a batting stance, she held the weapon and gave it a hard swing as soon as the other girl was ready. Just as the bat came around with a hard whiffing sound, she pressed a button on the grip. Immediately, a powerful gust of wind shot out of the hole, which was lined up with the dummy. It was very contained, focused solely on the target. As it went, there was a sound sort of like a new can of tennis balls being opened. Only louder.

The ball of wind slammed into the dummy and sent it sprawling backward into the wall. Quickly, the two girls set it up right once more before Haley took the same sort of stance as her friend, this time without the bat. She duplicated the same motion and sound, and was able to get the same effect. But it was even better than that. The two of them were able to try several more times, varying the strength of the swing to make a lighter or harder burst of wind. After recording several of those, Haley could quite effectively control how hard she hit someone with that.

And they weren’t done there. They had more tools in the bag, including a stun gun, a bola that could wrap around someone’s legs, and what looked like a handheld vacuum cleaner that could make someone feel very hot. Not enough to burn them or anything, but it could make them feel overwhelmingly sweltering so it would be hard to do anything.

Haley was able to duplicate all of them simply by hearing the sounds and watching what they did. Some of those sounds were so quiet or subtle that Irelyn couldn’t make out anything, but Haley assured her the sounds were there and being duplicated. Her enhanced hearing meant she could pick up a lot more than other people.

So it went on through another twenty minutes or so, until they saw the guard truck finally starting to return. By the time the man finally made it back, they were gone, leaving no sign of their little exercise. No sign, that was, aside from all the new tools Haley would put to use as a member of the Minority over the next few years. And, after that, for even more years as a mercenary.

Though at that point, she really didn’t mind echoing guns anymore.

********

Amber and Dani After Whamline’s Death

Exhausted as she was after the whole ordeal with Whamline, Amber still jumped herself and Dani several times in quick succession, a handful of teleports that took them far away from the spot where the boy’s body was.

Amber knew she was going to have to go back and deal with that eventually. She was going to have to talk to everyone, explain what happened and why, and just give her side of the story. There were going to be questions, interrogations, and there would probably be people who thought she shouldn't be part of the Minority anymore. Hell, there would probably be people who wanted to lock her up, no matter what that bastard had done. And she wasn't even sure she would be able to blame them. She had made a choice. She consciously let him die. There were extenuating circumstances. She honestly didn't know if she could have contained or stopped him after teleporting the boy out from under the falling rubble. He could've escaped. He could have gone on to kill more people. Maybe a lot more. How would she feel then? If she let him go, let the boy who had killed her father escape and he managed to destroy even more lives, how would she live with herself?

Not that she was especially looking forward to living with herself after what she actually did do. The terror in his eyes when that building was coming down and he knew he couldn't escape, when he knew she was his only chance, kept playing back through her head. When she closed her eyes, she saw his desperation and panic. And yet, she also saw the viciousness and evil in his eyes before, when he had been gloating about what he was going to do to her and her friends.

“Hey.” Dani's voice shook Amber out of her dwelling thoughts and back to the current situation. The two of them were at Dani's second apartment, which the other girl had assured Amber would be left undisturbed. No one else from La Casa aside from Broadway and Eits knew where the apartment was. She’d rented it with a secondary identity to have a place to go if anything went wrong with Blackjack’s crew, and came now and then to get a break from that whole situation.

The apartment wasn't very big, it was actually just a studio place with an attached kitchenette and bathroom. What took up the bulk of the space was a truly enormous bean bag chair set in front of a widescreen television with several gaming systems attached to it. It was obvious that Dani came here to vegetate and get her mind off everything.

There were also several large terrariums around the room, with holes cut in them for the lizards to pass in and out as they pleased.

“Sorry, I’m here,” Amber assured the other girl, forcing herself to focus. The two of them had just finished eating pizza, though Amber had almost fallen asleep right in her plate a few times. Dani had insisted she get something in her stomach. Now, she stood from the small table in a corner of the room, yawning. “I… I should go talk to--”

“Ohh no.” Dani shook her head, taking her by the hand. “You’re not going anywhere, not yet. Look, I know there's a lot you need to do, but I've got your back. I mean, as much of your back as I can have. You're not ready to talk to anyone, and you know it.” Gently, yet firmly, she guided Amber over to the bean bag. “Here, just sit down for a minute. You'd be pretty shocked at how comfortable this thing is. You’ve gotta rest, babe. You’re… you’re just…” She bit her lip, clearly unsure of how to proceed. In the end, she settled on leaning down to pick up the three-foot long Mars Bar, who had been crawling around at her feet. Cradling the iguana briefly, she set him down on one side of Amber. “Here, even if he’s not in bear form, he makes a pretty good Teddy.”

With a very small smile, Amber carefully scratched the iguana before reaching down off the side of the beanbag to pick up Twinkletoes, the chameleon. She sat him next to her head before patting the open space beside her. “You're right, this thing is pretty big.” Though she tried to sound casual, there was a hollowness to her voice, as though she was just going through the motions and trying very hard not to let the other girl see how devastated she was.

“Hey.” Carefully sitting down next to Amber on the bag, Dani shook her head. “You don’t have to do that. You don’t need to pretend you’re okay. It… it’s alright. It’s okay to not be okay. He was… he was… you thought he was your friend. If I was--” She stopped herself, flinching. “Sorry, I don’t even know what I’m--”

“It’s alright.” Though her voice was still strained, Amber managed a very faint smile that way. “You don’t have to have all the answers. We don’t… we don’t need to talk about it right now. Can you just… umm… be here?” In that moment, she sounded far less like a confident, powerful superhero member of the Minority, and more like a small child asking to stay with a guardian after a bad dream.

With zero hesitation, Dani nodded and laid back on the bag. Her voice was soft. “Yeah, I'm here. I'll be here as long as you need. I promise, I'm not going anywhere. We don’t have to talk about that.”

Making a noise of relief, Amber shifted over onto her side. Her hand slipped down to find Dani’s, interlacing their fingers before her head found its way to the other girl’s shoulder. Still, she kept her eyes open and stared toward the pretty face next to her. “I don't care anymore,” she announced in a soft, barely audible voice. “I don't care about the cops and robbers stuff. I don't care about any of that. I… I like you.”

Swallowing, Dani squeezed her hand before reaching over with the other to gently brush Amber’s dark hair away from her eyes as their gazes met, only inches away from one another given the other girl’s position with her head against Dani’s shoulder. “I like you too, babe. But you don't have to say anything else right now. We don't need to… we don’t need to get into any of that. Just… I’m here. I’m right here.”

She wasn't the only one there, of course. Mars Bar and Twinkletoes were pressed up around Amber, one on the opposite side from Dani and the other by her head. And soon, the rest of the lizards, who had been prowling around the apartment, made their way over and climbed up to seek out the body heat. Tuesday the gecko lay in the space between Amber and Dani’s heads, Riddles the bearded dragon curled up on Amber’s stomach, Holiday the skink nestled into the space between the bag and her shoulder, and Scatters the tiny neon day gecko settled against their clasped hands. Amber stuck her other arm under Dani’s neck to pull her closer, letting out a soft, contented sigh in that moment. She didn't say anything. There was no need to. They were both comfortable like this. Not only physically, but in every other way. As broken as Amber felt about the whole situation with Whamline, and as much as the idea of talking about it with everyone else brought bile to her throat, none of that mattered. Not right then. Now, at this moment, only Dani mattered. Dani and her lizards, because they were an extension of her. They were part of her. Everything else could wait.

For several long, yet perfect minutes, the two of them lay there together in contentment. Amber thought she might fall asleep like that, but somehow, her eyes stayed open. Maybe she was still a little afraid of what would haunt her dreams. In the end, she whispered, “Can I ask you something?”

Again, Dani responded with zero hesitation. “Anything you want. Unless it involves getting up and moving away from this spot. That might be asking too much.”

“No.” A soft, tender murmur of denial came as Amber’s head shook, burrowing a bit closer to the other girl without squishing any of the lizards. “I hope we never move again. No, what… I just… I was wondering if you could tell me how you got your powers, what happened. I mean, if you don’t want to get into it, that’s okay. I just want to know you. The real you.”

Moving her free hand through the other girl's hair tenderly, Dani managed a soft smile while exhaling slowly. “Yeah, I think you deserve that much.” Her voice caught a bit before she gently kissed Amber's forehead. “If you really want to hear it, I’ll tell you about myself. But I promise it’s really not that special. I’m not secretly a princess or the sole survivor of a ninja clan. My parents aren’t supervillains or heroes, and I wasn’t raised by tigers. I’m nothing special.”

“Well you’re wrong about that.” Amber’s voice was flat as she shifted a bit to kiss Dani’s shoulder and snuggled against her. “You’re Dani, and there’s no one more special than that.”

A warm blush crossed Dani's face and it took her a moment to find her voice again. “Okay okay, I’ll tell you all about the boring old story of where Dani Kalvers came from. I guess if nothing else, it’d be a good way to help you sleep.”

And yet, that much she was wrong about. As Dani told Amber the story of her past, the other girl lay there in rapt attention. It wasn’t boring at all. Not because she actually did have some secret, super-special history connecting her to some long-lost hero or anything. But because she was Dani, and learning more about her would never be boring for Amber. No matter where the other girl came from or who her family had been, Amber would find her life endlessly fascinating. She was Dani, and that was all that mattered.

She listened through all of the other girl’s story, asking questions now and then, until it was done. Dani offered a little shrug then. “That’s who I am. See, nothing special.”

“Liar,” Amber whispered, lifting her head a little until she could touch her lips to Dani’s gently. “You are very special. Don’t make me get off this bag and kick your butt about it.”

Giggling despite herself, Dani whispered back, their lips still brushing one another. “I’d love to see you try.”

A long moment of contented silence passed, before Amber kissed her once more, a soft, lingering connection before she settled her head against Dani’s shoulder again. “Maybe later,” she managed. “Once you nap a little so it’s a fair fight.”

Dani said nothing to that, simply snuggling in against the other girl. The lizards did the same. And for quite some time after that, there were no other sounds aside from the soft, steady breathing of two sleeping girls and six small reptiles. Eventually, Amber would need to deal with everything. She would need to talk about Jerry. But for now, she was with Dani.

For now, for this moment, that was enough to let her sleep without the pain.

************

A Look At An Autistic Fell-Touched

Sitting in the driver’s seat of a dark-colored van, a pale-skinned young man right on the cusp of his twenties, with a smattering of freckles across his face and a mess of scattered red hair, stared intently at an open map in front of him. Not a map app on a phone screen or on the van’s console, but an actual physical paper map. That’s what he preferred. That’s what he had to have. Touch screens were cold and empty. He didn’t like those. He liked paper, the big maps that unfolded so he could run his fingers along the path he wanted to take and picture every turn properly. Cold, empty touch screen maps were bad. They wouldn’t do at all. He had made that much very clear. As did the stack of maps both in the glove box and taking up part of the rear of the van. He collected them. Not just real maps of actual places, but fantasy and science fiction maps as well. Every type of map he could get, as long as it was a physical copy. Some thought he had a problem, given how many maps he kept. He thought they were the weird ones, because why wouldn’t you want a map? Maps helped you know where everything was, and where everything should be. Things had places they were supposed to be, and maps showed you where those places were and how to get to them.

Maps were more important than people realized. But he knew. He kept them safe.

The young man also wore a pair of bright purple headphones, which were playing Beatles music. He liked the Beatles, they helped him think. And, just as often, not think. His favorite song was Ticket To Ride. Whenever he felt stressed and thought he couldn’t handle another moment in the world, listening to that song calmed him down. Sometimes even just humming the tune was enough.

He was still in the midst of listening to that all-time best band in the world when the back door of the van was abruptly yanked open. A voice called out over the sound of those melodic tones. “Sorry, Jack, we gotta go!”

Another voice back there chided the first. “Hey, when we're on a job, it's Drive. And don't just shout at him like that.”

That second man climbed through the back while the first and a couple others were tossing boxes of stolen goods into the open space. Already, Jack, or Drive, had taken his headphones off and dropped them in his lap, hands tightly gripping the wheel while he stared at the clock on the nearby dash. “It's not time yet,” he announced firmly, as though convinced that if he simply explained that they had come too soon, they would go back and return to the proper schedule. “Thirteen minutes. You still have thirteen minutes. You're not supposed to be here yet. It was planned. We have a plan and you stick to plans. It's important to stick to plans. Or it all falls apart. Plans are important.”

Clambering into the passenger seat, the other man, whose name was Ben, looked at the driver, his expression hidden by the black ski mask he was wearing. “Sorry, dude. Trust me, we would've stuck to the plan, I promise. But listen to this.” He reached out to the radio, touching the thing to turn it on. Immediately, the van was filled with the sound of an announcer informing the public, for what was apparently yet another time out of several, that all streets in Detroit would be closed for the foreseeable future within the next ten minutes.

“Ellis heard it on the radio back in the shop,” Ben informed him. “They're closing down all the streets, Drive. So we've gotta get out of here while we can. I don't know what they're doing, but I don't want to be stuck next to a place that just got robbed when they shut down all the roads.”

While the other man was talking, Drive had started to hum softly to himself while reaching up to press the button to turn the dome light on. He then turned it off again with a flick of the button, on, then off, then on. All of which might have made someone who hadn't known him as long as Ben had to think he was being rude or not listening. But he was definitely listening. He was calming himself down so he could react to this change of plans. He really didn't like it when plans changed. It made his already very extant anxiety even worse. They had spent hours very carefully and specifically plotting out the exact path to get to this place to avoid any attention, how long the others would spend in there, and the route back. He had prepped three separate potential routes depending entirely around which direction any potential pursuit came from. But this? This was all wrong. It was thirteen minutes early. Eleven and a half now. He had to adjust. He had to bring himself under control. And that meant calming down so he could focus. Light on, light off, light on, light off. It was reassuring. When you pressed the button the light came on, when you pressed it again, it turned off. Each time with a satisfying click. Some car lights didn’t click. That was wrong. They were supposed to click.

Finally, after what probably felt like forever to the others considering the stakes, the red-haired man straightened in his seat and set his headphones aside. “Okay,” he announced in a voice that still cracked just a little from the effort of pulling himself together. “It’s okay. The time is okay. We can adjust. We can move. The road’s there, it’s there so we can use it. Yeah, we can use it early.” While saying that, he gave the map in front of him one last glance to assure himself of its existence, then folded it up and tucked the thing aside. He didn’t need the thing anyway. Not around here. He had every single street in this city memorized. He’d had the streets memorized since he and Ben had been kids running around with barely any adult supervision. They had been neighbors both at home and at school, their desks always next to one another since Ben was often the only one Jack would talk to. Ben understood Jack in a way most others didn’t and probably never would.

“Hey, you took off your helmet.” Pointing that out, Ben reached down and picked up the full face-covering racing helmet. It was black, with neon green lines drawn along either side in a pattern that was reminiscent of the star trails left behind when sci-fi starships would jump to warp speed. The visor was dark, but also had very faint green lines dancing across it now and then that were visible to people looking at it, but not at all to anyone wearing the thing so they wouldn’t be distracting.

“Had to,” Drive informed his partner and best friend while taking the helmet to put it back on his head. Now his face was covered, his expression hidden. “Looks suspicious sitting here for thirty-two minutes with a helmet if anyone went past.” He paused, pointedly amending, “Nineteen minutes. Still suspicious.”

“We’re good,” one of the men in the back called up while he and the others hopped in with their ill-gotten goods and yanked the doors shut. “Let’s get the hell out of here. There’s already some firetruck down the street getting in position, looks like they’re getting ready to shut it all down. You sure it’s not about us?”

“It’s not about us,” Ben assured him. “There’s like two hundred k worth of shit in those crates, maybe. No way they go to all this trouble just for that.” He squinted back through the windshield to see a couple cop cars cruising past the next cross street. “Uh, that said, we should really go.”

That was all he had to say. Drive was already shifting himself in the seat, hands on the wheel. And yet, despite the fact that his hand didn't move anywhere near the ignition (indeed, there weren't any keys in the slot at all), the van abruptly hummed with power. But it wasn't coming from the still-silent engine. It came from Drive himself. That was part of his power, the gift he had been given by the orb that had come to see them not so long ago, when they were both about to lose their apartment and had few prospects ahead of them.

The system had quite thoroughly failed Jack, who found it incredibly difficult and frustrating to hold down a regular job and kept running into more and more bureaucracy making it difficult to receive the SSI and SSDI (Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance respectively) he was supposed to be entitled to. He had finally found a data input position he enjoyed, but an angry boss who thought that the young man’s quirks were simply him ‘being stubborn’ and that he ‘needed to grow the fuck up’ had put an end to that. And without Jack there, Ben had walked off the job as well. But only after putting his fist into the asshole’s nose.

But, satisfying as that had been, it had made it even harder to find new jobs. They engaged in a bit of petty crime and found their way to street level positions as members of the Oscuro gang. Then, during a job that went wrong a couple months earlier, Jack had Touched. Now he had powers. Real powers. They were still working out exactly what to do with that, but it meant he was rapidly climbing the ranks of importance within Oscuro. Cuélebre wanted people with powers, even ones with issues like Jack. He accepted them. He was willing to work with them, even willing to give Jack time to figure out his power a bit better with some smaller jobs before involving him in the bigger stuff. And he acknowledged that if Jack was going anywhere, it had to be with Ben, his partner.

With the van purring under the power generated from Drive himself, the man pushed the gas pedal. He didn't really need to, of course. His ability allowed him to simply power and move any object he was inside of, be it a car, truck, helicopter, a suit of heavy armor that wouldn’t otherwise move, even clothes. But he still pushed the gas pedal anyway, because it felt right.

And yet, his power wasn't limited to simply providing energy and direction for any given vehicle. The next part came as they accelerated straight toward the intersection, rapidly picking up speed.

“Buckle up back there!” Ben called over his shoulder, ensuring that his own belt was secure. “Give us a countdown, Drive!”

“Five… four…” the other man promptly began. “... three…. two… one… engage.”

And engage he did. At that exact instant, Drive triggered the other part of his power. Abruptly, a tunnel of bright neon lights appeared all around the van. To anyone on the outside, it would look as though the van was suddenly elongated to twice or three times its normal length. And then the van would simply vanish from sight completely.

Within the van, the tunnel of neon lights were all they could see through the windows. It only lasted about ten seconds, before the lights faded and they found themselves back in front of the old warehouse building they had left from much earlier that night. That was Drive’s real power. He could send any vehicle or object he was empowering through what amounted to hyperspace or warp-speed. He called it a pocket universe where objects could move much faster and without anything to block them. His power allowed him to navigate that ‘other space’ perfectly, so he could get anywhere in the city within thirty to forty seconds at worst. That was why it was so important that he know exactly where he wanted to go thanks to memorizing those maps. He mentally directed the vehicle through every turn within that brief span of time.

“See?” Ben squeezed his best friend’s shoulder. “Told you we’d be fine.” To Jack, he added, “You okay?”

“Yes,” came the response after a moment, as the red-haired man took off the helmet once more. He picked up the headphones and put them back on his head, turning his music on once more. That was all he said, and there was no need to say anything else. He’d answered the question, why would he spend more time and effort elaborating?

Ben, who knew his friend perfectly well, didn’t expect anything else. Instead, he nodded to the others. “Let’s get the stuff inside and let Cuélebre know it’s all good.

“Then maybe we can watch the news and find out what the fuck’s going on out there tonight.”