American University, Washington, DC – 3/31/09 – 12:00 PM

"Miss Brown?"

A nervous young man in a police officer's uniform cleared his throat conspicuously. "Ahem...um...Miss LiberTeen?"

Brittany flashed back to reality, called back from the sea of her thoughts by a buoy of recognition. She shook her head slightly, finally realizing the young police officer standing near her. The look of deep consternation was wiped from her face, and she smiled at the young man with the kind face. Officer Bradley, she noted. No older than twenty-five, with a kind face and a buzzcut like her father's. He was bashful; she got that a lot, but this one was probably a fan. They're all fans to your face, but there's something about the eyes of the ones who mean it, something in their posture that tells you they're being sincere. "I'm sorry", she laughed softly. "I was out to space, there, for a minute. Am I up?"

"Yes, ma'am", the officer nodded apologetically. "The stage is all set for you. I'll be escorting you to the podium."

"Thank you", she smiled warmly, touching his arm on top of his county ID patch affectionately. "I'm ready, let's go."

Brittany's outward confidence belied the maelstrom of confusion and lack of confidence roiling within her. American University had invited her to hold a lecture at their campus grounds on the subject of sexual taboos in the twenty-first century, something that was so surprising that she didn't have a chance to think about it properly before she found herself saying 'yes' to the offer. She'd prepared her notes well in advance, and done her best to ensure she had something meaningful and salient to say, but the was finding herself nevertheless very suddenly intimidated. She was a pundit, not an academic. When speaking to rooms full of American voters or gatherings of teenagers in parks, she had nothing but confidence. But here, amongst all the collegiates, at one of the most prestigious private universities in the country, no less, she couldn't help but feel painfully out of her element.

She'd spend the two days prior in Washington, DC, and loving every second. She hit all the tourist spots, from the Pentagon to the Lincoln Memorial to the White House. She had intended to do so publicly, but the MPDC had warned her upon coming into town that it might behoove her to remain in cognito for the duration of her pleasure time in the city. "A lot of people around here don't like you", one Sargeant had told her over the phone. "We're according you a police escort for your business here, but we can't provide that kind of protection for you during the rest of your stay." Reluctantly, she'd done as she was instructed, and had gone largely unnoticed. Sitting at the steps of the great President Lincoln, she'd penned the speech she'd be reading today, with passionate, earnest words. "Writing is easy", her english teacher had told her. "You just take out your pen and bleed." So she bled, bled out until there was nothing left, and when it was done, she tucked it away, resolving not to open it again before she spoke the words aloud. She would not allow herself to second-guess her words. They were written in truth and passion, and they would be spoken the same way.

She was tempted to take Officer Bradley's arm, but realized it would have been a breech of professional etiquette, not to mention had the potential to be seen as weak, and obstained. Steeling her shoulders, leveling her eyes, she walked in brisk step beside him, towards an outdoor podium set up near the campus quad, a small area packed to the gills with people and overflowing out into the rest of the campus. She immediately spotted the police officers, both uniformed and plainclothes, milling about and on the outskirts of the crowd. Four of them were already mounting the podium, keeping a sharp eye on the corraled group of protesters who stood to the far right-rear of the crowd in the nauseating designated "Free Speech Zone". There were forty of them, maybe fifty, holding picket signs and trying desperately to be heard over the crowd, who greeted her with a gale of applause as she ascended the platform and subsided only when she waved them down, a brave, genuine, and very real smiled on her beautiful features.

The roar of applause and alternating cries of love and disgust finally subsided as her natural charisma seemed to bring a hush to the crowd, and she pulled her notes from her pocket, stacking them neatly on the podium. She took three deep breaths, finding her center, and drew one last breath to speak.

"Help! Help me! Oh, god, help me!"

The voice was quiet, distant, but over the now expectant crowd, it rang out clearly. Eyes darted nervously around the crowd, around the scene in total, looking for the source of the noise. And before any more could be said, the source of the cry was spotted.

Five Minutes Ago

Blast the noise. I should have taken Jason's advice and done my final grading at home. Tilting his glasses down his nose, Professor Antonio Fuerta, PhD, rubbed at the growing ache behind his eyes and flicked an irritable glance out the window at the enthusiastic students outside assembled to greet some nova or other speaking on campus today before he turned back to the last three papers from his post-modern literature class with the weary distaste of a man faced with an unpleasant but necessary task. Scrubbing the Augean Stables, for instance. I could always take them home now, but between Maria and little Benjamin I'd find myself grading them Monday morning before class. Better to get it out of the way. Picking up his pen again and resolutely ignoring the rumpus outside, he returned his attention to the unfortunate inanity of Miss Suzie Anderson's latest attempt at critical thinking.

“Busy day out there, Professor. We could raise quite a noise in here and nobody would ever know.” The girl's voice nearly jolted him out of his chair, and Antonio whipped around to face the intruder in his office with a wild and obviously impossible thought pounding in his head: Madre Dios, I would have sworn on my life I locked that door!

“Oh, I hope you don't mind, but I let myself in.” The girl's low, almost sultry murmur was as striking as her shoulder-length red hair, but there was a wild light in her emerald eyes that froze the breath in his throat; he worked on a college campus, and it was absurd that he should be suddenly afraid of a teenager in a leather trenchcoat and trendy upscale fashion. Even one that appeared in his supposedly locked office. And yet, looking at her, he was uncomfortably reminded of the massive anaconda he'd show his son in the National Zoo a few weeks ago: unblinking green eyes watched him with a predatory coldness that had no room for anything resembling empathy

He shook himself out of the thought and straightened up, chastising himself for an overactive imagination. “You'll have to excuse me, miss. You startled me, and it's well after my usual office hours. I have a lot of work to get done, but if there was something quick you needed?”

“Antonio Fuerta, right? You wrote A Voice Like Thunder. They made me read it last year in high school.” She reached behind her and pushed the door open, more of the noise drifting in from the crowd, but the way her voice dropped with venom on the next words kept them perfectly clear. “It was the worst shit I ever read in my life. I swear, two more pages of cultural entitlement angst and I would've put my fucking eyes out. But I liked the part where she shoplifted the art set, so I'm going to give you a one minute head start.”

“Head start?” His head was telling him this was someone's idea of a joke, but somehow the pounding in his chest pushed the question out anyway.

Her smile would have done a pit viper proud. “Before I kill you, Doctor Fuerta. My name's Cynthia Ann Huxley, by the way, and I'll be your murderer today. Forty nine seconds. Forty eight seconds. Forty seven. Forty six.” There was no hesitation in her voice, no hint of anything but a sadistic enjoyment of his sudden irrational terror, and looking into the girl's eyes he somehow knew that she was entirely serious. His feet, having already come to that conclusion, were already carrying him out into the hallway in a panicked rush that caught on her outstretched boot and sent him sprawling painfully across the narrow hall and into the office door opposite. “Forty two. Forty one. Forty. 'Time was a rushing torrent across her face', Dr. Fuerta! Thirty six. Thirty five...” He was on his feet again, panting already with exertion, glasses askew on his face as he stumbled across chairs and piles of papers waiting for returning teachers, the hallway seeming to lengthen to infinity as her voice echoed after him over the roar of the crowd. “Twenty nine, twenty eight, twenty seven...”

Cyn watched him disappear around the corner of the hallway, glanced down at her watch, danced a little jig on the threshold of his doorway and then checked her watch again. “Three. Two. One. Time's up, Dr. Fuerta! You are the weakest link.” She lifted her head, lips spreading in a nasty smile. “Goodbye.”

He was half-way down the central stairs, panting for air, slowing down as his rational thoughts tried to convince him he was going to break his neck running from this girl who'd probably just tried to spook him on a dare from one of the sororities when a booted foot appeared out of the wall and caught him just across the ankle, sending him crashing down the stairs to the third floor landing with a clatter of broken glass and metal as his glasses shattered against the steps and went spinning away to rattle off the tall glass panels overlooking the South Quad. He scrambled to his knees, blinking against the blur of his vision, and saw the hazy outline of a slender figure in black clicking her way down the stairs toward him. “Tsk, tsk, Professor, one too many faculty lunches? I was hoping you'd get a little bit farther.”

“You don't have to do this... please... I have family, I...”

“Dignity, Doctor, dignity! Isn't that what you wrote so movingly about? 'The great river of souls continued on around her, a comforting tide that carried her through.' I swear I recall reading that somewhere.” Her boot lashed out, catching him under the ribs and sending him sliding half a dozen feet across the wide lounge between the offices and classrooms, fetching him up against one of the tables hard enough to send it crashing down on its side. “Think of this as a form of literary criticism, if you will. A bad review.” She slapped him twice as he tired to rise, then knocked him staggering back across an overstuffed chair with a quick snap-kick to the stomach. “You should be honored; I came all the way out to DC to tell you in person just how much your book meant to me. A real life changer.”

He staggered to his feet, back to the glass, the noise of the crowd vanished into a roaring silence as though this impossible apparition had swallowed it up, and in a sudden wild desperation he screamed at the top of his voice "Help! Help me! Oh, god, help me!"

Now

Cynthia's lips peeled back over her teeth in a sugary sweet smile. “Tell me, Doctor, have you ever wanted to fly?”

She crossed the distance between them in three quick jumps, chair to table to chair, then plunged forward with a predator's grace to catch him in her quantum aura... and then they passed through the glass together as if it were mist, the rush of air drifting through them as insubstantial as the whisper of wind through a cloud, and then she kicked away from his chest with a salacious wink; his scream of pure terror cut off with a sickening crunch as his suddenly solid body impaled itself on the spiked, wrought-iron fence that lined the edge of the Quad. Cyn laughed, twirling herself in mid-air as gracefully as though she'd been standing on solid ground, then half-turned to stare down at the terribly silent crowd and the blond girl in the ridiculous outfit poised with her mouth open on the speaker's platform. “Well, what are you all waiting for? Don't they teach people to applaud a good show where you're from?”

Guns were drawn and voices hastily shouted into radios before the sneering little girl floating halfway outside the building could finish her sentence. One of the officer's, an older gentleman with a hard face and salty channels running down his cheeks from decades of tears yanked a bullhorn out from under his arm and blared out an order to halt and a demand for surrender. Other officers, all throughout the crowd, hastily got on their radios and phones, swatches of conversation heard over the screaming calling backup, EMTs, SWAT, Team Tomorrow, Stars & Stripes, anyone. People were flooding out of the courtyard like cattle. It didn't matter whether the girl was here to kill one man or a hundred; people would trample their lovers to death if they thought it would get them a foot farther from death. Fear. It did terrible things to people.

Brittany gulped hard, her eyes leveled, taking stock of the killer floating up in the air, watching her, standing on guard for her next move. She wasn't a doctor. She couldn't help that poor man. She wasn't a cop. She couldn't catch this girl, and what if she did? What then? A lump formed in her throat. Her eyes felt wet. Her peripherals glanced the stack of note cards lying in a jumbled stack on the ground where she dropped them. For the first time since her eruption, she felt weak, useless. All she could do was stand there like an idiot and watch.

The girl yelled something back, a taunt, and a bullet fired from the ground whizzed into the air, taking a chunk out of the building behind her. There was a pregnant moment of awed disbelief, and everybody realized that the sharpshooter hadn't failed; the bullet went right through her.

"Ma'am?", a voice came from behind the horrorstruck young LiberTeen.

She turned, willing her face away from the scene. It was Officer Bradley. She heaved inwardly. This would be the part where he politely informs her that he's going to have to escort her off stage and to someplace "safe". The sick irony. As if there was anything they could do to protect anyone here. "Yes, Officer" she flatly spoke, furtively assenting to the inevitable.

"Miss LiberTeen, I have been ordered to pass on a request to you from the Commissioner of the Department of Columbia Police Department." He was serious. It showed in his face, that deep-creased concern that would make him a man before his time.

Brittany was taken aback. "O-of course!", she sputtered. "Wh...what do you want me to do?"

The officer leaned in closely and sighed, seemingly reluctant to place this burden anywhere but on his own, impotent shoulders. "Miss...Stars & Stripes are en route, but it will be several minutes before they arrive. If the girl flees, we'll have no way to follow her."

Brittany's eyes went wide with realization. "You want me to--"

"DO NOT ENGAGE HER", he urged through gritted teeth. "Please, please, do nothing to jeopardize yourself. But...please. We're requesting your assistance in following her until she can be properly pursued by law enforcement." The boy heaved, grimacing as he finally got the last of it out.

Sirens could be heard in the distance. Brittany didn't know if it was more police, ambulances, what. She looked over at the tidy, chubby little man's body mounted on the fence, and knew he was already beyond help. The girl above him was laughing, taunting the police, secure in the kind of invincibility that only a combination of youth and superpowers could make one cocky enough to think they had. Brittany closed her eyes and breathed deep, trying to find a moment of clarity before answering. "All right", she responded firmly. "If she runs, I'll follow."

"Take this." The young officer nodded and put a radio into her hand.

“Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.” One hand on her hip, Cyn shook a finger at the retreating crowd and the awkward line of police officers in a near perfect imitation of her mother's favorite scolding pose. “No brave-hearted citizens standing forth to protect the innocent women and children from the wicked witch? No champions of Truth, Justice and the Usual American Bullshit soaring out to claim I'll never get away with this? A couple of bullets, and you're all standing there with your dicks in your hands. Pathetic. I ought to chase you all down to the Potomac and drown you like rats.”

She looked down at the mortal remains of Antonio Fuerta, a delicate shiver working its way down her spine at broken beauty of his dark skin impaled on the cold iron spikes. Perfectly landed, too. Some days I amaze even myself. She flicked her eyes over the crowd, suddenly and intensely bored with their petty scrambling, and she scarcely spared a glance for the gorgeous blond girl obviously pissing herself on the stage. What a bunch of losers. Let's blow this scene, Cynthy-girl. Casually flipping the bird to the police officer loudly demanding she surrender herself into custody, she back-flipped off her airy perch with the liquid grace of a professional diver, did a nearly weightless handspring off the stone of the old lecture hall's steps, and vanished into the wall of the building in a swirl of red hair and black leather.

The darkness around her dissolved a moment later as she jogged out the other side of the building, cut left through the sod embankment and an old prop room, and set a dozen sorority girls scattering in startled terror as she stepped out of their basement wall, through the Ouija board and wine bottle scattered on the floor, and then jumped smoothly through the ceiling to jog along the narrow frat/sorority lane with careless disregard for the lampposts, benches or pedestrians she passed through as she worked her way toward the car she'd most recently stolen. Follow that, piggies.

"That's it! Go!" Officer Bradley's hand met Brittany shoulder with an urgent push.

They'd only turned their heads back to the scene when the girl did her impossible, mid-air backflip into the building's walls with a wry little sneer lighting her face, taking any hope for justice with her. "Shit!", an officer cried, yanking his hat from his head and dashing it angrily against the ground in frustration. The sentiment was echoed by the others, who cursed their impotence with grumbled, snarled strings of obscenities and desperate calls to anyone they could think of to alleviate the ugly truth, that they were doing nothing because there was nothing that could be done.

Brittany could do something. She clutched the radio and took off. Her node flowered into wakefulness, and then burned, screaming, as the girl worked against the air currents and gravity that fought her every step of the way, begging every inch to go faster, faster still, to not give up, summoning up all she had to reach the top of that building as quickly as she inhumanly could. What the hell am I doing!? I'm a pundit, not a crimefighter! Oh, man, oh, man, I hope Stars and Stripes catch up soon... Air whipped at her face like arms trying to pull her back to the earth, and for the first time, she was not in love with flight. She reached the top of the structure what seemed like minutes later, perching herself high enough to see all four sides of the building, an updraft licking cold at her exposed legs. She tried in vain to think of something wise or pithy that her father told her from her youth, some nugget of tactical know-how that could see her through this with grace, but came up with nothing.

Did I lose her? she thought to herself, chastising the part of her that secretly hoped she had. She hadn't long to do so, as a shock of red hair made itself plain from the ground below, leaving the building the oppsite side of the murder. There! she rushed down, maintaining visual contact, hoping that the little murderer didn't think to look up. Not yet, anyway. The killer ducked into a sorority house via the foundation, and Brittany had to fight to restrain herself from trying to simply smash through in chase. Sense prevailed, and again, she flew to the top of the building, waiting for the girl to emerge. She could easily escape by going through the ground, Brittany puzzled, but no. She's enjoying being chased. It doesn't feel like she's getting away with something if she doesn't make a game out of it. The red hair made itself known again, this time from the far ceiling of the sorority house, where the girl bounded to a nearby frat roof and started to run along the edge, giggling to herself the whole time. Brittany watched in stoney, bitter amazement as the girl cackled over her escape made good. "To hell with this." Brittany growled, leveled her eyebrows, grit her teeth, and took off after the killer.

Cyn watched in momentary amusement as one of the intoxicated frat boys she'd just walked through doubled over in sudden, helpless nausea; twirling like a ballerina, she dropped him an ironic little half bow and in the process caught a glimpse of the red, white, blue and blond figure in the sky trying to follow her. She put a hand on her hip for a moment, staring up at the girl who'd looked so terrified on the stage and looked scarcely less nervous now, then blew her a taunting kiss and ducked sideways through the front window of one of the frat houses. You wanna play hide and seek, Miss America? Let's see what you've got. She flicked from room to room, floor to floor, house to house, running on stairs and through walls and across thin air with equal taunting carelessness, her red hair flashing in and out of view as she zigzagged maddeningly along frat row. It was reckless, crazy, insanely stupid... and it made her laugh like a girl with a naughty secret to stick it to the silly little twit wearing a cut-up flag overhead.

"Enemy to the front, every other bugger behind." Brittany told herself she wasn't going to lose sight of the girl, repeating it over and over until she nearly believed it into certainty. The girl was playing games, now more than ever, and Brittany resolved that she was not going to play back. From her vantage point on high, she saw trace flashes of red pop out like glimpses of a hummingbird, weaving serpentine between buildings and other cover. Whether the girl realized it or not, she was weaving a pattern. Her arrogance and youth were going to cripple her. She thought Brittany was here to stop her. Wrong, kiddo. I'm just the signal flare for the guys who are going to show up and bust your psycho ass. Run around all you want. While the haughty little snake scurried about down below, Brittany waited and watched, with eyes as cold and hard as a mongooses.

“Well you're just no fun at all...” Pausing with her head half-out of one of the second story walls of the Phi Beta Mu fraternity, Cyn glared up at the hovering woman who'd scarcely moved an inch in the last few minutes with distinct frustration. “You aren't gonna play on your own? Fine. I'll make you play.” She ducked through the wall into the next room, grabbing the heavy-built jock squatting down behind his girlfriend with his pants around his ankles around the waist, and his scream of uncomprehending horror as she pulled him through the roof with her was worth every ounce of strain on her arms. She kicked him hard in the balls, dropping him groaning to the roof with her hand still half-holding him up and his insubstantial knees still half-inside the roof tiles, then tossed a saucy wave up at the bitch overhead. Ignore that, girl scout!

"Fine. I'll make you play."

The words sent a shiver down Brittany's spine. Whatever she was about to do, it was going to be bad. Her eyes locked on the girl - or where she hoped she was, behind the wall - waiting for the shoe to drop, mentally girding herself for a series of contingencies. Within two seconds, whatever it was the girl was going to do, Brittany would be ready for it. She raised the radio up to her mouth and thumbed the button thoughtfully, knowing that her hands were about to be occupied elsewhere. Whatever was about to happen, she'd have time to fire off a location, if she was lucky. Her nostrils flared. The morning air stung up here, and the oxygen was almost imperceptibly thinner, but enough to set her chest heaving.

A hostage. It was the first thing she'd suspected the girl would do...and the last one Brittany had an adequate answer to. From where the impish demon and the jock were positioned, Brittany knew that the guy was only holding onto his legs by virtue of the girl holding onto him. If she let go, he was mangled. Maybe dead. If she went solid, so did he. In reality, the girl had her in a corner. There wasn't anything she could do but play along and hope that the little sociopath wasn't stupid or crazy enough to kill an innocent person just to rile her pursuer.

"This is LiberTeen", she squwaked over the radio. "She's at the top of the Phi Betu Mu house with a hostage. I'm going in."

A voice laden thick with static came over the other end in a frantic pitch. "LiberTeen, do NOT engage, repeat, do NOT engage! Personnel will be on hand shortly!"

Brittany ignored it, thankful that the radio volume was down low enough that there was no way it could be heard over the jock's screaming, not unless the girl had super hearing. Too late to worry about that, now, she cursed to herself, zipping down to the rooftop. "All right! I'm coming!" she cried as the tiles rushed up to meet her toes. "Don't hurt him! Just tell me what you want!" Six minutes, Brittany. Six minutes. Shouldn't be long, now. Stall. Stall.

“That's more like it.” There was a sickening sound as the girl's boot slammed into the jock's side, and his scream cut off in a gasping cough; Cyn straightened up and looked Liberteen full in the eyes with a cheerful smile as though she weren't holding a shuddering hostage casually with one hand. “You got a name, Miss Superstripper? Not a stupid title, by the way, like The Tart in Red, White and Blue. A real name. I'm Cyn.” Her smile widened slightly as she looked Brit over in a faintly sickening evaluation, as though they were chatting each other up at a nice nightclub, and there was a terrible sense of normality about her. “You save lots of people's lives before?”

Brittany regarded the girl with an eerie calm. She wasn't going to get roped into losing her cool, which was exactly what the girl wanted. Short. Professional. Try to get her excited. Try to get her thinking about you and not about the guy she could kill with a thought. She refused to look at the hostage, even when the psychopathic teenager kicked him in the side, ensuring he'd be peeing blood for a week. Part of that was her level-headed appraisal of the situation; the rest of it was that she just couldn't bear to look at the guy, to look into those pleading eyes with her own, knowing that she held his life in her hands.

She swallowed visibly, her mouth feeling suddenly very dry. "My name is Brittany Brown, Cyn" she replied, monotone, her blue eyes locked into the green of the girl opposite her. She took in the rest of the girl, now that she was close enough to get a good look. She's a kid! She can't be older than me... She looked like any girl Brittany might have known growing up. Nothing about her marked her as a nova. The only thing different about her was the cold, ruthless air of a psychotic that allowed here to carry on a pleasant conversation as at the same time she threatened to kill a man with the most minimal effort. If you'd shown Brittany a picture of her, she would've said she was attractive, albeit a bit harsh-looking. Her eyes were unmistakably predatory, and glinted bright with madness. "And I've never saved anybody's life. This...isn't what I do. I'm not special." She paused, and reminded herself to keep the girl talking. "You kill many people before?"

“Twenty three so far. I'm still getting warmed up.” Cyn's smile was almost mischievous, a schoolgirl telling tales out of class, but her eyes were twin windows into Hell. “So you fly around making speeches, huh? Pretty lame reason to have a costume. You pissed I rained on your big talk about whatever?” She punctuated the question with another savage jab of her heel into the jock's kidneys, extracting a breathless moan of pain from his abused lungs, but her voice never wavered from a sort of mild curiosity. “I mean, kinda hard to compete social theory or something with a guy getting impaled. Little anti-climactic, after all.”

What Brittany found most unnverving about the exchange was how natural it was becoming, how easy it was for her to have a serious conversation with someone whom she had just watched kill a man, who admitted to killing over twenty more, and now threatened to kill another. It was telling tales out of class, and as much as the participant of the conversation was anathema to her, talking about herself and what she did was like putting on a pair of old, comfortable shoes. That didn't make her lose focus of why she was here, or make her demeanor any more warm.

"Well, that's true. Americans have always been more interested in violence than sex, and no matter how eloquently or to what length you care to discuss the salient moral dilemmas of sex with pets or your immediate family, a killing is sure to capture more attention. I frankly doubt I would have kept much attention in comparison if I was displaying my points." The words felt like bile coming out of her. Not about herself, which she had become beleagueredly accustomed to discussing rather blythely, but in referring to a man's death in such coarse, academic, News at 11 terms. A man had just died. A real person. With a family. Maybe a wife, maybe kids. And she was all but telling jokes. She hoped Stars & Stripes were on their way. She couldn't take much more.

“Tell his wife and son something for me, hmmm? When you follow your lily white conscience and go see them, I mean.” Cyn leaned in, emerald eyes shining fiercely, and her voice dropped to an almost sultry purr. “He begged pathetically at the end. Not a hint of that dignity shit he wrote on and on about.” She gave Brittany a sly little wink, reading the shock in her eyes, then glanced up past her shoulder with a soft click of her tongue. “Been great talking with you, Brittany, but that looks like my cue to leave coming in from the west. Here... I'll give you a present to remember me by.” Her leg lashed out, kicking the jock away from her in a long plunging arc out over the thirty foot drop to the hard pavement below as she finally let go of him. “Fetch, girl!”

A lot of stories take on a life of their own when they're told several times over the years. Otherwise minute details are embellished, memories are misplaced, and things are omitted or added in the name of dramatic storytelling. So it's not very surprising that well into his forties, Donald Ofdensen would still tell his friends the story about the time that LiberTeen saved him when Geryon threw him off the Washington Monument, after which the two of them and "this totally fine bitch I was banging at the time" returned afterwards to his dorm room and "had this fucking mind-blowing three-way". It was equally unsurprising that few people were stupid enough to believe him.

Only the part about LiberTeen saving his life was true.

Brittany reigned in a horrified, wide-eyed scowl as Cyn pitched the college boy off the edge of the building. Brit knew she wasn't strong enough to catch him, but she was fast enough to get under him and break his fall. With blazing speed, she broke pursuit of her quarry, leaping off the edge of the roof in a perfect dive and zipping underneath the falling victim, pants still around his ankles in a perfect parody of the way every man claims he wants to die: "while having sex". This is going to hurt SO badly, she sighed to herself, placing her body directly underneath the sack of potatoes. He impacted her at about fifteen feet, and was on top of her until they hit the ground, his hairy ass mauling her grimacing, exasperated face.

Police and EMTs were already on the scene, having followed Brittany's last transmission to the foot of the frat house, and Stars & Stripes, Washington, DC's famous civil protectors, were close behind. The only participant missing from the equation was Cyn, who, just as she'd planned, had vanished. Thankfully, the officers had made it in time to catch the action, and there was no dispute about what had occurred. The same psychopath who killed Dr. Antonia Fuerta attempted to kill an innocent bystander during her escape from justice, and LiberTeen, a private citizen, both tailed the suspect and saved the bystander's life. He was admitted with a fractured knee and some bruises. Brittany broke her arm.

Something subtle had changed in Brittany, and it was more than just the fracturing of a bone. Cyn had misread the look she saw in Brittany's face; it wasn't shock she'd seen there. It was hate.

Somewhere in Virginia – 3/31/09 – 9:00 PM

The upscale speakers crackled to the Euro-synth beats of Kissing Razors, rattling the expensive china plate collections in the study around in their long cabinets like they were trying to bust loose. Knocking back another glass of expensive whiskey, Cyn leaned back in the in-home office's big leather chair and put her boots up on the desk next to the keyboard for the expensive workstation computer Mr. Daniel Lee III had custom installed for his personal use and hadn't even bothered to password lock. His personal files were encrypted, of course, but she hardly gave a damn about them. No, it was that prissy little Liberteen bitch she had on her mind, and several bottles of Mr. Lee's finest bar stock hadn't dulled how fucking pissed she was in the slightest. Oh, sure, she'd showed the bitch who was boss and then some, but she'd seen the news coverage she knew that fucking fraternity loser was still breathing. He'd been hers to kill, and Brittany “I'm so sweet sugar wouldn't melt in my slut mouth” Brown had dived under him like something out of fucking Superman and stolen his death from her. Who did the little cheerleader-wannabe think she was? Somebody ought to teach her a fucking lesson. Cyn took another slug of whiskey before dropping the glass on the floor, leaning back in the chair and letting the bass from the speakers beat the tension out of her bones; for a minute she was slack as a rag, red hair hanging down over the back of the chair limply, smelling of the shampoo she'd used from the shower. Couldn't be a prick like Lee's, he wasn't enough of a fag... had to be whatever piece of ass he normally kept on the side. Well, she had good taste in shampoo, anyway, even if she had shit taste in men. With a sigh of contentment, Cyn pulled a Virginia Slim from the cigarette case in her right inner pocket and lit it, took a drag, smile at the ceiling in the dark. Yeah, not bad for a day, even with that flag-wearing bitch butting in. Now what to do tomorrow.....

Somebody ought to teach her a fucking lesson.

Cyn's feet dropped through the desk as she jolted upright in the chair, cigarette dangling loosely in her fingers, emerald eyes wide and bright with sudden inspiration. She reached down and ground the cigarette out slowly on the back of Mr. Lee's suit, just below where she'd phased his head through the top layer of the desk, staring into nothing while her teeth chewed lightly at her lower lip, fingers tapping a little drumbeat out against the expensive wood; after a minute, she grabbed the keyboard, typing with a sudden manic intensity that sent a dozen windows flashing open, and when she slumped back in the chair again and put her feet up on Mr. Lee's scrawny shoulders there was a predatory grin on her face that would have shamed a piranha. “Brittany Brown, Missoula, Montana. Girl, didn't anybody ever tell ya you shouldn't put your address on the fucking Opnet? There's bad people out there.” Reaching into her pocket again, she took out another cigarette and lit it with relish. “Who knows what some loony might do with that kind of information....”

American University, Washington, DC – 4/2/09 – 1:00 PM

Brittany was discharged from Sibley Memorial hospital with a cast, a sling, and a completely unnecessary prescription for Vicodin, with assurances that the cast could come off in a little over a month. Brittany figured it would be off in less time than that, still lamenting that she didn't have the trick of nova healing quite down to a science yet.

Two days later, she was standing on the podium near the quad at American University again, this time delivering her speech without incident, her left arm portraying a brave mask beneath its bandages. The Human Sexuality Department, who had asked her to come speak, was rather insistant that she not force herself to come back so soon, to take it easy and pigeonhole the lecture for another day, but she was even more insistant that she not capitulate to terrorism. In the end, she won out, and - now buttressed by half the cops in the Capitol - she gave her speech in full to a rapt crowd nearly twice as large as the first, and received a thunderous buffet of applause in return. Brittany knew that a lot of them were only there because of the spectacle, the publicity, but that was fine. Whatever brings them out, she sighed.

The lecture, 'The Changing Face of Sexual Taboo in the Modern Age' really seemed to go over pretty well, to her relief, in spite of protest, which she was relieved to see had dwindled from the first protest, her secret hope being that the tragedy had driven some of the less brazen fundies back under their rocks out of shame. The doctor's wife, Mrs. Maria Fuerta, had even come, and after the lecture had commenced at the crowds had dispersed for the afternoon, she'd approached Brittany and hugged her, thanking her for her part in what she hoped would eventually bring her husband's murderer to justice. It made Brittany feel like a fraud; this woman's husband was dead, and all she did was chase his murderer, and to no real gain, for that matter. The heroes would be the ones who caught this girl and brought her to justice, and she was no more heroic than anybody else who'd acted that day. Considerably less so; she'd failed, after all. But Mrs. Fuerta hugged her still, tears streaming down her face out of grief for her beloved husband and thanks to the girl who tried to do something, anything, and Brittany hugged back, tears of impotence and sadness at her inability to do anything meaningful about it.

Metropolitan Police Headquarters, Washington, DC – 4/3/09 – 7:00 PM

The MPDC had called a press conference to deal with the nearly overwhelming volume of inquiries regarding the murder, and what part Stars & Stripes as well as LiberTeen had played in the fiasco. This was quite possibly the biggest news to hit the city of an apolitical nature in years, and thanks largely to the straight-arrow, business-as-usual presidency of Randolph Portman, still gaining momentum on Capital Hill, the news media had leapt on it with the voracity of a starving bear.

And this was how Brittany found herself on the steps of the Henry J. Daly Building, a mere two blocks away from the White House itself, a day after her scheduled flight out of DC, standing on a podium with the MPDC Chief of Police, Stars & Stripes, and about a dozen other officers, speaking into two dozen microphones about her part in the tragedy that had taken place only days ago. The questions came rapid-fire and urgently, and Brittany handled it with the graceful unease of someone naturally eloquent who wasn't at all used to the drumbeat, staccato rhythm of a national press conference.

"Miss LiberTeen, did you know the murderer?"

"No, she...I'd never met her before. She--"

"Did you see what kind of powers she had?"

"She could fly, obviously, but she could move through buildings, too, like a ghost, and--"

"Have you spoken to Professor Fuerta's widow?"

"Y-yes, I have, and she thanked me for my part in this, but--"

"Will you be aiding in the continued investigation?"

Brittany heaved, catching her breath, and with a flush of her node, the crowd began to settle, as if a snow of stillness descended in gentle, lilting flakes until a coat had covered them all. Her eyes opened, and she spoke slowly and deliberately into the collection of microphones, her eyes beaming forward at the queue of cameras cordoned off to one side. "I am not a peace officer, but as long as I have information that may prove useful in the apprehension of this murderer, I will continue to work with state and federal authorities to see that she is brought to justice. This woman's actions are reprehensible, sadistic, and deserving of redress. I believe I can speak for myself, Stars & Stripes, the MCPD, and all state and federal authorities that we will not rest until this killer is found and apprehended."

The police chief, a calm, stoic, handsome old black man laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and stepped forward, using the silence to take the burden off her shoulder's, reiterating and echoing her pledge to see this through and ensure that justice would be swift. Stars & Stripes took the mike next, relaying what they could of the incident with the cool air of two seasoned professionals, which they both were. Some more questions, then the chief spoke again, and Brittany was escorted back into the precinct house, where several of the local cops received her with a fatherly demeanor, patting her on the shoulder, thanking her for her help and for being brave, and telling her to get well soon. Everyone present, Stars & Stripes included, signed her cast, and with a slightly apologetic smile, she boarded a police-escorted convoy to take her to the airport to return home.

She was glad to be going home, but the lingering sense of failure and hopelessness that had settled on her had burdened her visibly. Her smiles were forced, and that plaster clinging to her arm was a constant reminder of her own inadequacy. Maybe Cyn was right about her. She wasn't a hero. What was she dressing up for? She made speeches, and tried to help people sometimes. Hardly worth such fanfare. Nursing a can of soda all the way back to Missoula, she contemplated how realistic she was really being, how much good she was really doing, and maybe, if it was time to go another direction. She didn't reach a conclusion before passing out in her seat, but what was clear was that things were never going to be the same, and that she had just made a very dangerous enemy.

Missoula, Montana – 04/04/09 – 11:17 PM

Gravel crunched under the wheels of the black Porsche 987 as Cyn pulled off the badly paved trail and cut the engine, staring in horrified disbelief at the long dirt road winding off into the trees. “You have got to be fucking kidding me. I mean, Brit, I knew you were a hick from the sticks, but fucking hell.” Shaking her head in exasperation, Cyn took the keys (still bearing the stamp of the dealer she'd lifted the car from in Knoxville) out of the ignition and phased through the locked car door. “I'm not gonna trash the bodywork on a ride like this for your damn ass dirt road, so I guess I'll just fucking walk. I mean, how far can it fucking be?”

Almost a mile of dust and trees and intermittent brambles later, Cyn finally came into sight of the house with nothing short of bloody murder flashing behind her eyes. “Fucking three hundred dollar boots. Three fucking hundred dollar boots your god-damned woods have covered in dust. And scratches! I'm gonna have to steal another fucking pair from a decent boutique, and God knows how far it is to one of those from this God forsaken hellhole.” She stamped her heels into the dirt in momentary fury, nails digging into her palms as she glared knives across the open space at the dark bulk of the ranch house, then vanished into the night air with a sudden flicker of displaced shadow.

Dust stirred in the silence of the night, a whisper of sound scarcely above the level of a light breeze brushing past the cherry red pickup and the black Jetta in the driveway, creaking across the broad boards of the long porch and through the long gallery of windows into the living room. Bathed in the phosphor glow of the flickering television set, Mr. Brown snored softly from his half-sprawl across the couch. The tick of the old copper-rimmed clock on the wall was the only other sound in the room for long moments, then the soft creak of hinges and the rustle of fabric as one of the blankets seem to untangle itself from the hall cabinet and spread itself over the sleeping man with artful precision. The middle aged man stirred slightly in his sleep, stilled, began to snore again. The air shivered slightly, a faint brushing breeze drifting down the short hall toward the bedrooms.

Mrs. Brown shifted in her sleep, a passing nightmare fluttering her breathing, but the moment passed and she stilled into silence again; silently, her nearly empty water glass rose from the side-table and floated to the bathroom. Water ran, a soft trickle almost inaudible against the sounds of country night, and then the full glass returned itself to her table; her jewelry box rose a moment later, silently sliding through the wardrobe beneath it before fading completely from sight. One of the dogs outside barked at the moon, and Mrs. Brown stirred again without waking; the whisper faded from the room with the softest echo of a girl's laughter.

The faintest hint of a girl's muffled cry broke the silence of the house, and the whisper of movement slipped through the walls like the breath of a dream, following the muffled sounds to the off-set room near the kennels; the agitation of the dogs outside had faded, but if anything the noise from Brittany's room only increased. That soft whisper of laughter came again, lost against the sounds of muffled creaks and whimpers, like the hiss of an adder beneath the rustle of leaves.

Cyn slid through the wall of Brittany's room with the jewelry box tucked under her arm, a predator's playful smile on her lips, then paused with a silent snort of disgust as her eyes adjusted fully to the half-light and she could see the slender blond girl writhing obscenely on the bed. She'd expected as much, of course, once she'd seen the sort of shit the girl posted on her website. What does a nymphomaniac do at night alone, hmmm? Like that's a hard one. She ducked down, dropping her hand through one corner of the bed to deposit the jewelry box between one set of books and a couple of girlishly decorated boxes, then straightened up and looked down at Brittany's flushed face with a slow, nasty little smile. You fuck with my game....Let's see how much I can screw with yours. She leaned down, letting her long red hair drift through the headboard around Brittany's face, watching the older girl's half-closed eyes intently.

Brittany's arm had been feeling much better ever since she'd woken up that morning, and after a quick visit to their family doctor back in Missoula, she was delighted to finally have that cumbersome cast off. Three days wasn't too bad at all for a broken arm, she figured, and despite some stiffness from not having used it, she really felt much better. She even managed to do all her chores after her father brought her back from town, taking a strange delight in doing otherwise boring things like the dishes or cleaning out the kennel, just happy to have full function back in all her limbs. She remembered breaking her finger when she was ten, and how that splint impaired her for what seemed like forever, and was thankful again that she was a nova. She didn't know how she healed so quickly, but she was awfully thankful to have done so.

There were other reasons she was happy to have all her ambulatory faculties back, of course, and as the sun set on her family's modest, cozy little house, she slipped away to her room to enjoy one of the more gratifying ones. She tossed her eufibre costume to the edge of her bed and slipped on her father's old jacket and a pair of plain cotton underwear to sleep in, then cuddled up on top of her bed, snuggling in amongst a zoo of stuffed animals that sat around her headboard like Brittany's Dreamland honor guard. With a playfully serene smile, she snagged her lower lip on one of her canines, half-closed her eyes, pulled the sheer cotton of her panties aside and began to gently pet the soft, pink petals of her womanhood with her newly healed arm. Oh, I've missed this... She inhaled, taking her time, savoring her own body, spending several minutes simply becoming reacquainted with her most intimate area, the small, soft folds of skin guarded by the plump lips of her vulva on other side, massaging herself, treating herself as if she were her own treasured lover, her body writhing impatiently at her own touch. She found herself thinking of Cat, and how she'd selfishly wished that Troy hadn't come along to stop Cat from playing with her, and about how she took her in San Francisco. She thought of Robert, of that night of the best sex of her life in his parents' bedroom, and of all the playful meetings that followed. She though of other things, some of the people she'd been with before, some people she'd never been with at all. She thought of herself, playing with herself, and through it all, began to moan and whimper softly, teasing herself to brink of her own sanity. Even the air seemed to change subtlely, a hint of vanilla wafting on the breeze. Oh, Robby...Robby...give me that big, wolfie dick...oh, daddy...daddy, fuck me... She cried out, a loud, high-pitched whimper, and gently slid a finger inside herself.

Slut. Cyn's lips peeled back over her teeth, the cold blaze of her emerald eyes hidden behind her veil of quantum distorted light as she slid an intangible hand through Brittany's cheek in the mocking parody of a lover's caress. I could strangle you now and they'd find you just like this, hands between your legs, tongue hanging off your lips, pretty girl-next-door face that lovely tinge of blue. Would your daddy be able to cover you without puking his sorry guts out? Bet your mother would crack a valve, drop dead on the spot. Her hand slid slowly through Brit's throat, tracing down between sweat-soaked curves of her breasts, the warmth of her lungs and the frantic beating of her heart fluttering around Cyn's immaterial fingers. Or one little squeeze here, just one... they'd find you with your fingers buried in yourself, not a mark on you, 'poor little thing her heart just stopped'... bet they'd call that a judgment of God in the press, say it was him punishing you for your filthy speech. Wouldn't that just kill you.... if you weren't already dead, of course.