Chapter Two

"After School Activities"

Monroe building exterior, 45th floor, downtown Capitol City, 3:45pm…

Eugene Harden wiped his brow and looked down. It never ceased to amaze him how breathtaking a view of the drop from forty five floors up could be. He'd been cleaning buildings like this one for twenty five years, and one of these days, he would either finally quit or actually fall off of one. Of course, falling off of one was a ridiculous suggestion- Eugene was a pro, he knew what he was doing when he tethered himself to one of these things.

Turning back to his work, he waved at the office personnel inside and continued washing the windows. When he was finished with the immediate section, he adjusted his cabling and slipped the climbing cups back onto his palms, then moved up the glass to the forty-sixth floor. That was when one of the cups slipped and left his hand, and he did fall away from the skyscraper.

Giving a shout of surprise, he swung away from the building, dangling from his tethering line and glad it was secured at the top. But in the process, he lost another one of his cups, watching it fall down, down, to the ground below, and he realized that for the first time since he'd started this job, he was in trouble.

His coworkers had all gone to lunch, but Eugene had been in a groove, so he hadn't stopped what he was doing. This was strictly against company policy of course, but his supervisor liked to let grizzled vets like old Eugene do as they pleased. The sooner they finished the better, so that they could move on to a shorter building.

But he'd secured his line pretty tight, and was surprised when he suddenly dropped a couple of inches. From far above, pieces of concrete rained down and passed him, and he looked up, wondering if maybe it wasn't as secure as he'd first thought. Well, he'd just have to get up top before things got that bad, or lower himself the forty five floors before his line gave out. Eugene decided to go up top, since it was a shorter distance. He shook off his other suction cups and watched them all the way down to be sure they didn't hit anybody. Then, he started to pull himself up.

It was okay for a couple of floors, but then the line jerked, and he was worse off than when he'd started. Looking up, he saw more concrete falling his way, and the line gave out all together.

He was falling. It was an odd sensation. He turned his head to watch himself in the building glass, rolling onto his back. It was certainly better than watching the ground rush up to meet him. He'd prefer just to hit it unexpectedly, and get it over with. He saw a few surprised faces in the offices as he flew by, and he did allow himself one last moment to smile, surprised that he wasn't terrified, and he hadn't started to scream.

But in the reflection, he saw something even stranger than his reaction to falling to his death. A beautiful blonde girl was approaching- how, he didn't know- her arms extended in his direction and horizontal to the ground as she seemed to be flying through the sky. He cocked his head as she came up beneath him, certain he was hallucinating until when he felt himself being eased into her arms.

Eugene turned and stared at her. She couldn't have been more than eighteen years old. She certainly didn't look like a machine or an alien. How in God's name could she fly?

She smiled at him. "Going down," she quipped, slowing their descent, and angling her feet toward the ground.

"What the hell is going on?" he asked. "What the hell are you?"

"I'm saving you," she replied. "And I'm just a girl who's out here trying to make a difference." She brought them to a gentle landing to the sound of clapping, as people had gathered to watch and take pictures of the dramatic rescue.

He stared at the kid when she set him down and put a hand on his shoulder to steady him when he stumbled, looking up at him. "Thank you," he said. "I didn't mean to be rude. It's just…were you flying?"

She laughed. "Yes. People are asking me about that a lot today. And no, I don't know exactly how I do it. It's like flexing an extra muscle and it just happens."

"Wow, that's amazing!" he exclaimed, shaking his head and looking her over. "You're something else, kid."

She raised her eyebrows. "Thanks," she replied, and took off. He stared after her as the other people rushed forward, asking him questions and inquiring as to his condition. He wondered where she was off to, but figured he'd be able to catch the super girl on the evening news.

Capitol City Airport, air traffic control tower, approximately 4:00pm

Robby Lang stared out the window, trying to get a look at the 747 aircraft he needed to somehow bring in for a safe landing. The plane had circled above until it ran out of fuel, unable to get stuck front landing gear to work so that the pilot could bring it in. On the runway, emergency response crews were at the ready, knowing that the pilot would not only be gliding in on fumes, he'd be doing it without fully functioning landing gear.

"How's it looking?" Robby asked, trying hard not to chew on his nails and keeping an eye on his radar to keep other planes from crossing into the now-dangerous landing space.

George Jeffries, a pilot Robby spoke to at least three times a week, responded, "As good as it can look with no fuel, broken landing gear, and 250 passengers and crew."

"Yeah, I know, not good." The 747 had circled one last time and now approached the runway selected for its crash. "Try to keep her steady, George. You don't want to knock off too much speed."

"Who's the pilot and who's the controller?" George replied with a chuckle. "I know what I'm doing, Robby." Robby was glad at least one of them could keep his sense of humor in a time of crisis like this. Though everyone in the room was aware of it, they still had other planes that needed watchful eyes and ears. Robby was the best they had at what he did, so he was working the certain crash.

"Hey, Rob?" Kristin Moyer tugged on his sleeve.

"Not now, Kris, I'm trying to talk to George," he said, covering the microphone of his headset. "We've got an incoming crash, remember?"

"Yeah, but…" Kristin was staring at her radar. "You need to see this."

Robby rolled his eyes. Kristin was fairly new at this and couldn't be expected to understand the gravity of the situation. A controlled crash was still a crash, and they were likely to lose more than a few passengers if not the entire plane on impact.

"What is it?" he snapped, and immediately wished he hadn't. A blip had appeared, thirty five miles out. Its designation was unknown. He frowned, and in the time it had taken him to do that, the blip had moved to thirty miles out. Then twenty. His eyes widened as he realized what it must be.

Oh, no. "George, you need to be ready!" he yelled into the microphone. Fifteen miles and closing.

"What is it? What's going on?" Ten miles.

"We've got an unidentified bogey, coming in from the southwest!" Robby glanced back at the screen. Five miles, now. "And it's coming in fast!" Only a missile could move that fast, and that could only mean terrorists had targeted the plane, a perfect storm of misfortune that Robby would unfortunately have to witness. The bogey was right on them now- and that was when he saw the person-sized red, white, and blue flash go by the air traffic control windows, toward the descending plane as it angled for the runway.

"What in the world was that?" Kristin cried, as nearly everyone got to their feet when the sonic boom of rushing air behind the thing rattled the windows. Robby reached for the binoculars he kept in his desk and put them up to his face, peering in the direction of the plane as George's voice came over his headset.

"I just saw the weirdest thing," he was saying. "Looked like a red flash coming from your direction."

"Hold, please," Robby replied, adjusting his view so he could see what it was.

He nearly fainted when he saw it- it looked like a teenage girl in a costume. Somehow, she'd flown up under the plane and had positioned herself near the broken front landing gear, reaching up into the mechanics of the device. As the plane continued down, she gave a yank and the gear came down. Everyone in the tower started to cheer when they saw it, and George came over the headset again.

"My landing gear is down!" he exclaimed. "I don't know how, but it's down and fully functional. This should make the landing a lot smoother, at least, even if we still are going to have an issue stopping."

"Hold, please," Robby repeated. He watched as the girl released the gear and hovered, allowing the plane to go by until she reached the midsection, at which point she angled her hands up and started moving along with it again. It nearly looked as though she were manually stabilizing it to aid in the landing.

"I've got a lot of control, here, all things considered," George murmured. "It's almost like I got my engines back." Robby heard him talking to other people in the cabin. "They're still down? You're kidding!"

The plane landed smoothly, and as soon as the wheels were firmly on the ground, the girl dropped from beneath the aircraft and moved around to its front, waving at the crew inside as she positioned herself near the nose, and from all appearances, she pushed up against it and started slowing the plane down.

George shouted, "Oh my God! Is that a-is that a girl?" She held onto the nose of the plane- making a face as she seemed to strain against it, a little- and the plane slowed more quickly than it would have if the engines were working. The rescue teams were cheering and clapping as it came to a complete stop.

The fire crews moved to secure the plane while she held it in place. Once they signaled to her that every was okay, the girl flew over to the door and pulled it off, the emergency escape unfolding down to the tarmac as EMTs rushed to attend to passengers. The kid didn't hang around long- she said something at the door to the passengers, then stepped off of the exit into the air and flew away, waving at everyone as she went. Robby followed her as best as he could, but she was fast and he lost her, though he did catch the sonic boom that sounded when she sharply accelerated and vanished once she'd reached what she obviously had deemed an appropriate height to move that fast.

All around him, everyone was cheering and celebrating, wondering at the miracle that had just happened, but Robby had seen her. It was just a teenage girl.

A teenage girl who could fly, who was strong enough to pull down a plane's landing gear barehanded, control the aircraft's descent with ease, bring it to a complete stop under her own power, then rip off a door that should have required hydraulics to open. What the hell was going on?