Ricochet
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Chapter 3: Terra
See, the thing is … um …
Uh … well … it was like …
Shit. I'm no good at this.
Even after Raven totally worked and worked with me for, like, days … I still glitch it up sometimes.
Robin says not to worry, that they're all behind me and I have plenty of time and yadda yadda yadda.
Then some crap happens like what I pulled yesterday and …
All right. Deep breath. Do that ground-and-center thing Raven taught me. (She's way better at it than Slade ever thought about being, but then she isn't some Mister Supreme Evil Maniac who's trying to control my mind so she can take over the city/state/country/world, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised, and also she has my best interests at heart 'cause I can tell, even if she never actually says anything.)
Whoa. I need to stay on topic.
Running Guy. That's the topic. And he already slipped by Gar and Robin BOTH, so I don't feel as bad as maybe I might.
Okay. Start at the start, as Raven says, and you're less apt to miss anything.
You know … I really think we're more alike than any other two of us on the team. Me an' Raven? Shady pasts, and totally righteous powers that we, um, have a little trouble with now and then, and maybe not so great at relating to other people. Yeah, we sorta come at it from different angles most of the time, but …
On-topic. Right. Sorry. I might be a little hyper. It's just that … yeah, okay, there's shit goin' on with me right now that is totally off the hook. Sure, yesterday's patrol went straight down the shitter, but I've got a slammin' guy, an' he totally rocks my world, an' I never had any idea how much fun sex could be with a shapeshifter, an' …
Damn. Where'd I put my Adderall? Don't think I had one this morning. Raven usually reminds me but she was out on early patrol an' I was up late playin' Covert Ops: Monkey Island with Vic an' tryin' to get my mind off my screw-up, so I kinda overslept this mornin' and missed …
No, wait, now I remember. Robin reminded me. I took it with my orange juice.
Get your head on straight, Terra. And tie it down.
Okay.
I was patrolling out by the docks. Vic had the east half of the city. He usually takes the east or the south 'cause the roads are better so he's more mobile in the T-Car. So I had the coastline. Suits me. More rocks an' dirt an' sand an' stuff easy to come by. Not that the rest of the city doesn't have plenty of parks an' woods an' crap, but on this side I've almost always got a line-of-sight on some ground I can use, an' I like that. Comfortable, you know? Lots of raw material to work with.
So, anyway, I was floatin' along in my modified boulder … yeah, see it's been hotter 'n Hell's attic for a couple weeks now, an' the weather guys say it'll be this way for another week at least, an' with my coloring, I need some serious sunscreen help. Yeah, I'm pretty tan anyhow, but that don't mean I wanna have to deal with skin cancer in a few years. So I got me a nice, big rock and turned it into a covered chair. Nice an' shady. Of course the air still feels like it's blowing out of an oven, but I can deal as long as I'm not in direct sunlight.
So I'm just kinda bobbin' along, keepin' an eye out for more o' that gang trouble like what Star broke up a couple days back, an' I spot this guy climbin' up the outside of an apartment building. My first thought was 'second-story man' but then I thought it might be Running Guy, since Robin an' Gar both said he liked to climb buildings an' then jump off 'em. So I headed over that way.
The building was around fifteen floors, you know, seventy-five or eighty meters, an' he wasn't too far from the top. I came to a stop even with him, and maybe six or seven meters away, an' said, "You're the guy that gave Robin and Beast Boy the slip, ain'tcha?"
He spared me a glance and kept climbing. I floated up with him.
"Robin said you were fightin' some would-be rapists an' one o' those asshats stuck a knife in you."
He didn't react to that at all.
"You all healed up by now? Was it not a bad stick?"
He gave me a funny look, but didn't answer. Only one floor to go before the roof. He could climb really fast.
"You plannin' on jumpin' off once you get to the roof? 'cause I'd kinda like to see that."
Upon reaching the roof, he sprinted for the opposite side, calling back over his shoulder, "You kin watch eff you wanna, Miss. I got to go." And he just ran off into space, spread-eagle.
I kept pace with him until we were about five floors away from splat, then slowed down and watched while he hit the pavement – hard – in the middle of the street, and just bounced. Landed on his feet, an' took off south at a damn good rate.
Okay, it was about, maybe, 1530 hours an' the sun was canted off to the side enough that the buildings cast some pretty sharp shadows, and he wasn't in direct light when he landed, which is probably why I could see that he started to glow as soon as he bounced. Not a lot, but enough to notice. I thought that might mean something to Robin, so I made a mental note to tell him about it later.
I came up next to him – traffic was awful light, prob'ly on account of nobody wantin' to be out in the heat – an' leaned over an' yelled, "What's the big rush?"
He flicked me a quick look an' said, "Stick aroun', Miss, an' you see."
He had a cute accent. I stuck. But I also called Robin to report what I was up to. He got real exercised once he found out who I was tailing.
"Stop him!"
"You sure about that? He's not doin' anything but runnin'."
"It'll only be a matter of time before he causes another accident. Stop him. Now."
I tried not to grumble too much as I signed off. 'Stop him.' Yeah, well, that might be easier said than done. Jump City ain't all that far from San Francisco, and it shares some of the same sort of geography, hill-wise. As in, we got 'em. Not as many or as steep, but there's some good ones around, and as we topped one of 'em, I could see a decent-sized intersection at the bottom, you know, traffic lights an' stuff. That happens a lot. I guess it's just natural for folks to build roads along the base of a hill, but that makes it a total pain for drivers if they have to stop right at the bottom, or start off from a stop goin' uphill. Maybe the civil engineers in charge don't have to drive on 'em. If they did …
Anyway, Running Guy zipped down the hill, maybe ten meters in front of me. Looked like he was speeding up. I pulled a great big wad of dirt out of a lot as we passed by and threw it at him, but he just dodged it and kept going. Jinx herself couldn't have pulled off a better fade than that, an' he didn't even spare me a glance.
Stop him. Yeah, right. I could tell his reflexes were maybe, like, ten times better than mine.
There was a garbage truck that had just pulled out of a side street an' was headed down in the same direction some forty-odd meters ahead of him. Running Guy put on a burst of speed that surprised me, so I edged my boulder forward a little harder and looked for another vacant lot.
The light down there at the intersection turned yellow. The garbage truck, what was goin' maybe forty or fifty klicks by then, put on his brakes (they squeaked somethin' awful) for about two seconds, an' …
Okay, this is kinda where my fuck-up starts, but you gotta keep in mind that what happened next took maybe three and a half seconds, tops, and I didn't – I mean seriously, I didn't – really have time to help, even if I had figured out what was happening. Which I hadn't, because I don't know shit about cars or trucks or how they work or what makes 'em go … or stop. And that's my story an' I'm stickin' to it.
His brakes squeaked, but then the squeak stopped and somethin' wet sprayed out from under it. I wouldn't have noticed it except that I was kinda just behind an' to the left of the truck, and some of it got on me. I didn't know what it was or why it was significant, but I knew … that is, I sorta realized it wasn't water. Not that there'd be any water on the street anyway, as hot as it's been and as long as we've gone without rain. Mainly it just confused me, and I wasn't really watching the truck … I was watching Running Guy. He had just passed the truck a couple seconds or so before, doin' what had to be nearly seventy klicks, an' he made it to the intersection just after the light turned green for the cross-street, an' slammed his hands down on the hood of a tiny convertible that was just about to pull out into the intersection.
The car barked to a stop. I caught a glimpse of the driver, a woman maybe pushin' thirty, an' a little girl in the passenger seat. An' then the garbage truck barreled through the intersection, horn blaring, an' the woman watched it zip by with her mouth hangin' open.
Running Guy looks up at me – and I'm sorta in shock just then, 'cause it hit me that he just prevented a really bad wreck – an' says, "You got t' stop de truck now, Miss. Hurry!" An' he ran off to the east, hell-bent for leather. I didn't waste any more time then an' zipped after the truck. Yeah, Robin would prob'ly want me to chase R.G. some more, but that truck needed stopping, an' there wasn't anybody else around to do it.
Okay, so the truck's brakes had failed. An' R.G. was right there to stop what totally woulda been a hot mess. What was wrong with that picture?
There was a good, wide grassy strip between the sidewalk and the street at this section, so I pulled up a couple tons of earth and mashed it against the front of the garbage truck. It slowed down an' stopped right smart, a ways before it reached the next intersection, an' I flew over to it an' looked in the window.
That poor driver. He was positively green, an' couldn't get the door open fast enough. He noticed me right off, but felt like he had to lean against the truck an' spew chunks first. I let him finish an' then flipped him a water bottle (Robin insisted we take at least a six-pack of 'em with us on patrol). He took a long swig and said, "Th-th-thanks."
"Welcome." I looked back up the hill. R.G. was nowhere to be seen – naturally – an' I heaved a frustrated sigh. "You know what happened back there?"
"Hell." He was a young guy. Couldn't'a been five years older 'n me, an' he was rattled bad. Shakin' hard, he walked around the front of the truck an' sat down on the curb an' wiped his face with a greasy handkerchief. Then, again, he said, "Hell."
"You gonna be okay?"
"… Yeah. Tomorrow, maybe. Shit. Dude, I saw that woman's face. Saw her little girl. Didn't have no way to stop, and nowhere else to go. Couldn't plow into the bus."
That's right, there was a city bus in the on-coming lane. I was so focused on the car that R.G. had stopped …
"I woulda killed 'em, too. In that little Miata o' theirs? Hell, Trashosaurus probably outweighed 'em ten to one. They didn't stand a chance. Woulda killed 'em deader 'n a hammer." With elbows on knees, he leaned forward, rested his head on knobby fists, an' whispered, "Shit. Wouldna been nothin' but a smear."
"You got any idea what happened to your truck?"
"Hell if I know!" He looked up and his eyes were just a little bit wild. "Brakes just died! All of a sudden it felt like I was steppin' on a pillow. Went right to the floor."
"I saw somethin' wet come out from under you back up the hill."
"Huh." He took another long drink. "Musta popped a hydraulic line."
"You think it coulda been sabotage?"
"Sabotage? You kiddin'? On a garbage truck? Who'd be whack enough to pull some shit like that?"
"… Yeah. I getcha." I thought it over for a second an' shrugged. I'd let Robin know. Maybe he could organize an investigation or somethin'. Right then I needed to call Our Fearless Leader an' let him know R.G. gave me the slip.
Needed to. Didn't want to. I could hear him yell before I even hit the button.
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A/N: More clues … more hints. What do you think? Review and let me know!
Next Chapter: Cyborg
