The Taylor Twins 4.1
... as seen by a trucker.
The storm was fairly solid, making it impossible to see as far as downtown, but George Gutierrez could still make out the enormous wall of water that had come from sea-side, rather than bay-side, and was crawling deceptively slow uphill through Captain's Hill, then inland through ritzy South Brockton.
He idly wondered how fast it was really going, and knew he was good enough at math to be able to calculate it by seeing landmarks be engulfed. It just so happened that he was much more worried about drinking beer on top of his truck's cab, getting soaked to the bone, watching Leviathan destroy his city.
"Is it swirling?" half-shouted Highway Patrolman Jacques O'Brien beside him, half covering his eyes against the rain.
George had previously noticed that the mass was apparently spinning. He knew the word 'swirl' meant 'move in a spiral', but he didn't care to correct Officer O'Brien. He rather took another pull from his beer.
"It is," he shouted back. "And I think it is picking up speed."
And indeed it was: in the last minute it had decidedly taken a discus shape, twenty feet tall and easily three hundred yards across, and now that the centre had dipping below the walls, it looked like a stadium had decided to take a stroll.
"See that brown house over there? That one about to be levelled?" the officer shouted, pointing just ahead of the wall of water. George didn't see a thing, but he shouted "yeah" all the same.
"My wife grew up there," the officer shouted. "Her folks were real assholes: they disowned her for marrying blue collar."
George guessed the officer was using 'blue collar' as a slang meaning 'not white', as the officer clearly had some very strong African ancestry, but George didn't ask for clarification.
They settled into a silence, watching how the capes had finally reacted and had begun blasting at the discus. Some seemed to be blasting at random, others (high flyers) seemed to be following a spot, but most where waiting for that spot to come around and have an opportunity at a synchronized shot.
'Let's see: the discus is about three hundred yards round, and it's spinning at a period a little under three seconds'. Pi times diameter over time... He assumed some rounding error, did the math in his head and whistled.
"What's that?" asked Collin.
"It looks slow because it's huge, but the discus's spinning a little under Mach speed!" he shouted back.
"Excuse me!" Somebody shouted from behind them.
Turning around, they found a woman crouching behind them. A woman on a checkered catsuit and a featureless mirrored mask. Clearly a cape.
"The fight is that way!" George informed, helpfully pointing at the discus.
"I'm not here for that!" she shouted back. "I'm looking for Mover of Goods, former member of the Marché!"
That was a name he hadn't heard in years. Not even at their annual barbecue for "the good half" that got out after Marquis was captured and Skidmark killed Gold Washer and turned the gang into everything Marquis didn't want it to be.
Glancing at the cop sitting by him, he tried to play coy.
A moment later, he glanced at the toroid of doom, sighed, turned back to the cape lady and admitted it: "That would be me," he shouted, trying not to think about the fact that he was literally confessing in front of a cop.
"Would you do a mission for Dryad, Marquis' daughter?"
"Gladly," he said with barely a moment's hesitation: all of the good half had been watching Panacea from afar all these years, ready to close ranks around her if she ever needed a thing. Speculation was rampant among them that Dryad had to be Panacea stretching her muscles, and it was great to have confirmation. He stood up, chucked his half-full bottle of beer well away from the road, then squared himself and saluted the lady.
"Where to, ma'am?"
"A field hospital will be set up at the abandoned YMCA north of Archer's bridge!" she shouted, handing him a domino mask and one of those Endbringer bracelets he had seen on the papers. "Dryad heals by using biomass! And the bridge will be overrun due to flash flood in precisely twenty-one minutes! Deliver your pigs to the YMCA before it does!"
He thought about it for a moment: under normal weather it was perfectly doable, but it was a tall order under these torrential rains.
Nevertheless... "Roger, ma'am!" he said, immediately beginning to plan his route: he would take the perimeter highway, of course...
"And Officer O'Brien: you are to follow him to the bridge and close it from this side!"
"Roger, ma'am!"
"Remember that many lives are at stake!" she said, before making a luminous portal appear in mid air, jumping through and disappearing from their lives.
George and Officer O'Brien thus nodded at each other, tossed their empties onto the embankment, and climbed down.
As always, he turned his key. His engine roared to life.
As he often did before going to sleep inside his sleeper, he then turned on his fuel cell. The computer governing the fuel cell immediately protested being turned on while the main engine was running, but that would be taken care off soon enough.
As seldom, he then pulled out the ashtray, twisted it clockwise until something clicked, then kept pulling out, revealing a bunch of buttons and indicator lights for some very custom features. Such as his barely legal 50bhp electric supercharger. Or the active gyroscopic stabilizer hidden under the sleeper. Or the only bit of Tinkertech he still had from before Chop Shop became Squealer: an "integrity field generator" that, somehow, made the trailer behave as integral to the truck; thus, along with the gyro, allowing him to not risk rollovers even when cornering hard with a full load.
As he had to wait several seconds for the gyro to rev up and the field generator to charge up its capacitors, he slipped on the mask and put on the bracelet.
"State your cape name."
"Mover of Goods."
"Local cape or visitor?"
"Local cape." He wasn't a cape, but that was irrelevant. Besides, he loathed the costume Marquis had commissioned for him: it made him look like Mario Bros.
"State your preferred role in the coming fight."
"I am delivering a truckload of live pigs to be used as biomass by Dryad. I am delivering them to the field hospital in the old YMCA. After that, I'm yours."
The bracelet then began explaining how to use its two buttons.
He filed the information, but also noted that the controls for the generator were reporting 75% charge, and for the gyro were reporting that it had hit 1200 rpm. It would still accelerate some more, but he was good to start rolling.
Shifting into gear, he did so.
Not a half mile downhill, still bringing him uncomfortably close to the fight, he took a look at his special controls (96%, 1350rpm) then at his tachometer, then muttered a prayer and prepared to enter the cloverleaf at the very unwise speed of 55 miles per hour.
This cloverleaf was a beauty: each leaf was two lines wide, steeply banked, and its pavement was always kept pristine. Back in the day, it was the midpoint in every race between him and Chop Shop. Races that eventually became her tossing him the keys so he could test ride each new vehicle hard, and him listening her squeal adorably as he drifted and did donuts. This cloverleaf would always be their special place.
He turned his wheel hard left, then pushed the nitrous oxide, and as soon as his eight rear wheels were spinning and his truck had gone sideways enough, he turned very rapidly almost all the way to the left.
Moments later he felt how the trailer too was going sideways. While the integrity field would kept it from tipping (as long as it lasted), it was on him to keep it from fishtailing out of control. His first nitro was spent, but he very much had an enviable engine.
Forty-five degrees in and he was fully in control. Of course, glancing down he could see the numbers of the integrity field dropping, but it hold... or so he hoped.
He held it.
He held it.
He held it.
And just as the integrity field began hitting single digits, he was at the end of the turn. He disengaged it, got traction on his ten wheels, then had to fight the trailer's fishtail from turning into a jackknife.
He came uncomfortably close to losing control, but a second nitrous charge let him outrun the trailer and get it back under control. And he was now doing 70, which was as fast as he dared on this deluge.
"I hope you heard those squealing tires, Sherrel," he muttered, as he toggled the field back on again and saw how its fast charge slowed down to a tickle.
He made it well in time across the bridge. He made it in nineteen minutes.
He was waited at the YMCA, where he was then guided to the back, to then unload his squealing cargo into the Y's empty Olympic pool (as an improvised corral). It was interesting to see his cargo being unloaded with parahuman powers, though.
He wished he had been able to take a glimpse at the Marchioness Amelia that he had once bounced on his knee, but he was informed Dryad was holed up inside that wooden dome and was pretty much in a trance. He did have a minute or two to hammer a quick text message to some of the old crowd with confirmation that Dryad was their lady, though.
He was then tasked to take his truck to one of the Endbringer shelters downtown and help to evacuate it.
Once at the shelter, his PRT minders instructed him to lock himself inside the cab and wait. Two kept guard of his cab, while the other three went to get the people from the shelter.
They loaded his trailer to the gills. His three-and-a-half level swine trailer was legally limited to 178 pigs. He hardly feared his truck being overburdened, but he worried a little about the trailer was riding very low, and feared how many people may simply end up smothered by the time they could be unloaded again. How many people did he have? He easily imagined three normal people taking the floor space of a pig, more given desperation. So easily six hundred souls? The PRT guys didn't know: they just loaded people in until no more could crush themselves in. He swore softly to himself not to do another drifting stunt unless he saw absolutely no alternative.
But then, ten seconds after he began driving again, a huge sinkhole opened up right in front of him.
He had absolutely no chance to manoeuvre and under a second to brake. He just thought about the hundreds of people trapped inside his cage-truck, closed his eyes as he fell in, and didn't see while a wall of water came to smack his windshield in.
"Mover-Of-Goods: deceased. Lord Street Market Shelter."
Author's Notes:
Cancun had a great Carnival. The Golden Queen will still have Royal Duties for the next eleven months, but those will be few and far in between. I'll come back to my update schedule of 3 to 4 times a month.
Would everybody at a cape organization be a cape? Doctor Mother wouldn't agree. Would everybody at an Endbringer fight be a cape? Necessarily in the thick of it, but not so much in the periphery of the fight.
