1.4

"Oh! You're early. Eric was always late, not a lot, but enough to be ...," Karma paused, her breath catching. "Anyway. I'd come to think habitual tardiness was a family trait. You were late when we picked you up to go to that concert in Boston. You remember?"

"I do." Mesa had been digging though Gladly's memories of his brother's girlfriend in preparation for the meeting. He refused to think of it as a date. The fact that both of them had dressed nicely and Mesa had brought a small bouquet of wildflowers he had picked on the Island was merely them being respectful of his body's dead twin. "The Smashing Pumpkins' Reunion Tour. It was a good show."

"I bought the recording," she said. "You look silly just standing out there. Come in. Thank you for the flowers. They're a wonderful reminder of nature's beauty in this time of disaster." She took them from Mesa almost before he could offer them to her. "I'll put them in water. Please make yourself comfortable. Can I get you anything while I'm in the kitchen? It'll be about twenty minutes 'til dinner is ready."

"Sure," he replied. "A soda or some water would be great. Really, whatever you've got." He knew supplies were scarce.

Store shelves were more empty than not, if the store was even open. Many houses and apartment buildings were without water or power, often both. There had been progress in the last weeks, but not enough to reach everyone. Karma's small house was halfway up North Mountain, so her neighborhood had not gotten the same amount of damage from the rising waters that most of downtown had. And it had avoided direct attack completely.

He looked around the interior of the smallish living room. It was decorated in an eclectic mix of East Asian and pseudo-medieval, with touches of Alladin's Lamp and Native American mixed in. There were books and small art works on the shelves that covered every wall. There was a TV, but he imagined she only used it to watch movies. He really could not see her as a fan of shows like Big Brother or Cape Life. There were also so many plants the room reminded him of the butterfly house at Dow Gardens. As odd as all the parts were, they seemed to fit together into a strangely comforting whole.

"Here you are," she said, bringing him a glass of green liquid. She watched him with a smile as he sniffed at it. "It's a mixture of various fruits and vegetables, including spirulina. My own recipe. I think you'll like it."

Mesa took a tentative sip. It tasted a lot better than it looked, though the slightly crunchy, gritty texture took a little getting used to. "Nice. Thanks."

"See. I know things. I even avoided putting cauliflower in the veggie lasagna. Something tells me you don't like it."

"Reminds me of sickly broccoli. Which is odd because I like broccoli."

"Not sure I agree, but to each his own." She smiled and settled into a large wicker chair opposite the couch. She gazed at him very directly, her eyes seeming to swallow him for a long moment. Then she smiled and it was all normal again. "Shall we talk about your being from a different world now or wait until after dinner?"

"I'm still not sure what you're talking about. I am David. I think you might just be confused from the trauma of the attack and the aftermath."

"I'm not 'confused'. That was patronizing. I know what I know, including that David liked cauliflower. He and Eric used to fight over it as kids." Her voice was sharper, offended and defensive. "I can understand that you're not willing to admit that truth, but maybe you can answer some less telling questions."

"Like what?"

"Why are you here? What's your goal? Your purpose?"

"Pretty existential," I muttered. I once had a partner that had minored in philosophy in college. He liked to ask those kinds of questions either during stakeouts when he was exceptionally bored, or when he was trying to impress girls in bars. Kind of annoying.

"I suppose, but pertinent to the situation."

"My goal is to serve and protect. I just want to keep people safe. In this crazy world there are too many bad guys for one man to fight, so I'm trying to concentrate on Surfside. If I can make a difference in one town, it'll have to be enough." Mesa rubbed his face with both hands.

"Well, I suppose that's better than trying to take over the world or something equally ridiculous. I think you're wrong about the positive difference one person can make, but at least you're trying," Karma replied.

"You said you were working in the camps?" Mesa asked, trying desperately to change topics. "What can a social worker do there?"

"Quite a lot. We're working to establish identities of the refugees, get them registered for support services from FEMA and the City, reconnect families, and make sure any immediate mental health needs are being addressed." She snorted in a most unladylike manner. "I'm even working with the admins on PHO to verify people for 'Brockton Bay Refugee' and 'At Ground Zero: Brockton Bay' user badges."

"Why are you wasting time on that?" Mesa asked. He had avoided the madness of PHO as much as he could since arriving. It had some useful information, but it was buried under a metric ton of garbage that he had to sift through to find it. If there were other options to answer questions, he preferred to use them.

Karma started to turn red, her expression indicating it was with anger rather than embarrassment. Then her eyes sparked and she calmed down. "Not a fan of PHO?"

"No. It's just too much chaos for me. I get enough of that in the real world."

"Ahh. I can see where you're coming from. But a lot of people do use it for information or connecting with family, friends, or just people who share an interest. Those badges may be meaningless in the big picture. But they can be comforting to the people that earned them and their connections online."

"I suppose," Mesa mentally shrugged. He could not see it, but he knew he had always had a mental block when it came to social media in general. Here it seemed to apply mostly to PHO, but that was a big part of cape life.

"Will you help me set the table?" she asked, standing.

"Sure," he replied.

Almost an hour later Mesa pushed back from the table and covered his mouth with a hand as he belched. "Excuse me," he murmured.

"Please," Karma scoffed. "That's a familiar part of a vegetarian diet."

Mesa nodded, not wanting to touch that statement. "That was great. Both the dinner and the company."

Karma smiled. "Thank you kindly. It was my grandmother's recipe."

"Your grandmother was a vegetarian?" he asked.

"Yep. She was a bit of a hippy. She raised me after my mother died, even named me. She taught me so much and I couldn't love her more."

"Where does she live?" Mesa asked, hoping the answer was not in Brockton Bay.

"Unfortunately, she passed on a few years ago. Right after I finished grad school. This was her house. I moved back here from Burlington to help her then just stayed."

"So you grew up in Brockton Bay?"

"No. Durham. But Daisy got a job at Medhall when I was in college so she moved here."

"What did she do?"

"Biochemist. And yes, I know what you're thinking. And you're right. She was a hippy who made drugs for a living."

They both laughed gently as they cleared the table. Mesa had never been married, but the domestic scene was not totally unfamiliar. He'd had several long-term relationships, but marrying a cop was always a risk and not one that every woman was willing to take. None of the women he had ended up in relationships with were in that risk taking group.

After clearing up they retired to the living room.

"I wanted to thank you for the ..." Mesa started the somewhat familiar speech that would allow him to gracefully leave the situation before the awkward questions of where their relationship was going or if he wanted to press for affection from the blond beauty would arise when he was interrupted by a sudden high-pitched buzz.

He looked around and noticed the windows and wine glasses shaking.

"Get down!" Karma yelled, diving for the floor.

Mesa barely managed to dive on top of her and raise a repulsor dome as all the glass in the house exploded like grenades. Flying shards bounced off his shield, though several pieces managed to avoid the area of shaped physics and sliced through his Dockers.

The explosive wave quickly passed. All the glass was destroyed in the initial attack. After thirty seconds, spent to make sure all the ricochets were spent, Mesa lowered the field. "Was that an earthquake?"

"No. Shatterbird. They're here." The dread in her voice was plain.

The name sparked one of Gladly's memories. The Slaughterhouse Nine were the most feared humans in North America. They had been wandering the continent for two decades leaving a trail of dead bodies and destroyed lives behind them.

Shatterbird was known to announce their presence in a city or town with a sonic attack that turned every shard of glass in the city into a deadly projectile. She had killed hundreds if not thousands over the years, possibly more than any of the other members of the traveling serial killer circus.

"Are you alright?" he asked, looking over her for any signs of injury.

"I think I'm ok, thanks to you." She hugged him, which made him aware of his own lacerations.

"Ow."

"Oh, sorry. Let me get my first aid kit." She walked carefully into the bathroom and returned a moment later.

Mesa was using his tractor beams to gather the glass from around the living room, dining room and kitchen. Since Leviathan Vector's powers had expanded. Originally, he had the ability to project tractor and pressor beams from his hands. These beams were like telekinesis that could only draw things towards him or push them away. Gladly had developed them to be much more versatile than Mesa would have expected, combining them to create vibratory beams and shearing blasts.

One of the most interesting things about his powers to the PRT, who had requested multiple session of power testing with him when he first went public was the fact that his powers could affect other power-based energy projections, such as Laserdream's energy blasts, Gallant's energy bolts, and Circus' fire breath, but not physical projections such as Spitfire's napalm, Rime's ice fractals, or Miss Militia's omni-weapon.

After Leviathan, Vector's powers became more flexible. He could now project tractor and pressor fields from any part of his body and could alter the direction of their pull/push, adding up, down right, left, ect. as well. He has always been able to use this to fly, can now fly and attack as well as create force fields. He was using these sideways vectors to move the glass into a single pile.

"I'm glad you're not trying to hide your powers from me anymore. Eric always knew, and I guessed when you started working in public. Masks really don't hide that much."

"I figured, if nothing else, the repulsor field would have given me away." He shook his head sardonically. "As soon as you've got me patched up, I need to head to Surfside, make sure they're ok. You're more than welcome to come with me. If the Nine are in the Bay, the Island may be your safer bet."

She mused as she removed four pieces of glass from his legs and taped bandages to cover the wounds. Finally, she said, "I think I'll stay here. I have a feeling the Nine will mostly be concentrating on the other capes. I feel like I'll be safe here. And I still have people to help. Even more of them now, I'm sure."

"Alright," he replied. "If you need anything, call me. I try to help out as best I can, but Surfside has to be my top priority."

"I understand. This far and no more ..."

Not wanting to risk saying anything else to the strangely perceptive woman, Mesa wrapped a rag around his face and took off towards the Island.