"Taylor! Over here!"
Mandy's shout caused Taylor to grin. She'd already seen the girl, and as the light breeze was blowing from that direction she'd smelled her some time before that. She had, in fact, noticed that she tended to approach people from downwind these days as a subconscious matter of preference a lot of the time, the amount of information she could get from the huge array of scents was astounding and steadily growing.
Waving back, she walked towards the small group, who were laughing about some joke Eric had just made that she'd missed the punchline of due to the chatter of the crowd in the area. Lucy seemed to find it particularly funny based on her expression.
When she was twenty feet from them a cry of "Thief! Someone stop that bastard!" suddenly came from behind her, making her turn and look, as did everyone else, to see a bedraggled looking man in his early twenties running flat out towards them holding a large women's over the shoulder bag with a cut strap flapping behind it in one hand and a small sharp kitchen knife in the other. Behind him a mid-thirties woman was running after him, the source of the shout, and several other people including a uniformed police officer were beginning to follow.
Seeing that he was going to pass very close to her, as he weaved his way expertly between the pedestrians, most of whom were looking as if they couldn't work out what was going on, Taylor waited, then at the right moment, stuck her invisible tail between his legs at ankle height. This had the inevitable effect that the man promptly and spectacularly tripped, almost cartwheeling, losing both the knife and the bag as he flung out his arms to save himself.
Catching the bag as it passed her, making it look almost accidental, Taylor stepped back to allow the thief to slide to a halt on his face. The cop, who had passed the woman due to having better stamina if nothing else, pounced on him, wrenching his arms around behind him and slapping a set of handcuffs on in seconds, then hauling him to his feet. Mandy, who had seen the entire thing and was gaping a little, looked at him and the thief, then at Taylor who was smiling slightly, then down at the knife which had ended up nearly at her feet, before grinning widely.
"Shit, that was cool," she cried, bending down and carefully picking up the knife by the extreme tip of the handle with finger and thumb. "Good reactions, Taylor!"
"Thank you, thank you," the owner of the bag said as she panted to a stop next to the teenager, looking somewhat flustered. "Thanks you so much, young lady. He nearly got away with all my money, expensive and irreplaceable tickets to a show in Boston next week, my keys, my driver's license..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "Maybe I should keep more things at home," she added with a smile. Taylor handed her the bag, amused at the commentary.
"Don't worry, it was no trouble, I just grabbed it when it flew past." She grinned as the woman looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
"You have very fast reactions, I must say," the former victim smiled. "Your friend there is right." Mandy and the others had come closer and were only a few feet away, listening with interest. "Thank you again. If he'd got away with my bag, I… I don't know what I'd have done." She opened the bag, pulling out a small purse. "Here, let me..."
"Don't worry, Ma'am," Taylor said politely. "I don't need anything, I just caught the bag. It was no big deal."
"But..."
"Honestly, I have enough money, thank you. I'm just glad I could help." Taylor smiled as the woman looked dubiously at her, then nodded with a smile of her own.
"If you're sure. I still think you deserve something, but..." The woman shrugged. "Kids these days," she laughed. "In my day they accepted rewards."
The cop, who had just finished reading the perpetrator his rights and searched him thoroughly, handed the man off to a colleague who had turned up moments before, then walked over to join the discussion, looking pleased. "That was very well done, young lady," he said with a small smile. Noticing that Mandy was still delicately holding the knife with the blade dangling downwards, he pulled a plastic evidence bag from his pocket and opened it. "Can you just drop that in here, please?" he asked, holding the bag out. Mandy carefully did so, then he sealed it and wrote something on the seal with a pen. "Thanks."
Turning back to Taylor having put the bag away, and now holding a small notebook instead, he asked, "Can I have your name for the report?"
"Taylor Hebert," she replied. He wrote it down, then frowned, looking at the notebook, then her.
"Any relation to Danny Hebert?" he asked.
"He's my father."
The cop nodded, smiling again. "I should have known. He's a good man and would probably have jumped right in under the same circumstances. That was a hell of a good catch."
"You know him?" Taylor asked, curious. The police officer smiled a little.
"Slightly. We've met a couple of times. I was at the DWU last night, actually, there was a disturbance caused by those idiots in the E88. Hookwolf turned up and made a fool of himself, when a new cape who was helping the DWU beat the crap out of him. It was both one of the funniest and one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen." The cop shuddered involuntarily. "This new one, Raptaur they're calling her, seemed polite but by god you wouldn't want to meet her unexpectedly down a dark alley. Mad props to your father that he seemed completely OK with her and even shook her hand."
"Dad mentioned her, yes," Taylor snickered. "He said she was nice. And effective."
"Oh, god, she was effective," the cop agreed with a smirk of his own. "Hookwolf looked like he'd really managed to get in over his head, which I for one never thought I'd say. Serves him right. Anyway, well done, Miss Hebert. Give my best to your father." He held out his hand. "Officer Jericho. Andrew Jericho."
Taylor shook his hand, smiling widely. "I'll tell him you said hello."
Turning to the victim of the crime, Officer Jericho said, "I'll need to take a statement from you, Miss, please."
"Certainly, Officer," the auburn haired woman smiled. She looked back to Taylor. "Thank you again, Miss Hebert. You saved me a lot of trouble, if I'd lost everything in here it would have taken weeks to get everything sorted out. My husband would have been very upset as well." She held out her own hand. "Cheryl Alcott. It's very nice to meet you."
Taylor shook the outstretched hand with another smile. "it was no trouble, honestly, Mrs Alcott." Glancing at Mandy who seemed slightly surprised, she added, "We're going to be late for our movie if we don't leave now, though. Do you need anything else, Officer Jericho?"
"No, thank you, I have everything I need from you. I know how to get in touch if we need anything else later but I doubt we will. Thank you again for your help."
"No problem," she replied. Waving to them both she joined the group of people who were standing nearby, watching and listening. "That was interesting. Let's go and see this movie."
"You… are a little weird, Taylor," Mandy grinned as they walked off. "And have really fast reactions. That was an amazing catch."
"I wonder why he tripped like that?" Lucy, on Mandy's other side, asked. Mandy shrugged.
"He was running so fast he probably fell over his own feet."
"Or tripped over one of these bricks," Eric put in, motioning down at the surface of the pedestrian area which was indeed made of interlocked brickwork. "Some of them need to be fixed, they stick up a little. I've nearly fallen over because of them in the past. Hi, Taylor," he added as an afterthought, making her smile.
"Hi, Eric."
"Do you know who that was?" Mandy asked suddenly, looking over her shoulder first to make sure they were far enough away so that the woman and the cop who were still talking couldn't hear them.
"Cheryl Alcott, she said," Taylor noted.
Mandy rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know that. Do you know who that is, I mean?"
"No."
"That's the Mayor's sister!"
"Really?" Taylor looked over her shoulder, then nodded. "Interesting."
"Interesting? That's all you can say?" Mandy stopped with her hands on her hips, looking slightly stunned. "You saved the Mayor's sister's shoulder bag from a horrible fate, and it's merely 'interesting'? Weird girl." Lucy, Eric, and Taylor all exchanged glances, then began laughing.
"Slightly overdramatic, Mandy," Eric snickered. "But well said." Mandy shook her head a little with a smile, then resumed walking.
"Seriously, she's pretty high up in the social hierarchy of Brockton Bay, Taylor," she added. "One day you might need a favor or something."
"Ah. I now have political pull," Taylor nodded wisely. "I know the handbag of the sister of the Mayor of Brockton Bay. I can use that."
"Idiot." Mandy giggled to herself, while everyone else grinned.
"How did you know who she was?" Eric asked curiously. She gave him a superior look.
"I move in more rarefied circles than you do, peon," she replied with haughty tones, then laughed when he rolled his eyes at her in a very obvious manner. "I went to a party with Dad last year that the Mayor put on, we were introduced. She seemed nice."
"Where are the others," Taylor asked as they walked.
"Already in the theater," Lucy replied. "Maria texted me just before you arrived. She's there, Rich is as well, and two of his friends, Emil and Josh."
"OK. Are you looking forward to the movie?"
Lucy smiled. "I am, actually. I've heard it's a really good one, it's had better than average reviews."
"She's also stoked about the fact that there's another reptilian cape in the city now," Eric snickered, glancing at the girl who looked mildly embarrassed but amused as well. "That one the cop was talking about, Raptaur. Have you seen the videos on PHO?"
"I watched them this morning, when I woke up," Taylor told them truthfully. "She looks… pretty formidable."
"That's one way to put it, sure," Mandy said with a slight shiver. "But fuck me she's scary. She makes Saurial look cuddly by comparison."
"I think she looks really cool," Lucy told them in a quiet voice, smiling to herself. "And she beat up Hookwolf, so she has to be good."
"It sure looked like she didn't have too much trouble doing it," Eric nodded, grinning. "She knocked him around like she was playing mini golf. It was hysterical."
"Not a fan of the E88, Eric?" Taylor asked. The boy glanced at her with an amused look on his face.
"Not so much, no. I mean, look at me? Do I look like an Aryan?"
Taylor turned her head, carefully inspecting the boy, who she knew had Mexican, American Indian, and European roots, then shrugged. "Can't say I've ever noticed, actually."
He laughed and nodded to her. "Which is why I like you."
"Thanks." They shared a look of amusement, while Lucy giggled.
"There's Rich," Mandy pointed, making everyone look. The young man in question was standing just outside the glass doors to the lobby of the large cinema multiplex a hundred yards away. Spotting them he waved wildly, then waited for the small group to arrive.
"About time, guys, we only have five minutes before it starts," he said rapidly, leading the way inside. "Here, we bought the tickets already, but if you want snacks you'll have to hurry." He handed everyone a ticket.
"Slow down, Rich, you know there's about twenty minutes of ads before the trailers start then nearly a quarter of an hour before those are over," Mandy admonished him as he frantically herded them towards the snack counter.
"But I want to see the trailers," he mumbled.
She shook her head sadly. "Silly boy. We have plenty of time."
He didn't stop fidgeting until she deliberately stepped on his foot and gave him a severe look, which replaced the shifting from foot to foot while looking at his watch with a pained yelp followed by quiet muttering, which amused everyone. Soon enough they were inside, occupying nearly an entire row of the middle section.
When the movie finally started, as Mandy had predicted close to half an hour past the posted time, Taylor settled back to enjoy it, which she did. The Varga found it amusing as well, keeping them both entertained with sarcastic comments about the plot and the overall animation, although he seemed favorably impressed even so.
'Can we come up with a dragon form? Or something with wings, at least?' Taylor asked wistfully as they watched the rather spectacular scenes of the young protagonist hurtling across the sea on his draconic companion. 'I'd love to be able to fly.'
"It's… not entirely impossible, Brain," the Varga replied thoughtfully. "Although I'm not sure about the aerodynamic feasibility of some of these creatures. I think the wings are far too small to support them. We should do some research."
'I'll add it to the list,' Taylor commented with an inner smile. 'We're building quite a big one. At this rate by the time I get to college I'll have learned more in different subjects than most people leaving it have managed.'
"Education is always a good thing, I think," the Varga rumbled with a smile in his voice. "As your people also say, knowledge is power. This is very true."
Sipping her coke, she kept watching, finding the entire experience well worth it. Glancing sideways at Mandy, who was beside her, then onward to the others, all of them watching with interest, she smiled to herself. It had been a long time since she'd gone out with friends to do something like this and she was amazed to find out how much she enjoyed the experience itself.
A familiar scent reached her nose over the hundreds of others swirling around the theater, causing her to look over her shoulder. At the back, she spotted Dean and Vicky also watching the movie and eating popcorn, with Amy beside her sister, apparently fascinated by it. The brunette had a large tub of popcorn of her own which her sister kept trying to steal from, gaining little but a slap each time, a sight that made Taylor grin a little.
After a moment, she went back to the movie, but saw that Amy had noticed her, giving her a quick look of her own before returning her attention to the screen. Taylor made a mental note to approach the girl over the next week or so and just have a talk with her, she was still somewhat worried about the impression that the Dallon girl had given her of someone being close to the point they either did something stupid or just gave up. She recognized it all to well.
'Do you think there's any harm in allowing her to study us?' she asked.
"I don't think so, no," the Varga replied after a moment. "I would like to study her as well. I am still puzzled about the source of parahuman abilities. It's possible that I can determine their source if we can inspect a willing subject, she may be open to swapping information. We know her power can't affect you, it seems to have no point of reference to even begin and even if it did, I can block it. There's no danger to us from that point. Whether she would pass on anything she learned to someone else, though… I don't know, but I suspect not. Miss Dallon strikes me as a very private individual."
'That's the impression I got too. I really think she needs a friend, though. That girl is way too tense.'
"Very true." He fell silent again, with a thoughtful note in his voice, as they went back to concentrating on the entertainment.
Amy discreetly watched the back of Taylor Hebert's head as the other girl laughed, wondering with inner amusement what her sister would think if she knew Saurial, and most likely Raptaur, was twenty feet away snickering at the exploits of poor Hiccup on the big screen. Victoria was definitely more than a little intimidated by the former and actually quite scared of the latter.
She was well aware that Dean knew Taylor was there as well, she'd spotted him twitch a little when she and her friends had entered down at the front and looked around for seats, but manfully keep his reaction to the minimum. Wondering if he had also drawn the connection between Saurial, Taylor, and Raptaur, she glanced at him for a moment. He was watching the movie apparently engrossed in it but she could see little tells she was aware meant he was more tense than he should be.
It had been pretty obvious to her even before Taylor idly confirmed it that his mystery cape that he'd mentioned knowing the identity of was the brunette, from the moment she'd taken Amy's hand and given herself away. She'd seen him looking at the girl several times since she'd transferred in and had instantly realized why at that point. But he was being very, very careful not to get involved. Almost too careful, since to anyone who knew him well and actually paid attention, it was clear that he was worried about the girl. If not terrified of her.
Smiling to herself, she decided that sometime in the next week she would very carefully and politely approach Taylor and strike up a conversation. Curiosity about the other girl was eating at her, only getting stronger the more she considered each new piece of information, but at the same time she was extremely well aware that the method she'd first used was… unwise. Luckily everything had worked out OK, but she was determined not to jump in feet first next time, because it could easily have gone the other way.
Dismissing the issue for the moment, she went back to watching animated dragons chase each other while the sound track swelled. It was actually a good movie, one she was glad she'd let her sister drag her to.
She wondered with a small smile if Taylor was taking notes...
"So what did you think, Taylor?" Taylor looked across the table at Lucy, who had asked the question. "Was it worth seeing?"
"It was pretty good," she admitted with a smile, handing the menu back to the waitress. They were in a Chinese restaurant that was a block away from the movie theater, having decided that all the places to eat right next to it were too commercial and too expensive. "I liked the dragons. Most of them. Some of those designs were silly, though. They'd never be able to fly."
"It's a movie, it's not supposed to be real, Taylor," Eric laughed. He looked up as several helpings of prawn crackers arrived, smiling at the waitress, who smiled back as she handed them out. "But I think it was good too."
"Definitely worth seeing. We should do this again sometime soon," Mandy agreed. "It's fun." Glancing at Taylor she slyly added, "Maybe Taylor can stop a robbery every time. That was really cool to watch."
Taylor sighed, smiling. "All I did was catch the bag, Mandy. He's the one who tripped and threw it at me."
"Good thing it was the bag and not the knife," Eric snickered. She nodded, grinning.
"I wish I'd seen it," Josh, one of Rich's friends who Taylor didn't know, complained. Mandy and Eric had taken great pleasure in telling the others what had happened while the adverts played, gaining Taylor a number of compliments.
"It was epic," Lucy giggled. "The expression on that guy's face as he went down… He was all, 'Oh, god, this is going to hurt.'" They all laughed at this.
"He bounced pretty well," Mandy agreed. "But then he had a large cop sitting on him. I'll bet that was uncomfortable."
"I'm amazed that some random cop knew who your dad was, Taylor," Eric noted, glancing at her as he reached for another cracker. "He must be pretty well known."
Taylor smiled a little. "He's pretty high up in the DWU, and knows a lot of people in all sorts of strange places," she agreed placidly, helping herself to one as well. "It surprises me sometimes. I never thought of him as someone important, he's just Dad, but over the last couple of months various things have shown me he is, in his own way."
"My dad said that your dad was more than just high up in the DWU," Maria, one of the other girls from Taylor's home room class, remarked with a smile. "He said he basically runs it."
"He claims he doesn't, but I don't think the rest of them would agree," Taylor snickered. "Some of those guys treat him like a good friend, some like a respected leader, but he's the top man to all of them from what I've seen. I'm really pleased how much he's cheered up recently. Leaving Winslow and going to Arcadia was good for both of us."
"Well, I'm certainly enjoying knowing you, Taylor," Mandy laughed, putting her arm across her friend's shoulders. "Maybe he can introduce Lucy to Saurial one day. Or Raptaur." She shivered slightly at the name, although Lucy looked interested.
"I'd like that," the Chinese girl said quietly with a small smile.
Internally grinning, Taylor replied, "I can ask."
They chatted until the food arrived, then fell silent more or less as they ate. Despite her earlier meal Taylor found her appetite well up to the task, enjoying the food very much. Eventually, stuffed, they leaned back, Mandy frowning over the bill and working out who owed what.
"Oh, this is way too complicated," she finally muttered. "Why don't we just split it eight ways? We all had more or less the same."
"OK by me," Emil, who didn't normally talk very much, said while pulling out his wallet. Everyone else agreed. "How much?"
"With tip..." Mandy frowned, biting her lip in concentration. Taylor watched for a moment, then leaned over, looking at the total.
"Twenty-three dollars and sixty-one cents each," she announced. "Including the tip."
Mandy sighed heavily. "That's not fair. You're so much better at math than I am," she muttered, accepting the figure and dropping the slip of paper to the table. Taylor smiled at her, as she dug out her own money. It was still a slight shock to her that she didn't need to watch every penny, the settlement amount was still sinking in. She had no intention of splurging on anything much, but it was nice knowing that an evening out with friends wasn't a problem.
They all put twenty-four dollars on the table, Eric collecting the cash into a fairly large pile, then handing it to the waitress when she came over. Thanking her, they headed outside. "It's been a lot of fun, everyone," Taylor announced, pleased and happy. Similar sentiments echoed around the street from the others. It was nearly midnight and there were far fewer people around now than when they'd arrived.
"We really should do this again soon," Mandy replied, smiling, as they headed back in the direction of the main plaza area. "I've had a lot of fun tonight."
"I think we all have," Rich agreed.
Arriving at the large multi-story car park at the end of the pedestrian zone, Mandy looked around, then pointed to a car waiting beside the curb. "There's my mom. I'll see you guys later. Come on, Lucy, let's go." She and the other girl left with a wave. Taylor waved back, then turned to the remaining five people.
"I'm heading this way, so I'll see you in school on Monday," she said, smiling at the others, before walking off. A chorus of goodbyes came from behind her. When she'd gone a couple of blocks away, she checked around her, then turned into an alleyway she knew led to a smaller one that was very dark and had no cameras. Sniffing carefully she assured herself it was empty of witnesses.
Thirty seconds later, Saurial was bounding over the rooftops of the buildings towards the bay.
'I love swimming,' Taylor smiled to herself, propelling herself through the dark water with slow sweeps of her tail. She was only about half the size currently than she had been when she'd played with the tanker the first time, fifty feet under the surface and headed towards it, in no great hurry. 'Although I think that PE class would be a bit shocked if I did it like this.'
"I don't think we'd fit in the pool, Brain," the Varga chuckled.
Hearing a boat in the distance, she slowed, looking around and up. It sounded familiar. After a moment, she recognized the distinct chugging sound, and the faint clatter of some mechanical part wearing, both accompanied by a high pitched ping she realized must be some sort of little sonar device for looking for fish. It was the same small fishing boat that had been pootling around the bay the first time.
She grinned. 'I really shouldn't do this,' she thought to the Varga as she turned back toward the sound and resumed swimming, carefully growing a little until she was up to tanker-moving size. Slowing again, just under the surface, she thought for a moment, then popped her eyes above the water and checked around. Nothing anywhere within a couple of miles except for that one little boat. And it was an overcast night, no moon and only the glow of the city off the clouds lighting the water. It should be just enough…
beep beep beep
Erwin froze.
After a moment, he looked to his right at the fish finder. It was showing something very big slowly approaching from the direction of the open ocean.
"Not again," he moaned. He'd only just managed to persuade himself that it was safe to go out on the water once more after over a week and nearly a complete bottle of brandy.
Throttling back he moved to check the display, then looked out the cabin windows. He couldn't see anything. "Not that I feel any better about that," he muttered to himself. Going out onto the rear deck, he looked behind the boat, not seeing anything there either.
"Damn thing must be malfunctioning," he finally decided out loud. "I'll have to get a new one." Shaking his head he turned to go back to the wheel. "Sea monsters. The lads are right, I'm seeing thing..." His irritated mumbling died as he watched an endless row of almost black scales, glistening with seawater, part the waves thirty feet away. The thing slowly slid past soundlessly, taking far, far longer to finally disappear than he was even slightly happy about. It must have been well over a hundred feet long and he'd seen neither head or tail, only what seemed to be a back.
"Oh, Christ," he finally said in a horrified whisper, moving to the side and looking frantically around for any signs of whatever it was.
"Hey, is this Brockton Bay?" An incredibly deep female voice that he felt in his bones spoke from the other side of the boat, behind him.
Erwin froze.
Again.
Very slowly, he turned his head, stared in shock, then looked up.
And up.
And up.
Thirty feet over his head, something looked back.
Great glowing yellow-orange eyes the size of garbage can lids looked down at him, on either side of a head nearly as big as his boat, from what he could see of it in the dark. The reflected sky glow from the city in the distance lit the thing just enough that he could get a horribly accurate idea of how fucking enormous the creature actually was.
Assuming it was standing on the bottom, which he knew was around fifty or sixty feet deep around here, it must have been well over eighty feet tall. God knows how much tail was behind it, but he could see a curve of scaled flesh breaking the water some distance away like a small reef.
After a very long, nearly zen-like pause, he nodded a little. Raising a hand he pointed.
"It's just over there."
She looked over her shoulder. "Oh, right, thanks very much. I was hoping I'd found the right place. Just looking for my little sister. I know she wanted to come and play with the ships and she said this place was a good one to explore." Turning back to him, the huge creature nodded politely.
"Thank you. Have a nice night." It sank out of sight, almost without noise, only a small splash sounding as the water closed over her head a second later. A ripple in the water moved away rapidly, heading towards the city and slowly fading.
Erwin watched for some time, then very slowly went back into his cabin, throttling up and turning the wheel. He decided he was going to stay out here for a while, perhaps the world would make sense if he didn't think about things for a couple of hours. Not to mention that if that thing was going to the city, he was going in the other direction.
A beer or two might help as well, luckily he'd brought some with him.
He did, however, reach over and turn the fish finder off with a trembling hand first.
Giggling to herself Taylor submerged and headed back towards the city, then turned towards the deeper channel when she heard the fish finder stop chirping. Making a long slow sweep to the left she headed out to sea again, passing under the tanker along the channel and taking mental notes of the silted up places to deal with later.
'That was really funny,' she snickered to her companion, who was laughing quite hard. 'Poor guy. I couldn't resist, but it was a little mean.'
"I'm sure he'll recover and it will undoubtedly add to the legend of the family of reptiles living in the water around the city," the Varga chortled. He was vastly amused by the entire thing.
Both of them laughed, as she slowly headed down the shallow slope of the sea bed outside the bay, aiming for deeper water a few miles out. Reaching it she turned more or less east and sped up, increasing in size to around two hundred feet from nose to tail. While she swam they experimented with the aquatic form, streamlining it more and making the tail a larger part of the whole, until she looked more like a lizard crossed with an eel on a truly vast scale.
The improvements allowed for much greater speed and shortly she was moving fast enough that she could feel bubbles across her snout and head, as the water was violently pushed out of the way. She remembered it was called cavitation, the water locally turning to vapor due to the lowered pressure caused by the rapid motion. Tweaking the shape of her head the Varga managed to reduce it significantly, and as she went deeper and the pressure increased it stopped for a while.
Increasing speed again, though, brought it back. The bubbles imploding down her neck as they reverted to liquid caused a tickling sensation that wasn't unpleasant at all, although a little odd.
"I have an idea, Brain," the Varga said suddenly. "I notice that as these bubbles form they reduce the effort needed to move through the water. I suspect that if we could create a bubble large enough to cover most of your body while leaving enough tail outside it to propel us, you could go much faster."
'Can we do that?' she asked, intrigued.
"I can manifest air in a thin layer surrounding you, it shouldn't take very much, and if it's made to last only a second or so there won't be any bubbles on the surface to give away our position. Do you want to try it?"
'Why not?' she asked with an inner grin. 'Go for it. Let's see how fast I can really go.'
"All right. Hold on, I need to think of the best way..." He fell silent for a few seconds. "Ah. I think this will work."
Taylor felt a thin layer of air suddenly separate her body from the water over about eighty percent of the forward portion, and at the same time she shot forwards fast enough that she was taken by surprise. 'Wow! That's incredible!' They were moving at least twice as fast as before and it was, oddly enough, taking less effort.
Fiddling with the shape of the bubble the Varga finally professed himself satisfied. "I can't seem to improve it much more, but I'll keep thinking about it," he announced.
'This is still amazing,' she replied happily. She had no idea how fast she was moving, but it was fast. Much faster than she could normally swim and even that was pretty damn quick. Putting a little more effort into it she found the optimum ratio of effort in to result out and leveled off there, descending to follow the sea bed at perhaps a hundred feet or so. She could feel a pressure wave reflecting off it and back up, disturbing the silt. 'Oops. That's going to leave a mark,' she commented.
"We should probably not do this too close to home or it will leave a very obvious trail," the Varga said.
'Or stay shallower,' she suggested.
"Possibly, but eventually there will be a very significant wake that will attract even more attention."
'True enough. Oh well, we can slow down for the last twenty miles or so then make a sharp turn, that should throw anyone off for a while.' Pleased with the results of the experimentation, Taylor kept swimming.
Some time later she wondered how far they'd come. She knew from her recent research that the edge of the continental shelf was at least two hundred miles out but she was starting to find much deeper water, which confused her a little. Surely she couldn't have reached that far already?
'I think I need to go up and use the GPS,' she finally said, as the bottom began to drop away quite quickly. Slowing to a near halt she felt the bubble of Varga-created air vanish, then she began to rise, shrinking in the process so when she reached the surface she was only about ten feet long or so. Regrowing her arms which they'd shrunk and streamlined so they didn't get in the way, she reached for the necklace of Vargastuff that supported a series of pouches of the same material containing her phones, the GPS unit, her wallet, and a few other things that she didn't want getting wet. The Varga was managing the size of the necklace as she changed to keep it the right dimensions. It had seemed the easiest way to keep everything safe.
The GPS unit dropped into her hand as the pouch containing it vanished, and she pressed the power button, hearing a beep. Shortly it lit up, the screen telling her it was looking for a fix, which didn't take long. She stared at the display in shock.
"Holy… I knew I was moving quickly but that's ridiculous!"
The map and coordinates showed that she was about thirty five miles south of a location marked as the LaHave Bank, putting her just off the edge of the continental shelf and nearly three hundred and forty miles from Brockton Bay. It had taken about an hour and a half to reach this point, which meant she had covered the majority of the distance at close to two hundred and fifty miles an hour, or possibly more considering the time spent experimenting. "How the hell are we that quick? I've never heard of a machine that can go that fast under water."
"The air bubble seems to be far more effective than I expected, Brain," the Varga said with a certain amount of amazement in his voice. "Fascinating. And very useful."
"I'll say. I can make it much further north and still get back before tomorrow night now," she smiled. "It's not too difficult, I could keep that up for hours." Wondering if she could visit England some time and finding the idea of casually swimming across the Atlantic wildly amusing, she worked out the right direction, then put the GPS away without turning it off so it could get a fix faster the next time.
'We can definitely find somewhere a hell of a long way from anyone now if we go up past New Brunswick. Maybe the coast of Quebec or Labrador,' she said as she submerged again, swinging around to head north-east on a course that should miss Nova Scotia completely. 'Almost everything up there within twenty or thirty miles of the shore got washed away, there shouldn't be any people at all.' Trying to picture the map in her head, she remembered there were lots of little islands around that part of the world. 'No one will miss one,' she grinned, speeding up and zipping through the deep water in her bubble of air.
"Colin?"
"Yes, Dragon?" he asked, turning to the monitor on which the face of his best friend was displayed. She looked concerned and confused.
"There's something… odd… going on."
"What is it?"
"I have no idea." She sent an image to another one of his monitors, which he studied closely. "The SOSUS network is detecting something deep underwater off the East Coast moving at extreme speed in a generally northward direction, although it started off heading east from somewhere about fifty miles outside Brockton Bay, to the north. The location is rather vague, it seems to have been speeding up and slowing down for a while, before it headed straight out to sea and accelerated to over two hundred and sixty miles an hour. It stayed on that course for just over an hour, going dead straight at depth, then vanished again. A few minutes later, here, out past the continental shelf, it reappeared a few miles away and headed north east, even faster, following the continental shelf about three thousand feet down. When it got to roughly the fifty-ninth parallel it disappeared again, then reappeared heading due north. It vanished for the last time about fifteen miles off the coast of Quebec."
Rather pale, he asked the first question that jumped to his mind, somewhat horrifyingly. "Leviathan?" The Endbringer was the only thing he could think of that was that quick under water. He relaxed a lot when she shook her head.
"No, he's in the South Pacific near Christmas Island at the moment, still on the bottom. More or less on the exact opposite side of the planet." She seemed somewhat puzzled about it. "He's been hanging around that general area for weeks."
"Odd. Perhaps it's a submarine?" he suggested, watching as she drew the course the mystery object had taken, seeing it went past the end of Cape Breton Island and right over the sunken ruins of Newfoundland.
"I don't know, but I certainly am not aware of any sub that can cruise at close to three hundred miles an hour, three thousand feet down. I can't make anything except a supercavitating torpedo that could reach those velocities and certainly not sustain them for hours."
"It's not an easy feat, definitely," he mused. "I suppose some Tinker might have managed it, though."
A sudden horrible thought crossed his mind. "Another Endbringer?" He paled again at the idea.
Dragon was silent for a moment. "I thought of the same thing," she admitted. "But there's no evidence for it right now. Only the sounds of something moving much faster underwater than anything but Leviathan can manage, and nothing much else. I can't get size or shape, only a direction and approximate speed. The network isn't designed for more than that. I've upgraded as much of it as I can but there are still gaps even now, it's a work in progress. The end of the Cold War meant a lot of the original network was removed. Ironically, fifty years ago I could have given you a much better idea of what it was and where it was."
"It's irritating but I know you're doing your best," he said absently, still studying the map and therefor missing the smile she cast at him, one of great fondness. "Very strange. And somewhat concerning. How have those underwater drones come along?"
"I've nearly finished two, and have two more in production," she commented. "I can get the first one operational in a few hours if I push it, and it will take about three hours to get it out to you."
"I think we need to send something down to see if we can spot anything odd out there," he replied, scratching the side of his nose thoughtfully. "It might be an idea to send it to where this thing actually went first, rather than to where it was. Unless it comes back down here I'm more interested in what's happening in Quebec right now."
"OK, that's a good idea," she nodded. "I'll get this one working and send it over, then link the feed to your lab. I'm very curious as well. Hopefully it's not dangerous, or at least, hostile."
"It's probably one of Raptaur's siblings," he noted. She stared at him for a moment.
"Colin? Was that… A joke?" She looked shocked. Slightly embarrassed, he nodded.
"Did it work?"
"Actually, yes, it did. There's hope for you yet," she laughed. "I'll be in touch in about three hours."
"All right. Thank you for telling me," he nodded, smiling a little. When the image of the other Tinker vanished, he made some notes, then switched his concentration back to designing the worlds most lethal shotgun.