(Plus Lasers...)
The two tracks originally linked in this chapter are:
www dot youtube dot com / watch?v=RkEXGgdqMz8
www dot youtube dot com / watch?v=RkEXGgdqMz8
They're underlined in the text.
4th of July Celebrations, Family Style!
Come see FamTech™ UltraFireworks® in action.
LASER SHOW!*
Special performance by Kaiju on the FamTech™ Mega Zeusophone! Never before shown to public!
Synchronized Dragon Overflight
Free Barbecue, provided by Brockton Bay Dock Workers Union in association with BBFO, LLC
Pets permitted
See overleaf for more details and best places for a good view
*Note: No fly zone radius of twenty miles centered on Protectorate ENE base, enforced by Air Force drone aircraft. Duration two hours. See NOTAM N2017/11 for further details.
Colin read the flyer he was handed by one of the people dressed in a lizard-themed hat, turned it over, read the back of it, then opened his mouth to say something. After a moment he closed it again, looked at Hannah who was reading her own copy with raised eyebrows, and sighed faintly.
"Every time I think I've got some form of handle on what they're going to do next, something like this happens," he said sourly.
"They're your friends," his companion said, glancing at him with a worried look. "You know that I still find them extremely off-putting."
"I don't know why, most of the time, since they're actually a very responsible and effective group on the whole, but I admit that every now and then I do somewhat regret not transferring to another location when I had the chance," he replied. "It's too late, now, no other Protectorate base wants any of us in case they follow us."
Hannah nodded slowly, still looking at the neatly printed flyer. "How the hell could they get permission for something like this?" she asked. "No fly zone? Air Force backed? That's the first I've heard of it."
"I have no idea," he said, shrugging. "Possibly they've been talking to the defense department again. I know they have some very unusual contacts in the government, somehow. No one will tell me why, just that they provided a 'special service' which seems to have given them a very large amount of political capital. Perhaps Director Piggot can explain."
As it happened, the director was as surprised as they were. And not entirely pleased. When she put the phone down half an hour later, she was grumbling under her breath, some of the things she was saying fairly vicious from what Colin could make out. Both he and Hannah waited politely for her to cool down a little.
"It's real," she finally said. "No one will tell me WHY or HOW those fucking lizards have managed to work a deal where over twelve hundred square miles of airspace will get closed for two hours, but they did it."
"I suppose we could go and ask them," Colin pointed out.
"You think they'd tell us?" she asked, looking at him. "I'm not sure about that. Or that you'd want them to if they would. Remember what happened the last time something odd was going on and you made inquiries?"
Colin shuddered. He remembered. He liked the lizards, he really did, but sometimes they were a little much. This might be one of those times.
"I suppose we'll have to wait and see what they come up with," Hannah said a little unhappily. "It's plenty of notice at least, the 4th isn't for a week."
"It better be one hell of a fireworks display," Emily growled, looking out her window towards the DWU yard and the various odd constructions that could be seen sticking up here and there. "That entire part of the city is becoming extremely disturbing."
"You have to admit the crime rate is astoundingly low these days," Colin remarked. Both women nodded, although neither one looked wildly happy.
"So is the overall sanity rate," Emily sighed, picking up the flyer he'd given her, then shaking her head.
"Dragon overflight?" she queried, sounding put-upon. "I just..." She dropped the flyer, put her hands over her eyes, and pressed hard, making a faint sound that Colin could just hear the words 'I don't get paid enough for this' in. He was diplomatic enough not to mention it.
Although he had to admit, at least to himself, that she might have a point at times.
Ethan accepted a plastic cup of punch from a grinning DWU operative, the woman in her fluorescent jacket looking like she was enjoying the entire event so far. The union people were everywhere, handling crowd control, making announcements and directing parking motorists, running food stalls, you name it. He'd entirely lost count of how many he'd seen but it must have been hundreds.
The BBPD was certainly not having to exert itself all that much, except in actual criminal affairs, practically none of which happened at something like this these days. Even simple pick-pocketing was at a near-all-time low, mostly because of what Cloak had done to the last one she'd caught. The video of the man gibbering in fear and pleading with the snickering item of haunted clothing had gone viral as soon as it hit PHO, and had resulted in two different organized gangs of street thieves turning themselves in and pleading for clemency in return for a full confession.
As far as the sort of thing that he and his colleagues were needed for, so little was happening in that area that he was actually starting to get a little bored. On the other hand, his wife was wandering around with a small smile and saying that she'd live with the lizards if it meant she could have a holiday without having to pay to go to Hawaii.
And no one knew where the hell Kaiser was these days. Lung's whereabouts were known, but…
He turned to look at the shirtless man in the mask, his torso covered in tattoos, who was signing autographs. A deep laugh came from him as one of the kids surrounding him said something. Ethan shook his head, drank his punch while wondering if he should add something from the flask in his pocket, then turned away and headed towards the shoreline and a better view.
Some things were just better not thought about…
Some of his friends were still on the Rig, but he'd wanted to see this from the water level, and there was no denying that the atmosphere of a huge crowd of people enjoying themselves was more than a little attractive. He could smell all manner of things being barbecued all over the place around him, the park behind city hall full of picnickers, while people lined the roofs of any building with access, including the PRT one. Looking around, he wondered if anyone was actually watching the monitors at all.
"This is fun, isn't it, Assault?" a voice whispered from behind and above him, making him look back. Cloak was standing on her invisible platform a few feet away, two feet off the ground. And eating a corn-dog on a stick, which was disappearing into the empty hood bit by bit. Two more were floating in mid-air next to her.
"It's certainly impressive," he grinned. "Your friends are going all out for this. How did they get the Mayor to go along with it?"
"They asked him, and paid for the facilities," Cloak replied happily. "He was fine with it. Nice guy. I'm looking forward to the fireworks."
"I love fireworks," he nodded.
"These will be something to remember, then," she laughed. "I've seen the plans. So many lovely dimensions..."
He stared, then shook his head. Not going to ask.
"Not long now," she added. "About five minutes until the show starts." She looked at the sky. "Just dark enough to make it look really good. I'm going to get a better view. See you around."
"OK, Cloak," he replied with a wave as she climbed away from him in the air. Looking around for Battery, he spotted her fifty yards away, buying a burger from a vendor by one of the fountains. He headed that way, sipping his punch and just relaxing, while wondering what the difference between normal fireworks and FamTech™ UltraFireworks® was.
Emily leaned back in her chair, on the helipad on top of the PRT building, watching the crowds below. Tens of thousands of people were milling around as far as she could see, all of them migrating towards the shore and good vantage points. Thousands of glittering lights in all colors of the rainbow could be seen everywhere, as street vendors sold all manner of LED based toys, glow-sticks, and other little gimcracks. She was certain that a lot of the people down there were from outside the city, and that the result of this entire thing was going to be a significant boost in tourism.
Which probably had Roy smirking as much as any of the lizards, as well as the entire town council. And half the shop-keepers in the city to boot.
Beside her, Legend was sitting in another chair, slurping on a milkshake he'd flown down to street level to acquire moments earlier. Considering his position in the Protectorate, she felt the noises he was making were somewhat inappropriate.
A loud gurgling sound made her wince.
"This should be good," he said, removing the straw from his mouth. "One thing you can say about the Family; they never do things half way."
"As we're all too aware," she grumbled.
He grinned, then went back to making appalling, satisfied noises. She noticed he had a bag of hot-dogs on the floor next to him, sighed a little, and stole one of them.
Lucy and Mandy looked at each other, feeling excited, then went back to staring towards the bay from the shore-line of the park, in almost exactly the same place they'd watched Kaiju move the ship from. "The entire city must be here," Lucy said, raising her voice to be heard over the background buzz from the huge crowd. Intermittent loud bangs and showers of colored light came from all around them as people further back in the city and up on the hills let off their own fireworks. The sounds echoed around the buildings as flat cracks, with whistles and crackles mixed in.
"Looks like it," Eric said from behind her. All of them were sitting in folding chairs that Rich had turned up with. "I bet the view is even better from the DWU, up on top of that dorm block there. It's the perfect place to watch from."
"Probably, but Taylor said their security was very high since so many of them are in the crowd here," Mandy put in. "It's a pity, I'd have loved to see it from there, but I can understand why not."
"Here's fine, everything's going to be happening up there anyway," Lucy smiled, leaning back and looking up into the darkening sky. Stars were slowly becoming visible in the evening, while to the west the last of the sunset was fading towards violet. "Any time now," she added, looking at her watch for a moment.
The crowd was quieting down as everyone tensed in anticipation. After a little while it was almost eerily quiet, although not to the level of Kaiju's debut. Even so, Lucy shivered a little with a building sense of something portentous about to happen.
A tone sounded, not echoing at all, even though everyone in the city heard it at the same time. Another one at a different pitch came and went. Then a voice that almost everyone recognized said, with enormous satisfaction, "Ladies and Gentlemen of Brockton Bay and more distant areas, welcome to our celebrations of the Fourth of July. We all hope you enjoy the experience as much as we did planning it. Now, join me in counting down to the introduction."
Über's voice rang out across the city, rich and full, and clearly very pleased with himself. "Ten… Nine… Eight..."
People started joining in, individually and in groups, getting louder and louder.
"Seven..."
More voices sounded out.
"Six..."
The roar of the crowd echoed across the bay.
"Five..."
Lucy yelled out at the top of her voice, thrusting her fists into the air. Beside her, her friends were doing the same.
"Four..."
"Three..."
The entire crowd was perfectly synchronized with Über, as he kept talking.
"Two..."
A moment's anticipation built instantly, then…
"ONE!"
There was a pregnant pause as everyone fell silent at once, then in the distance, out over the water towards the mouth of the bay, there was a flash at sea level. Everyone watched as a point of light ascended, almost lazily, towards the dark purple sky, arced over in the direction of the Rig at what must have been a couple of thousand feet up, then abruptly shattered into millions of brilliantly burning fragments. Moments later a thunderous report rolled across the crowd.
The points of light, far too many to count, all went in different directions, but somehow managed in the space of a couple of seconds to assemble into a vast rectangle. A sheet of light easily a quarter of a mile across hung rippling in the sky, illuminating the city like daylight. Moments after it formed, the lights shifted, some going from the white-gold color they'd all started as to pure white, some to a brilliant deep blue, and some to scarlet. The end result was a perfect American flag, facing the entire bay at just the right angle so everyone could see it.
The cheering was so loud Lucy almost went deaf.
A couple of seconds passed then the flag of light dimmed and fell away into a beautiful huge shower of orange lights that nearly made it to sea level before disappearing. Even as they winked out, another projectile was launched from whatever mechanism was doing the work, out roughly where the tanker had once been. The crowd watched, spellbound, and wondering what this one would be.
Again it burst into tens of thousands of tiny lights, these spreading out, then forming a gold emblem that more or less everyone in the country recognized these days, the same reptilian head as was emblazoned on Saurial's armor. The giant lizard head, in profile, stood proudly against the night sky. After a couple of seconds, it seemed to turn and face them, making everyone stare in amazement. One eye winked, then it fell apart and faded from existence.
Again the crowd roared its approval.
There was a pause, then the music started. Lucy recognized the track and grinned, as it was weirdly appropriate considering who was behind this entire thing. Synced to the music, dozens of points of light started leaping skywards from the distant firing point, the main display starting with a literal bang. She watched, entranced, as the most amazing fireworks show she'd ever seen played itself out in front of her, half a dozen tracks playing one after another. The fireworks began with the sort of thing that any other display she'd ever seen would have used as the finale, and only got more elaborate as time passed.
Enormous balls of light that spread out over vast distances, changing color over and over again.
Structured shapes, spheres, cubes, pyramids, all came and went, some containing other constructs. All were formed of colored flames, in some cases trailing sparks for hundreds of feet behind them.
More complex shapes occurred. One massive one spread out into a perfect replica of a spiral galaxy, high enough and big enough to cover half the bay. It seemed to slowly rotate as it faded, points of light representing stars flashing brightly like novae, then fading through blue to red and black.
Sheets of light rippled overhead like the aurora, turned up past eleven.
All of it set to music, all of it perfectly synced, and all of it the most incredible sight she'd ever encountered.
The fireworks boomed and whizzed, screaming around the sky, forming shape after shape. Some of them didn't even seem possible and Lucy had absolutely no idea how you could achieve such effects with mere burning chemicals. But however it was done, she was very glad that it had been.
Amazingly, she noticed after a while, there wasn't any smoke left behind. That meant that each new effect was completely unobstructed, something she'd never seen before.
Ten minutes in, brilliant beams of light started forming a backdrop, projected from several sources around the bay. One was obviously the DWU facility, one was somewhere up in the expensive area of town on the other side of the bay, and one was probably somewhere in the vicinity of the far side of the ship's graveyard. Every color one could imagine was represented, fans and sheets of glowing luminescence spreading out like a curtain reaching for the stars.
The sense of energy and fun in the crowd was beyond belief. Whoops and screams accompanied each launch salvo. She could see people dancing to the music, or just jumping up and down in place as they watched. Lucy herself was grinning so widely her cheeks hurt, but she didn't mind at all.
Around half an hour in, the launches abruptly stopped with one final burst, which formed the words above them in giant silver letters:
Phase 2
Lucy wondered what that meant.
So did everyone else, from what she could see.
"If you will direct your attention to the middle of the bay, please," Über's voice sounded, "You will be able to see something that has never been shown to the public before. Please welcome... KAIJU!"
Everyone craned their necks to stare at the water. Nothing happened for a moment, then a huge circle of waves lit from beneath in brilliant deep blue. The circle expanded out and faded.
It happened again, expanding and fading faster.
The circles of light kept coming, speeding up. Now, accompanying each one, a subsonic thump could be heard, like giant footsteps approaching from miles away. Lucy was almost quivering with expectation.
Something started rising out of the water, making the crowd stare in shock. Huge toroids of metal, fifty yards across, rose slowly into view, water pouring off them. They kept lifting, higher and higher, to reveal they were supported on enormous crystalline columns, which were internally lit in shades of violet. In the end, eight of these constructions formed a line, separated by a hundred yards, and at least two hundred feet tall.
"Holy shit!" Rich yelled in her ear. "What the hell are those?"
"This, my friends," Über answered him, the timing impeccable, "is Kaiju's new Zeusophone. Harnessing the power of lightning on a scale never before seen, she will show us how to really bring the music."
"What the hell is a Zeusophone?" Eric asked loudly.
They all shrugged.
Then watched with open mouths as, illuminated by the lambent glow from the crystal columns, a vast keyboard rose from the water, locking into place fifty feet up. Salty rivulets dripped from it, the flow quickly dying off. Moments after, Kaiju herself rose after it, the thing at just the right height for her to reach out and put her immense hands on the keys. She looked over her shoulder at them and grinned.
"I've been looking forward to this," she called, the bass voice easily audible to everyone on shore. "Let's see how well it works."
She turned back, lifted her hands, and brought them down.
The entire crowd jumped as one, when enormous sparks immediately roared out from the metal toroids on the columns, hundreds of feet long and extremely bright. The purple and violet streamers, like the sort of thing you'd see in a good thunderstorm, each gave off a different note.
Kaiju ran down the keyboard, rippling from one end to the other, the deepest notes something you felt rather than heard. Apparently satisfied, she began playing, the music easily recognizable although most certainly not ever intended to be performed on an 'instrument' like this.
Moments later the fireworks started again, now synchronized to Kaiju, as she played Bach's 'Toccata and Fugue in D Minor' with quite respectable skill, the entire piece transposed down into the range of her bizarre instrument. Somehow, it worked.
The lasers came back, the music formed by sculpted raw electricity played on, the fireworks zipped across the sky, and Lucy just sat back and absorbed it all, feeling that the Family coming to Brockton was the best thing that had ever happened.
"I wonder how she's powering that device?" Colin asked absently, watching the eight vast Tesla coils produce sparks he estimated were in the megawatt range each. "And for that matter how the discharges aren't causing any radio interference or induced electrical noise?"
"Magic, for all I know," Hannah commented, watching one particularly brilliant firework burst into a perfect hollow dodecahedron, each face a different color. "Like those fireworks. I'm pretty sure that it's not actually possible to make a shaped charge do that."
"It's certainly not easy," he mused. "Impossible is clearly the wrong word since we're looking at it."
She looked at him, then back at the sky.
Then shrugged.
"It's a word that doesn't seem to mean what it used to, around here."
He nodded slowly, still wondering how the discharges were being contained. And wondering where Dragon had got to.
On the roof of the town hall, Roy sat with Phil, both of them sipping a truly extraordinary brandy that his friend had provided. "Excellent," Phil sighed, watching the display. "Another perfect geometric solid. Absolutely beautiful." He glanced at Roy. "Please pass on my pleasure to the Family for how superbly this entire event was planned and executed. I will definitely wish to meet them at some point in the near future."
Roy smiled at his old friend. "Of course, Phil," he replied. "It would be my pleasure."
They went back to watching, Phil tapping one finger on the table to the music, in as good a mood as Roy had ever seen him.
The music reached a finale, the sparks blazing out across the water, then dying away. At the same time the fireworks stopped again. Kaiju turned away from her keyboard as about two hundred and fifty thousand people screamed and cheered, taking a deep bow. "Thanks, everyone," she said loudly. "That was a lot of fun. Now, please forgive me, but I have to go. Don't worry, though, we're not done yet." Behind her, the 'Zeusophone' was descending into the water again, quickly vanishing from sight. With a last wave, she did the same.
The lasers stopped, the bay went dark, and the crowd went quiet. A single shot fired, again leaving text in the sky.
Phase 3
"People of Brockton Bay, your attention please," Über said, his voice now sounding amused. Lucy giggled, remembering the introduction Kaiju had used months ago. "Please direct your gazes towards the sea. The Family Dragon Display Team is inbound."
Every eye turned in that direction. Lucy could see three points of light, moving quickly towards them. They neared, then half a mile away, suddenly split three ways, two arcing up and to the left and right while the middle one went straight over the Rig, a roar of jets sounding. Each one left a trail of somehow glowing smoke, one red, one white, and one blue.
She started laughing. So did a lot of other people.
The outer shapes, which suddenly lit up in blazingly bright blue and red lines respectively, were clearly large dragons, one of which she knew. The center one was just as clearly Dragon, in one of her high-speed combat suits. She wondered how the Family had talked the Canadian cape into this…
Colin stared as his best friend, along with two flying reptiles that shouldn't have been able to exist, put on a very impressive aerial display, drawing patterns in the night sky in glowing smoke. He had no idea how it was done but the effect was remarkable.
Why she was doing it was something he was wondering. Eventually he just shrugged. She got on very well with the entire lot of reptiles, they'd probably just suggested it for the pun and she'd gone along with it. It was the sort of thing she'd find funny.
He made some notes, then attempted to work out how they made the smoke trails glow like that.
The air display was soon added to when the fireworks started up again, the three flying capes looping in and out of the resulting displays, while music played. It was one of the most beautiful things Lucy had ever seen.
Eventually, though, all good things come to an end. The three fliers did three separate loops in different directions, which ended with them heading back out to sea. The two dragons were barrel rolling around the trail left by the Guild cape, which was arrow-straight. All three of them exited through a massive hoop of glowing green light caused by a firework, in a manner that was obviously choreographed. Seconds later they were gone.
The fireworks and music rose to a crescendo, the entire sky filled with points of light, then one last shot climbed into the sky after everything else had died away. This turned out to be a repeat of the one that had begun the show, blossoming into a flag as the first bars of the national anthem started. The music faded as the flag did, until all was silence.
When the applause started, Lucy thought it would never end.
"OK," Emily said, looking at Legend, who was now elbow-deep into the largest bag of popcorn she'd ever seen, grinning like an eight-year-old. "I'll admit it. That was pretty damn good."
"Best display I've ever seen," he chuckled. "I wonder if they do birthday parties."
She shrugged, helping herself to some of his popcorn, watching the cheering going on below them. If nothing else, she was sure that the Family was more popular now than ever, and oddly enough she was fine with that.
Mind you, it still didn't make life in this place any less weird, but there were some perks.