13.
Happy Harbor Fair Grounds
September 22
18:54 UTC
"Ever wonder what girls do in the restroom in groups?"
Sitting on a bench with Conner and the boy from earlier, Carlos both ate a funnel cake and scrolled through one of his phone apps. His words drew both teens' attention with the other rolling his eyes as if his question was offensive to his precious hearing. As for Carter, he simply rose an eyebrow and glanced at the powdered sugar cheeked teen.
"What?" Carter asked.
"Ever notice how girls travel in packs to the restroom in public?" Carlos asked again. "Well, what do they do in there? What could possibly take a group of them to do? And they take so long to do it too."
Leaning back, Carter cleared his throat as his friend went on.
"Do they do each other's makeup? Compare notes on how studly guys are? Trade cosmetics? Mark stuff off a 'to do' list with said stud?"
"Or maybe use the bathroom?" the other teen boy said. "Seriously, how stupid are you?" Getting up, he headed away from the group to a nearby game booth.
"Actually," Carter said while checking his phone. "My Uncle Wally said they have proof of them wanting to take over Earth and heard all men into Canada. He also said it was a vast conspiracy brought on by the cooperation between the women of Earth and women of Mars in that even the government will not be able to oppose them due to the fact they do not know; however, they are planning on making their own laws favoring them in which men outside of Canada will be hunted like wild animals and treated as trophies with bounties ranging from five hundred to several thousands depending on the difficulty of the hunt."
"Y, your uncle said that?" Carlos asked with an incredulous look on his face.
"No," Carter said with a straight face. "They actually do the same things we do, but in a group."
Shuddering, the Hispanic teen shook his head. "That's nasty."
Going back to his phone, Carter checked, yet again, if there were any messages from his friends currently at Titans Tower. Again, there were none. Only a message from his mother about dinner and how she was called out to back up his father who, in turn, let them both know he would be out on call in Florida for a League emergency. The thought of spending a day with his school friends being a bad idea crossed his mind.
C"Look out! Look out!"
"Run!"
Snapping him back to reality, Carter looked over to where the shouts were coming from when he saw a large tower come crashing down. Sparks flew into the air with a loud explosion erupting shortly after.
"What the, hey-" Being pushed back, Carlos toppled over a trash can as a stampede of people rushed by.
"What happened!?" Carter shouted as the lanes between the venders and game booths became insanely crowded.
Another explosion occurred with audio equipment screeching, forcing Carter to cover his sensitive ears.
"Carter!"
Running up to the teen, Joslyn and her friend fought through the crowd where he was. Neither paid Carlos any attention as he was pushed away by the mob of panicked people.
"Joslyn, what's going on?" Carter asked when a roar filled the air.
"It's a monster!"
"What is that thing!"
"It's attacking the stage!"
"Joss, we gotta go, now!" Joslyn's friend shouted over the people.
"Where's Mar'i?" Carter yelled.
"She left already," the blonde told him.
"What?"
"Kids," an officer yelled. "You've got to get out of here! Go!"
Taking the rear of the group, Carter made sure Joslyn, Carlos, and the other girl were ahead of him by a few feet. It was not until they were headed to the exit of the fair grounds when he began to fall back. Once they were just out of range and couldn't see him easily, the son of arguably the two most powerful League members slunk away and disappeared between a couple of booths.
It was easy to get lost in the stampeding crowd. No one paid him any attention whatsoever as he headed to the rear of a restroom. Checking to see if he were being followed, which he was not, he stripped his jacket off, the only article of clothing he wore that was not capable of shape shifting, and jumped into a shallow ravine running along the side of the fair and into the forest. It was there where Carter hung his jacket, the one his father wore on his first date with his mom, and flashed his eyes, burning the contacts hiding their true color. Taking to the air, he then had his clothes change shape from a pair of sneakers, jeans, and a shirt, to a form fitting black suit with red trim at the seams, bare arms, and fingerless gloves. The moment he burst through the trees, the teenage boy known as Carter Kent then formed a red crest over his chest with a shield insignia representing his Kryptonian heritage with an 'X' in its center to represent his Martian heritage.
(-)
Looking out through a small window on the side of the restroom she was in, Mar'i saw a crowd of people fleeing an explosion. Hissing, she checked her watch for the time. "Too early, morons."
Leaving the window, a window requiring her to float several feet in the air, she kicked the remaining stalls open, checking for other women then ripped the tie from her hair off. A few pieces of garbage fell to the floor but were ignored as she flung her left arm out and fired a purple projectile, melting the metal around the door's handle to keep any would-be hider out.
"Alex better have a good reason for speeding this up."
Unbuckling her belt, Mar'i shed the jeans she wore and kicked them to the side, but kept the boots. In their place were skin tight leather pants, which matched the leather foot coverings, giving her a slight heel. The sweater she wore was soon stripped off, exposing metal bracers on her forearms and a black, midriff bearing leather top. In its center, wrapping around her exposed shoulders, was a large, indigo shaped arrow-like design. It was something she had put together with the pattern being a last minute addition for a break in its coloring.
With a flash of purple energy shooting off her body, Mar'i burned off her body makeup and contacts, taking her true form before firing a beam of energy at her discarded clothing and another at the ceiling where she took off flying at a high rate of speed, leaving her outfit from earlier to burn as if she were never there to begin with.
(-)
Stopping some fifty feet in the air, Carter watched as the hundreds of fair goers fled away from the same direction, the direction of the stage DJ Leslie Willis currently occupied. It did not take a genius to know where to go, but it did take a moment to tend to someone shouting for help nearby.
Pinned between a fair game and a wooden table, a young teen boy tried to pull his leg free. No one stopped as they were all in a rush to get out, leaving the boy on the ground with his ankle being crushed. As if that were not enough, several ponies from the "Kiddie Ride Along" corral were galloping through the crowd with their handlers trying to get them back. Adding to that were small fires setting the food stands a blaze with people falling down and getting trampled.
"Crap."
Not knowing where to start, Carter first shot over to the burning stands, ripping the colored tents out of the ground and slamming them in the dirt near the frightened ponies. A shot of heat vision created a trench ahead of the animals where they filtered into with the dirt covering the burning covers.
With two problems solved, the flying teen dove close to the ground and picked up two people, one adult male and one ten year old boy. Setting them close to the exit, he flew back to grab some others as the people gawked at the sight of the black clad being helping them. Without hesitation, Carter went back to helping those in need, ignoring the finger pointing and words aimed at him. He had seen enough footage of his parents and other League members to know the opinions of the public did not matter when their lives were at risk, and right now, he was needed.
"Carter?! Carter!" Heading back into the crowd, Joslyn searched for her so called date as her friends took off, leaving her behind.
Placing the kid with the injured ankle down, Carter had just enough time to hear a loud whistle come from a food stand. One of the propane tanks had been damaged by falling shelves and it would not be long before it would cause an explosion with, of all people, Joslyn in the blast zone.
Taking off from a run, Carter managed to get to the blonde girl and cover her with his body as she screamed. That was when the propane tank turned into a makeshift flamethrower before it burst, sending shrapnel into his back but leaving no damage as his Kryptonian side gave him a level of invulnerability. With the immediate danger over, he separated himself from her and looked her over. Besides a few nicks here and there, she was okay...until she looked up at him.
"Are you oka-"
Letting out a high pitched shriek, Joslyn stared into Carter's blood red eyes and scrambled to get away. Kicking her feet out, she managed to create some distance and get to her feet with one last glance at her savior. The look on her face was one of fright, completely different from the look he got from her earlier when he had his contacts on and looked normal.
She was almost to the exit when a tall scaffold holding a banner for the fair ruptured and began to fall. Apparently there were so many people fighting to get to safety, they all managed to damage the struts supporting its weight. As a consequence, the metal had buckled and began to break, falling where the teen girl was running to.
"Hey, look out!" The warning was not in time and neither was he if he took off flying, but as soon as the structure hit the ground, Joslyn was gone as a purple streak shot through the air and snatched the girl.
(-)
It was so fast, the sound of metal braking, the structure falling, and the sudden feeling of being weightless, that Joslyn's mind had barely enough time to process what had happened. She was still braced for the moment the scaffold would crush her and slowly opened her eyes. Cradled in a pair of strong arms, the blonde stared at the face of a young, orange skinned girl around her age with flowing black hair. Struggling when she saw a pair of glowing green eyes, she tried to get free when she felt herself drop and held by an arm. With a shriek, she was dangling some eighty feet in the air and had climbed higher.
"Here, you'll be safe up here," the green eyed girl said. "Safe enough."
Flying off, the orange skinned girl left the 'Queen of Happy Harbor High School' gripping onto the side of a hundred foot high water tower overseeing the fair grounds. She waisted no time checking on her as she flew off back to the fair with the blonde shouting after her.
Back on the ground, Carter looked around for any sign of the purple flash and Joslyn but could not find any trace of them when a roar echoed over the grounds. Few people were still running to safety, mostly workers who sought to guide people to safety and help the injured.
"Hey," a voice shouted from above, "you just gonna stand there, or go looking for a fight?"
Turning around, Carter looked up and saw a girl hovering some thirty feet in the air. Not noticing, his jaw dropped and eyes widened as he took in her sight, especially those glowing green almond shaped eyes of hers. He had heard stories, tales of beings like her, similar to when he went to church with Martha Kent during his family's Christmas gatherings and could not but think he was witnessing an angel above him when another roar brought him out of his trance.
"Come on, last one there'll stay for the cops." Taking off, the girl left a purple streak behind her.
"Wow." With a wide smile, Carter leapt into the air and flew after her, almost forgetting about calling his friends for backup. "Wait, who are you!"
Titan Tower
September 22
19:32 UTC
"And the Blackhawks barely cling onto their lead as the second period comes to a close with the Anahiem Ducks trailing four to three."
"Hate hockey." With the remote in hand, Irey flipped through several channels as she ate her ninth salad in the last ten minutes. An empty six pack of tall boy energy drinks sat between her legs where two discarded bottles of ranch dressing rested. She was on her third one at the moment when her phone, her 'other' phone, rang.
Leaving her fork with a bundle of lettuce leaves and a radish in her mouth, she read the screen where a readout of Carter's request for backup appeared along with coordinates of where he was at.
"Looks like our boy needs assistance." Flipping onto the couch Irey occupied, Carrie grabbed a crouton from her salad and waived her phone in front of the ginger. The young girl had already dawned the bottom half of her mission gear, black tight pants, green boots, and her yellow utility belt.
"Looks like."
A moment passed as Irey chewed her food, prompting Carrie to break the silence. "So, you gonna get ready? I just need my Kevlar tunic, cape, mask, and gloves."
"Why? He didn't care enough to help us when we needed it."
"Petty much?" Entering the room, Lorena adjusted one of the leather straps on her thighs where a holster housed a water bearer. Unlike the other two, she was in her mission outfit, a female version of her father's when he was her age only without the backpack used to store water and her water bearers holstered on her thighs.
"Eager to help CK?" Irey asked.
"Shut it. I just want to show him up in the field."
"Sure you do."
"Come on guys!" Zachary yelled as he entered the room already in his mission attire, which made him resemble a certain street magician out to freak minds. "Unknown threat, unknown Meta, need backup ASAP? What are we waiting for?"
"For 'Miss High Horse' to get off her, um..." Carrie said then stopped.
"High horse?" the magician finished for her.
"Shut it." Standing before the ginger, Carrie grabbed the salad bowl from her hands. "Come on, Irey! You've been going on about how CK abandoned us for some girl and said how he didn't want to be part of a team and you pick now to throw it back in his face? If you want to show him how to be on a team, then get dressed and let's go already! If not, we're out of here without you."
"You try to leave without me and I'll make you regret it," Irey told her friend. "Carter made a choice to leave his phone off, so I'm making the choice to wait for y'all to get ready before I do. It takes me ten seconds to change into mission gear, how about you?"
"So you're not doing this to get back at Carter?"
The Standing, Irey tossed the box of trash on the coffee table. "I'm doing this to show Mister Supermartian how being on a team is done. We fight together, we win together. And I only have one question for you three."
"And that is?" Lorena asked.
"You think Raven could teleport us there? Cause that would be an epic entrance for us to make."