It went against the grain to wear a halter top and no bra, especially in late January, but I'd quickly learned that my power would destroy any hoodie or coat I was wearing if I used it. Even though it was a turtleneck halter, I still felt too exposed with my back so bare, but paradoxically I also wasn't that bothered.

Maybe it was because I didn't really feel the cold. I couldn't. Not anymore.

It wasn't easy to find a good place. Even in a place like Brockton Bay, which was something of a surprise. Fortunately, I didn't need much, and I had in my side a hefty amount of apathy. Plus, I really, really needed to just let go, otherwise I might do seething rash, like blow up Winslow or kill someone.

Maybe three someones in particular.

Which was why I was at the docks, standing barefoot amongst gravel and broken glass and who knew what else, not too far from the buildings of the Dock Workers' Union. At the very least it should've been uncomfortable as hell, but that was another thing to thank my power for. Gravel and glass and debrii bothered me about as much as the bitter chill did. In other words, not at all.

First I made sure that the satchel holding my hoodie, shoes, socks and glasses was secure and safe against my belly. Then I took a deep, slow breath and finally relaxed my grip on my power.

As I did my back opened and my wings emerged, all forty-something feet of them, and it was such a relief to finally let them out properly. Some notion, an instinct maybe, had me shifting my stance against the wind, but I didn't really feel their weight. It wasn't that they were that light. I knew damn well that my wings weren't light at all, given how the gravel under my bare feet was suddenly being compressed underneath me.

I glanced over myself as I mentally prepared myself. They weren't like the wings of a bird or a bat. They didn't even look like flesh and blood, which was odd seeing as how I not only could feel them, I could also move and flex them a little.

They were a dull metallic black, my wings, angular and subtly menacing. Their unusual girth disguised the swell of my built-in engine pods, one to each wing and both bigger than my torso. There were shuttered openings along nearly every surface that I instinctively knew carried a wide variety of lethal munitions, mostly missiles and bombs but I had a feeling there might be more. Four recessed weapon blisters, almost completely flush to the surface of my wings, held turrets of some kind, two on the top or dorsal surfaces of my wings and the remaining two on the bottom or ventral surfaces.

A part of me knew that there was something else, something more, but already with what I had I could probably raze a third of Brockton Bay to the ground with absurd ease. If I really wanted to. I was trying really hard to not want to.

Emma, Sophia, and Madison have no idea how much I've been thinking about killing them once I left the hospital and became aware of just what I could do, but if I did that I'd be worse than them. And with my powers, it would've been easy.

So easy.

Too easy.

Terribly, horrifically, frighteningly easy, if I didn't care about collateral damage, like innocent bystanders or their family members.

So instead of unleashing my truly horrific power-granted ordinance on three bitches who may or may not have deserved it, I decided to stretch my wings proverbially and very literally. And fortunately there was a section of the old docks that was just long enough to serve me as a makeshift runway. It would be tight, but I figured I could make it into the air.

Probably without breaking anything important too.

It's funny really. Rumor mill had it that the docks and the ship graveyard were where capes supposedly tested their powers on stuff that no one cared about anymore. For me, all that mattered was that it was closer and easier to get to than the nearest stretch of highway.

With another deep breath to fortify me I checked my wings one last time, first flexing my elevons, then my flaps, and bizarrely found myself hoping that I'd gotten the names of my flight control surfaces right. How weird is that, when I didn't even know what kind of engines I had? All I knew for certain was that they obviously weren't propeller engines.

I started to walk. Then jog. Then I was running, my arms pumping as the ground cracked and crumbled underneath my feet. I felt, then heard my engines begin to spin up, a quiet rumbling that I very satisfyingly felt all the way down to my thighs, and I leaned forward as far as I dared, until the only thing keeping me from faceplanting was my own forward momentum.

My feet touched the ground less and less as I built up thrust. Then I heard and felt how the narrow rectangular intakes of my twin engines hissed like massive and furious snakes, followed by an even louder snarling as their combined thrust near-instantly exceeded anything that I could've hoped to manage, even in a car. My feet left the ground completely, and I had to veer awkwardly to one side to desperately avoid the ruin of a rusted cargo crane almost taking off my left wing.

But that one brief moment of panic soon gave way to sheer exhilaration and joy, and I couldn't help but let out a whoop as I shot up over the rooftops of the nearby warehouses and climbed into the sky. I'm not sure how I knew, but I was climbing at 170 mph and steadily accelerating. Fast.

It took me mere minutes to reach ten thousand feet. Less than that to decide just where I wanted to go. I climbed higher to twenty thousand as I circles the city, staying well clear of the airport and the Protectorate's rig, but I think someone might have already noticed me somehow because I felt something odd ghost across my skin and wings, something in the electromagnetic spectrum that I couldn't quite see with my eyes. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. My engines weren't exactly quiet.

For a moment, I thought I noticed someone or something trying to climb to my altitude, and tasted something in the air, but I was distracted because I was really trying to ignore the telltale bulk of Winslow high and the targeting solutions that instinctively, automatically slid through my thoughts at the sight of that horrible place. But when I found my attention shifting towards the homes of Madison, Sophia, and Emma, I found myself clenching my weapon ports shut when I noticed them creeping open.

So I directed myself south along the coastline, and opened up the throttle. In an instant my velocity jumped to 750 mph, just a little shy of breaking the sound barrier. Contrails marked my flight path as I left Brockton Bay behind.

Sunrise at thirty-five thousand feet is amazing. It didn't take me very long to wish that I'd had the foresight to wear sunglasses. My powers had made my vision perfect, maybe more than perfect. So good that even at my cruising height, I could just make out the highways I was using to guide myself south. The glare of the sun coming off of the Atlantic was hell on my eyes though.

I should've grabbed a map and sunglasses too, now that I thought about it. Not that I would've been able to read a map at that moment. As fast as I was flying it would've been torn from my hands the instant I tried to unfold it.

Moreso, I had soon realized that the ghosting, distracting sensation that I occasionally felt across my skin was radar, and that I could even hear and somehow send radio transmissions. Lucky me, I figured that out just in time to receive a tongue lashing from an air traffic controller who definitely did not appreciate my nearly blundering right into a restricted air space. He appreciated my lack of a flight plan even less.

I… I might have panicked and flew off in the middle of that uncomfortable conversation. Talking… Talking to people was…

..But on the plus side? I learned that my air speed maxed out at just over Mach 2. In a word, awesome.

On the down side, this discovery of my potential max speed was followed by noticing a pair of jets in the distance behind me, rising to my altitude and accelerating in my direction.

Oh, and they also began transmitting the moment they were within half a mile of me.

"Unidentified aircraft, this is the 131st Fighter Squadron, Minuteman 1, you are hereby ordered to slow to five-five-zero knots and fall into formation for escort to Barnes Air National Guard Base. Failure to comply-"

I didn't listen to the rest, because at that point, I got really, really stupid and panicked. Again.

I instinctively knew that my wings weren't intended for the sort of gymnastics that a dedicated aircraft like the two military jets (F/15 Eagle, C configuration, single pilot some part of me instinctively knew). They could accelerate much faster and were more maneuverable, but my max airspeed was almost twice theirs and maybe, just maybe I could give them the slip. After all, they hadn't tried to target-lock me, so they probably weren't that angry?

I cut my throttle, triggered my airbrakes and broke left, hard enough and fast enough that pain lanced through the frame of my wings. Stars sparkled at the edges of my vision but that didn't stop me from opening the throttle back up, all the way to max, and with a snarl my engines answered and launched me towards the ocean just as my would-be pursuers blazed past me, already trying to react to my escape attempt.

But I could feel/sense/hear the two F-15s maneuver to chase me and felt the telltale ghosting on my skin that let me know they weren't considering playing nicely.

I banked erratically, keeping either from getting a clear lock but hurting my acceleration enough to allow them to swiftly close the distance, which was absolutely bullshit because those planes were at least thirty years old and it really wasn't fair that they could move like that on something so much younger, newer and more advanced like me. Options began flooding into my mind and I felt the hatches on my weapon bays and turret blisters itching to open, but I fought that down, as surprisingly hard as it was, because I wasn't about to dogfight the Air Force or Navy or whoever and get myself in even more trouble.

So instead I filled my surroundings with as much noise as I could, because apparently I could somehow do that. Rear hatches along my wings opened up and chaff canisters tumbled out in my wake, bursting mere moments later and filling the air with white noise across the electromagnetic spectrum. Then I dove into the cloud layer and crossed my fingers both metaphorically and literally.

I think I fooled them for maybe twenty seconds before one of them suddenly appeared on my right, so close that I could make out how the pilot's eyes went wide as they finally got a good look at me, a girl that just so happened to have a pair of massive metallic wings coming out of her back.

"Unknown airc-… Unidentified Parahuman, how the hell old are you?" he asked thoughtfully.

My engines actually sputtered for a moment.

Or maybe that was me.

So I tried to break away again. As it turns out, being the superior overall aircraft doesn't necessarily make one a match for an aircraft designed by a team of McDonnell Douglas's finest with a pilot that had to compete against who knows how many people just for the right to sit in the cockpit.

That plane might have been welded to me, given how embarrassingly easily its pilot stayed on me. I pushed myself until I ached deep in my bones, weaving and juking and trying to break away long enough to build speed and escape. Not even for an instant was that plane less than Forty feet away from me, so nerve-wrackingly close I was sweating and nauseous. Was this pilot insane?! What kind of lunatic crowds another plane in the air like that?! Okay so I wasn't really a plane in the traditional sense but still!

I finally threw in the towel when the pilot directed his F-15 to fly upside down directly above me, close enough that I could look up into his cockpit as he pulled out a book and began lazily flipping pages.

"Unknown Parahuman, this is Minuteman 1, callsign Scarecrow. If you're quite finished," he drawled, "I wouldn't mind getting back to base in time to catch the latest episode of the Simpsons. Last episode they revealed that Maude Flanders faked her death to become a member of Haven and I really wanna know how that's gonna turn out with her husband Ned dating Edna Krabappel now."

Bastard.

An hour later, I was landing on a military runway. It was tricky, because I was nervous and I was being tracked by anti-aircraft installations, but I slowed as much as I could until I was more gliding than flying, and still damn near stumbled the instant my bare feet hit the tarmac. Sparks flew as the soles of my bare feet skidded and skipped across the ground before I began frantically pumping my legs and braking.

Before long I managed to stumble to a stop, and for a moment all I could to was wheeze like a set of bellows. I couldn't double over properly, with my wings out my spine can't bend that way, but I managed to quickly catch my breath. It was weird that I even had to, since I hadn't noticed any issues with my breathing even once during my flight.

It seemed like I was barely able to get my wings retracted back into my body before a military transport pulled up in front of me. I didn't even have time to try to get my shoes out of my satchel before I was very politely handcuffed and all but thrown inside a hummer.

So yeah. Making an attempt at a real fanfic instead of just another omake. Unlike the Joyride snippets which inspired this, this won't be a crossover, just an altpower. As for Taylor's wings, this less Arkbird and more Northrup Grumman.

Also, in an attempt to stave of the barrage of questions concerning military aircraft, I may study them as a result of my time in the USAF but I don't and never actually wanted to fly. I just find the hardware really cool.

And yes, the F/15 might be an aging bird but even today they're still goddamn incredible planes.