A Wizard In Alexandria's Court

by Perfect Lionheart

Many people have correctly said much about how dark and hopeless an environment Worm is. But for a serious D&D player, it is simply Tuesday. So no use panicking. Of course, there is that little complication about starting out as a 1st level commoner...

16. Chapter 16

A Wizard In Alexandria's Court

Chapter Sixteen

by Skysaber

OoOoO

Story Day Eleven, April 16th 2011, Saturday - Early Afternoon

OoOoO

Standing at the start of the race track with his arm around Lisa, Jared found some amusement in reflecting on how his current group had formed.

He had just been going around doing good and saving people; mostly capes, but those with superpowers had been the ones the Worm story had focused on, so the people whose situations he'd known about to save.

But the girls who formed his core group had, upon being saved, then immediately latched onto him and refused to let go, seeing him as their protector and source of safety.

That was not true of everyone he'd saved, not even all of the girls. Brian and Aisha had not seen him that way, so they'd gone off and were doing their own thing. Alec likewise, although he'd stayed local so was more frequently in contact. None of those people were in need of as much reassurance as those who'd formed his Sirens.

Those girls just got clingy.

But, since they needed constant reassurance, he was glad to provide it. This was a scary world after all, and if they wanted an island of stability and safety, he was happy to provide that. They'd all had pretty turbulent recent pasts, filled with danger, so their desire for security was perfectly understandable.

It did not hurt that the group were all far safer together than they were separately.

To be fair, he liked the ones who were currently clinging to him, and was enjoying it, so had even subtly encouraged it. Hey! It got lonely at the top, and nearly everyone back at magic school had been intimidated by him to one extent or another, as his performance had made most student wizards there feel a little like Ron Weasely to his Merlin.

Redhurst was an elite academy of magic. They took in only talented, intelligent people as students; people who were often very competitive and did not like being out performed. So there had been a little resentment and even jealousy among the students. But even part of the staff had begun to feel awkward towards him near the end of his five years there. He'd just kept doing things no ordinary low level wizard would ever think to do. Who wouldn't feel a little bit intimidated by a kid who was casually redefining what everyone thought of as wizardry?

It was not like he could claim it was purely due to his genius, or anything, as there were quite a few people on staff or attending there who were legitimately smarter than he was. He'd just read the rulebooks and connected a few things. So he'd had OOC knowledge sourced from dozens of worlds, things the locals could not even have imagined, as those OOC sources included lots of weird metaphysical stuff they literally could not have known.

But people fear the unknown. Even wizards. So he had been the polar opposite of popular as no one knew what to think of him, so consequently everyone had avoided him, isolating him physically as well as socially.

Well, almost everyone. There had been a couple of annoying roommates, and Andarlin (who'd arranged for him to have those roommates, despite Jared having paid for a private room). The headmaster had almost seemed to delight in needling him with minor annoyances like that for his own amusement. To be fair, Jared had often grown, both as a wizard and a person, by overcoming the often minor challenges his friend kept managing to throw in his way, though that had often required some clever thinking on his part.

So, he guessed, in a way it was a game they'd been playing together.

Huh. He wondered how long Headmaster Andarlin had been waiting for him to realize that.

Still, here on Earth-Bet, these superpowered girls had latched onto him after being rescued from their various horrible fates - so just like one of Headmaster Andarlin's little challenges, he'd gone ahead and dealt with their problems, then set about trying to improve on the situation. And if reassuring them of their safety was needed (and it was) then that was just part of saving them, and saving them was what he'd set out to do in the first place.

The fun thing about doing good as a hobby was that it never got boring. People were infinite in their variety, and the tangled ways in which they tied themselves up in knots never ceased to amaze him. Plucking apart those knots so they could go about their lives in safety was not the worst of hobbies to have.

There comes a point at which getting richer was just tossing more money on the pile. Power also stopped being interesting after a point - how can you improve on "Can do anything you want to do"?

Provided your wants were sufficiently modest, that last goal was not even all that difficult to reach. People who let their appetites rage out of control could never have enough of anything, of course, so for them that goal was significantly more difficult, verging on impossible. But Jared had met farmers who could do anything they wanted - they'd just deliberately limited their own wants to where they were satisfied by raising their crops, their families, some animals, and getting in a little fishing now and again.

Peasants could easily afford things kings could not buy - like peace of mind, or a good night's sleep. So limiting your own wants was the best way to be satisfied by what you had (and historically, the only way to have everything you wanted). It just did not appeal to greedy people - or those taught to think they could have everything they ever wanted and that someone else would bear the cost.

Which, if you wanted a quick look at the heart and core of all villainy, that was not a bad summation: the idea, whether self-taught or picked up elsewhere, that you could have everything you ever wanted, and that someone else would bear the cost.

Once you got that idea into your head, it seemed to break open all of the limits normal people had on their behaviors, because history had shown that people who got infected by that conceit would cheerfully commit some of the worst atrocities ever - worse than ordinary folks could even have imagined without those same villains providing bad examples.

So greed just seemed the bad way to go, as it never ended in happiness for anybody.

Being an adventurer, Jared's needs were considerably more difficult to obtain and vastly more expensive than a bit of fishing. His job amounted to a close approximation of a member of an elite special forces team, or the fantasy equivalent thereof, and like any elite soldier survival meant having the best equipment and training money could buy. But that was his day job, and what was life without hobbies?

And what hobby could be better than solving other people's problems?

Oh, yeah! Always a rush!

Now, to his mind "solving problems" was very different, and very distinct from "doing everything for them." In the first, you are only taking care of issues they cannot solve themselves, clearing the way for them to learn and progress on their own. Where most people got messed up was trying to do everything for others, and that doesn't actually help anyone. You try and do everything for someone, and history has shown countless times that they'll just get lazy and start to rot in place.

That didn't qualify as helping.

There were animals, like sheep, that were renowned as stupid because given the chance they will eat, and eat, and eat until they die from their stomachs having exploded.

People had some unfortunate similarities, in that they had the unfortunate tendency to indulge in too much of a good thing sometimes. In both cases, sheep and people, letting them do so without restraint destroyed them, not helped them.

For society to exist at all there had to be certain rules governing peoples' behavior, and controls put in place to enforce those rules. Folks couldn't just rob or rape everyone they met; that would be chaos, not culture. Now control could be imposed from without, by laws backed up by armed force - the government forcing you not to do bad things, with threats of violence and imprisonment if you did them anyway; or it could arise from within, in the form of morals - people choosing not to do bad things.

Jared was one of those people who far preferred having self-control, over being forced to do or not do certain things.

In his opinion self-control was the only form of control worth having. It was the only one that had proven that it worked, long term. Endlessly complicated sets of rules just inspired people to work even harder to get around them, burrowing through even the most obstructionist legal codes to find the loopholes; while choosing not to do bad things actually resulted in you not doing them, mostly.

And one of the things people had to have restrained, as they would indulge in too much of it and it turned out not to be good for them, was surprisingly entertainment. Some leisure? Great! Everyone needs some wholesome recreational activities each day. But too much leisure was just as bad as overwork, in that either way people were killing themselves by degrees.

That did not solve any problems, only created new ones.

Jared solved problems because he liked solving problems. It was interesting. There was an expression, saying someone had "won at life", and it was presumed at that point, that person would retire and start partying. But then there was also the example shown by the various aristocrats he'd met, or read about in histories, people who had the wealth and could afford to do nothing but party - and they were jaded beyond belief, because, contrary to expectations, there was nothing duller than a life of leisure! People who had nothing better to do than to entertain themselves all of the time? Some of the most boring creatures in existence! Boring, and bored, and worse! Every last one he'd known of had grown to *hate* that lifestyle! Even the ones who did not know of anything else to do with their time.

It turned out that too much entertainment was no longer entertaining at all, just another form of drudgery to be endured.

Not what you'd expect, but there it was, and it was supported by countless examples. People who worked in fast food, and got employee discounts, soon grew tired of whatever that restaurant served. It was the same deal. Too much of a good thing, stopped being a good thing. It became a burden.

No. It was far better to stay active, and indulge in interesting work - work that meant something and, preferably, helped people.

OoOoO

Lisa snuggled deeper into Jared's embrace, enjoying the bit of time alone together.

Ok, so they were both dressed as cartoon characters, in front of a growing crowd of fans and surrounded by other racers. But nobody *important*, ie, nobody that she had to share Jared's time with, so it counted as alone time for her, just as a walk down a crowded Boardwalk would.

On dates, miscellaneous other people didn't count. So here she was alone with her beau, on an activity that promised to be enjoyable.

That counted as a date to her mind.

Further, it was one tailored to her interests, as Lisa was a girl who delighted in knowing things others' didn't, and here she found herself privileged to be a holder of secret information about the race - because Jared had openly admitted to them that he was deliberately trying to turn events towards the absurd and ridiculous, in hopes of igniting hope via shaking people out of their all-too-serious woes - and doing so in the most ridiculous and unbelievable ways possible.

As he had proven with Lung, it was very difficult to be afraid of something once that source of fear has been turned into a farce.

So while a ton of ordinary people would be wondering, in ignorance, why so little about this made sense, she knew.

And it was glorious!

Snuggled in as she was, Lisa looked out over the developing scene.

A lot of work had been done converting the Brockton Bay airport over into a racing track.

Victor had done such an excellent job as announcer for Cape-Ball that as soon as the idea cropped up to have this race, they had decided to invite the Empire cape to do the same thing for it.

Now, having arrived on the site, it became apparent that Victor had enlisted plenty of help from the Empire in preparing for it; because among other things stands for an audience had been assembled around the tracks, and even now people were coming filtering in from all directions, gradually filling them. Also, hot dog vendors, and other concessions like swiftly-printed T-shirts and such were already on sale among the crowds.

Clearly, Victor had not missed their having sold those things during the Cape-Ball game, and was now determined to cash in on that idea himself.

Well, it cost them some minor profits, but nothing they'd miss, and overall this promised to be an amazing show.

The difficulty of the course would see to that, if nothing else did.

When Lung, in his lunatic ravings fixated on killing his enemy, had demanded that his prey not be allowed to escape the vengeance of his wrath, his gang had evidently decided the only way they could be sure of that was to shut down the Brockton freeways, railroads and airport - and to do that Bakuda had coughed up a whopper.

She had apparently grown bored with all of the flesh to glass bombs Lung had been demanding, and so had gotten creative in closing off the city.

Bakuda's power hated her trying to mass produce anything. Though Lung had insisted on getting his way on her delivering more of X bomb type as opposed to Y, with the way her power worked it had been easier and faster for her to just make whatever random bomb ideas her power coughed up, then sort out the different types (something she had some initial difficulty with) and send him that portion that was what he'd wanted.

But that had left her with scores of bombs of his non-preferred types just lying around. So she'd had a large stockpile available when it came time to isolate the city.

Black hole bombs had proven wonderfully effective in several places, especially destroying highways, along with railroads, effectively scooping out great round holes in the earth, cutting off those traffic arteries as effectively as scissors cut string. Those would have worked well for closing off the airport too, but her power would have found that boring. What Bakuda had settled on turned out to be much more final. Enough bulldozers and fill dirt could replace the great chunks of dirt sucked up by her black hole bombs in the instant they existed, then roads could be rebuilt over the gaps she'd created. So a repair was possible there, just costly.

But no one yet had managed to close off an active time bubble.

To completely close off Brockton Bay, teams of ABB thugs had gone out, some to cut this traffic artery, and others that one. Those meant to cut off all flying in and out had set up dozens of mortars all around their one major airport. The Asian gangsters had done so inexpertly, despite Bakuda's rather stern instructions, but the errors made had just helped randomize the spread pattern a bit. Then, when the mortars had gone off, those shells had turned out to be cluster bombs, splitting apart into hundreds of tiny submunitions that had scattered about like raindrops, hitting almost randomly across the airport and its grounds.

There had also been bombs placed personally by Lung's agents inside of the terminals. Several elderly Asians who were ABB affiliates even had jobs there, so the airport security had been a joke - they hadn't managed to stop anything. So bombs had managed to go off throughout the terminals, baggage processing and staff-only areas, hangars, everything.

With her surplus of tinker-bombs, Bakuda had directed more than enough overkill to the airport that nothing short of half of the gang's mortar tubes failing to fire would have left any hope at all the site could even be entered, much less reclaimed and restored to active service.

Brockton Bay had not been that lucky, as virtually all of those mortars had fired just fine.

Worse still, her time bubbles were invisible. You could hardly tell they were there until you'd run into one. That had been enough for the various agencies who considered themselves authorities to have declared the entire airport off-limits as the worst sort of disaster area. There were even plans to wall it off as an active hazard to the city.

Plans that Lisa knew were about to go nowhere, because no one would need them.

She knew that, determined to frustrate the authorities and tweak their noses by fixing the problem himself, Jared had set to work on the matter; and in no time at all the redhead had deduced that the first step to solving the near-insurmountable difficulty of reactivating the airport had been to mark all of the time bubbles, so that they could be easily seen and avoided by the people who had to go around them.

Lisa had even been mildly impressed, as his idea for a solution had been utterly simple in concept, and easy enough in execution that she surmised Victor had agreed to try it out of sheer curiosity.

Looking out over the airfield, the former Tattletale (current cape name undecided - as she definitely did not plan to keep cosplaying Danger-Prone Daphne!) did not even need her power to deduce that a crew of Empire thugs must have broken into the lot that housed the city's street sweeper trucks. She also knew those were normally outfitted with jets to spray water to keep dust particles from flying around as spinning brushes did the actual cleaning. That was good, but not enough, so the Empire had, also per 'Rick's' suggestion, mounted a few leaf blowers on top of each cab, rigged up so that they would blow hundreds of pounds of glitter around but especially ahead of the slow-moving vehicles - glitter which the street sweepers would then collect again, while the Empire goons could reload the leaf blowers from the sweeper's collection bin.

Via Rick's method, the glitter could be near-completely recycled. All except in one case - when the glitter they were spraying hit a time bubble, the glitter got stuck in time and hung there in the air, making it blindingly obvious there was a time bubble there, and even outlining its dimensions.

She knew from having listened in on the phone call that idea had been intriguing enough that Victor had not even charged Rick to have the Empire carry out that little task, and she could see it worked out exactly as the boy had predicted.

It was quite easy to imagine there were a few people currently in the Empire who were thunderstruck over that.

The ability to take a previously unsolvable problem and make it go away was not a small accomplishment by any standard. But to make an answer both simple and easy? That required a rare gift. Anyone could make something complicated. Complex, nigh-impossible solutions were the default answer to thorny problems. Simplicity required genius. And from their perspective a random kid had just casually coughed up a nifty trick that was guaranteed going to be finding its way into government agencies from the PRT to Fish and Game. A way to just drive along, albeit at slow speeds, and automatically detect any hidden time bubbles around you? Yeah, that one was going to get copied by all governments on the face of the Earth as soon as they'd heard of it. Every one that had faced a problem with time bubbles, anyway.

Even better, the method did not use any unique equipment, just stuff all local governments ought to already have on hand.

Heck, the Empire members had evidently enjoyed doing it. She guessed Victor would have tried it himself - not to say she wouldn't, in his place. Riding along feeling like you, personally, were doing something to defeat the invisible, undefeatable menace posed by time bubbles?

She envied them. That had to be intense, a quiet rush unlike many they'd felt before, a thrill you could not get from any drug.

Of course, she also had to admit that their little group would be facing increased Empire scrutiny after this, and it would probably be best to get ready to ditch their Belmont identities soon, as comfortable as they were, as Victor really had to have started wondering about Rick. First, two successful ideas on how to fight Lung and win, and now this? Even the betting on Lung's defeats was a neat trick Victor would not have thought of himself; and she was sure, with a little warning, he could have rounded up people who would have paid real money to be on those street sweeper rides, just toodling around the airport spraying down everything, detecting and exposing hidden time bubbles that were otherwise an invisible menace.

That many acts of above average intelligence drew attention - especially from a cape like Victor, who was a Thinker himself.

So they had to be suspicious by now.

Complete, easy answers to thorny problems did not happen by accident. Oh, how she wished they did! As if so, they would not be in this mess, caught in the Neo-Nazi's crosshairs as a person or group they'd doubtless like to recruit.

Perhaps even at gunpoint.

Even the fact that Rick's street sweeper idea was not perfect at collecting the glitter they sprayed turned out to be another advantage, as wind had naturally blown some of that glitter around, which was a good thing as wherever the wind blew, it carried bits of glitter with it. And where there were more time bubbles, the glitter hit them and helped to identify those targets for a more thorough spraying. That had really helped their crews not to miss any. They'd even shot streams of glitter up into the air, to catch all of the bubbles left from time bombs that had air-burst - the ones that had gone off before hitting the ground.

There had not been a high proportion of air bursts - a percentage or two at most, as she concluded that had not been Bakuda's goal. But out of so many bomblets that still worked out to be quite a few. Most had likely resulted from poorly-trained gang members firing their mortars on angles too high, so the timers ran down before hitting the ground. But many others had probably been caused by faulty detonators, those bombs going off just a fraction of a second too early - something she knew was easy enough to do, as doubtless Bakuda had not been working with industry standard parts, all carefully calibrated to survive getting launched into the air by explosives, then rain down and still go off after some very rough treatment. More than likely, half her detonators were parts from used children's toys and old, wind-up clocks, or chemicals she'd literally whipped up in a kitchen sink.

And while Tinkers could do amazing things with such parts, Squealer was proof they weren't perfect.

So, while the airport was still a minefield, at least now after the street sweepers spraying glitter all around the place, all of those temporal hazards were neatly and unmistakably marked.

No, they'd had some of the Empire's attention before. Now they'd have their *interest*. Rick would be getting some scrutiny, which meant it would be time to bail out on these identities soon.

Pity, as Lisa had surprised herself by growing to quite enjoy her short time as a Belmont.

Heh, who knew that having sisters could be quite so amusing?

With the time bubbles plainly visible, it had then been possible to send through those trucks that painted lines on the roads (again, stolen from the city's road maintenance lots, she felt sure), driving them around marking out the course for the racers to follow.

Victor probably had an overhead map, because to Lisa the winding, twisting-spaghetti paths the racetrack took before her looked all but incomprehensible without using her power - which she was not willing to do for something that would matter, for like, an hour at most. Win or lose was a matter of complete indifference to her, but Thinker headaches were still the bane of her existence.

Crippling migraines from overuse of her power had been less bad since her power had been changed from being the result of her link to an alien biocomputer over to a supernatural ability thanks to Jared's efforts, and even better since discovering that he could cure them with a touch, but she still avoided them whenever possible all the same.

And this race just wasn't worth it to her.

They did not have any money riding on this. It was all for fun, general amusement plus a spectacle for the town, with the bonus of cleaning up a property the town was about to declare a hazard and wall off.

OoOoO

Lisa stood alone, still in her disguise as Danger-Prone Daphne from the Scooby-Doo franchise, scratching the neck of her kangal that had been temporarily dyed to look like Scooby Doo, and watched with mild amusement as other contestants in the race stood by and allowed official 'race technicians' (really Jared's homunculi in disguise, who had also set up all of the race track cameras for covering this event) to attach clusters of big, old fashioned, cathode-ray-tube televisions to the front of each vehicle getting ready to compete.

Why? Because when Jared had cursed both Bakuda and Grey Boy with a weakness for their powers, he had chosen television sets - *because* it was absurd.

Her currently alone status was because her man had left briefly to do something, and Lisa kept her head on a pivot watching for his return.

Soon Jared, still in his Tom Slick disguise, approached down the row of race cars, having fetched Missy (now in disguise as Marigold, Tom's blonde supporter from the Tom Slick franchise) from the sidelines, and was now walking her back to his car.

As they were passing by one of the TVs on another vehicle, the talk show host on display on it asked their studio guest, "Is there a reason they didn't just drop the Lung-head straight in the bay, at least once they recovered it? I think there were a few places they should have just run for it rather than toss it a few more times, leading to its recapture."

Ben Stein, who was the guest, answered calmly and reasonably. "Ah, but the Empire did not have control of the ball during those earlier parts, Wendy. They were there initially playing support to Glory Girl. So while she wanted to beat on Lung to get revenge for her sister, beating on Lung was what was going to happen, and the Empire was just supporting that. It was when the beatdown fun had to end due to the arrival of the PRT that dunking Lung's head in the Bay became urgent."

In a few paces they had walked beyond the range of the speakers on that television set, past others blaring static, or weather, or various other random channels that were of no consequence, until 'Tom' and 'Marigold' stood before the cameras his homunculi focused in on him as the pair came up beside his vehicle and delivered a little performance for the at-home audience.

Missy addressed Jared, wringing her hands in concern. "But Tom, if you enter one of those bubbles, time will stop. How, then, will you win?"

"There is no such word as 'stop' in auto racing, Marigold!" he calmly reassured her.

"There is no such word as 'Smurf-stain' either, Tom, but that did not stop one from entering the race against you." Marigold retorted, pointing over to where The Archer's Bridge Merchants were also setting up for the race, under their leader, who'd chosen the completely tasteless name of Skidmark for his villain identity. "What will you do when you hit your first time bubble?"

Tom posed proudly, gesturing to the front of his vehicle where several large cathode ray tube televisions had been awkwardly strapped to the hood and front bumper, all of them powered on, showing static or random channels. "The event organizers had already thought of that, Marigold, and part of the race regulations is that every vehicle is required to have one or more functioning televisions mounted on their leading edge. That's because each time bubble has only a certain amount of temporal energy, and as we all know there is no greater waste of time than television...

"Look!" Tom pointed, "There's the demonstration driver making her run now."

At that moment the PA system crackled to life, and Victor's voice came over the loudspeakers and radio. "Welcome, welcome, welcome to another edition of Cape Sports, where we use unlimited super powers applied to classic sports. Of course, the non-super-powered are welcome, too, but good luck winning anything.

"Here at Brockton Bay Airport this fine evening we have auto racing, or rather vehicle racing, as some of those things out there on the track are definitely not automobiles. Tonight's event is the first ever Mono-Cape Grand Prick, held here on the field and runways of Brockton Bay International Airport. You'll obviously note I can say the word 'prick' when I am not referring to a Smurf. That's because in this race, we are using television sets mounted on all of the racing vehicles to 'prick' the time bubbles, like a needle on a balloon. And it's Mono-Cape because the rules restrict us to one crew member with super powers per vehicle.

"But first, our demonstration run, where we prove the safety equipment is up to the challenge. We have Gertie Growler of Growler's Garage pulling up now in her Pedal Powered Penny Farthing - yes, folks, that's one of those bicycles you've never seen outside of old black and white photographs before, with a huge front wheel and a tiny rear one. It might interest you to note this was the first bicycle design to ever use spokes on the wheels, and only the second to have pedals. It's not much easier to ride than a unicycle, with which it bears a strong resemblance.

"It also might interest you to know that Baron Karl Freiherr von Drais of Germany was the inventor of the bicycle, back in 1817, and we have one of his descendants, Baron Otto Matic, racing here with us today."

"Boo!" yelled the crowd.

Victor continued on as if not interrupted. "Growler mounts her bicycle, a difficult task when the seat is as high off the ground as a grown man's shoulders, I assure you, and she takes off. For this demonstration, Gertie is holding a twelve-foot pole, lance-style, out in front of her. The minimalist equipment on display here is to showcase to everyone there are no hidden devices, or secret gadgets, what's on display is all there is; and dangling from the front end of the pole is a battery-powered television, tuned to C-SPAN. You don't get a more boring waste of time than that, folks. If a television can burst a time bubble by wasting its temporal energy, we'll all soon know about it. I should note that what Gertie is doing here is impossible without super strength - that old CRT television weighs close to fourty pounds and it is at the end of a twelve foot pole with leverage working against her. But as you can see her lift it, she obviously has the required strength ... aaand she takes off pedaling furiously, getting up to, oh, I'd say, a comfortable eighty miles an hour."

Jared kept quiet and his true feelings off of his face as he listened. His group had chosen to use this race, in part, as an opportunity to introduce new cape IDs for some of his Sirens whose previous ones had had their deaths faked. Some, not all, because a few of the girls were still undecided about what they wanted their new IDs to be.

Offering new powers was his job. But he could handle it. D&D had entire suites of spells for making someone stronger, tougher, faster, smarter, and so on. Look deep enough into the supplemental materials and you'll even find ways to tweak those spells to be even more potent. Jared had piled up enough of those modifications that he could arrange for someone to convincingly fake super-strength fairly easily, enough to earn a modest brute rating, anyway.

Normally, Rachel (who was quite happily playing Gertie Growler, the grandmotherly garage owner from the Tom Slick cartoons) did not have super strength. However, thanks to Jared's spellcasting, she'd have it for the next couple of hours.

The audience (and there was a substantial online crowd added to those growing around the airport, ready to watch a race - even if most did not believe that it could happen) subconsciously held their breath in anticipation, as Gertie got up to speed on her ancient bicycle, leveled her television-tipped lance, and rode straight for one of the glitter-filled time bubbles.

The lance tip struck, and there came a great spray of glitter out in all directions like a firework exploding.

Gertie had been riding so fast she did not even bother changing course, just riding on through the cloud, disappearing into the spray of glitter on one side of the former time bubble, then emerging from the other.

Then, possibly because she was feeling cheeky, she did the impossible and performed a wheelie, waving her lance above her in triumph as she posed and smiled for the crowd.

There came a bare moment of stunned silence, then the crowd roared with approval with energy and feeling that rattled windows several blocks away.

"YAY!"

The old grandmother pedaled around in a few victory circles, before making her way back to the starting line. One of the cars there had a front-mounted television set to a news channel, and the talking heads there kept demanding, "Did you see that?! Did you SEE that?! Ladies and gentlemen, this has not been confirmed by any official sources, but that looked like the very first time bubble to ever be defeated!"

Victor's voice resumed his announcer role. "Well that's one for the record books, folks. While Gertie returns, I'll take a moment to summarize the rules for all our sports fans out there. For every time-bubble popped, a contestant gets 10 points. Video cameras will be recording from multiple angles so we get the points to the right racers. A racer must pop at least ten time-bubbles to qualify to win. After that, racing continues until the last time bubble gets popped, at which point racers are directed by a siren to go for the finish line. Crossing the finish line first, after the siren and popping at least 10 time-bubbles, gives you 150 points, with 100 points to the second racer across the finish line and 50 for the third. The race winner will be determined by total points. So it is possible to win just by popping a lot of time-bubbles, and some of the slower-looking racers will probably be attempting that.

"The race course wanders all over the airfield, even crossing over itself in places, in an attempt to go past as many time-bubbles as it can. That could lead to some interesting traffic situations as events progress. But we'll see that very soon.

"It's quite a crowded field down there. Dozens of racers had been invited, and it looks like even more have shown up, attracted by the stunning prizes which have been offered, even just for participating. Those include some super-tech medical serums that can cure any known disease, physical or mental, among other prizes. I'd be down there racing for that too, if I wasn't already getting a couple as my pay for being the announcer.

"Obviously, the starting line is just outside of the airport, beyond the outer limits of the field of time bubbles. We've had to extend it a couple of times just because of the enormous response of racing entries. On the north end of that line, we've got the source of most of that. It seems to have started with one homeless person hearing the rules and getting an idea, then spreading it to his friends, who spread it theirs and so on. But in our invitation to this race we passed on the promoter's promise that every vehicle would leave it in like-new condition - and someone leaped to the idea that, that did not require their vehicles to *start* the race in that condition. So the city's homeless seem to have seized upon that idea, and dragged, pushed, or rolled to the airport a variety of scrounged up vehicles, with a clear preference for buses, trucks, campers and especially RVs, the larger the better - presumably for living in after the race is over. Included, I see several official vehicles, probably stolen, including a burned up fire truck, four police cruisers, two SWAT vans, and a couple dozen PRT armored trucks - some of which I recognize from the riot earlier today, and others from Cape Ball. In fact... yes! There is one that is collapsed around Menja's footprint on the back. I'd recognize that anywhere.

"These homeless wagons take up a good portion of our starting line; and joining this junk parade, we have half a dozen at least of what appear to be a few 'Squealer Specials' destroyed in past conflicts and abandoned. These are all being pushed up to the start-line by about fifty more homeless. And it appears their counting on that offer by Gertie Growler to repair any damaged racer was not in vain, as there she goes towards them. It takes just a couple taps from her gigantic wrench on each vehicle to fix it. What I wouldn't give for a wrench like that!

"It's probably Tinkertech, of course... and I guess we can consider that confirmed as Gertie has just reached the first of those six 'Squealer Specials' and repaired it with more taps of that wrench. Since everyone knows only Tinkers can repair Tinkertech, that makes for a pretty solid case that Miss Growler must be one. I wonder if she hires out?

"Anyway, folks, regardless of any Tinkertech aspirations we may all have, we've got a race to announce here. On the south end of the starting line we have almost the opposite collection of vehicles as up north, with a bewildering variety of sports cars, executive-style status mobiles, and even some genuine race cars, driven by some of the elite of Brockton Bay. Who can blame them, folks? Anyone would want the participation awards on offer here, and those cars are speedy enough some of those normals may even have a chance at winning the grand prize. Of course, they look sort of funny with those television sets strapped to their front hoods and bumpers, but that's the cost of entry, folks. You can't collapse the time bubbles without them.

"Mixed in with that crowd, I see Max Anders in his lovely BMW on the front line. But also New Wave has made an appearance. Yessir! I can see them conferring with each other between their vehicles. They're out in force today, folks. Not even a natural disaster gets this many of New Wave out and about anymore, but it seems like we've got the whole team here today, with some very nice automobiles.

"I don't recall anyone in that cape group having powers related to racing, but even if all they are after are the participation awards, I am sure they will find them well worth the effort.

"Moving on, for our other racers, we have vehicles of all descriptions here tonight. We've had the low and the high end, now here are several dozen of what you might call "normal' cars, mostly coups, some sedans, a van, a station wagon, and such. Who knows who might be driving those? It could be a local used car salesman, it could be Alexandria for all we know. We did not ask anyone to submit an official ID card before entry.

"Then there are several, ah, unusual vehicles. The ThunderBolt GreaseSlapper, driven by Tom Slick right out of the cartoons, is perhaps the most normal among those. The Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo joins us as well, with Danger-Prone Daphne at the controls, and her dog Scooby as passenger. No word on what happened to Fred, Velma, or Shaggy.

"In other news sports fans, my staff has just informed me that an apparently unremarkable Volkswagen Bug at the center of the start line may be more than it seems to be. The little white car, with red and blue racing stripes and large number 53 painted on it is in fact an exact visual match for Herbie the Love Bug from the old movie of that name. It will be interesting to see if it matches that famous racer in more than just looks.

"And now a new cape, young like most new capes are, who looks like he just made his own costume out of things he found at the thrift store, including an actual bath towel as a cape. But that's not the only thing he's made! He's riding a hovercraft made of a lawnmower and several leafblowers. It ought to be real interesting to see if he can compete, folks. Don't feel too bad, kid, we all start out in something similar to the motorcycle leathers and hockey pads you've got there. At least you had the good sense to dye them matching colors. Green and brown aren't even bad choices, good for camouflage if nothing else. At least you did not default to the cliche all-black jeans and hoodie. I think that's worth a cheer for the new cape, don't you folks?"

"Yay!" the audience replied.

"There you have it. Moving on to the real contenders, we have some unidentified vehicle it is hard to see, it is loaded down under so many JATO pods. For those who don't already know, JATO stands for Jet Assisted Take-Off, but even that is a bit of a misnomer, as they are solid fuel rockets. The military devised them to strap onto overloaded cargo planes to assist them in getting the needed thrust to get into the air. They come in various sizes, large and small, and there is a whole collection on that little buggy. It causes me to wonder if that's Squealer's personal ride for this little contest. But there's been no indication so far that it's anything more than what an insane hobbyist with no sense of self-preservation could do.

"Next we have a Sherman Tank with a classic blue and white Smurf in the commander's hatch, a dog sled, and an enormous metal cart I've only ever seen the like of in railroad pictures from at least a hundred years ago. It is a simple flat platform two people stand on and alternately press down their side of a central see-saw-type lever to power it along. The valkyrie giantesses Menja and Fenja are standing on it, ready to pump the hand-crank to make it go. While that would break our rules of one cape per vehicle, Kaiser, who made the cart, says it's ok and that's good enough for me! Hold on a sec, our race organizer, who is providing the much-coveted prizes, just called me and also said it is ok, since the giantesses basically have the same powers as each-other. What a great guy. And I heartily recommend you all buy whatever he sells, if he ever drops his anonymity and turns out to be selling something.

"...and what's this? It must be Squealer from the Merchants. Nobody else builds cars like that. She is driving an 18-wheeler Semi-trailer truck up to the starting line. It looks like it's been crashed, burned, twisted out of shape, then patched back together again using refrigerators, shopping carts, toolsheds and lawnmowers she found in the junkyard, plus who knows what else. Words fail me as...

"What? Folks, Squealer must be high on something, because she has approached the starting line from the exact opposite direction, pulled up, and yes, she has driven past the start line and parked on it... backwards! Yes, folks, she's facing backwards. The rear of her truck is at the startline, and she's stopped there. Apparently she is planning to race in reverse, trailer first. Trailers are notoriously hard to back up, and ones of that size the worst of all. I wouldn't try that in a race, not even on a bet, even while drunk. This I have to see."

"Here's an update... my staff tell me that the Smurf driving a Sherman tank is actually the leader of the Archer's Bridge Merchants, Rude Smurf, here under his alternate name of 'Accidental-Discharge-Of-Personal-Foulness'. I am told that he is the test case for 'excess swearing turns your skin blue', so far the first and only example. You can see here that his is an advanced case. Yesterday, just a normal man, now his skin is entirely blue, and he obviously feels compelled to wear a white cap and footie pants, while going shirtless. In this cold weather? Good luck to him.

"Yessir, it looks like it will be a grand event with so many racers lining to the starting line, almost ready to begin."

"There's the starter's gun, and They're Off! The cars all surge forward, some I see have problems already, we'll get back to them in a minute; but none speed ahead like that little go-kart with the JATO pods - it blows past everybody and makes them look like they're standing still!

"But wait, what's this? Apparently that wasn't the starter's gun after all - it was the Sherman tank firing its cannon at the ThunderBolt GreaseSlapper! But Tom Slick saw the turret traversing his way and dodged in reverse. The unexpected direction made it work, but cost him time. He is now at the rear of the pack, even behind Menja and Fenja on their enormous railroad hand-pumped car. When the gun went off they pumped so hard they sorta burned rubber, except those big knurled steel wheels don't have rubber, so as they spun they dug deep holes right through the pavement. They're pumping hard now that they've lifted it out of the hole and started again. They're catching up and it looks like we can expect surprising things from them.

"In the meantime, none of the racers have stopped, so, effectively, that WAS the starter's gun, since the race is going ahead full-speed regardless.

"Of course, the problem I'd referred to before is some of our racers took off to a standing start, as it looks like scores of racers have been chained to metal posts by Dick Dastardly - you'd think someone would have been watching for that, as he did it in the opening credits of literally every episode of that cartoon.

"Now the go-kart's rocket pods have run out and it looks like it's having trouble starting the next pair. It gets passed by Herbie the Love Bug, which started so strong it popped a wheelie and raced ahead on two wheels for the first hundred feet. After Herbie we have Baron Otto Matic, who is dumping crates of caltrops over the road surface behind him - what a bad sport and all-around rotten contestant. Then there is the Smurf Tank, moving so fast under Skidmark Smurf's power that it is shedding links of track and other parts as it goes - It just wasn't built to handle that kind of acceleration - it's only a tank after all. I think max speed on those types was thirty miles per hour. They were not meant to go ninety.

"Squealer's truck roars off - directly away from the race track! She must be on some strong stuff today. Baron Otto Matic's caltops seem to have burst the tires of most of the actual race cars, coups and sports cars, however New Wave all pull together like a professional racing team single file behind Shielder's car - Shielder himself being too young to officially drive is sitting in the passenger seat while it looks like they hired an actual race car driver for him, nevertheless so long as that driver has no powers that's perfectly legitimate by the rules of this race, and it certainly leaves Shielder free to operate his power, which he has adjusted into a broad screen in front of his car, pointed and sloped into a wedge like the cow catchers on old style trains, pushing all of the caltrops and stopped vehicles out of his way, clearing a path for the rest of New Wave and several of the smarter drivers to follow behind him.

"Rune uses her powers to physically lift up her Camaro and fly it over the caltrop field, while the new guy with the home-built hovercraft just plows right through them, apparently using a little extra power on those turbofans to lift the extra couple of inches to clear them completely. Hot on their heels is Danger-Prone Daphne, who remarkably seems to be pulling off the impossible driving task of simply *missing* all of those sharp bits of metal scattered randomly across the start of the race line. I wouldn't care to try that myself, folks. Yesterday I would've told you it couldn't be done. It's like dodging between the raindrops, yet somehow she is doing it. Perhaps there is some mystery to the Mystery Machine after all.

"Oh! And before Squealer's 18-wheeler drives completely off the reservation it opens its back doors and drops a ramp, down which backs one of the coolest looking sports cars I've ever seen. Seriously, folks, this black Trans Am literally gleams with polish as it brakes into a quick U-turn and races back towards the starting line. I seriously don't know what I'm looking at folks, as this looks nothing like any vehicle Squealer has produced before, but not only does it apply some sort of boost and take off, catching up to the rest of the pack like they are standing still, but that gleaming black finish that hasn't a spot of dust on it despite all of the dirt being kicked into the air by the other racers - and all of the bullets sparking harmlessly off its surface as some poor sports in the rear ranks open fire upon it as it starts to pass them. Last of all there is a red light bar in the center of its hood that appears to be actively scanning back and forth. So it's obviously Tinkertech somehow, but like I said before it looks nothing like I've ever seen associated with any gang in town.

"Back to those in the lead. The JATO-cart has managed to reignite its rocket and pushed its way back into first place in a literal roar, but has to cut it off again quick as they approach the first corner, beginning the first leg of the race that has time-bubbles on it.

"That opens the way for Herbie, who manages the turn at a frankly unsafe speed, rising up on two wheels so high I am amazed it did not flip over. But that was apparently just what it took to regain the lead and it is the Love Bug who tags the first time bubble - which pops in a dazzling burst of glitter, released from stasis. She collects a second, a third, and Ooh! now she's dodging like mad, losing speed as she swerves wildly back and forth in between bursts of machinegun fire from the Smurf Tank! So far she's been lucky, avoiding every bullet, but it looks like the two streams are coming together, trying to pinch her in between, and...

"... and the Smurf Tank just crashed into the side of a building! A thirty ton tank, it crashed into, and through, that building wall after having failed the turn, but not before firing its main gun at the Love Bug, and whether due to luck or accuracy (and let's be honest here - it's luck) the shot came so close the little car had to brake so hard it stood on its nose for a couple of seconds, and still barely squeaked by with that shell rocketing right past the hood. An amazing dodge. Had it been any less so, and that high-explosive round would have turned Herbie and its driver into confetti.

"Lacking speed to maintain the lead, the Love Bug manages somehow to spin out of the way as the now-reignited JATO-cart roars past, followed by Menja and Fenja as they show just how fast they can get going on the straightaway. The JATO-cart grabs its first three time bubbles in rapid succession. However, the thirty foot tall giantesses on their Valkyrie-cart also tag a time bubble, then two more at once, their cart is so wide. Now the twin giantesses are switching to pumping one-handed, as they each swing about giant mallets topped with televisions sets, popping time bubbles left and right, both high and low. However, doing so has cost them some speed and now they begin to be passed on both sides by other vehicles vying for the lead.

"Coming up fast is one of the Squealer Specials, this one looks like a dump truck with scorpion claws attached. I remember this one - it got used during a number of heists last year, using its massive bulk to break through the walls of auto-parts stores, then using those claws (which have vacuum cleaner tubes on the inside, if you can believe it) to suck up massive stockpiles of inventory, filling the back end of the truck before backing away and escaping before the police could arrive. I could recall it crashing, too, after Kaiser put a huge metal spike through its engine block after being used to hit an Empire business. No clue how it got to be functional again, unless Gertie Growler really is that good. Now this monstrosity has no right to be as fast as it apparently is, but it's coming up right behind New Wave, having just used its claws to throw aside the last two cars between it and Lady Photon's Mercedes.

"The claws reach towards the expensive sedan, only to have Lady Photon herself stand up out of the sunroof, turn, and give three good blasts right into the grill of the onrushing Tinkertech monstrosity, destroying its engine, front axle, and apparently a good chunk of the drive train as well, as we see the former monster truck careen off to the side, rolling and bouncing as it comes to pieces before coming to rest in a ditch. That's not something Photon Mom could have done if she were the driver, so perhaps they hired professional racers for the whole team. That would make sense, actually, as their powers really do not give them much advantage in driving...

"And what's going on with Danger-Prone Daphne? It looked earlier like she'd lived up to her name when Rude Smurf's tank shot her with that cannon. But now she's back in the race, and... are those ghosts?! Well, either she's secretly the daughter of Crusader, the famous ghost-summoning cape of the Empire 88, or we've found out what happened to Fred and Velma, folks."

OoOoO

Lisa smirked inside as she heard Victor's announcement. Skidmark, who the announcer was having fun calling 'Rude Smurf' since his skin had turned blue, had indeed shot her van with the main gun on that tank of his, causing her to spin out of control for a moment and even roll, losing her place among those vying for position at the head of the race.

However, those who had expected that to have stopped her had no idea how this van was MADE!

Oh sure, Jared had seen that rich guy's collection. But apparently those museum pieces had served as nothing more than as a source of inspiration to her boytoy, who had immediately built his own copies.

It was something that had to be seen to believed - only, Lisa herself had seen it, and she had difficulty believing it. It was like something out of a cartoon, how fast he'd thrown everything together.

The process he had followed for her van, then later repeated for the other vehicles was first, to assemble what looked like a wire frame of the final vehicle. She knew auto-makers used funky shaped folded metal to save on weight. He hadn't done that, using solid, thick rods linked together in a sort of cage and heavily braced wherever possible. Then he had put together the guts, the engine, drive train, all of the moving parts from the wheels on up, even the instrument displays - only none of the body panels or plates. So he'd left it looking like a biology model of a skeleton plus organs, with no skin or muscles, standing in the corner of a medical classroom somewhere, only as a van version of the same thing.

She knew, vaguely, there was some kind of racing where the contests used stripped-down vehicles something like that, that did away with every extraneous ounce of weight. But despite not knowing much about that genre, she was pretty sure this wasn't that, both because of the extra thick metal bars he'd used, and he'd included shapes of doorframes and other stuff the ounce-saving races would have eliminated. So she did not know what was up with that.

Then he had animated it.

Just like when he had done whatever it was he had done to cause Uncle Jeb to stand up and start walking and talking like a real person, he'd made a ceremony out of it and the guts of her soon-to-be van had started moving on their own, and behaving like a living thing, an animal instead of an object.

There were parts of her that still found that creepy.

Only after he had done that had Jared fitted on the doors and paneling and assembled what she'd always thought of as the body of the vehicle. Only, in this case, it had seemed a lot more like outfitting a hermit crab with its shell. Still, what had resulted looked normal, had a mind of its own and could control any part of itself, from the doors to the windows, to the gas cap access panel and the wipers to, well, everything. Thing could not only drive itself, it could turn the seat massager on and off, signal a turn, and change radio channels on both the AM/FM for looking tunes, or the police band scanner for crime reports.

Of course, while he had been assembling this, she could not help but notice and ask, "Are you coating it in battleship armor?" Lisa had been staring at the extremely thick - as in several INCHES thick, solid steel body panels being mounted.

"Light Cruiser," Jared had corrected her, in that extremely precise way of his. "The armor is only four inches thick, so comparable to a light cruiser. Battleships tend to be much thicker, roughly twelve inches on the main armor belt; some more, some less."

Then he'd flashed her that smile of his, the one that told her he was even more clever than she was, and made her weak in the knees. "Of course, battleships and cruisers only have that on areas calculated to be where they are most likely to be hit. This van has armor that thick all over: front and back, both sides, as well as on the top and bottom. It is a complete armor shell. Even the windows are a substance called Glassteel, which you can see through like glass but is literally as tough as steel - and just as thick as the rest of it."

"How will I even open the doors?" Lisa had asked, thinking of how much that had to weigh.

"Same as always. Armor has all been alchemically treated to be weightless. Or, of course, the van could do it for you. I've ordered this one to obey your every command, within certain limits. I'd hate for you to get frustrated and say something like, 'Get Lost', then have it drive away. We'd never see it again."

Lisa was suitably impressed. "Light cruiser?"

He'd shot a look towards her. "Oh, some of the latest and greatest tanks finally piled that much armor on front, and the few other areas they are most likely to get hit. Of course, they use advanced composite armors that are tougher than an equal thickness of steel - but I've thrown enough magic on this there is not a material on Earth even half as tough as this stuff is! Not even close!"

Then he'd paused for half a heartbeat, before casually tossing off the comment, "Oh, and the tempering process makes it entirely immune to any degree of heat or flame. And it's immune to acids and corrosion too, of course..."

Lisa had not known how seriously to take him at the time, but after getting shot by that Sherman Tank, she was taking it a lot more seriously now than before the race.

The weird thing was? He'd chosen four inches because with the way vans were normally built, between the body panels on the outside and the inner panels forming the passenger spaces, the outer walls were made to seem about four inches thick anyway. All he'd had to do was put in actual material instead of empty space, and even entering and using the vehicle, you wouldn't know that anything was different unless you'd seen him build it, were seriously into vans, or tried poking around in places most were never likely to access.

So her van was *significantly* better armored than a Sherman Tank, able to take she didn't even know how much punishment, yet the average person wouldn't know anything about it was different without a fairly detailed inspection most were unlikely to do.

Oh, and the vehicle handled beautifully. All of the weight was in the bottommost parts of the van, with the floors and everything above them being next to weightless. So she cornered like a dream, accelerated like nobody's business, and could stop on a dime.

When the van wasn't driving itself, of course.

The tires were even made of steel mesh, which the van could fluff out so they looked and acted like regular tires, but with no air pressure. The van could also flex them like we do our fingers, so could have them act as if inflated or deflated as needed. Both had different driving characteristics. Slightly deflated gave great traction, a good grip on the road for accelerating and braking, or handling around corners, while slightly over-inflated gave reduced friction and drag and so made for great speed.

It could also morph its wheels in a way that let it tiptoe along like a child trying to be sneaky - that was frankly the most cartoony thing she'd ever seen.

There were other special functions, just none that were important to this race... so far.

So with that amount of armor the blast from Skidmark's tank, a former war memorial from out in front of Brockton's town hall that the army had decommissioned then demilitarized so it was nothing more than a statue, that the Merchants had stolen and Squealer had repaired and remilitarized, restoring it to its full fighting ability and then some, had done nothing more than scuff the side of the Mystery Machine's paint.

And spin her out, and roll her over a few times, so when she'd recovered that put her near to last place, of course. Right in the midst of the swarm of Merchant vehicles that were rowdy and noisy as well as spoiling for a fight.

Their bullets rattled off her van's sides and did nothing.

Their RPG shots, whose warheads were based on heat, were barely more annoying, but they did cause one other great feature Jared had included to activate. Her boytoy had done that "Create Lantern Archons" spell of his again, this time giving her three of those spirits of light and goodness as bodyguards for this race. Then, for humor value, he had cloaked them in illusions so they appeared as the ghosts of Fred, Velma and Shaggy from the cartoons.

So, as the Merchant vehicles around assaulted her, those spirits responded by flying out directly through the sides of her van, and started to shoot beams of light as destructive as lasers, aimed at disabling those Merchant vehicles who had been firing on her.

Tires exploded. Trucks spun out. Buses flipped over all around her, and cleared the way for 'Daphne' to shoot forward, clearing that swarm of hostiles, all of the while savoring the amusement as she listened to the announcer's stunned report, "... protected by those spirits of her fallen team members, the Invulnerable Mystery Machine shrugs off more anti-tank rockets as if they were raindrops and surges ahead! How is it invulnerable? That's a mystery, folks..."

Lisa grinned. Who cared about winning? This was the most fun she'd ever had!

OoOoO

"... protected by those spirits of her fallen team members, the invulnerable Mystery Machine shrugs off more anti-tank rockets as if they were raindrops and surges ahead! How is it invulnerable? That's a mystery, folks..."

The cars of New Wave were driving like a wolf pack, every car looking out for the others, focusing on using their powers to shelter and shield each other as much as possible, while neutralizing threats in turn.

Although some cars were capable of contributing more than others.

Early on, Eric, aka Shielder (being driven in Panacea's car, since she being dead did not need it, and Eric was underage, so had not been given his own yet) had taken the lead so that he could clear the road of those caltrops. Since Lady Photon had the next best shields, when Shielder was in front her car took the rear of the family pack, just to provide the most coverage, as most threats would either come from in front or behind, and they had spent a couple of hours practicing on empty city streets so their formation could smoothly switch places so he could always be placed between the rest of them and the worst threat, while Lady Photon in her car took the next most threatened position.

Those New Wave capes that couldn't participate as well stayed at the center of the pack. They'd entered mostly because every car in this race earned another participation award, which was nice, and well worth the risk to their minds. But also meant another chance at victory, and the real prizes.

Crystal Pellham, known to the world as Laserdream of New Wave, had triggered long ago with a variation of her mother's powers. Where her mother was well rounded, having decent forcefields, flight and lasers as her powerset, Crystal had gotten a double helping of the flight and lasers; her blasts were second only to the Empire cape Purity's in this town, and she was nearly as fast and agile as the Empire cape in the air (quite a boast, considering nobody had ever hit Purity, that she knew of), but her shields were the weakest of her family.

This was an issue at present, because as her driver was skillfully keeping position in close beside her brother, she was currently struggling to maintain even a weak barrier over her precious baby blue Porsche 911 that had been a birthday present for her sweet sixteenth.

The car was precious to her not only for that, but at the time Aunt Carol had taken her aside and explained that she'd gotten it out of an impound lot, having been taken as part of the spoils when the police seized a drug lord's ill-gotten gains. So it was quite a lot more car than New Wave could regularly afford, so she was to take care of it, as it could not be replaced.

But as the closest thing to an actual race car the family had, it needed to be entered, as it was their best chance to win.

And winning could set them up for life. At the prices projected for some of those cures being offered, they were worth millions!

So it was definitely worth entering, even hiring professional drivers who'd gone out of work as more race tracks had closed during the worldwide economic slump.

Hiring pro drivers, ones used to acting as a coordinated team even, had been the easiest part of this race so far.

Hardly surprising. Frankly, things were so bad they made the Great Depression of the 20th Century look weak. Worldwide gross domestic product falling by 15%? HAH! Earth Bet could only WISH they were so lucky as to ONLY have things fall so far!

If anyone doubted things were that bad, during the Great Depression the US reported 23% unemployment. This was considered legendarily bad, and one of the defining hardships of the era. However, modern Brockton Bay had 50% unemployment - more than twice as bad.

So things were worse, MUCH worse, than Great Depression levels in the United States. It was hard to get official figures internationally, because over half of the countries that used to exist didn't anymore, in any legal or practical sense. They were warring tribes, if anything.

And no one did international trade with warring tribes. They didn't produce anything useful. So another key factor of the Great Depression, international trade in a slump, Earth Bet had also beat on any metric you would care to consider.

Among the homeless, surprisingly, the smallest portion were what was usually termed the working class. Sure, they'd lost jobs. But that happened all of the time at their level, and they were used to lay-offs, business closures, and so on forcing them to change jobs or even careers. So while there were some out of work, people still always needed plumbers, and electricians, computer techs and car repairmen.

What they did NOT need, were millions upon millions of excess lawyers.

So it was the so-called executive class who had suffered the worst. Tens of millions of former government employees, whose own bosses could not tell you what they did for a living, got dumped out on the street as those high-paying positions had collapsed. Millions of highly-paid academics got shoved out the doors as schools closed and grant money for their endless research projects vanished. Administrators for projects that no longer existed suddenly found themselves reading want-ads, wondering why no one was advertising for highly-paid positions that did no actual work.

The fluff, the fat, the easy jobs that did effectively nothing had been ruthlessly squeezed out of the workplace by sheer practical necessity, as any business that could not slim down and trim the useless from their workforce went under - and drained EVERYBODY from their workforce.

The difference was, that the useful would then find new jobs.

So thousands of CEOs, stockbrokers, elite celebrity whatsits catering exclusively to rich clientele, found themselves out of work, and no job openings in their field. Their talents no longer required, as anything that failed to contribute to putting food on the table or the functioning of the critical infrastructure of society was no longer needed.

Golf courses closed by the thousands as the rich leisure class shrank to its lowest level in over a hundred years.

No more ten million dollar book deals for novels that nobody would read. No more rich research grants for studying pocket lint. No more "charities" that did no more than launder money for a wealthy elite. And no more self-important blowhards with nothing but a political science degree, and no actual job experience, landing a six figure income and a prestigious government post doing no work that anybody, even their own boss, could identify.

The phenomena of having more middle managers than actual work force was over.

You put seeds in the ground, or contributed to keeping up the flow of goods, and electricity running, or nobody needed you.

The future of America, of the world, was almost entirely blue-collar.

The political activists would have celebrated, but political activist was another job the world did not need anymore. So those had all been put out of business years ago. No one had any pocket change to give to pay for college dropouts to shake signs and march before government buildings, when their own children were on the brink of starvation.

You contributed something useful, that led to food being put on people's tables or essential services running, or increasingly as time went on, no one needed you.

And if no one needed you, it wasn't worth their effort feeding you. Not when their own belts were tightening over not having enough themselves.

Even governments were subject to this breakdown. The number of nations whose governments had NOT collapsed at least once or twice during the crisis accompanying the rise of the parahumans could be counted on one hand. The lucky nations had been able to reform theirs in something similar to the old form, but most had not. And those that survived had laid off ninety percent of their former employees, at minimum!

The US government had laid off 90% of their workforce... twice! And still there were some who claimed it was bloated and oversized.

There was not a communist government anywhere on Earth. They cost too much to maintain. The most expensive cost-for-benefit style of government on Earth. No one could afford them.

So many people never sat down and thought through what 50% unemployment would MEAN!

People that kept things working and created things for others to use were needed, and so stayed employed, even if things were tight, and they had to change employers from time to time. But people that just jockeyed papers across a desk were not, and so did not.

In yet another reversal of former trends, back in the 80's populations had started to move out of cities and suburbs, and back out into rural areas to farm - whether or not they had done so before, or were any good at it. Most were city folks whose basic understanding of farming went no further than "seed goes in ground". But they had parked campers or RVs on some bare patch of land (more or less ignoring whatever corporation or government claimed it owned that spot) and made the attempt anyway.

It was better than dying of slow starvation in the cities, as yet another homeless, out-of-work bum. And neither the governments nor the corporations could afford to hire enough cops to drive them off the land they'd settled.

The settlers would have just kept coming back anyway. Where else did they have to go?

The former race car drivers New Wave had hired hadn't raced in a few years, having previously switched careers to become long-haul truckers, because society always needed goods moved around. Farms and orchards were very good at producing stuff, and getting those products to where people would consume them was always going to be needed.

Crystal knew of an entire law firm, a big, and formerly popular one, that had converted over and now mowed people's lawns - then took and sold the grass clippings to people who used it as animal feed for cows. The investment firm that had formerly managed those lawyers' stock portfolios now picked apples in Washington state.

Pedicabs, a form of hybrid bicycle/rickshaw were beginning to appear in American cities as a small-scale local means of transport. She thought the hatchback tricycles designed to carry passengers on a for-hire basis were kind of cute.

She knew of a former ad agency whose members all ran them - with ads splashed all over their sides, of course.

Those were the lucky ones. Crystal had heard rumors that, after an outraged parahuman had leveled their corporate headquarters, and possibly-accidentally took out all of their source code with it, the CEO of Microsoft was now begging in the streets.

Rumor had it that parahuman had triggered while waiting on hold for tech support.

Shielder's car jinked to the right, opening the path to her, and Crystal took the opportunity. As Laserdream she had the most effective long-range attack out of all of New Wave, so was paired with her brother Shielder and tasked with taking out threats to their group he protected them from. Right now, that threat was one of Squealer's Specials, an abomination which looked like a fiberglass pirate ship with wheels and dozens of black-powder cannon poking out of hatches on either side. The broadside on it was deafening, and dangerous for the sheer weight of steel balls it flung more than the accuracy. That made a broadside from it more of a ship-sized shotgun blast to the side, more than anything aimed. Still, it was devastating - that's why Shielder's car had gotten in the way of it to protect the rest of them.

Shielder had the opposite of the set Laserdream had. Like her, he'd gotten a variant of their mom's power, however his lasers and flight were pathetic, while his forcefields were world-class.

Just as Laserdream was on offense, her brother, having the best force fields, was on defense. They were a team within a team. His driver was tasked with getting him in between the worse threats to the rest of New Wave's formation, while she was tasked with ending them.

Her driver had positioned her perfectly. She took the shot.

The energy bolt must have struck something volatile inside, because all of a sudden she couldn't hear and a pressure wave shoved at her car, causing a minor skid. She blinked, suddenly feeling wind on her face, and simultaneously realized that her shield had gone down, and that apparently her powers made her immune to being blinded by big flashes of light.

Because the pirate ship on wheels had gone up like it was nothing more than one BIG barrel of black powder, leaving a crater in the road.

As her hearing came back, she heard the announcer over the radio saying, "... and New Wave starts off their new career as racers with a Bang! Wow! That came close to a BIG bang, folks! It rattled windows clear over here in the control tower! Some of the racers are dropping out as they take time to blink the spots from their eyes. That's going to clear the field a bit, folks."

Laserdream took several gulps of fresh air to clear the momentary panic she'd felt over that big blast, feeling lucky the drivers of her race team were all wearing polarized face shields on their helmets... and looking *away* from the explosion!

OoOoO

"... and New Wave starts off their new career as racers with a Bang! Wow! That came close to a BIG bang, folks! It rattled windows clear over here in the control tower! Some of the racers are dropping out as they take time to blink the spots from their eyes. That's going to clear the field a bit, folks."

While Victor was doing his announcer job and chattering, mostly about the lead vehicles in this race, Jared was struggling forward from the rear of the pack, a mad mass of vehicles of every sort and description, most of them desperate to pop their first time bubble - a landmark that would pump their participation award up to the next level.

Jostled from each side by a tide of vans, trucks and buses brought to this event by the city's homeless, and that now appeared to be racing, not for victory, but for the sheer bloody-minded amusement of smashing into other vehicles, Jared shifted gears and applied one of his spells boosting the Thunderbolt GreaseSlapper, sliding in between two buses full of mooks firing at him, darting around the rocket-propelled grenade they'd fired at him while sliding past a dump truck - avoiding the anvil someone inside of the back tried to drop on him, then around one of the Squealer Specials as it stabbed at him with a mechanical scorpion-like stinger on its back, all in less than an instant, clearing the tangle before any of them could effectively block his advance.

Heh, those must be Merchants - obviously not in this race out of the kindness of their hearts.

However, doing so left him neck-and-neck with a shiny black Trans Am that was also fighting its way forward through the Merchant parade and their impromptu demolition derby.

Surprisingly, he recognized it instantly. "Hey gang?" he announced to his Sirens over a telepathic link he'd set up before this race. "Someone has entered a perfect visual duplicate of the Knight Industries Two Thousand," he said, dodging around an RV that just tried to ram him and darting ahead of two vehicles trying to crush him between them, still neck-and-neck with the black Trans Am.

"A what?" Taylor's mental voice came back.

"K.I.T.T." he replied.

"Still not getting it," Missy told him.

The boy mentally rolled his eyes, sending them that sensation. "Just like Herbie was the star of a few racing movies, KITT was the star of a TV show about an intelligent car, used to thwart evil and correct injustice. It was all but invulnerable, could powerfully boost its speed and make amazing jumps - not to mention often being smarter than its driver."

"Sorry," Lisa shot back. "Must have been before our time. But didn't the announcer note the strange black car ignoring bullets?"

"So it's more than a perfect visual match, then. It must have some of the functions," the wizard concluded. "Come to think of it, one of the stunts KITT was most known for was deploying from the back of a semi while the truck was in motion, or being recovered the same way. It was one way to avoid the very distinct vehicle from being tracked by the organization's enemies. So we've got not only a close match for the car, but more than likely a devotee of the series driving it."

While he was saying that, KITT came flying over the top of one of the nearby buses, landing mere inches from the Thunderbolt GreaseSlapper as Jared jinked wildly to avoid the collision.

This brought them neck-and-neck once again as they cleared the tangle of the homeless vehicle swarm.

It was the nature of traffic to bunch up, cars forming clusters as they tried to creep past each other. Having generally the slowest vehicles along with the worst drivers, the Merchants and homeless in their buses and RVs largely formed the cluster that was in last place. Now breaking free of them and into the largely cleared zone between them and the next pack of faster cars ahead, they saw that middle rank as their next obstacle on their way to challenge the leaders.

The distinctive sound of KITT's Turbo Boost echoed as the vehicle roared off in excess of two hundred miles per hour.

A grin could be seen on Jared's face as he matched that in his highly modified ThunderBolt GreaseSlapper.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Well, still alive, folks. Not sure how that happened, but I made it through another beastly winter.

Also, most people don't seem to know this anymore, but the rule is "One speaker (or point of view) per paragraph." So do not have multiple people speaking, or combine one person's talking with another person's action, both in same paragraph. It's wrong, and confuses the reader about who is doing or saying what things. However, in those rare cases when the same person is speaking across multiple paragraphs, like an announcer, it is proper to indicate this by not concluding one paragraph with ending quotation marks when it is followed by another paragraph of the same person speaking.

Not that they teach that in schools, anymore. Heck, they didn't teach that 50 years ago! But my mother was an English nut, and so... yeah. It's still the rule, and I know it. It conveys useful information to an enlightened reader about just who is speaking, so I try and use it where appropriate.

Beta work by Dogbertcarroll.