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The Lioness - a 'tactical' superheroine
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She pulled the specially molded clamshell Kevlar over her head, then began clicking together the four catches down each side, fitting it snuggly before reaching for her harness.
Her unwelcome ‘partner’ was pulling on his own gear with similar practiced efficiency. He caught her eye and glanced at her chest with a slightly different reason than most men. “Why do you even wear a vest? Bullets bounce of off the Lioness.” He sneered, “I know. I’ve shot you.”
“Well for one, Spider, people see the vest and think twice about pulling the trigger in the first place. And unlike you, most hostiles don’t end up actually hitting me. It’s a lot safer for everybody. And two, the Kevlar traps bullets. Cuts down on ricochets. Like you said, they bounce off of me and have hurt bystanders before.
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One my "WTF" questions is why does Superman let himself get shot? He has superspeed, heat vision, x-ray vision, and telescoping/microscopic vision.
He could use x-ray vision, find all the guns (esp those people are holding), send a burst of heat vision to melt the firing pin, move on to next gun. In a few instants, all the bad guys guns are nullified, and there is zero chance of a ricochet causing damage.
Very handy in a hostage situation as well. (Doubly so since it seems most of the time that even though the artist draws his heat vision, it doesn't seem to be something visible to the human eye, at least at certain power levels).
Of course he rarely uses his super-speed in combat. Most fights with Superman should never start. (I have this problem with Flash, esp the TV show.)
Don't get me started on Superman Vs. Doomsday (possibly the absolutely stupidest written fight in the history of comics, unless Superman is an absolute utter moron). Honestly, the writers should be embarrassed.
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She looked over the last of the checklist and turned to Doctor Cartwright. “I seem to have forgotten my pen. Do you have one, perchance?”
“I always have a pen, dear” he answered with a slight smile, passing her his. It was a long standing ritual between them with as much force behind it as a thousand military superstitions shared by pilots and foot-sloggers alike. If he hadn’t, she might have scrubbed the mission right then and there, the omens speaking so firmly against it. But he’d never let her down. Not even the first time she’d asked him for a pen.
...4 months ago...
“Miss Taylor– Angeleah, you’ve already been the victim of a capricious god, I don’t want to take adv–
“I’m nobody’s victim, Doc. Liam was an oversexed jerk, but he died screaming. Its hard to beat that for instant kharma. I hate the rat-fucker that killed my parents a hundred times more than Liam.” She was panting with remembered outrage.
Doctor Cartwright looked at her pain and turned away in shame. ‘What are we doing?’ he thought to himself.
“Enough about me. What’s got you so spooked? You’re a good person, doc. I trust you. So trust me. Tell me what’s scaring you?”
The doctor took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, composed himself. Calmer, he faced her and looked her in the eye. “Miss Taylor, some of my colleges have devised a series of tests. Tests for your... for your durability. Tests I object to because they amount to little more than sophisticated, premeditated torture. Even with your consent, this runs deep in to morally grey waters.”
“Then I share your concerns.” she answered with a cool evenness that would have made the blood of anyone who didn’t know her like he did run cold. He had been her doctor since the day she had blasted into the FBI building. He had washed her parents’ blood off and kept her from going mad that day. Since then he had proven both considerate and unflinchingly principled. His was a sense of honor that she aspired towards. They weren’t friends precisely, but they were close in their own fashion. Kindred sprits.
“As you might imagine, we would have to subject you to increasingly hostile circumstances, first until they caused you pain, and then escalating until they began to cause you injury before stopping.”
She could tell how much this upset him – his voice had gone flat, robotic, clearly reciting something he had read on a page from memory because the words were too awful for him to form himself.
“But this would be gradual, yes? Controlled?” She asked. “You’d help me find out my limits before someone shows them to me the hard way, in the field? I could call it off right? There would be a safe word or something?”
“Yes, absolutely. And determining ‘you limits’ for your own knowledge would be one reason for the experiments, Miss Taylor. But there’s more. More that you have to know.”
She just cocked her head, listening and waiting.
“The experiments would form the basis of counter–”, he choked on the word for a moment before continuing. “Countermeasures tailored to your physiology should you go rogue.” There, he’d said it, and he was shaking with anger now. “There are people here who want to be sure they can kill you, Angela.”
She remained silent, thinking. He looked at her, pleading for her forgiveness with his eyes.
Finally she took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Do it.”
His head drooped, not with relief, but shame.
“I can tell them to continue then. But I need more than your spoken, or even written consent. I need you to write out for me, in your own words, your understanding of what will be done and why. I’ve brought the forms.”
“Did you bring a pen too, doc?” she said, softly, with quiet kindness that made him look up at her again.
“I always have a pen, dear. You know that.” he answered, and realized that was why she had asked.
She took the papers and confiscated his desk in companionable silence and thought for several minutes before beginning to write. When she was done she handed it to him, still silent.
He read it, and his eyes gleamed, on the verge of tears.
“I’ll... I’ll monitor every procedure.”
“I know you will, Doc. That’s probably the only reason I can do this. But make sure they get it right the first time. I don’t want to play guinea pig forever.”
“I will.” He folded the paper in precise thirds so the creases would obscure nothing that she had written. He tucked the paper into his labcoat pocket and withdrew.
She sat in his office alone the rest of the night.
Like all monsters, I am terrifying. But I am a monster only in the imagination of those who must fear the worst and act to prevent it. This is my truth– Today. Who can know Tomorrow?
I, Angeleah Clarice Taylor, consent to these experiments though their essential purpose is to do me harm. I do this to safeguard lives should I become a monster in fact, and not just in imagination. I trust in my friends, my lawful superiors, and my people. So that they may place their trust in me.
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I'm expecting the Lioness's most recurrent 'weakness' will take the form that she doesn't weigh any more than a normal person her size and she has to concentrate to fly/anchor herself in space. The physics of momentum are an unrelenting bitch to the super-strong. Fortunately she's had a good teacher, who we'll be meeting later .
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TwiceOnThursdays wrote: I love this. Very practical, and shows good tactical thinking.
One my "WTF" questions is why does Superman let himself get shot? He has superspeed, heat vision, x-ray vision, and telescoping/microscopic vision.
To be honest I find about 90% of Superman stories intensely boring. If it comes down to physical prowess... He Wins. Done. Finito.
Only the best writers can manage him and when the others fall back on fisticuffs to drive the story the show is over (for me). Superspeed is a HUGE contributor to the ludicrous proposition of having a Superman fight be dramatic. Its one of several things they need to officially carve out of his suite of powers entirely -- formalize what most writers do already: ignore it as unworkable. But until then we just have to cherish the stories that recognize the psychological and moral dimensions are where the character thrives. I applaud the writers who understand his most interesting superpower is virtue and that its not as unchallengable as his super-strength.
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She shook her head, trying to scatter the unwelcome memories of her ‘testing’ She hadn’t slept quite right ever since discovering she could still drown like anyone else. She could crush a tank... and still be water-boarded if she were restrained. Jason had brought her some books and tapes on pearl divers. Through practice and breathing exercises she could, with advance warning, hold her breath about 4 minutes now. That number was still rising and she worked on that - and her fears - every day.
Supplies drawn and packed, she walked toward the hanger with her mind back on the task at hand. There was a man in a lab coat leaning against the wall nonchalantly in the closed corridor. She wasn’t fooled.
“Can I help you?”
He stood up straight, maybe a bit startled as if he’d been deep in thought rather than alert for her approach. “Yes...?”
“I don’t recognize you. And this is a very secure area...”
He quickly brandished his credentials and gave the day code for her project. “I’m not supposed to be in this section, but I hope you can spare me a moment. It’s... important.”
Curious, and not particularly threatened, she tipped her head and listened.
“You haven’t met me because I am the man who designed and evaluated your recent... study.
Her eyes narrowed with unthinking anger. The memories of pain... But still she said noting.
“I wanted to reassure you that my summary, my... options... I developed from that study have never appeared on any computer screen. The file is physical, there are only two handwritten copies and they are both in places I imagine make Fort Knox look like a church donations box. No system is foolproof but your vulnerabilities are being kept very safe.”
“I appreciate your candor,” she said through nearly clenched teeth, “but I’m pressed for time. Now that I’ve met you...” her hands were clenched into fists, the fingers grinding against her palms with a force that would shred steel, “Can we pick this up, say day after tomorrow?”
“I’m afraid – truly afraid – that won’t be possible. As compensation for my good works the organization has provided me with an all expenses paid tour to the Australian outback. It’s been a lifetime dream of mine to see Ayers Rock and I’ll finally... Well. To be honest Miss Taylor, I expect some nice young person with impeccable deniability will kill me in my sleep before I get back. An office fire or two later and all the ends will be neatly wrapped up.”
“WHAT!?” This was NOT the direction this conversation should be taking. She didn’t want revenge precisely, but she did want to confront this sadist on her own terms, not this ambush in a bare access corridor.
“It would be treason for me to tell you what I’ve devised and would make all your suffering for naught. But since others may intuit what I’ve developed methodically, I... I just wanted to offer you some advice: Work on your flying. Not the speed but how much you can lift. Your instructor, the captain, can probably offer some ideas. He’s very clever.”
She was half listening, still processing his first bombshell. “They’re going to kill you to protect my...?
“It’s been my honor working with you. I hope you do great things. And I’m truly sorry for the pain I caused you.” Then, unable to face her any longer, her turned and strode briskly back the way she’d come. He stopped at the next intersection and looked back at her. “Oh, one last thing, not that it would be an option for this organization. The power that made you what you are? It could also unweave you. But you probably thought of that yourself. You’re quite clever, too.” He gave her a soft, sad smile.
She stood, staring as he turned a corner and was gone.
She was over a minute late to the plane. No one seeing the desolation of her expression asked why.
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People doing things they do not want to do, but think need to be done, and paying the cost. And immense power but with some limitations.
That makes a very interesting world. And you've populated it with characters that we want to know more about.
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SHTL
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- - -
Then, something hit her.
Hard.
It's a Hollywood myth that people can be bodily flung around by the energy transfer than occurs in the space of an inch or two and along a contact point a couple inches wide when a punch connects. No matter how strong the person is throwing the punch. Human bodies are squishy. It takes special harnesses and a fantastically slow release of energy to generate that effect, often from a whole team of stuntmen pulling on ropes with their full bodyweight. In the real world people will burst like water balloons before gracefully sailing away when a true hammer blow falls.
Angeleah was not squishy. She’d found that out months ago when she’d graduated from firing range dummy flinching as a 30mm vulcan cannon opened up on her courtesy of Captain Birch and a parked A-10 (he'd had total faith in her), up to being a target for an M1-Abrams as part of her ongoing durability testing. They’d had to rig the tank for time delayed remote firing; no tank crew they could find would accept the order to shoot at an unarmed woman standing out on the test field 500 yards down range. The first try had missed. She was a tiny morsel compared to the armored predator’s usual diet of tracked vehicles and hardened buildings. The howl of the round’s passage almost made her call a stop to the proceedings. But the second time? Center of mass, baby. She’d bounced ass over tea kettle almost half a mile before having to dig herself out of the churned earth hillside that served as the range’s backstop. She came out laughing and covered in mud. "It kinda tickled!" They’d given up on ballistic testing after that. There was really no point. When it came to kinetic kill weapons she was no-bullshit invulnerable. No, all capitals, please. And get some boldfaced up in here. INVULNERABLE, bitches! Yeah. Like that.
So when a massive meathook came out of the darkness and slugged her with enough power to pull her whole body into the air behind the homerun hit on her skull and she flew across the room to embed herself in the concrete wall like spear thrown by a god... it didn't hurt, but she took notice.
“Ow! Fuck, my hand!” roared a meaty bass voice.
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More (ass-kicking payback) to come.
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It started with the dream of her birth.
A simple girl. Plain really. One who would go on to lead a bitter, shallow life, except...
A young god espied her, as she walked the perimeter of the great pool in their place of learning.
He was virile, potent, new in the bloom of manhood, and in her budding frame he alone saw her potential.
As she climbed to the place of diving he called down Demeter’s blessing, and her hair grew golden and fine. As she walked to the brink, high over the water her hips grew wide and womanly. And as she bounded up and down preparing to leap, her bosoms swelled to shame the titans and they bounded with her in a symphony of fertility, for Demeter served well her lord.
And she leapt, like an arrow through the air and so inspired he called upon Artemis. Her limbs grew as she arced towards the water, long and shapely as the sacred deer, and then fulsome with muscle filling her with the Moon Huntress’ almighty grace and power.
But water was the sacred element of woman, and as she slipped beneath the waters they began to churn. He called down the grace of the most beautiful of all goddesses, Aphrodite. Her swim-club suit slid away in the current and the bubbles carried her up, until like the goddess she too came forth upon the foam. Naked and glorious. And she continued to rise, flying over the chain link fence that separated her from her lord as he lay in the grass gazing at her, knowingly. And then she knew her name, for while she had been blessed by many, she sprung fully formed from his mind, Athena, master of spear and shield, Goddess of Lust and Blood. And she settled on him and they rutted and his light made her whole.
It was a seed that had been planted years ago in the thin and wretched soil of woman. It lay fallow and the shadow creature lived a life even less than ordinary, took a husband made of trash, and retreated into misery. That thin, useless woman, waiting not for the light of her forgotten god but for the pitying release of death. Until the day when the leaves turned and fell, and her lord returned! Now he was mighty indeed, adult and in the height of his power. The sleeping dream quickened in her mind, replayed itself in her flesh, and the garbage that had carried the seed was dust beneath her heels. She was ATHENA and she did mount her god once more and their lust burned like a wheel of fire.
And then her lover was gone.
The goddess found herself in the hovel of woman and smelled the sickness and decay. She burned it, and the spider that had been the woman’s husband in it.
But still her lover was gone.
So she tracked down every drop of the poisoned blood that had given birth to the woman, and slew them all, branch, stem and most tender leaf.
But still her lover was gone.
She learned of other goddesses, kindled by her lover. But they were not sisters. They were thieves, who had kept her love from her. And when she found them, she slew them too with spear like lightning and shield unbroken.
But still her lover was gone.
The bards of the land sang of her might and her fury and her triumphs. They dubbed her Bloody Athena and in their fear she knew some solace.
But still her lover was gone.
She turned one year old, but she was no child. She took other loves, and felt a quiver as they died beneath her and no more, for no mortal could satisfy her.
But still her lover was gone.
The wheel of seasons turned again and the leaves began to fall. So she planned a great massacre. Because birthdays should be fun.
But still her lover was gone.
...I miss you, Walker.
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And now... repercussions.
Once inside, Taylor began to strip out of the borrowed flightsuit. They’d had to give her one of their biggest to zip up over her chest, and she’d rolled up the overlong arms and legs into somewhat comical cuffs.
Merete pointed at here arm. “If you have that, I’d hate to see what happened to the other guy.” She said with a chuckle, having no idea how right she was.
Angeleah looked at her arm. She hadn’t been hurt in years, not since... Liam...
“It could also unweave you...” The man’s voice suddenly echoed in her thoughts.
“Oh. Oh no. We have to get him back.” She was so distressed she actually gabbed the general by both shoulders and shook her. “We have to get the man with the badge back!”
At the moment Merete, whose body shook as helplessly as a Chihuahua in the jaws of an Irish Wolfhound, was immensely grateful Angeleah did not have super-speed.
“Tay-lor-plea-se-stop-tha-t!” her teeth clattering as she carefully shaped the words.
“Oh!” Taylor released the uniformed woman, rejecting her mistake so forcefully Merete staggered back four or five steps, barely managing to avoid a fall. “Oh. I’m sorry! But this is crucially important: we have to get the man in the badge back here.
“Who?” Merete asked, trying to tug her coat back into shape. She didn’t understand what Taylor was on about, but she accepted implicitly that it was Important. Angeleah never laid hands on people like that, and especially not her.
“I don’t know! I saw his badge, but I can’t remember his name. But he knew. I don’t know how, but he knew...”
“Breath in, Taylor. Breath in and slow down. The man had a badge. Who was he?”
“He said you were going to kill him. To protect my secrets.”
‘Oh. That narrows it down quite a bit.’ the general thought, distinctly non-plussed. She held up her hand flat above her head at about the level of Taylor’s nose. “About yay tall? Salt and pepper hair? Glasses?”
“Yes... oh. He did have glasses! I forgot that too... But what was his name?!” She was calmer now but still not thinking quite straight.
“Where did you meet Professor Dover, Angeleah...Exactly?”
“Just before the op. He was waiting for me. He told me what he’d done. To me. But not what he’d written.”
Despite herself, Merete smiled. That’s sounded like Dover. The only problem with surrounding yourself with honorable people was they tended to do the honorable thing. With surprising inventiveness sometimes.
“So he didn’t tell you what he wrote?” She encouraged the young woman.
“No. He said that would be treason. But that’s not important!”
Merete cocked an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ she thought. ‘It seems awfully important to me...’ but said nothing.
“He said the power that made me could unweave me... The first man I fought – Blacksite’s lieutenant, I think – he hurt me.” She held out her arm again, the bruises now hideous purple circles, all surrounded by a broad halo of sickly dark gold. All displayed across flesh a tank could barely tickle...
“This whole night feels like a bad dream.”
“I feel the same way,” Merete said softly with a rueful smile. Her sins were coming home to roost. She shrugged her shoulders, and readied herself for the ugly conversation about to begin. ‘You don’t sleep in the bed you want, you sleep in the bed you have...’ she parodied herself. She’d made this bed herself.
“We’ll fly Professor Dover back from Australia in the morning. He’s still in the air on his way there now.”
“He’ll be disappointed.” Angeleah said, unexpectedly smiling. “He really wanted to see Uluru.” Taylor used the aboriginal name for the sacred stone, the one the man had called ‘Ayer’s Rock’.
“That must have been quite a talk you had!”
“Were you... are you... really going to kill him?”
There it was. Placed so she could tap dance away neither to the left or the right. ‘Birch has taught her too well,’ the general mused. Truth or lie. Nothing in between.
“I was going to. I may still.” There was steel in her voice. Steel she didn’t trust she’d have up until that moment.
“He understands why, you know?”
“I know...”
They stood together, the room very still.
“Do you?” the older woman finally asked.
Taylor, a living weapon of mass destruction, a girl who had been raped and violently orphaned now maybe betrayed by the woman who had tried so hard to give her the chance to find her own way, stood very still.
Angeleah looked at her... and nodded. Once.
“I’ve decided I really don’t want your job.”
Merete exhaled, truly happy the young woman was still talking to her. “Then you’re wiser than I was at your age.”
Suddenly Taylor was hugging her. Her touch gentle this time.
The general let it slide without comment. Just this once.
Taylor released the general. “We saw Blacksite. His face.”
“YOU DID?” Merete was shouting suddenly, and not with outrage that Angeleah had touched forbidding fruit. The revelation was met with naked, ravenous curiosity.
Taylor had been hoping the Spider was wrong about them having stumbled over a secret that the general was keeping from her. Keeping for reasons that might make very good sense to Mueller, she had realized. The plane ride home had been a long one, and time had taken its chance to spin layer upon layer of suspicion over the sandy grain of his words. It had formed the perfect pearl of doubt, and the revelation that Merete would kill a man in her own organization in cold blood hadn’t exactly dispelled that doubt.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Blacksite is Liam Walker’s brother?”
If Spider hand snuck up and hit her in the head with a bat her expression wouldn’t have been much different. She blinked a few times, face blank with shock, and then made a little gasping inhalation as if her whole brain were rebooting and just remembered breathing was a thing she should do.
“Because I didn’t know?”
The rest of her brain seemed to be firing again as she caught the real sub-text of Taylor’s question.
“We’ve never seen his face! How could you think I’d keep something like that from y–” She saw the tilt of Angeleah’s head and the single raised eyebrow.
“–oh.” The last few minutes had just happened. “Ok. I deserve that.” She took a deep breath, rethinking.
“I swear to you – on my honor – that I did not know Blacksite had anything to do with Walker.”
Angeleah decided that if Merete were faking now, she was better off believing the lie. She’d never seen a person more sincere.
“The only problem with all this being, Liam didn’t have a brother. Or any siblings at all. What exactly is it you saw that makes you think so?”
It came out in a rush. “If you saw him! It was just obvious. He looked so much like Liam, but he was older. Maybe five or ten years older. And there were all the ogres, and the lieutenant was so fast. And there was no gizmo. It was all Blacksite. There is no gizmo. He made them.”
Merete knew Taylor wasn’t babbling, precisely. There was an underlying thread of logic, but it was all rested on some crucial fact that put it in context for Taylor that she didn’t share. Yet.
Angeleah could tell she wasn’t making sense. She tried to boil it down. “Blacksite has to be like Liam! His lieutenant hurt me. And only Liam’s other women can do that.”
Finally Angeleah’s story had come full circle to the injury on her arm. And General Merete Mueller, the commander of Orca, hand picked
by the president to look after the nation’s paranatural arsenal, still wasn’t sure she understood any of it.
But she knew she’d better start to. Maybe Dover would understand.
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...Six months ago...
She was still stinging from her second run-in with Spider, but that wouldn’t stop her from going out and wandering the city looking for trouble. She’d catch him next time. She just had to seize the initiative. Despite his claims of being a somewhat typical thief, she’d foiled several other high end robberies without any of the complications he seemed to delight in throwing at her.
Her hearing was, perhaps disappointingly, quite ordinary. Which was why she had a police scanner earbead courtesy of the FBI (they were nominally her day job). Usually she tuned it out and relied on visual scanning, but sometimes an officer’s tone would catch her attention. Like now:
“Code 80, I repeat CODE 80. She’s on the move up from 42nd on 7th, towards the park. My god, it’s a slaughterhouse in here.”
She didn’t recognize ‘code 80’ but the man’s voice was a barely controlled shriek.
She didn’t stop to gain altitude, instead launching herself in a blur through the canyons of the city. She clipped an unexpected flagpole and had to trust to luck it didn’t land on anyone because she was going too fast to stop and check. The resulting shrapnel had been pretty small so she was hopeful no one would be hurt.
When she got there, she wasn’t sure if her haste had been validated. There was no one at 7th and 42nd to save.
They were all dead.
In shock she drifted up town, following the trail. The river of blood was hard to miss.
She heard more cries on the police band and increases speed. ‘She’ – whatever ‘She’ was – had been sighted near the 79th street transverse. Taylor gained altitude and finally saw her in the distance. That the woman leaping from person to person driving them into the ground was nine feet tall helped considerably with identification. She was also carrying something large, like a suitcase maybe. And a stick?
Target sighted, the Lioness began to accelerate. One good flying spin throw and she might be able to pitch the woman into the JKO reservoir. That was probably the largest open spot on the island, well away from people.
Instead she slammed into a shimmering wall of light.
“Don’t. She’ll find her prey in a few minutes and it’ll be over. The less people in her path the better,” said a voice that promised all the pleasures of the world.
She looked up and he breath caught in her throat.
Dragon Pearl was in New York.
“Thank God your here. We can stop her together.
The woman just shook her radiant, stunning face, beautiful even wearing a sad frown.
“Oh, sorry. I’m Lioness. I’m a good guy. Come on! She’s probably hurting more people. We’ve got to hurry.”
She just shook her head again. What was wrong with her?
“I don’t... but... well the let me go at least. I have to stop her!
“You’ll die.” it was almost a whisper.
“YOU DON’T KNOW THAT! I have to TRY!”
The wall of light vanished and so did Dragon Pearl. Confused and furious she looked for the Amazon. Why had she stopped her? People were dying! She spotted her on 5th, systematically butchering her way across the front steps of the Metro art museum. There were bodies everywhere. Children...
Taylor didn’t pause to make threats or announcements. She didn’t ask the woman to stand down. She wasn’t trying to arrest the mass murderer... Flying in fast and low she just hit her.
Hard.
And suddenly it was like her first day on the mat with Sensei Birch. The Earth and sky were a tumbling kaleidoscope and when the world next snapped into focus she saw the Amazon’s face grinning at her over the edge of a burnished piece of brown metal that had her pinned to the ground and saw a spear that seemed to go on forever from this angle. Its point flashed down at her eye until it filled the whole world...
Then there was another body-twisting shockwave and she was surrounded by sky again, the city upside down above her, and Dragon Pearl floating next to her seemingly upright from her perspective, calm as could be.
“What IS WITH YOU!?”
“You’re welcome.”
Bits and pieces of the last few second started to re-cohere into a narrative and Angeleah’s hand snapped up and covered her gapping mouth.
“She... would have killed me. In one move. She had me in one move...”
“Don’t ever stick around for a fight that woman starts. She’ll kill you if you’re her target. But she rarely flies. Normal people have a better chance against her than we do. They’ve hurt her before, if only a little.”
That made no sense at all. Like everything else this woman was doing. “I’m pretty tough.” It sounded lame even as she said it.
“It won’t matter. That spear will go through you like a marshmallow. You’ll be dead before you feel it. Liam made a monster with that one.
“She’s... one of us?
“Oh yes. Liam dreamed his lover as a goddess of the hunt. He’s gone now and so Athena hunts us in his memory.”
“But its just a spear.”
“I could show you, but it’s better if you just trust me. As tough as we are most of us are also slow to heal. It wasn’t on his mind at the time. Our powers are just the flat props and cardboard scenery of his dreams. Look at us from the side and it’s all a sham.”
Angeleah just stared at this woman, shimmering with power. How could she say...? Dragon Pearl, she had actually split a mountain once! She’d cracked open a volcano and turned the eruption away from an entire city. With her hands! ...There were statues of her in Seattle. Statues, plural! She was maybe the strongest of them all. And she was afraid of the lunatic down there on the streets below.
“Let me say it clearly: None of us are invulnerable to each other. If they have Liam’s gift, all bets are off.”
“If I go down there again... will you stop me?”
“No. But I’ll mourn.”
That, finally, made Taylor pause. She wasn’t kidding.
They drifted down together, closer but still above the rooftops. They watched and did nothing. True to Dragon Pearl’s prediction the woman wove a tangled line of death through the city streets, always searching. Police roared into her course and died. Men and women a hundred times more heroic than Angeleah made brave, defiant stands and died. People trapped by circumstance took their last long look at their families, cried in the arms of their loved ones... and died.
It lasted only minutes, but the horror seemed to go on forever.
Until Athena found what she was looking for.
A woman, older, but not old, carrying a child. She had tried to run.
Seeing the baby, Taylor leaned forward with the desperate need to act, and was caught by a hand as much stronger than her as she was stronger than the weeping mother below.
“Watch and remember. But don’t.”
Angeleah wanted to scream. “We can’t be this powerless!”
“Why not? They are.” Dragon Pearl answered the unspoken words. “Why should we be able to counter each of this world’s evils?”
The baby was dead and Athena was gone. There was no whimpering, no sobbing. No wounded anywhere. The untouched in mute horror and the dead in their silence. Sometimes only inches separating them.
In her shame, she never told anyone that she had been present that day.
But she swore, next time, she’d die before backing down. Dragon Pearl’s warning had to work both ways, didn’t it? Athena wasn’t invulnerable to her, either. She swore it on a baby’s last cry. “All bets are off, bitch.”
More to come.
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- AuGoose
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...Five Months Ago...
She hovered, admiring the Grand Canyon far below. 10 AM sharp and 22,000 feet up. The FAA had the area cleared for “Orca Air Maneuvers” so the space would be aircraft free until sunset.
There was a sonic boom from far above her. She looked up to see Skybreaker making an almost lazy corkscrew down from tens of thousands of feet above her, demonstrating his uncanny ability to operate all the way out to the fringes of space. He came to a flawless swooping stop just slightly above her, dominating the space even though the were alone with open air for miles surrounding them in every direction.
“Lioness?”
“As scheduled, Skybreaker.”
“Then welcome to the best flight school in the world. We have extensive facilities for your use today...” He waved expansively at the empty sky around them, handing her a nearly transparent section of hardened composite like he was wearing, almost like a bubble over the eyes.
“I don’t need eye protection, at least at any speeds I’ve been able to achieve.”
“Its not for protection, at least not primarily. As your speed increases – and I’m sure yours will – you may simply find it more comfortable to not have air roaring across your eyelashes.” It was a nice way of saying her speed was laughably low compared to his. He was one of the fastest and most adept flyers in the world. His ability to manipulate gravity also let him pick up and move objects that should have shredded in his noticeably super-strong grip. Even without them he could lift in the 8-12 tons range. But when he was serious he didn’t lift with just his hands, he could neutralize gravity, allowing stunts like supporting a 50 foot yacht from far off center if he wrapped it up in twisted gravity just... so...
Taylor had to fuss with her hair a bit to get the strap settled, but he didn’t seem to mind waiting, watching her intently.
“But the real value for today is... this!” He clicked a stud on his visor and hers began to hum. blurs and squiggles flashed across it, too close to her face to focus on, then resolved into three-dimensional golden rings hanging in the sky all around them! She turned her head and the virtual rings seemed to hold steady all around her.
“Your very own training course, high above the ground. I programmed it myself.”
“That is– That’s amazing!” Se grinned. His reputation as one of the best seemed well earned. The design of the paths around her would make for a hugely demanding display of aerial agility. And to do it at speed...! Wow.
He smiled, clearly pleased to have impressed her.
“Now, lets inspect your gear.” He flew around her, not especially trying to hide that he was ogling her from every possible angle. Oh, sorry, ‘inspecting her’.
“Those are not entirely aerodynamic” he observed, grabbing his own pectorals and shaking them up and down to illustrate.
Yes, she knew she had breasts. In fact hers were vibrating just slightly with the interaction of their flight fields. Almost as if...
Finally he nodded. “Mostly it’s good. Modeled on a racing swimsuit I imagine. The tan and black pattering will make you very visible, which is a plus - you want to be the center of attention for any armed criminals. And while I approve of this artistically,” he waved at the top of his chest while exaggeratedly leering at her chest to the point where it was almost comic, almost, “you’ll need to close up the neckline. You start moving over 100 mph or so and your quite admirable cleavage will scoop so much air into your costume it’ll pop.” He lifted his chin and gestured to a tight, thick collar around his own throat securing his suit against inflation. “There’s a natural windshadow below your jaw. Anchor the suit to a collar like this and you’ll be fine. You have a similar shadow you can uses for a tool harness here...”He reached forward, his thumb-tips touching his hands splayed wide in what would be a pretty good mold of her torso beneath her breasts. Demonstrating the placement of the bands he’d described. But she was struck by the sudden, absolute certainty he was going to miss by about four inches on the high side.
Skybreaker barely had time to be startled when his hands were abruptly spread apart wide and his wrists encircled in loosely closed hands. She executed an almost lazy forward summersault over him, their ears just brushing and she came to rest back-to-back with him their arms spread straight out to the sides in her now firm grip. Then she hunched her back forward and drew her arms – and his – forward as if she were rowing a boat. He hissed in pain, the only reason his arms not torn off being that his back was wider than hers and his arms longer.
“Now, Skybreaker. I value you input and admire your skill. So much so that I’ve ignored your roaming eyes and even the fact you’ve been fondling my chest with your flight fields the last few minutes. I am sure making girls’ breasts weightless is a great pick up line that’s worked well for you before. But I can already fly on my own so it’s not exactly new to me. Now say ‘I understand’.
While about 50 intensely rude things sprang to his lips, Skybreaker also realized after pulling on his arms his wrists were trapped in bands stronger than any steel. Orca’s files said she was 10-15 times stronger than him and now he absolutely believed it. She was only inches away from ripping him apart over the fulcrum of her unyielding back...
“I understand...” it came out a little thin, but he still had enough slack to breath.
“And you know how I got my powers, so I’m sure you won’t be surprised I have... boundary issues.” She pulled her arms forward just a hair’s breadth farther, the ligaments in Skybreaker’s shoulders so taut they were singing on the verge of double dislocation. “Because the next guy who thinks to pleasure himself at my expense... well, lets say that what happened to Liam isn’t the upper limit of grizzly demises. Say ‘I understand, Lioness.’”
It came out even thinner between his clenched teeth. “I understand, Lioness. I do!”
She uncurled. The were simply back-to back again, hands at their hips. She nuzzled a shoulder into him, a sort of casual but deep rubbing that immediately relaxed his strained muscles. He ached, but he wasn’t injured. She was very precise. “Now say ‘sorry’ so that I believe you mean it and we can part friends today. Teach me something new and we might even part good friends.”
He didn’t hesitate to take the opportunity she was offering. “I am so sorry. You are very beautiful. Not just your figure... but that you can fly too, without me lifting... That’s not an excuse. But... It got the best of me. I’ll never do it again.”
He heard her laugh behind him. “I didn’t say never do it. Just never do it without asking. And I don’t mean only me. Any woman.” She leaned her head back against his, touching him gently. Resting her head against his for a few moments. Forgiving him with the fall of her hair. She let one of his hands go and spun him around to face her as she backed away reestablishing her personal space. “Now teach me how to fly! Really fly. That chase against Bloodrazor through the struts of the Eifel tower... That was amazing! And don’t you dare try to make me pop my suit before I’ve fixed it...”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Really.” If he rubbed his wrists a little as he said it she politely ignored it.
For the next few hours they danced on air, her struggling to keep up with his soaring excellence. Between exercises she frolicked, her happiness radiant in her face and the casual swing of her arms and legs as she darted around like a minnow. Skybreaker kept his fields to himself, but he still got a better show than his imagination could have ever produced. That sunny day in the sky had been very good indeed.
More to come.
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- AuGoose
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And just for giggles I tossed the model into something more formal. City charity event maybe.
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AuGoose wrote: Been writing on this again after hitting a conundrum with Zoe. Thought I'd share a loose concept piece for Taylor's "Patrol Gear" when out and about as Lioness in NY. That's her own hair poking out under the helmet in back - a helmet that should break up some of the key angles used in facial recognition software. She's not super-obsessive about her secret identity, but she doesn't flaunt it either (mostly for the protection of her neighbors). She's got a good sized satchel on her back and a few knick-knacks on her belt.
/quote]
Welst....this is good superhero logic.
Like most stuff with superheros it at best seems like something that could work....but it is well thought out like so much of lioness.
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She would never be able to, indeed would never try to patrol the city 24/7. In fact she often allowed her days and nights to roll over so that her activities were less predictable. She had a pager for major emergencies, but she also had the freedom to tell ORCA and the NYPD when she was not going to be on call even for catastrophe. No sense them waiting for her if she was half a world away. The erratic hours sometimes left her a little woozy but she still found that flying over the city late at night was restful– when there weren’t any screams of course. It was lovely seeing the city in all its moods, well worth the odd headache or poor day’s sleep.
She still paid special attention to the roadways, particularly around the nightclub districts. Drunk driving was something you could occasionally stop before it started. Swooping down and confronting a staggering reveler as they approached their car. She had a line of credit with three of the city’s taxi companies and they were eager to come ‘round when she called and asked them to take a drunken fare home. When she took someone’s keys, they stayed taken until she slipped them to the cabbie to be returned on arrival.
A few complaints had been filed, but the police largely invited such individuals to shut the fuck up and count their blessings. In return she did everything to not abuse their trust in her word.
But after that deeply personal calling her favorite sort of action was fires. There was no negotiating with fire. No hurt feeling or confused motives. Just pure threat to lives and property. Her training at ORCA had focused on interacting with LEOs (law enforcement officers) but she knew every fire station in a 30 mile radius had a one-sheet posted about her. The first two section were distinctly un-fun. The most severe warnings imaginable that the brass would not tolerate “ungentlemanly” conduct towards her, and that no one was to stop for photos while working an active blaze. It wasn’t that unusual for her costume to get burned to nothing and to keep your damn tongue in your mouth when it happened. Playing grab ass of any sort with her was an instant firing offense. Considering what she was capable of if she took the matter into her own hands, it was the least they could do. One burly axeman had found himself riding a bus back from Seattle after making a go before the policy was formalized. A three day ride without pay and another two weeks suspension waiting for him when he arrived.
The second section was perhaps more chilling. It outlined her strict policy that she would rescue civilians first, last, and always over the firefighters. There would be no trying to attract her attention with false peril. They were trained professionals who knew the risks of the job. She would respect that and trust that they would want her to get the other people out first. There had been a few exceptions brought on by the practical demands of triage (she’d pulled out a team of five firefighters even as two teenagers burned and still had nightmares about it), but overall the warning worked. The men and women of the NYFD stayed on task, treating her as a useful offensive tool against fires and not a safety net.
She’d managed to deflect most of the impulse to stop and stare or worse try to take pictures by visiting the firehouses a few days after each blaze. She would pose with them, sometimes lifting a pump engine or flying in the pictures to give it the personal touch of a friendly paranatural. One of the Good Guys.
In what was fast being enshrined as private ritual held at the stationhouses behind closed garage doors where the newshounds couldn’t easily see, she would name four men from the squad that she’d worked with to come forward. She hovered over then and kissed each of them chastely on the forehead, thanking them personally. While the captain on the scene was almost always among the four, the others were such a curious mix that rumors spread how she was selecting them. Were they the bravest? No. Some men who had carried out citizens or their brothers at the utmost risk to themselves had been skipped over. Were they the most attractive to a young woman... seemingly not: she selected fresh-faced rookies and scared and aging veterans alike. It was months before the Chief Fire Marshal for the Five Boroughs finally dared asked her why she picked the men they did. He had no complaints — every one had been a fine fireman and they seemed even more determined to give their best after her kiss. She’d told him, in private, that they were the ones on the radio in her ear that sounded the most calm. She chose them because they were steady in the face of danger and she wanted to honor that without encouraging them to take more risks. Their quiet courage helped her focus, told her what she needed to know to do her very best with them. He had nodded and kept her secret but he also flagged a few of them for promotion. Close to a year on now, all the crews loved her called her ‘their warrior angel’ and knew that somehow "The Lion's Kiss" was a sign of being on the fast track.
The third section of the one-sheet? That was almost fun. It outlined her arm-signal sign language for needing a shower. She was immune to the heat but her body still absorbed it. Quite efficiently in fact. It took minutes, sometimes less in especially hot flames, for her to build up so much heat she could no longer touch people without burning them as badly as the fires around her. When she called to say she was coming they unpacked extra coats and pants for her - when she could she would go in wearing turn-out gear not that different than the firefighter’s own. Still, she had to strike quickly, precisely, launching small sorties before emerging to get the coldest water available poured over her in an eruption of steam. Even with her strength and mobility she had to work as part of the team to help the most people - a challenge that called to her with every dispatch. Mostly she was able to place herself where bucket crews could hit her and the blaze with a single chilling gout, but some fires sent her skittering to the back lines to cool down while reporting on what she had seen to the commander on site. Her earbead was temperature hardened but her microphones always fried in a serious blaze. She could listen but if things got hot she couldn’t call out.
That had lead to some bad situations... she’d even gotten turned around and buried herself once. It was a design problem ORCA’s R&D was still struggling with. It was terrifying sometimes being at the bottom of a pile of rubble, knowing she could dig her way out but that doing so might collapse the heap and kill others trapped in it with her. She’d studied practical building engineering with a passion after she’d panicked once and brought a building down from the inside. No one had been hurt, but it was a close thing...
But tonight, no fires. No screams. Not even many drunks. Just time to think.
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