Chapter 10: Sanity Maintenance

“Woooo!”

Alyssa couldn’t help the whoop of delight as she accelerated still farther, long since having blasted past the speed of sound as she kept low over the ocean waves. Intellectually, she’d known that the Tamaraneans her powerset was partially based on were fast, to the point that the stronger ones were capable of hitting FTL speeds in space. There was, however, a massive difference between ‘knowing’ and knowing. Something she was finding out, to her immense enjoyment, as the airspeed indicator from her HUD indicated she’d just passed Mach 4. Which, since she was practically hugging sea level, meant somewhere just over 3,000 mph.

Despite that, she wasn’t even feeling the strain. Far from it, she wasn’t even yet feeling like she was properly ‘running.’ More a brisk walk, really. Frankly, she was nearly certain she’d hit her durability limits against air resistance long before she ran out of acceleration, which made her really want to aim straight up and try space flight. Unfortunately, that was virtually certain to get her picked up by someone’s sensors.

As it was, she was certain some of the tech heroes and villains, along with possibly a few groups like Shield, had probably picked up the sonic boom over the ocean. Sure, she’d flown well out over the Atlantic before breaking the sound barrier, and her ocean-hugging flight would keep her off most traditional forms of radar, but she had no delusions the big names didn’t have far better and more comprehensive tracking. She hoped her own ECM and invisibility would prevent them actually being able to intercept her, but she was operating on the assumption they’d probably at least realize someone had been doing insane supersonic loop-de-loops and barrel rolls out over the ocean.

Grinning at what they would make of her erratic, erratic but insanely fun, flight path, she doubled down on the acceleration and really pushed. She’d pushed out far enough over the North Atlantic that she was now clear for a straight shot south, with nothing but ocean all the way down to Antarctica if she followed her HUD. Worried about shock front at this point, if she happened to pass any ships, she grimaced and gained altitude. It would likely mean far more people would see through her stealth, but this wasn’t going to be a long experiment.

Mach 5, 6, and 7 flew by with barely a whisper. At Mach 8 she began ignoring the fluctuating Mach number as she rose to 70,000 feet. She’d already blown past the ‘official’ airspeed record of her old world, of just over 4,500 mph at high altitude with the X-15. The record was much higher in this reality, with one of Iron Man’s more speed-oriented suits currently holding the ‘official’ record of 6675 mph.

A speed which Alyssa had just passed with barely a whimper.

Well…not quite barely a whimper. Even as thin as the air was up here, she was starting to have to lean hard on her power to keep a straight flight path against the wind resistance of what little atmosphere was here. By the time she hit 8,500 mph, even the slightest wrong twitch was forcing her to compensate, and she decided to call it. She let off the proverbial gas, decelerating with a bit of disappointment even as she angled down and lost altitude.

Deciding she really didn’t want some nosey hero or other interrupting her ‘decompression’ time, she made several course changes as she looped back North. She even dove below the waves and spent half an hour testing her underwater speed. By the time she’d gotten back in the general vicinity of the United States and dropped to subsonic speeds, it was both nearing dawn and she was fairly sure no one had an accurate fix on her location at this point. Angling toward land, she slowed farther to let her stealth really make her vanish and landed on a random beach.

She reached out and connected to the internet at some nearby resort. Amelia Island? Oh, that was interesting. Apparently pretty well known for some iconic beaches, huh? Well, she’d been a little curious if any of the Tamaranean sunbathing love had crossed over from Starfire’s template. She assumed it was originally the empowering solar energy that did it, which wouldn’t be the case for her. But Tamaraneans were also originally a feline species, so who knew?

She’d never cared for the idea of beaches and sunbathing in her past life, but the point of taking today and tomorrow off was to destress and decompress. So why not find out if her new body made her understand what all the fuss was about? Sipping margaritas on a beach seemed like a good place to start, and if she didn’t enjoy that it was just a hop-skip-jump over to Disney World from here. She hadn’t been since she was like six-years-old in her past life. Maybe it would be a bit of fun, particularly when she was far from needing to worry about the costs of a VIP line skipping pass and overpriced food.

Nodding, deciding on her plan, she set out to find somewhere she could change out of her armor. Her armor had small, heavily shielded compartments built into it. Just large enough for things like her phone, credit card and ID. She could easily use Creation to sort out some more casual beachwear at this point, even if it meant finding somewhere safe to stash her armor in the meantime…

… … …

“Mmmm, so there is a point to this, sort of.”

The quiet murmur came in a relaxed voice, just before Alyssa reached for her second strawberry daquiri and took a sip. It was sadly starting to melt, so she held onto it to keep sipping instead of putting it aside again. It wasn’t like the tiny amount of alcohol was going to do much to her current body, even if she’d downed it like a shot. Which wasn’t the point. Even in her past life, he had liked daquiri’s and completely ignored anyone who thought they were too girly. Now, she’d discovered she liked them still and that they made a delightful counterpoint to the warm sun.

This whole beach experience thing wasn’t too bad. Well, not once she’d figured out how to maintain a ‘fuck off’ mental field around herself to keep all the drooling idiots from bothering her. If any of them had been women she might have been okay with it. But, true to what the message in that place-in-between had said, her preferences hadn’t changed just because her body had. At least the empathic nature of the Force would let her filter out the bi and lesbian women out so she didn’t waste her time. Though the latter might be a crap shoot given her actual anatomy.

Said ‘anatomy’ was the reason she was wearing shorts with her bikini top, instead of a bikini bottom which she’d never have been able to conceal her package in. Even with the shorts, only their special design, intended to comfortably hide said package, made it easy for her extra anatomy to go unnoticed. Of course, she’d had zero shame about going with a rather minimal bikini top that barely held in her fantastic tits, in order to get as much of the proper ‘sunbathing’ experience as she could.

Fun fact, apparently she had inherited Tamaranean love of sunlight. Or, if she hadn’t, then women in general had a seriously un-fucking-fair advantage in how good it felt on their skin. Whichever the case was, once she’d gotten the hormonal men to buzz of, she’d enjoyed lazing around for the last several hours. In part, she knew that was just the inevitable crash from having been running nearly full tilt since her arrival. But there really did seem to be something genuinely relaxing about sunbathing.

Sighing, she regretfully fished her phone out of her cleavage, having dropped it there mostly for sheer novelty value. What? She was enjoying having tits, okay? They were fun, and her enhanced anatomy meant she didn’t even have to worry about back pain. Well, whatever. As much as she was taking the day to relax, she did need to at least check in on what the rest of the world knew about what had gone down in Gotham. She had no idea how Shield and the DEA would play what had happened. Let alone the Avengers, given that Iron Man had shown up in person.

She hummed as she scrolled through the custom feed she’d set up. Getting accurate news regarding Gotham was, to say the least, complicated. The local news outlets were a wild mix of mob-owned and fiercely independent, the former being useless and the latter generally lacking the connections to do much more than interview bystanders. Since this world was fully into the age of social media and cell phone cameras, though, there were other options to pick up the slack. Particularly when it came to the ‘cape scene.’ There, a very specific piece of social media had taken on a life of its own.

Metahumans Online.

The forum was international, having been originally started up by Dragon. It had become the go to place online to geek out about ‘capes’ of all kinds, and Dragon herself made sure that any heavily biased or slanted information got flagged. The Gotham Boards saw a decent amount of use, given that few other places in Gotham provided uncensored or unslanted news. Alyssa had spent some time reading speculation about heroes, villains, and teams on the various boards since her arrival. She wasn’t too surprised to see a thread already existed regarding her, as a result…

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Welcome to the Metahumans Online Message Boards

You are currently logged in as, Star Knight (Unverified Cape)

You are viewing:

• Threads you have replied to
• AND Threads that have new replies
• OR private message conversations with new replies
• Thread OP is displayed
• Ten posts per page
• Last ten messages in private message history
• Threads and private messages are ordered by user custom preference.

 

■

♦Topic: Massive Raid in Gotham - New Meta?

In: Boards ► Gotham ► Cape Activity

PleaseDontBreakMyBones (Original Poster) (Veteran Member)

Posted on June 22, 2017:

Hello fellow Gotamites! I'm sure some of you are already reading some vague details regarding this topic from the local media shills. A few more of you might have already grabbed a soundbite from the Avengers -Here-. For the rest of you that are just now waking up to catch up...surprise! There might be a new cape in Gotham! (or possibly just passing through?).

How do I know? Well because I was working a temp job down dockside last night when I got entirely too close to a fuck-off huge raid that featured appearances by our new Cape, the DEA, Shield, and fucking Iron Man.

What do we know so far? Well, we know that the raid was apparently orchestrated by a single, previously unknown Meta (type unknown). Said raid resulted in four different facilities operated by The Hammer (Russian Mob) being hit. Three of them were drug processing operations, while the fourth was apparently a counterfeiting ring. One which, get this, was being run by KGBeast. Yeah, THAT KGBeast, the one that's been on Shield's Most Wanted list for years.

Well, now he isn't. The new Meta, who identified themselves to Iron Man as Star Knight (check out the short snippet confirming that on the -Avenger's Page here-), didn't just capture KGBeast, but took out all four locations before anyone else could arrive. Three with pre-planted knock out bombs, the fourth...well, that was the fighting I heard. Star Knight went in solo and took the entire fourth operation, including KGBeast himself, out in less than 15 minutes.

No good images exist of Star Knight yet, but I did manage to snap a quick shot with my awful phone cam of her talking to Iron Man afterward. -You can see it here-

Obviously, lady has flight powers at minimum, but I have no idea if it's all her or if she's another tech type and the suit is doing the work. Well, one way or another, I just hope she's a might bit less punchy with random dockworkers than the Bat Family. I don't want any more broken bones just for taking temp work guarding a warehouse that I have no idea of the contents of! Fuck, glad the place I was working wasn't one of the targets!

 

► RatsforBags (The Guy In The Know)

Replied on January 22, 2017:

Damn, you beat me too it!

Well, I can at least add one more image I got from a local CCTV that apparently wasn't properly connected to its network. -Here is a better shot of Star Knight- though the resolution still sucks. A couple of things to add about possible powers...as well as something seriously interesting.

The seriously interesting thing first...the GCPD didn't have a clue about the raid before it went down, but the DEA and Shield both somehow had teams already in Gotham. Best guess is that Star Knight alerted both of them before the raid, but DIDN'T alert the GCPD. Which...fair. It's a major step away from how the Bat Family operates, but it seems to be more effective so far, given that the DEA and Shield immediately caravaned most of the crooks out of the city. I somehow doubt any of them are getting away from either group on 'technicalities.'

Yeah, fuck the GCPD.

Anyway, on to the possible powers bit. I've put together a few things since last night.

1) All of the properly hooked up CCTV in the area? Scrambled. None of them got a look at shit last night. Meaning whoever Star Knight is and whatever her powers are, she's got serious technical chops. Could be either technopathy or just mad hacking skills, though the one CCTV that wasn't properly networked getting something tells me it's more likely the latter.

2) When she left? She fucking vanished like the Chesire Cat. As in, full body fade out until just the eyes. -Here, res sucks, but you can sort of see it-

Between both points, I'm inclined to think she's a tech cape, but it's hard to say without more data...

 

► JustHereforthePorn (Cape Groupie)

Replied on January 22, 2017:

Wait, a new vigilante in Gotham that isn’t a furry? What the fuck is the world coming to!

 

► MrGiggles(Scared Local)

Replied on January 22, 2017:

Oh…what exactly are the Bat Clan going to think about this? I mean, I know we have a few independents like White Tiger, but even she teams up with them, and she’s small time. This seems like it was a pretty big bit of action…

► GarbageMan(Veteran Member)

Replied on January 22, 2017:

Who cares what the bats think? I don’t think I’ve ever seen them make a bust this big. They usually just tussle with the other capes. This seems more like it was targeted at the mob. Which…that’s fucking scary. I don’t have any sympathy for them, but if she keeps it up, it might start a gang war…

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Alyssa read on with interest, amused that most people seemed to be leaning to the idea that she was like Iron Man, a pure tech hero. Admittedly, she could see from their perspective why they might think that, particularly since Shield and the Avengers had kept their remarks simple. Stark had done her a bit of a favor in making sure everyone knew the name she’d picked out, at least. Which was a heck of a lot better than letting the media shills give her a nickname she might not be able to shake.

As for if the locals of the city thought she was a good thing or not…Gothamites were a cynical bunch. Half of them seemed to be sure she was really working for one of the other mobs. The other half were either mildly hopeful or, a bit more often, scared she was going to light the match on a powerkeg. Which, to be fair to them, she absolutely was going to do. She was simply trying to do what she could to delay the explosion long enough to reduce the damage before it went off.

She considered it all for several minutes, amusing herself by counting the number of people making ‘furry’ comments about virtually all of the other vigilantes in Gotham. Then, with deliberate movements, she turned her phone off and stretched. Now that she was certain there weren’t any major PR disasters to take care of, she had a date with some more sunlight, another daquiri, and possibly some flirting with a cute girl or two…

… ... ... ... ...

A/N: All work and no play is always a bad idea. Better yet, this chapter let me both show off Alyssa's limits a little more, and play with one of the points of this fic. That is, experimenting with a whole bunch of stuff. Such as including an attempt at something like the Forum posts you see in Worm Fics. That's a potentially useful tool to show outside perspectives without them REALLY being outside perspectives, which I've wanted to experiment with for a while.