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Chapter 24 – ResponseAlex realized she needed to make sure a couple of things happened. First, she flew back to the busted fire hydrant and used her trick with the angled shield to blast water at each of the fires that were still burning. The street, and the grass, and the tennis court. After all, the fire department couldn’t use that fire hydrant anymore until someone came out and repaired it. Oops.
Then she flew up into the air over the police and photographers. She went from silvery back to normal, and she announced in her Terawatt tones, “Officers, I suggest you check all their cellphones. At once. I have information that indicates at least one of them gave Danielle Atron the time and place for this photoshoot, which would make them an accessory before the fact to several felonies.”
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much she could do about the other thing. The photographers that weren’t dealing directly with the police were all taking pictures of her. While it would be a good thing if someone other than Alex Mack was listed as taking her picture, she didn’t like it that these sleazebags were the ones getting the photos. And she couldn’t just yank their cameras out of their hands with telekinesis and smash them. That would get her in trouble, and she didn’t want Terawatt getting sued this soon after she made her first official appearance.
At least she didn’t have to worry about people thinking Libby in a skanky bikini was really her.
“Terawatt! Look over here!”
“Terawatt! Can we get a statement?”
“Terawatt! What’s your connection with your impostor?”
She floated downward until she was only half a dozen feet off the ground, but on the opposite side of the tennis court from the photographers, so they had to shoot pictures of her through two chain link fences. She pointed at that last guy. “Are you accusing me of a crime involved with this impostor who is stealing my identity, when I just saved all of you from being burned to a cinder by a supervillain?”
“Terawatt! Ignore Jackson, he’s an idiot! How did you know about this supervillain?”
She carefully said, “In my secret identity, I work with a very talented computer programmer who built a system that allows me to monitor emergency calls and tag them on a large wall display overlaid on a map of the area. I was able to see a line of police, fire, and emergency calls heading in a straight line to this point. I just intercepted the straight line and stopped this supervillain when he dived down and attacked you.”
She turned and pointed at Libby, who was cowering under a police blanket and sandwiched in between two of her posse. She said in as intimidating a voice as she could manage, “And THEN I found you were here photographing some kid who’s dressed up like she’s really me! That’s fraud!”
One of the photographers yelled, “It wasn’t us! She contacted all of us and told us she was you and she’d do this photo spread if we stopped hounding her at her house!”
Alex pretended not to know what was going on. “Is this the incident Friday on the news with the high school girl claiming to be me?”
“Yes!”
“Yeah!”
“Damn straight!”
“You bet!”
Pretty much the entire press corps yelled out their agreement.
She glared. “And you believed this baloney? A high schooler? With no evidence at all that she has any powers? What is wrong with you people?”
“Hey! It’s not our fault! It’s a job! If we weren’t doin’ it, someone else would!”
She snapped, “That’s an excuse for bank robbery, not a responsible occupation like news reporting.” She turned and pointed at Libby. “And you, young lady. What do you think you’re doing claiming you’re a superhero? Didn’t it occur to you that I fight supervillains who would murder me if they could? You could have been killed! You could have gotten every one of these photographers killed. You could have had supervillains attacking your home and destroying it and killing your family! This isn’t a little prank. This could have had horrible consequences!”
One of the photographers yelled, “And it’s fraud!”
“And identity theft!”
Libby burst into tears again and wailed, “It’s not my fault!”
Alex groaned inwardly. It was never Libby’s fault. At least in Libby’s head. She snapped, “Of course it’s your fault. You’re the person who claimed to be me. You’re the one who called these photographers and agreed to this sleazy photoshoot. You’re the reason a supervillain nearly burned down most of this city block.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Libby sobbed. Libby then launched into her usual sob story about how it wasn’t her fault and she didn’t know bad stuff was going to happen just because people at school thought she was a superheroine, and it wasn’t her fault a zillion sleazy photographers surrounded her house all night and wouldn’t let her get any sleep, and her folks were really mad at her for nothing, and then she just wanted to get them to leave her alone, and how was she supposed to know a supervillain was going to show up, and …
Alex snapped, “Start taking responsibility for your own actions, kid.” She turned and pointed at the photographers. “That applies to you, too. Harassing a fifteen-year-old —”
“I’m seventeen!”
“— and her family in hopes of pictures? Maybe you need to re-evaluate your own lives.”
She watched as the police arrested everybody for criminal trespass and checked the photographers for cellphones. It didn’t take long for one officer to hold up a phone and say “This may be it!”
The photographer yelled, “There’s no fuckin’ way I’d do a deal with a wanted felon! It wasn’t Danielle Atron, okay? It was this kid named Carl. I figured he was a front for one of the big agencies, and he paid me two grand up front, so I figured what the hell. And I got a picture of him.”
One of the other police officers looked at the picture on the guy’s phone and yelled to her, “It’s Carlton Atron!”
Wow, she was totally not surprised at that one. She remembered Carlton really well. He was the jerk who sabotaged Annie’s project for the plant science fair, and then he tried to blame her for it.
Boy, she’d gotten blamed for a lot of stuff by a lot of jerks over the last few years. Carlton, Libby, Kelly … Did little Alex Mack just have a sign over her head that said ‘blame me for your badness’ or something?
She flew over to Dave Watt and made sure to stay floating a few inches above the street so she’d look a lot taller. She said, “Officer Watt, is there anything else you need me for?”
“No, ma’am,” Dave said. “We appreciate all your hard work keeping the streets of Paradise Valley safe.”
The officer with him, Sergeant Carson by his nametag, said, “And saving our butts when we need it.”
She smiled at him. “It’s my pleasure, Sergeant.” Then she rose into the air and flew the wrong way if she was going to go home.
She flew over two blocks and landed on top of an office building. Then she pulled out her Terawatt phone and called Ray. “Meet me at point K.”
She hung up and checked her new Willow-created map app on her Terawatt phone. She could see a really good place to dive into the storm runoff system, only about three blocks north from where she was right then. It was where one of the mostly-empty creeks ran through the town, and there was a good storm drain right on the street in front of her that would lead there.
She went silvery and dived down the side of the building, puddling into the grate and rushing through the tunnels to the creek. Then she flew down the creek still in puddle form to a big pipe she hadn’t tried before. It led a lot of the way across town, connecting the two biggest creeks so storm runoff didn’t cause more flooding problems. She hopped from there to the pipes she was more used to. Since she had a map that she’d even looked at and studied, this time she managed to get all the way to the storm drain near her front yard.
She puddled up into the spare tire compartment of her mom’s car and switched back to her regular clothes. She took the whole gym bag with her this time, and puddled back onto the driveway before puddling under the front door.
Once she was inside her house, she went back to normal. “Mom? Dad?”
“Honey? Are you okay?” Her mom rushed out of the living room, and her dad was right behind her. Both of them hugged her, as her mom said, “It’s on the news that another supervillain was flying this way, setting fires all over the place, and the governor’s already called out the national guard and state forest fire crews to handle all the fires.”
Her dad said, “Usually, the governor has to go have his meetings for hours, maybe days, before he can make a decision like that.”
Alex said, “Umm, don’t tell anyone, but it wasn’t the governor. It was Willow. She hacked into the state computer systems and faked like he was giving the orders. And it’s not like he’s ever gonna say ‘gee, you know that thing that made me look really good? Well, I didn’t do it and we can’t keep hackers from faking my stuff.’ That would make him look like a total loser.”
Her dad said, “You can’t just …”
Her mom said, “George, I think Willow can.”
He stared for long seconds before he muttered, “We’ve gotta get better computer security at the plant.”
Alex smiled naughtily. “I know someone who’s really brilliant at computer security, too.” She hugged both of them and said, “Gotta go, but I’ll be back soon.”
“Where are you going now?” her mom asked.
“KPVC,” she said.
They both knew what that meant, so they let her rush out to her car with her gym bag and head on over to the TV station.
Ray was already sitting in his car waiting when she got there. She hauled her gym bag with her and sat in his car in the shotgun seat. “Ray? Did you get anything?”
He showed her the viewfinder screen of her camera, which was still mounted on the steering wheel steadicam. It was the first time she had seen the whole deal her dad had built, and it was pretty amazing. He had gone with the plans she got off the internet for a steering wheel-like camera frame, only he had gone a couple steps further than that. Instead of just a crossbar and a bolt to mount the camera on, he had gotten a real steadicam floating mount with a hanging counterweight, just like the ones she had looked at in the online camera store that were about two hundred bucks and only handled side-to-side motion. Then he attached that to another component that suppressed up-and-down motion, and secured that to the crosspiece, which was a little lower, so the camera was in the middle of the steering wheel. Her GoPro was set on the floating mount, looking really cool.
Ray smiled. “Yeah, I stayed out of sight like you said. I was over in the bushes in Mrs. Munson’s yard just down the street, where I could duck around the side of her house if things went bad. And I used your dad’s steering wheel steadicam. It’s pretty awesome.”
She gave him a big kiss for being so great, and she looked over the film footage. It looked pretty terrif. Maybe not as good as she could have done, but it was way better than it would have been with no steadicam and no zoom on the camera.
She called Ms. Marsters about ‘her’ footage and then rushed into the station. The girl with the really long nails was back at the reception desk. Alex noticed that this time there was a little placard that said her name was ‘Edima’, which didn’t sound right because wasn’t that a disease or something? Anyway, Alex just said, “I’m on my way in to see Mark” and the receptionist buzzed her through.
Alex didn’t even get lost, and when she got to the door into the video editing room and knocked, Mark even came and unlocked the door for her. He smiled. “Hey. Alex, right?”
“Right,” she nodded. “Hi, Mark. I already called Ms. Marsters, but I figured I needed to come over here first anyways, because it’s more video footage.”
He grinned. “Don’t tell me you got Terawatt again.”
She said, “Well, I got it, but there’s about a dozen guys who got closer shots, and three of ’em had pro video cameras for other stations, so you guys may want to rush it.”
Ms. Marsters came in and said, “Alex. Back already?”
She nodded. “My friends all know about me getting the footage of Terawatt, and so when Libby started claiming she was Terawatt, I knew it wasn’t her, and then today one of Libby’s posse told one of my friends about this photoshoot Libby was doing and pretending to be Terawatt, so I snuck over to get some footage because it’s Terawatt stuff and Libby’s committing fraud. And a supervillain showed up. And Terawatt. And they had a super-battle over Libby’s head while she screamed like crazy.”
Mark took the GoPro out of the fake steadicam frame she had left it in. He said, “This is a really nice design, and it’s got an amazing steadicam system in the center. I bet it’s a heck of a lot easier to lug it around than the genuine steadicams we’ve got.”
Ms. Marsters said, “No wonder you got those good shots. This is a nice piece of work. Yours?”
She pretended to explain, “I found the plans for the steering wheel part, but I needed lots of help from my dad to get it all put together, and he jazzed it up with the steadicam float in the center, which isn’t part of the pattern I downloaded. But he’s a scientist and he’s really good at designing things.”
Mark downloaded the footage and started clipping it and cutting out little bits that weren’t really good enough for a top-notch TV station. He muttered, “Not bad at all. Not as good as your best stuff, but a lot better than your worst. Very solid throughout.”
She fibbed, “I was hiding in some bushes across the street and up the block, and that kind of made it hard to move around much.”
As he was working, Alex watched the footage. She had to agree. It wasn’t as good as the best she could do, but it was still good. And she hadn’t realized everybody on the ground was running around panicking. Even the photographers were running for cover. She wondered if any of them had decent footage of any bits of the fight, because she sure wasn’t seeing any of them stopping and getting good footage during the first part. And none of them were going over to help Libby and her friends, which was really jerky of them.
She said, “And we need to tell Maria McClellan about this. The police took pretty much everyone to the main station, and some of the photographers wanted to have Libby arrested for fraud. And all of them are committing criminal trespass. And she’s underage, so maybe it’s corrupting a minor, too. And it sounded from where I was like one of the photographers gave Danielle Atron the time and place, and that was how she could sic a supervillain on ’em.”
Ms. Marsters smiled. She moved her hands like she was imagining a headline. “Hmm … ‘Fraudster Impersonates Terawatt. Caught In The Act By KPVC.’ I like it.” She snapped open her cellphone and pressed a speed dial key. “Hey, Ria, your little interview buddy Alex has a story for you.” She handed the phone to Alex.
It took Alex longer to explain the whole thing to Ms. McClellan than it did for Mark to download all the footage and Ms. Marsters to decide what they were going to run with at six and eleven o’clock. Then Alex had to sign a form about copyrights and letting TV stations show her footage, and then she had to sign a different form for the payment for her footage. She read over both of them, but both looked just like what Louis had arranged for her the previous time.
She thought about rushing downtown and seeing if she could get pictures of Libby at the police station, but they probably wouldn’t let her bring a camera into the station, and it was really mean to even think about doing it. And Libby was going to be in enough trouble anyway.
Instead, Alex left the station and once she was safely in her car, she called Willow. “Terawatt here. Baddie busted. No casualties.”
Willow’s AutoTuned voice came through clearly. “I was really, really worried.”
Alex reassured her, “You did great. Amazing. I couldn’t have done it without you. And even Penelope Garcia couldn’t have done it as fast as you did.”
Willow said, “I really have to hack that GIS software. Parts of it are way too slow. I figure I’ll move the graphics display to my SGI box, and re-write the slow computational parts to run in a parallel processing mode on my network.”
Alex said, “The important part was you. You came through in the clutch. I’m really proud of you.” It felt weird being the mentor part of this deal, after all the help she had gotten from Sam and other-Willow and Hermione and Buffy and Selina and even Jaime. But this Willow hadn’t had most of a decade of life-or-death battles against the forces of darkness. She was still where other-Willow had been before Buffy turned up.
“Umm … thanks. I mean, people don’t say stuff like that to me. I mean, Mom and Dad tell me they love me and like that, but no one says ‘oh you wrote a revolutionary new algorithm, I’m really proud of you.’ ”
“Well, they should,” Alex insisted. “You’re way cooler than anyone knows, and you just saved the lives of over a dozen people, and kept maybe a big chunk of Paradise Valley from getting torched by a crazy supervillain.”
“Well, not really. I did some computer work, but you did all the hard parts. I could never do what you did.”
Alex told her, “And I could never do what you did. It’s just that Terawatt gets all the attention and you’re hiding in the background somewhere so no one sees you’re important.”
“I … I’m not. Really.”
Alex insisted, “You are. Maybe you don’t believe it, but I know it. You’re like … There’s an alternate universe full of superheroes. Selina lives there. And in it, one of the most important heroes in the world is a redhead who sits in a chair and works with computers all day. No matter how much pressure she’s under, the superheroes in fancy costumes know this woman will come through for them. And that’s what you are. That’s what you did today. Just because you don’t fly or shoot lightning bolts out of your fingers doesn’t make you unimportant. I can see it. And I know that someday you’ll see what I see.”
Willow sniffed a couple times and tearfully said, “Th-thanks. Thanks so much.”
“You’re welcome a bunch.” She hung up and wondered what else she could do.
She knew a lot about the other Willow, and she knew from what Buffy had said that the other Willow hadn’t seen herself as powerful and important until long after she was. Buffy had told her how Willow stood up to a vampire, and magically killed it with a pencil, and then had the courage to slip into the inner sanctum of The Mayor to find out the secrets of the upcoming Ascension. And then she stood up to a psychotic Slayer with a huge knife. Buffy thought that was one of the big turning points for Willow. But there was no way Alex was exposing her Willow to those kinds of dangers.
Maybe Willow needed to meet Team Terawatt and realize that they also thought she was awesome.