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Chapter 108 – Blue ChristmasAlex was totally stoked. The Christmas vacation was starting. Willow was taking Alex and Shar to Disneyland. Willow had secret stuff planned for Shar that Shar still had no clue on, so Alex had asked Willow not to tell anyone else, not even Alex, because Shar’s telepathy made it really hard to keep secrets from her.
And then after Disneyland, they’d all drive back to the house, and Willow would rush off to fly out to Jack’s for Christmas, even though she was Jewish and she kept saying she didn’t do Christmas.
Willow drove down and parked her electric car in front of the garage where it could get charged while they were gone, because her car wouldn’t go from Alex’s house through L.A. traffic to Anaheim on one charge, and it would take hours to recharge the thing. And Willow was still tinkering with an Alex-charging system that wouldn’t risk blowing up the car batteries if Alex accidentally overdid it.
Alex and Shar already had their suitcases and Alex’s gym bag in Alex’s car, with a bag of healthy snacks and a cooler of drinks. So Willow just had to take two chocolate cakes into the house, stick her suitcase in Alex’s trunk, and they were ready to go. And Alex had to remind her mom and dad not to eat both cakes before everyone got back from Disneyland. They both looked at her like she’d accused them of drug smuggling or something, but she still remembered what happened to the chocolate cake while she was at Comic Con.
Shar was totally wowed when they drove into the valet parking area of the Anaheim Marriott Suites. Especially when Willow did the big ‘CEO of Red Tree Software’ deal with the valet parking and the bellmen and the special service from Rich the concierge who obviously thought Willow was way too hot to be a CEO. Okay, the guy looked at Alex like she was too hot, too. Guys …
If he looked at Shar like that, Alex was going to shock the pee out of him!
Then they had a big suite with a living room and kitchen, and two bedrooms. Alex had insisted on sharing a bedroom with Shar, because if Shar had a nightmare and Alex wasn’t around, things could get bad. Shar hadn’t had a nightmare like that in over a month, but pretending Shar was completely normal was just asking for trouble.
As they unpacked, Willow teased Alex by singing, “Rich thinks you’re sexy … Rich thinks you’re sexy …”
“No, Rich thinks you’re sexy,” Alex insisted.
And somehow, they ended up singing “I’m too sexy for my shirt” only with different lyrics. “You’re too sexy for the Rich, too sexy for the Rich …” Shar couldn’t stop giggling.
Shar had everything all put away in the dresser before Alex figured out where to hide her gym bag. But the beds had plinth bases, which meant there was a solid board all the way around the base a few inches in from the edge of the box springs, so the maids never had to worry about trying to vacuum way underneath the beds. And that meant there was a secret open area under there that no one could get to.
Well, no one who wasn’t Terawatt. Alex went silvery, puddled through a crack into the open area under the first king-sized bed, and hid the gym bag there.
Shar had all her important stuff in the top left drawer of the big dresser. Her Barbies who were both in their civilian identities, her Barbie gym bag with the Terawatt Barbie uniform in it, the bag of other Barbie stuff, her book of DVDs including “The Iron Giant” and “The Little Mermaid”, her Gamegirl and games, her new books, and everything else she had been carrying in her backpack. Since she was dressed like Alex in overalls and a t-shirt and a hat, her clothes were pretty easy to deal with.
Willow already had tickets for all four days they were going to be there, and had the whole thing planned out. Room service each morning so they could get going quickly, with the hotel chauffeuring them right to the entrance. Then a plan for each day, including the first day when they took Shar to the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, where Shar was just about paralyzed when she couldn’t decide between being Terawatt or Ariel. She finally went with Ariel, even though she hugged Alex and apologized a bunch for not picking Terawatt.
And really, Terawatt was not a Disney Princess! Even if the Disneyland stores were doing a ton of business there with Terawatt merch, and there was a sign that they would soon have Terawatt t-shirts and people could order them in advance and have them mailed to them when the shirts came in. Boy, Driscoll Enterprises was probably swamped these days. Shar was wearing one of her Terawatt t-shirts from Louis, and she was really proud that she had one before Disneyland did.
So they managed to do that and Fantasyland on the first day. And they stayed for ‘Fantasmic’ and the other nighttime stuff. It was pretty awesome, even if Shar sang the “It’s a small world after all” song about a jillion times for the rest of the day. The second day, they did Adventureland and Critter Country, although Shar had to watch other people do Splash Mountain for a few minutes before she got up her nerve to do it. She sat behind Alex and in front of Willow, and when the ride went down the huge flume at the end, Alex ducked down behind the big guy in front of her, and Shar ducked way down against Alex’s back, and Willow got all the water that would have hit them, so she got drenched. Shar giggled about it on and off for like half an hour. Alex didn’t say so, but she got lots of video of Soggy Willow, using her TK to operate her GoPro while it was lurking inside her little daypack. They had Chinese for dinner that night, and it was really good, and Shar ate all three fortune cookies. She also told Alex what the fortunes said before she opened the cookies, which really surprised Willow. The third day, they did New Orleans Square and Tomorrowland. Willow kept insisting it wasn’t true, but Alex knew Willow screamed louder on Space Mountain than Shar did.
It was while they were back at their hotel for a nice, well-balanced dinner instead of more junk food, that stuff happened. Willow twitched and put her hand to her ear. Alex knew what that meant. She snatched her earjack out of her daypack and flipped it on and shoved it in her ear.
Jack’s voice came through loud and clear. “— and harbor patrol says they sunk a patrol boat with a laser beam or something, so that probably makes it an SRI job. Miller and Team Two are a good hour away at best, even if they parachute on top of whoever it is. But you’re already there. Is The Big T available?”
“I’m here, colonel.” They hurried down the hall and into their suite. Alex asked, “Do we know where the threat is heading?”
“No idea. IT says a straight line would put it right through downtown La-la-land, and a reasonable sector around a straight line has maybe six hundred to a thousand possible targets.”
Alex said, “I can be on my way north in a minute or two.”
Willow corrected, “Northwest. And I can have LAPD incident reports up thirty seconds after I get my computer running.”
Shar piped up, “I can help! I brought my superheroine suit!”
Alex knelt down and frowned. “Honey, you can’t go. I’ll be too afraid I’d need to watch out for you, to do a good job of watching out for me.”
Willow asked, “Shar, you wouldn’t want Alex to get hurt because she’s too worried about you, would you?”
“No!” Shar exclaimed. “But I can help! I can get those badguys and kapow ’em!”
Alex hugged Shar tightly. “I know. I know what a good job you can do of blasting the badguys. But please, I really need to know you’re safe.”
Willow suggested, “You can sit with me while I do computer support. And every minute you make Alex argue about this, that’s another minute the badguys have to do their evil deeds.”
Shar pouted, “But I don’t wanna be Sokka! I wanna be Katara! Or Zuko so I can go firebend ’em!”
Alex insisted, “I’m not going to take you. You can be really, really mad at me all night long, but I won’t do it.”
She went silvery, dived under the bed to puddle into her gym bag, and then back out as Terawatt. Willow had the sliding door onto the balcony open several inches by then, and Alex flew out.
Shar yelled at her, “Fine! I’m gonna be really mad at you!”
Alex stayed silvery as she went straight up against the side of the building, so no one would look out a window and see her flying off from their balcony. Then she flew up to about five hundred feet above the roof, and she headed northwest. Willow hadn’t given her a GPS heading yet, but the compass app on her tPhone was working.
She zoomed up toward Los Angeles County, wondering the whole time what the badguys were after, and why they were blasting boats and letting people know they were coming, when it would have been a lot smarter to sneak into the target, then use their superpowers to commit the crime and run away. Maybe they were just stupid, but maybe the big display of superpowers was the whole point.
She really hoped they weren’t going to try to steal giant clam-monster eggs out of the sand in Santa Monica.
Willow’s voice came over her earjack. “Terawatt, Acid Burn here. Straightlining the newest intel from the harbor patrol and the Coast Guard suggests they’re heading for Santa Monica.”
Crud! “Are they after giant clam samples?”
“This would be a really stupid way of getting any samples, if you ask me, but I kinda think this would be a really stupid way of doing anything, so what do I know? But there’s National Guard troops on patrol at the beach right now, and Pinkie Pie’s already put them on alert.”
Alex kept heading northwest, but veered a little more west, so she was heading kind of toward that beach that she hadn’t really wanted to ever go back to.
“Burn to Tera. Pyre says she’s really sorry she yelled at you, and she wants you to make sure you don’t get hurt.”
“Tera here. Tell Pyre I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Burn to Tera. Whoever they are, they just sunk a Coast Guard boat with what’s described as an ‘invisible grabber’ and a giant laser beam. And Pyre says that means you should’ve taken her along.”
“Tera to Burn. There is no way I’m letting Pyre get in front of maybe a laser beam, which her powers would NOT stop. Or that invisible grabber thing, which sounds like a ton of TK to me.”
Alex kept flying, but even at her best speed, she wasn’t going to get to Santa Monica for another fifteen minutes. By then, they could have psychically found all the giant clam eggs they wanted, telekinetically yanked them out of the sand, and disappeared. Assuming they had the right powers to do it the fast way. Or they might have robbed a dozen places in the area by then.
“Burn to Tera. They just hit the beach, smashed some National Guard forces that got in their way, and now they’re flying. Four of them, flying in formation, maybe … northeast. That would put them roughly along Santa Monica Boulevard, heading toward some ritzy areas. The LAPD has warnings on every TV and radio channel about these guys. But maybe that’s the objective. They’re sure not being subtle.”
Alex shifted her direction a hair less westward, since the badguys weren’t stopping in Santa Monica. “Tera to Burn. Alert Santa Monica authorities and National Guard forces that this could be a diversion to let someone else get at the giant clams. Or their eggs. Or samples of the chemicals.”
“Burn to Tera. Already on it. Pinkie Pie thought of that a couple minutes ago, and also had the Guard pull in the remote-control C-4 dumptrucks so no one could tamper with them or steal the C-4 and blasting caps. Oh, and someone next to me thinks it’s hysterical that we named a certain person Pinkie Pie.”
“Tera here. Action Girl and I thought it was pretty doggone funny when we thought it up.”
Alex kept flying as fast as she could toward Santa Monica Boulevard. Willow’s map app showed it pretty clearly.
“Burn to Tera. Team Evil just engaged a police helicopter and shot it down. Energy beam to the engine, and … poof! No more motive force. They’re probably lucky it wasn’t a laser beam through the pilot. A traffic copter got footage of it and then had to run for their lives. That was more or less over I-405. They’re still heading toward Century City or beyond.”
“Tera here. Any chance of L.A. AFB scrambling something with some threat potential?”
“Burn to Tera. Pinkie Pie says ‘Mister Darling’ is on it now.”
“Mister Darling?”
“Oh! Burn to Tera. I got it! Like in Peter Pan. It’s Wendy’s dad.”
“Oh. Right.” Duh. Wendy Harriman’s dad. Jack had Walter on the job. Alex wondered how long Jack had been saving up the ‘Wendy’s dad’ joke.
“Burn to Tera. Pyre says that someone’s sure going to be in the doghouse if he keeps making naughty jokes about other people, and it won’t be Mister Darling.”
Alex was closing in, but every minute she flew northwest was another minute the badguys were closing in on their target, and Alex still had no idea where they were going.
“Burn to Tera. Team Evil’s over the Los Angeles Country Club and they’re veering more northward. Maybe Beverly Hills, maybe Bel Air. Much further north, and they’ll be over the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and they’ll be out of juicy targets, and they’ll be in an area that a couple of Vipers can dogfight with ’em without worrying about heavy casualties on the ground.”
Oh, crud. “Tera here. We know someone who lives in that area. In a nice, big, expensive mansion.”
“Burn to Tera. I already sent her a text. I got a really pleasant reply that only used the F-word two times.”
“Well, I’m still maybe five minutes out if that’s where they’re going.”
Alex jetted across the Los Angeles skies. It was still light out, but street lights and headlights were turning on below her. If she hadn’t been so focused, she might have looked down and enjoyed the lightshow. But she was concentrating on getting to Azure Crush as fast as she could. Because if Team Evil wasn’t heading for Az, they were probably heading for someone close by.
“Burn to Tera, based on current vector it looks like the target really is Azure Crush. And we’ve got two Vipers engaging the enemy, and from their comms it’s not going well.”
“Tera here. Can they retreat and attack from a distance?”
“Burn to Tera. That’s what they tried first. Everything they shot or launched got redirected. Including one missile that got redirected into the other chopper despite ECM.”
Oh, crud. “Can you have them disengage?”
“Burn to Tera. Already trying.”
By then, Alex could see the battle zone. There were fires in a small area, and energy beams blasting around, and there went another explosion. She pushed harder.
She moved in as fast as she could, while trying to spot what was going on. One helicopter had crashed in the street outside the estate, making it pretty much impossible to get any support in through the front gate. The other helicopter had crashed right into the mansion, and that whole wing of the building was a fiery mess. She desperately hoped there weren’t any people in there. There were three people floating in the air over the back yard area. One was firing what looked like bright red laser beams from his hands. One was gesturing wildly like he was trying to conduct an orchestra on drugs. The third one just floated over the first two and held out her hands like she was lifting the first two up.
Alex flew over the burning mansion. The backyard looked like a couple of Army squads had been having war games back there, with lots of exploded spots and smashed stuff. Azure Crush looked like she was getting the short end of the stick, because her clothes looked ripped and massively burned. A really fast guy with a big metal bar was zipping back and forth, pounding on Az, while she tried to hit him. But he was way faster than she was. And every time she tried to focus on him, Laser Beam Guy blasted her or else Mister TK grabbed something big to smash her.
Alex zoomed in and hit Lifting Lady full speed on the back of the head. She collapsed, and all three supervillains fell forty feet into the pool.
“It’s about fucking time! Ouch!” Azure Crush yelled, as the speedster smashed her across her kidneys with that steel bar.
The speeder ducked out of Azure’s reach and sprinted around her aiming for an unprotected quarter.
Alex put a quick TK barrier up about five feet above the concrete patio. The speeder ran into it with his face at maybe seventy or eighty miles an hour. The impact felt like someone hit Alex on the top of the head with a board.
The guy’s face stopped abruptly when it hit the TK barrier. His body kept going. His feet flew off the concrete and his body went horizontal. He went flying through the air like that for maybe forty feet before he hit the concrete with a crash and skidded all the way across the concrete until he hit the lawn. Then his feet curled underneath him and he went tumbling across the grass.
A red laser beam flashed at Alex, and she darted to the side as she went silvery again. The beam came after her and clipped her, but reflected off her. Mostly. It still felt like someone had just thrown boiling water on her legs. She dived down toward the pool.
The other guy was using his TK to slam Az with big blobs of pool water the size of a hot tub. They weren’t knocking her down, but they were sure messing with her footing. And as soon as he realized he could pick Az up and just hold her on the bottom of the pool until she drowned, Az was going to be in real trouble.
Laser Beam Guy took another shot at Alex, but she dived into the pool and under the water. Neither of the guys had bothered to fish Lifting Lady out of the water, and she was probably already drowning, which was Alex’s fault. Alex used her TK to lob the woman out of the water and onto the concrete, right in front of Az.
Alex was hoping the badguys would have to stop and make sure they didn’t hit their teammate, but they didn’t seem to care a whole lot if they blasted her or drowned her or whatever, as long as they got Az, too. Why couldn’t Terawatt get some badguys who weren’t total jerkheads?
And if Lifting Lady was their ride home, were these guys just stupid? Because Alex wasn’t seeing another way out of here without running into lots of police and National Guard and angry Air Force guys and stuff. Unless they thought they could get up into the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and maybe have an escape plan, or a getaway driver, or something.
Alex puddled along the bottom of the pool and used her TK to yank Mister TK under the water. He gulped and thrashed around and panicked, instead of using his TK to just pull himself out of the pool. Okay, it had taken years before Alex figured out how to use her TK on herself, so maybe this guy was just too new at it.
She glanced over at Laser Beam Guy, and she saw the guy sticking both of his arms out of the water to blast laser beams at Az. But just as he started, something the size of a cabana came crashing into the water right on top of him. Alex figured that Az was handling stuff better now that she only had one guy to fight.
Alex grabbed Mister TK with her telekinesis and pinched his carotids arteries closed. Four seconds later, the guy was down for the count. She pulled him into her silvery form and puddled across the bottom of the pool to grab Laser Beam Guy, who was out cold and pinned on the pool bottom underneath hundreds of pounds of pool cabana. She pulled Laser Beam Guy into her silvery form, and puddled both of them out of the pool.
She checked to make sure both of them had beating hearts, and that Lifting Lady wasn’t dead either. Then she called Willow. “Tera here. Do we have emergency response on the way?”
“Burn to Tera. Yep. Three fire trucks, plus EMTs, two ambulances, half a dozen police cars, a truckload of National Guardsmen and two APCs, another two Vipers, and a Lifeflight airlift helicopter for serious injuries. And the SRI will have a team with a security truck there in a couple of hours.”
Alex could hear the sirens of the emergency vehicles. And she saw that Az was sprinting for the wrecked bandstand at the back of the property. She flew over to see what else was wrong.
She made sure she was in her Terawatt voice, and she asked, “Are there any people trapped in the building?”
“Nah, when your friend sent me that text, I got Sergei to get everyone out. I busted a hole in the wall back here for everyone else to escape.”
Well, that was good.
Az complained, “But Sergei and Hank and them? They just don’t listen!”
Uh-oh. Alex looked at the edge of the collapsed bandstand. There were two federal marshals who looked very dead or at least horribly injured, and there was a swarthy, handsome guy who had a big chunk of the edge of the bandstand dropped across his thighs.
Az reached down to yank the guy out, but Alex had a sudden memory from health class. Alex grabbed her arm, which was like trying to stop a runaway truck, even using her TK, too. “Wait!”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? I gotta get him outta there!”
The guy spoke in a voice that sounded totally California. Alex had figured with a name like Sergei he would be Russian or something. But he was just another Cali guy with a weird name. He groaned, “Listen to the nice superheroine, Az.”
“But I gotta get you out of there!” Az sobbed.
Uh-oh. It sounded like Azure Crush was maybe worried more about someone else than herself, and that was probably good in the long run, but it could be a problem right now if she didn’t listen to reason. Alex carefully explained, “Look, if he’s got broken bones or damaged arteries, lifting that off him could drop his blood pressure. It could knock him out instantly. It could kill him, if you’re not careful.”
Az growled, “How the fuck do you know that? You a nurse in your spare time?”
Sergei painfully said, “What? You never thought a superhero might get some Red Cross training? Even lunkheads like me do that.”
Az took his hand. “You’re not a lunkhead.”
He gritted his teeth, “Okay, I think I can hold out for a little bit, if you can get a tourniquet around each of my thighs and then lift this thing off. How’s that sound, Smurfette?”
Az fumed, “I told ya if you ever called me that again, I was gonna break something.”
He smiled. “I think I already got some broken bones. Does that count?”
She kissed him on the forehead. “Maybe. Just this one time.”
Alex grabbed some torn cloth that was draped across the front of the bandstand, and she used her TK to tear it into strips. Then she used her TK to slide the cloth strips all the way under his legs. He grabbed one and quickly wrapped it around his thigh, checking for tightness. Then he did the other and told Az, “Okay. Now lift.”
Az stepped over and put her hands under the bandstand’s edge. She grunted, and the entire thing rose two feet into the air, even if parts off to the sides were bending downward and groaning. Alex used her TK to slide Sergei out. Then Az lowered the thing back down.
While Az held Sergei and cursed about how long it was taking the paramedics, Alex went over and checked the two federal marshals. One had a horrible hole burned right through the center of his chest, and was way deader than Alex wanted to see. The other guy had two pieces of rebar through him and pinning him to the ground, but he was alive. Alive, and fortunately out cold, because that rebar looked like it would really, really hurt.
Man, those supervillains were real creeps.
She called Willow again as she lifted off. “Burn, this is Tera. We need emergency medical aid for three, maybe four supervillains, one security guard, and one federal marshal. We have at least one dead marshal. Everyone else appears to have gotten off the battlefield, thanks to your text to Az.”
“Burn to Tera. Access is blocked by that downed helicopter in the street. Can you assist?”
Crud. As she flew back over the burning mansion, she could see the first downed chopper had crashed right in front of the security gate, and no one was going to be climbing that fence. Plus, anybody with any sense had to be worrying about the ammo and missiles in the chopper cooking off as the thing burned.
A fire truck was working hard to put the chopper fire out, but was going to need more time. And the fence was one of those big welded-together wrought-iron things with no convenient nuts and bolts to take apart. And set in concrete. She needed Az to tear the thing apart, and she didn’t think Az was going to leave Sergei no matter how much he needed her to come out here.
Or Alex could try something creative. She flew over to the corner of the estate, where two police cars and a paramedic truck were waiting impatiently, and two more policemen were trying to keep several camera crews a safe distance from a possibly exploding helicopter. The fence had two heavy horizontal bars, one near the ground and one near the spikes at the top of all the vertical poles. The vertical poles went through the horizontal bars, where they were welded in place or something. She touched one horizontal bar with both hands and ran a really massive charge through it from fingertip to fingertip.
She’d seen arc-welders before on TV, and she’d seen metal melt with enough electrical current going through it, but she’d never tried it herself. And it was painful, because that metal got really hot.
But it only took a few seconds to melt the metal in between her fingers. Then she did it to the bar down at the ground, too, and the fence sagged a little. She then cut the fence on the upper and lower bars twenty feet closer to the corner of the estate, and the whole rectangle of fence fell over.
She flew over to the closest police car and said, “Officers, you can drive through the gap now. The felons are all in back between the pools, and the men in need of medical treatment are farther back, near the back wall of the estate. We warned Azure Crush just in the nick of time, and she managed to get everyone out of the mansion before it caught fire.”
Everyone started driving in through the gap she’d cut in the fence, except the fire truck that was trying to put out the helicopter fire. Even the news crews. She looked at the burning chopper and hoped the helicopter pilots had gotten the chance to parachute to safety.
And she tried not to think about the supervillains she could have killed by smashing their face in, or knocking them out and dropping them forty feet into a pool, or pulling them under the water until they panicked. What if they’d fallen forty feet onto the concrete instead? She was a horrible, horrible person.
Az would have probably killed them, especially after Sergei got hurt. Jack would have said Alex could have been a little more ruthless, just to make sure none of them got back up and attacked her, or anyone else.
She still felt sick about it. She was so glad Shar hadn’t seen this. She was so glad Shar hadn’t had to use her powers to stop some of these supervillains, because the only thing Shar was really good at with her powers was burning stuff to a cinder.
Alex flew over the supervillains and checked that they were all still out cold while the paramedics looked at them. Then she flew over to where Azure Crush was holding Sergei’s hand while the last paramedic checked him out.
Az looked up at Alex with tears streaming down her face. “This is all my fault, isn’t it? You warned me about that fucker Atron, and I didn’t think she’d dare. Not in the middle of L.A. And now everything’s gone. The house is ruined. Sergei’s hurt. Larry’s gonna hate me. No one’s gonna want me around because this might happen again …”
Sergei objected, “It’s not your fault. It’s that bitch Atron.”
Alex gently told her, “He’s right. It’s Danielle Atron’s fault. If she knew where I lived, or where Cready was being held, she would have gone after us, too.”
Sergei said, “And you’re the hero here, Smurfette.” Az glared at him. “You got everyone out of the mansion. You punched that escape route in the wall. You went back and faced off against a team of supervillains to protect all of us and make sure we had time to get away.”
Az groused, “I got the fuck kicked out of me. I just lucked out that a real superhero flew in and saved my ass.” She looked up at Alex and muttered, “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Sergei smiled. “At least you weren’t the loser sidekick who has to be rescued.”
Az smiled back. “I think you were more the damsel in distress.”
“Oh, no, no damsel-ing for me!” he insisted.
She smirked, “I think every time you call me something like Smurfette, I’m calling you ‘damsel’. So shove it up your ass. Damsel.”
But then the Lifeflight helicopter pilot didn’t want to let Az go in the helicopter with Sergei and the marshal and the paramedic. After all, she wasn’t a close relative or anything. Alex put a hand on the pilot’s shoulder and said, “Pardon me, but I would consider it a personal favor if you would let Azure Crush ride along. And perhaps you could point out to someone at the hospital that she may have some severe burns and contusions that aren’t obvious because of her skin color.”
The guy just looked down at her legs. She glanced down and saw what he meant. Oh, right. A big section of her tights was totally burned away over her left thigh, and her thigh was really red where it was showing. Even worse, there were a few spots in the middle of the burn that were maybe the size of a silver dollar that looked like they were going to have some big blisters.
Now that she was starting to think about it, the burned area was starting to sting. A lot. Crud! She was just glad Laser Beam Guy hadn’t nailed her with those laser beams while she was normal, because that would have been bad. She thought about the dead federal marshal with the hole burned right through his chest, and she knew it could have been mega-bad.
She stuck around long enough to give a statement to a policeman, and one of the paramedics came by and put some antiseptic stuff on the worst parts of her burn, then put a cool cloth soaked in sterile solution over most of her burn and wrapped it in place with loose bandaging.
She flew back like that. Okay, she went silvery the whole way so the wind wouldn’t blow the wrapping right off her leg, but she flew back to the hotel and snuck back in through the sliding door that was still open a couple inches.
Once she went normal, Willow and Shar just froze and stared at her.
“Your leg!” Willow squeaked.
Shar burst into tears. “You’re not s’posed to get hurt! You’re the hero!”
Alex went silvery to change out of her uniform. The tights were ruined, but she wasn’t going to put them in the trash here and risk someone maybe connecting them with the super-battle when plenty of newsies got video of the aftermath. Then she put some towels on the floor and plopped down on them and put a damp, cold, clean towel on her owwie.
She smiled. “I’ll be okay. Just a first degree burn, and maybe some second degree burns, but only a teeny bit. There was a guy throwing laser beams around.”
Willow immediately called Alex’s folks to let them know Alex was okay, which was a really good thing, since there was going to be news footage of Terawatt with a bandaged leg as soon as the next news program ran. And KPVC treated Terawatt like she was their own personal superheroine, so they’d definitely air any footage. They’d probably run a story about her just if someone saw her sneeze in public, and it would probably have a dumb headline like ‘Terawatt Battles Super Germs’.
Shar sat on the floor and hugged her, or else got out her dolls and had Terawatt and Pyre fight off the Evil Laser Beam Guy, or else sat and watched “The Iron Giant” with Alex and Willow. Willow ordered room service for six, so Alex would get enough to eat. Shar had fish sticks with jello salad and a ton of ketchup, or maybe that was ketchup with some fish sticks added. Alex had to tell Shar that no, she could not pretend the biggest fish stick was Evil Laser Beam Guy. Willow had a salad Niçoise that looked pretty tasty. Alex had two cheeseburgers with fries, two steaks with baked potato and sautéed green beans, four Diet Cokes with lots of ice, and two pieces of pie, one apple and one blueberry. Their blueberry pie was way better than their apple pie, even though Alex usually liked apple pie better.
And then she had some energy bars at bedtime, with four ibuprofens and another Diet Coke, this one out of their cooler. Diet Coke right out of a cold can was way better than warm Diet Coke poured over too much ice so it got all diluted and partly de-fizzed.
The next day, Alex stayed in the room while Willow took Shar to Frontierland and Mickey’s Toontown. Shar didn’t want to leave Alex all by herself, so Willow hooked Shar up with an earjack, and Shar gave Alex a verbal tour of the whole place. Alex didn’t know how Shar did it, but it seemed like Shar talked almost nonstop to her for almost eight hours, except when she was eating. Okay, a lot of the time she was eating, she was also talking with her mouth full.
They drove home the next day, although Willow insisted on driving the whole way because of Alex’s leg. Okay, it hurt some, but not that much. Alex just wore her baggiest overalls so there wasn’t anything pressing hard against her burn. And it wasn’t like she used her left thigh for driving, anyway. But Willow drove, and Shar played ‘mommy’, checking on Alex constantly and asking if she needed another Diet Coke, and feeding her snacks, and making sure they only played Alex’s music on the CD player.
Maybe Shar fed her too much Diet Coke. By the time they got home, Alex really needed to pee.
And then her mom and dad really fussed over her burn, which really wasn’t that bad. Willow had to get going, though, because she had to get home and wash clothes and get packed so she could fly to Jack’s for Christmas. She had already sent off all her Christmas presents via FedEx, so she could travel light. She was only taking a little carry-on and one small suitcase. Alex figured that with all the stuff Willow had left at Jack’s since her first visit, she didn’t even need the suitcase. And it wasn’t like Jack didn’t have toothpaste and a hair dryer.
Okay, there was this sexy Miss Santa outfit Willow was taking, and some Christmas lingerie, but other than that, it sounded like there was plenty of stuff already at Jack’s house.