Ruminations and Meetings

This would be so much faster if I could fly myself. Kara thought to herself, wanting to use her powers, but knowing that she couldn’t reveal them. She looked out the window of the helicopter, staring at the tiny buildings and even smaller people below, as she was flown to yet another day at Immaculata High, school for the children of the rich and powerful, where the tuition alone was more than most people made in a year. But for the Zabel family, Immaculata was almost commoner level.

She sighed and leant back in her seat. It hadn’t always been like this, ferried around by helicopter with security keeping track of her, but since Behemoth had attacked the Capitol on the day her family had been attending a corporate event there, everything had changed.

It had been last November. Snow was falling, Christmas was around the corner, and traveling by chauffeured limousine was the Zabel family. Her father, Jonathan Zabel, was receiving the EY Entrepreneur of the Year award for his work in integrating one-of-a-kind tinkertech into the supply chains of the Zabel Corporation and its subsidiaries. He had seen off fierce competition, from the illustrious Dr Kharne Gore of the Umbrella Corporation, to Max Anders of Medhall.

Kara, her mother Martha, and brother Clark had all come along in both support and recognition of her father’s accomplishment. It also provided a perfect opportunity for the family to spend some quality time together, time that they had not had much of, as managing a global conglomerate was rather time consuming.
They had been at the awards ceremony, her father had just been handed the trophy, when the alarms started to blare.

The early warning system of the PRT was still in development at that point; the powers that be only realized that an Endbringer was about to attack the capital city of the world’s superpower when seismic readings went off the scale. There were bunkers in place, as someone in power was smart enough to realize that this was only a matter of time considering DC’s status, but in the crush and panic, Kara and Clark were separated from their parents. They all made it to safety, but in different shelters, as they had to endure the hours of the walking calamity that was Behemoth rampaging above them. It wasn’t until after the attack had been fended off that it had happened.

They had been en route to reunite with their parents when they were attacked, not by the endbringer or by any other supernatural entity, but by all too human gangbangers. The criminal filth shot them and robbed them, leaving them for dead. Kara was ‘lucky’; their bullets hadn’t hit her vital organs or arteries. Clark was not so fortunate. He got hit in the neck, and in the rubble of Washington DC, Kara held her brother as he bled out in her arms.

The tragedy had devastated their family. Clark had been the golden boy, the heir to the family estate, trained since childhood for the responsibilities he was to bear. Yet, even with that weight on him, he had always been a good soul, a great friend, and the best brother that Kara could have asked for. He had carried that weight with apparent ease, making their parents proud, and all his teachers adore him. And now he was dead. Dead at the hands of scumbags who, as would be revealed in the following investigations, had criminal records a mile long and were out of prison thanks to “good behavior”!

Just revisiting the events in her mind made Kara’s fists clench, though she did not notice until the slight smell of combustion reached her nostrils, as her new super strength caused the very air between her fingers to burn. She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. She had to be careful not to let anyone know that she was a cape. Not only was it her release valve for all the pressure she was now under, both from dealing with the trauma she suffered as well as being the new heir, but she could ill-afford causing another scandal.

Once again, she went down memory lane. It had been at a commemorative event, honoring those who had died from the attacks, when she had suffered a meltdown. She had screamed words that were verboten in modern society to none other than the daughter of the now-former deceased president. She had blamed her father as being the reason filth like that which killed her brother were on the street and not executed, before breaking into a series of insults, both on them and their President father and First Lady mother. She had gained her powers not long after that, which only made the fallout harder to deal with.

The resulting news attention had not helped her family in any way, and “until things cooled down”, she was sent to stay in Brockton Bay. It was calmer here than in New York; even with all the gangs and capes, the Big Apple had the Bay beat. There was plenty of money here, few on the level of Zabel, but enough for there to be a private school decent enough to have a helicopter pad.

Speaking of which, the ride to Immaculata was nearly over. As the pilot brought the bird down, Kara thought of her short time so far as a cape. She was making a name for herself as Omnigirl. She was responsible for getting loads of the criminals off the street, even if she considered prison too good for them. She had met some of Brockton’s most famous heroes, such as the Hopeman. She had even been instrumental in defeating that strange, tiny, endbringer-like lizard thing. That one had earned her a pardon for any vigilante cape work, a lot of positive media coverage, as well as scouting to join the Wards program.

Even if she was tempted to sign up with them, she couldn’t without revealing her identity, so no chance of that happening. But they were persistent, and more and more when she went out on ‘patrol’, she would ‘happen’ to run (or fly, as the case may be) into a member of the PRT who would try and make conversation. She knew why they were so pushy about it; she had access to their files, and knew they compared her to the Triumvirate member, Alexandria.

While she didn’t know if she could “trade blows” with that legend, she knew that they undersold her in some ways. It was weird, not quite a voice in her head, but an awareness of what her powers could do. Not that the PRT could know, or would if she had anything to say, that her shard was that strong. She had yet to face any real challenge, and from her understanding, nothing short of the endbringers really could push her to those limits.

God, what a thought! She didn’t know how to describe the sensations that that thought brought her. It wasn’t exhilaration, or mania, but something else. It made her feel… in control, she supposed.

Kara was shaken out it of her internal monologue by the feeling of the helicopter landing. Time for another school day.

The day passed by in a blur. Another advantage of her powers that she had found, was that thanks to her immeasurable reflexes, when she concentrated it was like the world slowed down. She had stumbled across this handy ability when, in math class, she had been called on to answer the question on the board when she hadn’t been paying attention.

As she stood there, trying to quickly solve it in her head, she noticed that everyone was slowing down until they were almost stationary. Not wasting the opportunity, she ran through the equation and got the answer in a second to the rest of the world, much to her teacher’s chagrin. After experimenting, she found that she could read an entire textbook in under a minute, and that was going slowly to take it in. Of course, to her it felt like she was just reading the book, which was incredibly dull. A useful ability, but not a solve-all.

Finally the end of the day came, and after making the obligatory goodbyes to her friends, she got back on her helicopter to return to her apartment; the penthouse suite on one of the most exclusive properties in The Towers district. Her parents may have sent her here until things cooled down, but that didn’t mean they were going to shove her in a hovel!

Besides, this part of the city was by far the safest, as the money present led to a booming private security industry. Her parents didn’t know that their surviving child was invincible, but with how deeply Clark’s death had affected all of them, they would have gotten the security even if they did.

After bidding farewell to Mike the Pilot, Kara got ready for her plans tonight. Changing into her Omnigirl costume (an easy thing thanks to the collapsible feature she made sure that the tinkertech included), she took off into the afternoon sky, making sure to move fast enough that it would be next to impossible to trace her location back to home.

As she flew though the crisp air, savoring the sense of absolute freedom that flight brought, when a familiar childish voice reached her ears.

“Hi Omni!”

The figure of The Wards’ golden girl Bumble flew up to meet her, and underneath her mask, Kara smiled. She didn’t like most of the PRT lackeys, but Bumble was a bundle of joy, and no matter how jaded Kara thought she was, this bee-themed cape had a way with people.

"Hey Bumble, what's up?"

"I'm doing great! 'S not easy to balance capework and schoolwork, but I'm making it work! Plus The Wards have loads of support for us teens! Not to mention..."

There it is. Thought Kara. She liked Bumble, but she was not subtle in her attempts at recruiting.
Or maybe she's not a depressed weirdo who's trying to fill a void inside her? Ever consider that?
Kara swiftly pushed that niggling little voice aside. She had somewhere to be.

"Yeah. Hey, Bumble, I've got to be somewhere. Talk to you later, yeah?"
“Ooh! Are you going to see someone? You got a boooyfriend?” teased Bumble.

Underneath her full-face mask, Kara rolled her eyes at the childish antic.

“No, I don’t have a boyfriend.” She sighed.
“Sounds like something that someone with a boyfriend would say!” teased Bumble.
“Urgh!” groaned Kara as she facepalmed.
“Okay, girlfriend, I’ll let you go to your date!” smirked Bumble as she flew away.
“Hey, wait! I- urghhh!”

Bumble was a great person, but when she felt mischievous, she could be incredibly annoying!

Oh, forget her! Remember, there’s somewhere else you’ve gotta be! That internal voice kicked in, reminding Kara of her plan.
Right. Kara thought. Nodding her head, she took off through the sky.

Her access to the PRT’s database had revealed a very interesting presence within Brockton Bay. She didn’t know how long he had been in the city, but considering his current status, it could have been days or years. She flew to the bridge that had been noted in the terminal, deep in the bad side of town.

What filth!

Kara was born into wealth utterly unimaginable to the overwhelming majority of people. Even the rich could not truly fathom the uber-rich unless they themselves managed to enter their ranks. Having never needed to go to the dwellings of the downtrodden, she had rarely, if indeed ever, deigned to do so. Now she was seeing it first-hand, without the distraction of hunting down criminals.

Where there wasn’t trash, there was graffiti, and everywhere there was the smell of various bodily fluids. What was such a cape doing in a place like this?

As she reached the bridge, there was something that she wasn’t expecting; out in front of the bridge, there was a red motorcycle.

Kara floated down to the ground, close to the motorcycle, overhearing Japanese being spoken. As she touched down, becoming visible to the inhabitants in the shadows, a shout echoed out.

“OI! Get away from my…bike…”

The shout petered out as Roadrunner recognized the individual that had dropped in. Omnigirl looked up at him, then looked past him, at the man, the myth, the legend that he had come to talk to. She spoke to the man in ragged coats as he chowed down on the bento box that Takumi had brought him.

“Horikiri Takeichi. You’re a hard man to find. I never would have expected a hero of your standing to be in a place like this.”