Tag Archives: Rachel

Arc 5.8: Chance & Fate

Chance & Fate: Part 7

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“Um… Actually, kind of. Izzy and Daniel are good for scouting, and that’s what I’m using them for. You’re more like artillery. You never know where we might need you. I’d say let’s wait till we know, and then I’ll send you, if needed.”

“Well that… fucking sucks.” Vaughn stared at his chair’s monitor.

Camille looked over at Vaughn and then over at me. Despite what I normally expected out of her, she wasn’t flirting at all.

“So don’t you think we ought to leave the bombs to the Defenders? They’ve been doing it longer.

Continue reading Chance & Fate: Part 7 →

Arc 5.8: Chance & Fate

Chance & Fate: Part 6

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I had the jet’s scanner zoom in on the storage building, specifically on the objects inside. Flat discs approximately the thickness of tires lay on top of each other, arranged in the shapes of cylinders.

From the picture, the building appeared to be about seventy-five percent full. It wasn’t hard to calculate either. The building was rectangular.

I wondered exactly what that worked out to in terms of discs.

I zoomed in further, trying to zero in on one specific disc.

From behind me, Vaughn asked, “So, what’s in there?”

“I’m trying to figure that out,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed. Continue reading Chance & Fate: Part 6 →

Arc 5.8: Chance & Fate

Chance & Fate: Part 4

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Before making any calls, I walked to the campus parking garage. The van wouldn’t be as warm as my dorm room, but it was warmer than standing outside.

I turned the key, and it began to hum. After the fight where Rook had ripped chunks out of the van, and flipped it over, I’d done some fairly extensive repair work. Among other things, I’d switched the van’s power source over to the same fuel cells I used for Cassie’s armor—not to mention changing its engine substantially.

Its heating system didn’t work as well as I wanted, but there were tradeoffs.

One was that the new engine barely made any noise at all, and once it warmed up, I could comfortably sit inside without guzzling gas. Another, of course, was that the armor was vastly improved. There were a few more.

I dialed Rachel’s number. She answered, taking a deep breath as she saw me. Continue reading Chance & Fate: Part 4 →

Arc 5.7: Doom

Doom: Part 2

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Walking over to the school’s parking garage turned out to be every bit as cold as I thought it might be.

I hadn’t thought to wear my boots, and when I cut across the lawn, snow got into my shoes.

During the drive across the city, the van’s heating system warmed up enough to melt the snow still on my shoes. By the time I arrived at the house I’d inherited from my grandparents, and taken the elevator down to the Heroes Leagues’ headquarters, my feet were cold and wet.

I felt every inch the budding supergenius as I walked to the front of HQ’s basketball court sized main room, leaving wet footprints on the carpet.

Continue reading Doom: Part 2 →

Arc 5.5: Rachel in Infinity City, Area 551

Rachel in Infinity City: Part 23

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Then Red Lightning took to the air, flying out to the street where Günther inspected the living and the dead.

Grandpa stood in the street, staring down at the asphalt.

I turned away from watching him, and back toward Ghostgirl. She’d been watching him too, but turned her head back toward me.

“That was weird,” I said.

She turned to look behind herself again, looking out of the alley and toward the street. When she turned back to look at me, she said, “Weirder than you think. We don’t exist in their universe. A supervillain attacked Mom, and she lost the baby.”

Continue reading Rachel in Infinity City: Part 23 →

Arc 5.5: Rachel in Infinity City, Area 551

Rachel in Infinity City: Part 22

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“Hey,” I said.

She held up her left arm, looking down at the League communicator on her wrist. It looked just like the ones Nick made for us when we were in costume.

She tapped on the screen, waited, and then said, “It’s her. Thank God.”

Then she pulled a roll of duct tape out of her utility belt, floated down, and taped Julie’s mouth shut.

I laughed. “Duct tape? Did Nick put that in there?”

She froze. “No. I… Wait a second.”

She pulled up the communicator again, and this time she pointed it at me. After tapping the screen she said, “OK, this is going to be weird, but we split off early last summer—your time.”

“My time?” Continue reading Rachel in Infinity City: Part 22 →

Arc 5.5: Rachel in Infinity City, Area 551

Rachel in Infinity City: Part 21

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Not that we had time, and to judge from how they handled the True, if they were anything but decent, we were so screwed.

I’d never seen Vaughn target more than one person at a time with lightning. He’d told me that he didn’t think he had enough control to do it without straight out killing people. Whoever the person behind the lightning I’d just seen was, he’d taken out everybody near the entrance to the alley all at once.

Glancing upward identified him instantly—the red costume with a lightning bolt under an arch with Egyptian hieroglyphics on the chest? That was Red Lightning’s costume. I’d always thought the lightning, plus the arch, plus the hieroglyphics was a little busy, but I’d never gotten to complain to Red Lightning himself about the questionable logo design due to him being dead.

It appeared that I might get the chance now. This wasn’t Vaughn. This wasn’t Vaughn’s cousin Lucas, or his Uncle Russ, Lucas’s father. It was Giles Hardwick, the original Red Lightning.

Continue reading Rachel in Infinity City: Part 21 →

Arc 5.5: Rachel in Infinity City, Area 551

Rachel in Infinity City: Part 19

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I pulled my finger away from the screen, and the button changed from “Red Alert” to “Alert Sent.”

I was just about to call Travis to ask what Tara wanted me to do when the situation changed again. In the moments between noticing the Blues with the motorcycles and the Greens jumping out of their vans, and sending the red, the Blues had jumped off their bikes to join their fellow Blues in firing shots at Rod. At the same time, the Greens had taken a position off to the side, and they weren’t carrying handguns like the Blues. They had automatic rifles—specifically AK-47’s.

One of them had a grenade launcher.

I didn’t know how much trolls could take, but Rod couldn’t stand there forever.

As I came to that conclusion, one of the Blues stood up, waved his arms and all the True stopped firing.

He started talking, and taking the chance that Julie wasn’t in range, I listened in.

Continue reading Rachel in Infinity City: Part 19 →

Arc 5.5: Rachel in Infinity City, Area 551

Rachel in Infinity City: Part 18

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I stared at the phone’s screen, trying to remember what Nick had told me about his design. He’d put the phones together last spring when we’d been facing the remnants of the Cabal. After a moment, I remembered everything.

Nick had used the the Defenders teams’ communication protocols for our communicators. They were based on protocols Grandpa designed, and they’d become a standard. It wasn’t much of a jump to guess that he’d designed them to work here too—especially when I remembered that Dixie Superman got lost and came through Infinity City to our world. Grandpa successfully visited Dixie Superman’s reality once, and he would have needed a way to get back.

I could easily see Nick throwing in a way to detect which reality we were in if he had access to Grandpa’s plans.

This was the best news I’d had in hours, and I might have screamed in relief—except I didn’t—and that was good, because as I floated there, another name appeared on the team list:

∞ Red Lightning

And that put a whole new spin on everything—what with Red Lightning having betrayed the original Heroes League, and being, well, dead.

Continue reading Rachel in Infinity City: Part 18 →

Arc 5.5: Rachel in Infinity City, Area 551

Rachel in Infinity City: Part 17

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Samita didn’t say anything, and honestly, I had been kind of rude. Not that Tara seemed to hear.

She waved us forward, following Travis toward the corner—though not too closely. She didn’t have a death wish. Travis had already reached out, stuck his claws into one of the wooden beams that held up the floor above us and ripped it down.

He didn’t even act as if there were any resistance. In one moment, the beam was holding up the floor. In the next, it was in two pieces, both of them dangling from the ceiling. In the moment after that, Travis ripped a hole in the floor large enough for any of us to crawl through.

Tara turned toward us, and said, “Quickly, now. Samita and Rod, please climb through. Travis help them up. I’ll go last.” Continue reading Rachel in Infinity City: Part 17 →