The Power of Ten Book Four: Dynamo

Jessica looked inordinately pleased that someone would be envying her. “Yeah!” she agreed happily. “I don’t get much time to practice flying or aerial tactics at all...”

“Gods and Totems!” I sighed theatrically, and they totally bought into it. “Just because they don’t have any real fliers... Now, listen up, all of you. You two, because you need to remind her of something.” I had an overly serious face on, and they all adopted the same thing.

“You, Jessica, are born to wear Powah Armah.” She blinked despite herself. “I know, I know. It’s big, it’s bulky, it’s got frequently horrible fashion sense unless your last name is Stark, and it smells on the inside of sweat and gerbils.” They all got strange expressions. “But, why do you wear power armor?!” I asked them, holding up four fingers. “Ignore the armor. What’s the POWER in it for?”

“Because you want to fly!” Cindy blurted out. “You can have jets or anti-grav or rockets or wings or something, and fly around!”

“Ding ding!” I folded down a finger. “One No-Prize to you, Cindy the Silk! What else?”

“Super strength! You want to be able to lift up cars and tanks and stuff!” Gwen blurted out.

“Ding ding! Second no-prize to tha sultry blonde in tha cornah!” I pointed grandly, and then I pivoted on Jessica and pointed as Gwen blushed.

“Oh.” Jessica blinked. “I can already do that...”

“CORRECTAMUNDO!” I pronounced. “So, guess what? You don’t need power armor that does that stuff, because you can already do it.”

She was amazed at the thought. “What about the other two points?”

“Well, those ARE the two reasons you want it.” I waggled the first finger. “Bullet-proofing. You know, ARMOR. And, well, you can mount all kinds of weapons on a suit of armor, right?”

“Yeah!” she agreed quickly. “Ranged attacks!” she made the leap.

“And what’s two hundred pounds of armor to you? You could barely tell you were wearing it,” I scoffed at her. “All that power other guys are using so they can rocket around like little kids and lift a tank... you don’t really need all that power. You can concentrate all that juice on your defense, and your offense, if you want to.

“Let me tell you, if you don’t need a propulsion system, that saves so much bloody tech and power supply it is not funny. If you don’t need to include servos and power compensators and artificial musculature and body-following adjustable servos, ho, gawds and Totems, so much power is saved!” I declared. “Schmot Gurl says we needs to get you some toyz!”

She actually looked pretty excited, thinking about all of this. “But... how? I don’t have the money or the brains to make that kind of stuff!” she admitted, suddenly dropping into depression again.

I looked at her. Pointedly looked around, and away, spinning a complete circle. I pointed around very obviously and repeatedly. “MUHNEY.”

They all looked up and around, and despite themselves began to grin. “SHIELD would give me a suit?” she asked, a little shocked.

“Girl, you can fly and you are superstrong. Exactly how many people in the States can do that?” Her mouth opened and closed. “They would fall over themselves to give you some tech to try out, especially if you are going to go to work for them. You just have to admit you need some help, ask the right people, and whoa, they are totally willing to do stuff for you if you are willing to do stuff for them.”

“But it won’t be HER suit, will it?” Cindy asked in a low voice. “They can just take it away if they want to.”

“And so she goes finds someone else to give her one,” I said breezily, pointing emphatically. “Girl flies! Girl VERY valuable! Fly fly, tweet tweet! Humans not fly! Girl valuable! Lots of people with armor. Not lots of people can fly!”

Jessica was trying not to grin and failing. “I never looked at it like that...” she admitted.

“Girl, it’s like driving a car. Once you learn how to drive, who cares what car you have? Like this, you want to learn to use some armor like nobody else can do. After that, who cares where the armor comes from? You’ll be able to USE it, that’s the key! If it comes down to super-strong flying girl who’s great at using armor vs Joe Schmoe the soldier-boy who’s good at using armor, who do you think they’re going to give that armor to?” I leaned forwards to her. “Hint, you give the best gear to your best people. You can fly. There ARE no better peeps than you!”

She clutched her hands, really trying to believe in herself. “But-but, didn’t I hear that you can fly?” she burst out, sabotaging herself once again.

I rolled my eyes as the startled spider-totems looked at me enviously. “I can’t fly. I can glide aggressively, which is very different. Hey, Blue Shield, can you turn off the Stillflight?” I called out, waving.

He weighed me for a moment before speaking into his com. A moment later there was a feeling of release in the air, and Jessica promptly rose up off of the floor in joy.

“Stop!” I ordered her, and she froze in midair promptly, wondering what she had done wrong. “Well, look at that.” I crossed my hands and surveyed her, elbows akimbo. “She can just sit there in midair, without wavering, without lines, without anything. Damn, wish I could glide in place without, y’know, wavering all over the place. She doesn’t even have to stay laid out flat to the ground to do it.

“Betcha she can support all of us up there, too.” I promptly jumped up and landed on her shoulders. The other two grinned and jumped on her, too, clinging to a shoe and shoulder each respectively.

Her position in the air didn’t change at all.

“Can she stay put and spin in a circle?” I asked archly. She began to rotate around in place easily enough. “Damn, can’t do that while gliding. Can she clock spin?” I inquired. Her brow furrowed as she stopped spinning around, and instead started rotating sideways. I crouched so my head didn’t hit the ground as she spun around that axis, and we all went up and down, around and around. “Can she reach out with her right hand and spin about that point?”

She had to concentrate, reaching out with her right hand, Cindy getting out of the way, and proceeded to spin about that point without otherwise moving, carrying the three of us.

“Dyna the Power-Glider can’t do any of that, uh-uh,” I informed her grandly. “Because, y’know, I can’t FLY.” I hopped off her shoulders and down to the ground easily, the other two following me in dropping off.

“Is that really that important?” Jessica asked, confused at that, as she drifted down next to us.

“You don’t really think about this stuff too much, do you?” I asked, and her face fell. “Something going on in your life?” I inquired calmly. I already knew, of course, but I wanted her to tell me as I raised an eyebrow at her.

“I, I gained my powers in a truck accident. My whole family died. I was affected by radiation and in a coma for three months. I, I live with my aunt right now...”

I looked right and left. “So suddenly you have super-powers, and think that might be enough to change your horrible life. Then you get thrown onto a super-team of kids you actually know, and they are stronger than you, more graceful, and better-looking, and suddenly you feel you aren’t all that special again, especially since the training they are doing caters to them, and not to you.”

They all looked embarrassed at that, and Jessica swallowed as she looked at me.

“It’s definitely time for you to start abusing your ability to fly in all the ways,” I grinned at her, hands on my hips. “First and most basic lesson of a Master Flyer, which you definitely have the potential to be: Never fight on the terms of someone who can’t fly!”

I walked up to her and turned her ninety degrees to the floor. “If they can’t fly, your one-on-one fights should start from right there.”

I looked over in time to see Cindy and Gwen turning their heads sideways, starting to spread their legs out to get on an even keel. I rolled my eyes at both of them, and they promptly checked themselves.

“Now, while staying like that, start throwing punches at me.” She brought her hands ‘up’, and glided closer to me. “Stop!” She froze. I leaned in closer to her. “Why are you moving in towards my hands?” I asked her. I stepped forward and pushed her down towards the floor. “You see any hands to block you down there?”

She looked up at me in shock. I reached down towards her, and my hands didn’t reach her. I would have to squat down to face her, which I did. “Now, what just happened to all the fancy footwork they are teaching everyone? What happened to the ability to kick? I might even have to use a hand to keep my balance!

“And does this weird position affect you at all?” She slowly shook her head. “How fast can you circle around me?”

She zipped around me, and I spun to keep up, moving away from the others as I tried to break her circling, and she started concentrating on the hunt, attempting to keep me rotating and spinning and trying to keep up with her, focusing and trying to keep her speed up and get a shot at my back.

She settled for my legs in the end as I hopped and jumped across the floor, knocking one of them out from under me, and making the mental jump to swing her body through a spin and kick out while I was splayed, catching me with a good kick and knocking me back towards a wall.

She followed up, then slowed down abruptly as she realized a wall was there.

We were some distance from the others as I crouched down next to the steel wall ringing the track. “Okay, now you can’t circle me. What do you do? Come in to punch with me?” I raised both fists. “What’s your new mantra?”

“Abuse flying!” she repeated dutifully. “What should I do?”

“Your legs are significantly longer and twice as strong as your arms. Are they doing anything, unlike mine?”

“No!” She grinned, and changed her position, facing me with her feet, and proceeded to start stomping on me.

The force of the kicks increased rapidly as I batted aside the first two so easily she almost spun out. Gritting her teeth, she started using more force, using flying to brace herself, and began to slam her heels down at me. It took her a minute to realize that she could keep spinning back and forth, and vary her height, to come at me from every angle, and I simply couldn’t block them all without crouching down to cover my whole body.

She ended up kicking me around like a soccer ball when she realized the other point: a normal person had no way of bracing against a superstrong opponent who could fly. Simply hitting me from the side would bowl me off my feet, which not incidentally could get me away from the wall. Continued flying prone kicks at my legs and smashing me into the air kept me away from the wall, and she could circle me from every angle and kick at me as she pleased.

“Okay, basic lesson over.” I grabbed an incoming kick, latched myself to the floor, and threw her completely up and over me as she was frozen in surprise. She slammed down to the rubbery floor hard, and I promptly had both her arms locked behind her.

“What did you... how?” she gasped, as my elbow drove the small of her back into the ground.

“Why are you still on the ground when you can fly?” I asked simply in reply.

She froze, and a second later we were flying straight up. I spun off and around, wrenching her around, and she wasn’t braced for it, slamming into the ceiling above with a solid crunch that had everyone below wincing as I clung to her easily, and had one foot on the ceiling so we didn’t fall down.

Still had her arms pinned, too.