Ultrahuman 01 - Ugly (12 page)

Zoe had picked up a guy about ten years older than she was and it looked a lot like Andrea would be going home alone. Not that that bothered her. She considered, briefly, going home and getting changed. When the sun rose it would be Saturday and she did not need to get up early. Roger did not like his weekends cluttered with work so Radium Comics did not open on Saturdays. However, she had had a couple of drinks. She was by no means drunk, but there would be some slight impairment. She was not going to go out actively looking for trouble.

She grinned slightly. Maybe she would get lucky and someone would try to mug her on the way home.

~~~

The air over Tracy’s Landing, commonly referred to as Uptown, was clear. There was little cloud on the autumnal day, and the only air traffic was a couple of helicopters, the odd Ultra, and Penny. She hung in the air above Carfax Avenue, high enough that she was little more than a white dot to the people below.

Of course, that made the people below into ants. On a Saturday morning the streets below were full of shoppers and tourists, probably mostly the former. Uptown was noted for shops, clubs, and restaurants. There were some large hotels, but at this time of year, neither summer nor Christmas, the tourists were fewer in number.

She turned and flew south toward Downtown. From here it was difficult to tell the difference. Both areas were built within the last twenty or thirty years, and both had been designed by people wanting to make a name for themselves. Downtown was the business district, the ‘New Wall Street’ in the eyes of many, and it had more offices than shops, but it still
looked
the same.

It was a little depressing. She had come from a small sort of town and here she was hanging above… It was just so
urban.
The buildings were
vast
!
Huge towers of glass and steel, and all she could really see was blue and grey. Down at ground level she was used to it, sort of. And Friendship was not the prettiest part of the city, but it seemed to have more colour. Up here…

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Penny twisted in the air and her heart jumped into her throat. Hovering behind her, large as life, and twice as glaring in the bright sunlight, was Ultranova. He was
not
looking at the city.

‘It’s, uh…’ Up close, and she had never seen him this close before, he was not quite as good-looking as his reputation suggested; certainly not unattractive, far from it, but no better to look at than Bobby. There was a lot more muscle on his frame, showed off perfectly by the skintight suit he wore, and the suit suggested he was better endowed. Embarrassingly, it also suggested he was enjoying the view rather a lot and Penny fixed her eyes firmly on his face. That was solid, strong, but softer than she had expected. His blonde hair, ruffled by the wind, was fairly short. She knew he avoided expensive hairdressers precisely because the wind reduced even the best cuts to ‘tousled’ in seconds when you were flying. He had a slightly Roman nose, a full mouth, and blue eyes. The eyes were nice, in a slightly cold way.

‘New Millennium City,’ he proclaimed, spreading his arms, ‘the finest city in the world. Where paupers can become kings.’ His arms dropped suddenly and he floated closer, right arm extending. ‘My apologies, I should introduce myself. I am Ultranova.’

Penny giggled and took his hand to shake. ‘I, uh, know,’ she replied and then her eyes widened as he swept her hand up to his lips. Well, he was charming…

‘I suppose you do, but I find myself at something of a loss. I feel sure I would remember anyone so beautiful if I had met them before…’

On the other hand, he was trying too hard. ‘I’m Cygnus, and we’ve never met.’ She gave a gentle pull on her hand since he did not seem to feel like letting it go. ‘I’m new and I usually work at night.’

‘Night,’ he replied, smiling, ‘is for more pleasurable pursuits.’

Okay, trying
way
too hard. The need to tell the greatest hero in the state to cool his heels was, thankfully, averted by the sound of sirens drifting up from below. Penny spotted the car, something small and fast, being pursued down 12
^th
Avenue by two police cruisers, and then she saw Ultranova flying past her as he headed toward it. Well she was not going to leave him to work alone; maybe she could help.

Swinging around she dived after him.

~~~

Inside the car, three men in full face masks were having the time of their lives.

‘We got, three, maybe four million here,’ the one in the back said, the grin evident in his voice. ‘All in negotiable, untraceable, bearer bonds. We’re made.’

‘Soon as we lose these cops, yeah,’ the driver replied, his attention split between his mirrors and the road ahead of him. He was acutely aware that one slip at this point would end it, but he was still thinking up ways to spend half a million bucks.

‘We’re made all right,’ the third said, his voice suddenly pouring water on the enthusiasm. ‘Capes.’

‘Who is it?’ the driver asked, not wanting to look away from his driving.

‘Looks like Ultranova and… some stripper.’

‘Well forget the bitch, shoot him.’

‘He’s bulletproof!’

‘I know. We just have to keep him off us until we can get to the rendezvous. Then it’s clean sailing. Shoot at him!’

The passengers both opened windows, leaned out, and opened up with their Uzis.

~~~

Penny was a little surprised to discover that she was catching up. She was actually faster than Ultranova. Who knew? Then the lead started flying.

She twisted right, but quickly realised that the thugs in the sports car were far more concerned with the powerhouse that was Ultranova than they were with the slight girl in the brief costume. As she watched, he fired back, a beam of incandescent light lancing toward the car and just missing. Tarmac exploded behind the car forcing a cruiser to swerve violently. This was going to become dangerous.

‘Keep them busy,’ Penny yelled toward the hero. ‘I’ve got an idea.’

She thought she heard him yell something as she dived toward the traffic, but she was too busy wondering whether she could really pull this off to listen. Swinging around she came up behind the cruisers and closed in on the sports car. If they had been on an open road she figured they might have been able to outrun her, but here, in traffic, their speed was limited and she was closing the gap. The car jinked left into oncoming traffic, swinging right onto 10
^th
Street and she moved, grabbing the edges of the roof over the driver and passenger, and then pulling upward.

It was more than she had ever even
tried
to lift before and the pull on her arms felt like it was going to yank them out of their sockets… And then there was the sound of an over-revving engine and she was applying the brakes as she held the car in the air twenty feet above the traffic streaming along below.

Bullets pancaked against her skin and she looked around at the man sitting in the passenger-side window trying to kill her. ‘Aww, give it up, would you? It’s a new suit and you’re never going to hurt me with that thing. Even if you do, the best you’ll get is spinal damage when I drop you.’

The hooded gunman sagged over the roof of the car. ‘Fuck,’ he muttered, ‘crime of the decade and we’re stopped by a stripper.’

Penny considered a bad case of fumble-fingers for a second and then started lowering the car toward the spot where the two cruisers had pulled to the side of the road beside the plaza on the corner. Cops with pistols and shotguns were looking up at her, mildly confused expressions on their faces. Other cars had stopped and there was a crowd gathering, and some of them had cameras and notepads. There were two helicopters swinging around overhead, one of them bearing the recognisable logo of ACPN, the American Crime Prevention Network. They had probably been following the car chase, but she had no idea how the other press people had got there so fast.

‘Where do you want them?’ Penny called down to the cops. The cops looked at each other. ‘I don’t want to hurry you or anything, but this thing
is
kind of heavy.’

A minute later the cops were surrounding the vehicle and disarming the crooks while Penny floated to the ground to the click of camera shutters. She blinked as she was instantly surrounded by men and women clutching notepads and pocket recording devices.

‘That was amazing, Miss…?’

‘You saved a lot of people today.’

‘You’re new to the hero scene, aren’t you?’

‘That outfit is to die for! Did you design it yourself?’

‘Could we get some pictures…?’

‘Cygnus,’ she said, answering the only question she could immediately hear over the throng. ‘I’m Cygnus.’

‘We haven’t seen you in the skies before.’

‘No, I just got my registration last week and I normally work nights. I just happened to be passing with…’ She looked around, but there was no sign of Ultranova. Letting her take all the credit, well that was nice of him. ‘I was just flying past and I heard the sirens… And a friend of mine designed the costume for me.’ She flicked her hair back over her shoulders and spread her arms, and the sound of cameras was almost deafening.

‘So you’re obviously strong, and bulletproof, and you fly…’

Penny grinned at the woman who had asked the implied question. ‘That about covers it, as far as I know. I do seem to have a knack for being in the right place at the right time, but I’m not sure that’s a power. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to check whether the police need anything from me and then I should be going.’

‘Have you anything to say to the people of New Millennium?’ someone tried, going for one last quote.

Penny smiled. ‘Me? No, I’m just doing what I’m supposed to. If you can help you’re supposed to, right?’ Turning, she headed off toward the police cars.

~~~

Andrea sat cross-legged on the floor of her apartment, carefully cleaning her sword. It was old, very old. Someone had made it for a samurai with peculiar, but exquisite, tastes over seven hundred years ago. The blade was straight, double-edged, and used the Soshu Kitae, or Seven Layers, method. A double-edged katana was unheard of; even the ninja had used single-edged swords. Why it had been made and by whom was not known, but there were very few swordsmiths who worked steel that way. It had a name, Yōgo-sha, which she had been told meant ‘Defender.’ It was, if anything was, her prized possession and she took exceptionally good care of it.

Her attention was drawn to the small TV which was on primarily to provide background noise. ACPN was also an adequate method of keeping track of the big crime going on in the city. They usually just reported without adding spin. Right now they were showing footage from a car chase which had started somewhere in north Downtown and now, it seemed, come to an end.

Andrea watched as Cygnus lowered the escape car into a ring of waiting policemen. The girl was certainly strong, and Uzi rounds had a heavier impact than the Ingram bullets. It was impressive. The little press show afterward was just not Twilight’s style, but Andrea had to admit that the blonde came off well, and she looked a bit embarrassed at the attention. Not necessarily a glory hound. Thinking about it, she had wanted them to share the joy at the warehouse. Okay, so Andrea would let the bimboid off this one; it looked like she had been ambushed.

Looking down, Andrea went back to her work.

~~~

The helicopter flew in low dropping to a landing pad on the eastern edge of Andrews Air Force Base. There it disgorged two men in dark suits and sunglasses. One of them carried a large video camera.

They went straight to an unmarked, unremarkable door in one of the nearby structures, opened it, and went inside. It let them onto a short corridor with a pair of elevator doors at the end. Again, nothing remarkable until the doors closed and a panel opened to reveal an iris scanner. Both of them placed their eye in front of it before the car began to move, downward.

Around five storeys down it stopped and the door opened, and the men were faced with two guards armed with assault rifles. Showing their identification got them past that roadblock, and then it was on down the corridor to an office with no identification on it where a tall, slim man, in a dark suit, was waiting for their report.

‘The readings were… particularly strange,’ one of the two men said.

‘Explain strange,’ the man behind the desk requested.

‘She was classed as an A-three, but the power level readings were way too high for that magnitude.’

‘And,’ the second man said, ‘the frequency distribution was all wrong. She’s
not
a normal Ultra.’

The man behind the desk raised an eyebrow. ‘Exactly what would you call a “normal” Ultra?’

~~~

‘A car!’ June exclaimed, her eyes, once again, on the playback on ACPN. ‘You lifted a fucking car!’

‘I know. I was there.’ Penny was amused, and a little horrified. New Ultras were not that common and tended to make the news. New Ultras that looked like she did… The segment was playing on every hourly news update, with some seriously loving shots of her behind in the costume. And then there was June…

‘And you look
awesome
in the costume. I mean, every man in the city is going to be flooding their lounge with drool. Most of the women too.’

‘I don’t really think…’

‘Trust me. I bet Bobby’s seen it. I bet he rips your clothes off as soon as you get there.’

‘June!’

‘What? I want to. If he doesn’t I’ll…’ She stopped suddenly and turned around, starting for her room.

Penny frowned at her back. ‘June?’

‘Nothing,’ the brunette replied. ‘I’ll be back… in a second. Yeah, just a second.’

Penny shook her head as June retreated into her room and closed the door. Her housemate was getting distinctly odd lately. Well, it was almost time to go see whether Bobby
did
rip her clothes off anyway.

~~~

He did not, not immediately anyway.

‘You’ve been making a name for yourself, gatinha,’ Bobby said as she walked into the lounge. ‘Barely a week under your belt and you’re appearing every hour on the television.’