Slip
Angela stepped carefully down the hallway in her sapphire heels. She winced with every floorboard creak. Even with a short robe on over her costume for the evening, she was quite a sight, certainly finer flesh and more of it than had been seen between these dilapidated walls in a long time. One hand crossed over her chest, holding the robe closed as high up as possible; the other gripped her tiara tightly and tucked itself behind her.
She hoped no one caught her out like this. It was one thing if rumors started circulating among the scumbags of the streets that Sapphire was alive and well and fighting crime. It was quite another if her identity was exposed. She'd been lucky (and stupid) once before; she had to be more careful.
Maybe I should have changed out back.
What, and let some weirdo catch you naked and defenseless?
Maybe I should have gone out the window anyway.
And how would you explain the bars broken off the window?
I don't know, rust?
A few more steps and she was in the clear. She quickly shrugged off her robe, tucking it in a bush underneath the stairs. Already she could feel the swelling strength of her forcefield, a barely-there warm caress on her skin from head to toe. But that was nothing compared to what came next. Her hands trembled with excitement as they brought the shiny tiara to her head...
Oh, Yes!
The power surged through her slender body, a momentary rush that reached out and tugged on every nerve ending at once.
Hands went to hips. A half-step to the side pushed her feet to shoulder-width apart. She took a deep breath, standing up straighter, drawing up her spine, pushing her chest out and her shoulders back, raising her chin in a look of supreme confidence.
Sapphire was ready for action.
An instant later, she was airborne.
The ground fell away slowly as she floated up like a lazy balloon free of its string -- in no hurry to reach the heavens, preferring to revel in the simple feel of weightlessness. The air was still. Sapphire felt the crispness of October only as an abstraction through the warm cocoon of her forcefield. A quick look up showed no buildings, no wires, only the limitless night sky. Sapphire closed her eyes and let herself rise unguided. The emptiness of the sky was comforting. Nothing could hurt her here. Not hostile job interviewers, not Noel, not Ricky, not anyone.
After a long time, she opened her eyes. The orange glow of a sodium-lit city took a moment to orient itself below her. Downtown was a cluster of dark crystals to her left; a mostly-neat grid of streets and low buildings sprawled in front of her; to the right, the irregular patterns of suburbia nestled up against the foothills. The city sounds were less manic, less angry, almost soothing from up here.
Sapphire had to rein herself in. This wasn't a joyride. She had a job to do. She turned west and set off for the old warehouse district.
It wasn't really any faster to fly than it was to drive -- Sapphire had to keep her speed down or the wind would strip her naked -- but this way she didn't have to worry about anyone spotting her, or following her, or catching her off-guard. Not to mention she never had to look for a parking space.
Those were just rationalizations. The real reason was simple. It was the feeling of control.
No matter how out of whack life on the ground got, up here everything seemed to even out.
But now even as Sapphire, life was off balance.
Without warning, she found herself suddenly listing, veering to her right. And sliding downward. The wind flapped her costume more vigorously. Sapphire reflexively stiffened up, an instant of panic sharpening her focus; she leaned back, straightening her legs, willing herself to come to a hover.
What just happened?
She looked at each of her four gemstones in turn -- doing it slowly, moving as little as possible. Each glowed steadily -- plenty of juice left. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the feeling of the sapphires' caress. It was warm and pleasant, but not distractingly so -- there was no hint of the sapphires' turning.
Weird.
After a moment of careful stillness, taking mental inventory of every sensation and finding nothing unusual, she relaxed a bit, easing back into her normal neutral-gravity flying stance. Legs bent slightly, one a bit further forward than the other, feet relaxed, toes pointed, the weight of her sapphire shoes shifting subtly to her tied-off ankle straps; back arched slightly, shoulders relaxed, arms neutral; her body hanging from an invisible thread above the base of her spine. As she resumed forward movement, her wings billowed, gently tugging her hands out and back. Sapphire leaned into the wind as she picked up speed, back arched more, shoulders back, the rhythmic fluttering of her top and skirt comforting against her skin.
She felt fine now, but she took a lower and more cautious flight path just the same.
Minutes later, Sapphire touched down silently on the roof of the chop shop. She peered in the skylight.
There appeared to be no activity tonight. The superheroine quickly straightened up and looked around at the surrounding buildings; yep, this was the place. So where was everybody?
Looking more carefully down into the warehouse where she'd last seen six or seven cars being wrenched at once and jumpsuited greasemonkeys hustling every which way, she now saw only one man, dressed in a floral print shirt over a wifebeater, jeans, and old combat boots. He sat near the big front door, idly playing balancing games leaning back in a folding chair as he flipped through a magazine.
Figures they'd have the night off, Sapphire pouted. Not that she should have been doing anything more than watching, anyway, according to her partner. But who knows, if somebody had wandered off, and she'd followed them, and they'd done something stupid, besides stealing a car... she could have intervened then, right?
Anything for a little action.
With a quick spring, Sapphire shot into the sky. Maybe another trip downtown would be more fruitful. There had to be *something* she could do that wasn't too boring or too risky...
Maybe she'd peek in on that penthouse.
Or maybe she should just go home.
The "slippage" she'd experienced really bothered her. Sapphire thought back -- she'd never felt anything like that before. Sure, if she pushed her power too far things started to get... *fuzzy*, but this was different. She thought of her first three outings since the Labor Day Incident. There'd been no slip, not even a little one, not even a hint of anything weird. If anything, she'd felt better than before, more focused, more in control.
Sapphire compared it to the effect of The Hunter's attack. No, it wasn't the same. Every time The Hunter had had her in his sights, the feeling had been like sudden debilitating sexual overload. Tonight's slip had just been... well, Nothing. An absence. No, not even that. Just a little drift.
Anyway, The Hunter was dead, and she felt fine. No, she felt *great*. The sapphire energy felt as powerful and pure as ever.
Sapphire couldn't run and hide just because she'd felt a hiccup.
The steeled heroine turned toward the skyscrapers. Somewhere down there, at the top of one of those buildings, Sapphire imagined a powerful man dreaming of expanding his already-vast criminal empire. Truth was, she had no idea how big or small the stolen-car operation she'd found might be, or what other perpetrations its participants might parlay. But she was going to get to the bottom of it. She was going to make sure that crime didn't pay.
Getting closer now, the buildings began to reach up and differentiate. Sapphire spotted her target, a simple pillar of glass, nestled between two shorter and more broad-shouldered buildings on the near side of the city's center. Sitting atop the monolith was an angular arrangement of darker glass with a gently sloping roof, jutting out over one corner like a stylish hat, giving the otherwise staid building a dash of daring personality.
The Penthouse. Angela had followed the Felonious Ferrari Fellow to this building and watched as the elevator had taken him to its top. A customer? A mark? No, he'd been called here -- no doubt his employer.
Sapphire doubted that anyone with such lofty accomodations was solely funded by a single chop shop, no matter how successful it might be. Men like this had aspirations. They had power, and they wanted more.
The heroine was pulled out of her thoughts by the rhythmic flapping of her wing-sleeves. She was coming down too fast. She stiffened up, expecting to slow, but instead she felt that same *lessening* again. A pit of fear grew in her stomach; she tensed with concentration, slowing somewhat, but it wasn't going to be enough...
She hit the roof with a thump, crumpling into a ball and bouncing and then rolling over one shoulder before coming to an awkward stop. She leaped to her feet, holding perfectly still in a crouch as the world gradually stopped rocking back and forth around her. Sapphire's heart beat double-time, slowing a little bit with each deep breath as the girl calmed herself. Her eyes locked onto the access hatch a dozen yards away -- had anyone heard her? Her senses strained to detect any signs of activity beneath her, but the insistent humming of nearby rooftop machinery went undisturbed.
Sapphire shook herself loose. As usual, there were no signs of damage, except maybe her skirt was a little stretched out around the waist -- whatever the weird weakness was, her forcefield still managed to protect her.
A tentative hover and several long moments of inward focus found nothing wrong. She felt fine. No tinge of carnal response that marked the sapphires' waning, no flickering or dimming of the stones themselves. So what was it?
Sapphire sat down. She suddenly realized how tired she was. She'd had a long day -- a half-dozen interviews (and rejections), chasing the car thief a dozen blocks in heels, Ricky... and she hadn't really eaten anything since yesterday.
The girl checked her hand -- after a moment, she caught a slight tremor. Was that hunger, or was her anxiety coming back? Maybe her recent anxious state interfered with the sapphires somehow. It made a certain amount of sense; her power seemed to work by interpreting her movements, and if her nerves were shot... it was a good thing she'd taken her meds. She probably hadn't waited long enough for the Xanax to restabilize in her system. She'd better just chill out for a little while and let the drug do its thing before she headed home.
Or maybe it was the Xanax itself that was messing her up. It affected the nervous system too, slowing down both her emotions and her anxious twitches. Maybe the more the Xanax took hold, the worse she'd get.
She really hoped it wasn't the Xanax messing her up. She really needed to be Sapphire, but she really needed her Xanax too, at least until she could be sure she'd shaken the nightmares and the panic attacks. Dr. Ward had said it might take a couple of months, until she'd found some normalcy in her new life. Maybe once she had a few successful missions under her belt...
Because if push came to shove, she didn't know which one she needed more. The sapphires gave purpose to her life. But the Xanax kept the bad memories and scary thoughts under control. Angela had survived a real-life nightmare -- to continue revisiting endless horrible variations in her mind was too much.
No, it wasn't her meds affecting her sapphires. It couldn't be. Fate had been too cruel to her already.
Maybe she was just tired. She'd just close her eyes for a few minutes and rest... then she'd be okay . . .