Storyverse: WHC
Characters: Corinth
Warnings: bridge collapse
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I’m not precisely happy that a bridge is collapsing – what kind of person would I be – and definitely not a bridge this major, but it provides me the opportunity I’m looking for, at least, and there’s a sweeping sense of relief that leaves me lightheaded. I’m still not sure I’m doing this the right way. The first time I did this we just sort of stumbled into it, the confluence just carrying us into something we’d never planned for.
Well. The first time I did this was because my father set every parameter for me. The second time, the one where I tried and predictably failed, was winging it and hoping my idealism would carry me through. Then the accidental success. Then following someone else’s script again, hoping it would turn out right if I just kept at it step by step. It doesn’t matter how I end up counting it, really, because none of it was planned, so I have nothing to measure how the plan’s turning out against regardless.
I just have a name that’s doing some of the work of sleight of hand, a costume that’s doing more of it, and a potential mass casualty event.
The bridge falls in my mind’s eye a dozen different ways about an hour before I get there, wires snapping and cars sliding off the edge, road crumbling and water splashing too softly in the backdrop of the carnage. It looks the same as it starts happening, except that now I can hear, and it throws me. I’ve been away too long. Screams make me flinch again.
Barricades are the easy part. That’s the only thing I could decide on up front – gate off both sides so people stop streaming in before word gets all the way out there. It means I’m moving too fast for the news drones to catch more than a blur, but that’s alright. Speed is one of the more common powers and it would be stranger not to be able to manage it if I’d put in any practice, and who starts in trying to save people without any practice? I only really have to keep a tight grip on the telepathy and technopathy, and neither of those would do anything but give me a migraine at the moment, so it’s fine.
Time manipulation would work wonders, right here, but then I’d have to answer to every government in the world, and they’d figure out who I am for sure. Better that they only suspect, no matter how much it leaves me feeling like shit, and patch it over with something else. Everything else. I’m too fixated on the bad solution to let myself find the good one – but other superheroes have to be in this boat all the time, right? There have to be others.
I want to pick up cars. It feels like the right thing to do, grabbing some shiny gray vehicle in my hands and hauling it over to solid ground, over and over until everyone is free. Even at superspeed, it’s all happening too fast, though. I move to the side of the bridge and work at a hover. Increasing the tensile strength of the supports is a temporary measure, but someone more competent than me is going to have to come through and fix it all anyway. I’d rather not leave some poor engineer fucked, but what saves lives saves lives. I’ve got to change some of the materials, here and there, just to keep them from snapping where they tether.
The middle section of the bridge starts to break away, just like scenario three, and I catch it pretty solidly. I have to swap through three different types of telekinesis to find one I can maintain across the whole thing, and it aches through my shoulders already. It would’ve been easy to lift cars. This has me frozen in place enough for the cameras to catch my face as if I’m working in real time again, even as I slap shields across rubble trying to cover the gaps. I hope my grimace is photogenic enough. I’d hate to have a silly looking introduction.
My arms hurt. I’m pouring too much power into holding up the center of the bridge; I can’t even feel the powers move as drivers and passengers scramble above me, following pedestrians to safety. The heartbeats just pound louder in my ears as my focus narrows again and again. Emergency services are here trying to get people out – they’re the only ones with a remotely steady rhythm – of some car. A bus. I let my senses drift out of my body because it’s not like it’s going to leave me dizzier than I already am, but finding the shape of things by TK alone is a challenge. At least the nauseating sensation of quenching fires is still something I can handle with my eyes closed. I grapple my way to the fused door and let it disintegrate into the wind.
Let go, a voice tells me, and it’s long seconds where I assume it’s my own, my body protesting trying to hold everything still and steady as the heartbeats recede. It’s safe to let go now. I believe it. The only sound left for me to hear is my own blood rushing in my ears.
The water is so soothing on muscles I didn’t even realize were frozen stiff that I stifle a sob, and then figure why bother, and let myself have half a second to cry. No one can tell this deep under, anyway.
But there are people down here, still alive or mostly so, and the faster I can teleport cars to the surface, the more of them people can drag out. Each slap of the palm against metal hurts more than the last.
I’m not going to have the energy left to heal anyone.
So much for the grand entrance.
