Miraculous World: Georgia Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Titanic

In the daytime? I’m Lizzy. Just a normal girl with a normal life.

The tiny girl raised her hand. “Ms. Jackson? The wolves in the example should not be called apex predators. There are both bears and mountain lions in the area which can hunt and kill wolves that are away from their pack.”

The teacher in question let out a long-suffering sigh. “You are correct, Lizzy, but for this lesson please stick to the animals pictured on the chart and not others that are in the real environment.”

The bell marking the end of second period chose that moment to ring, and Lizzy Fischer’s stomach chose that moment to growl. Flip side, since everyone was trying to get out of the classroom, nobody noticed but her. The cafeteria was predictably crowded with people chattering about everything on their minds. Not what Lizzy liked, personally. Sitting at one of the tables outside was where it was at. Listening to the songs of birds and bugs, enjoying the feel of sun on her skin. That was happiness.

The problem, of course, was that the weather had a different idea. In true South Georgia style, the clouds above were unleashing an incredible amount of rain on their town. It probably wouldn’t last long, but it was enough to keep her inside.

Conversation in the cafeteria had one topic today. New heroes. Not one, but TWO had shown up in the last week. One clad in blue and orange, a boy who could blast his enemies with lasers and concussive force. Another just one day later, a girl in a tuxedo who got caught by the morning news taking down a monster with an ice axe and incredible speed. Both looked about the right age to be going to high school, too, so who could they be? Lizzy honestly was not able to care any less if she tried, off in her corner. After all, none of them were talking about her.

“Okay, Dag, you can talk until I move my backpack. They wouldn’t be able to hear us over this noise if they were in the next table over, and even Sarah isn’t sitting that close today.”

Dag stayed hidden in the backpack. After all, how would she ever explain his presence? A flying, talking whale shark? One that looked like those squeezable stress toys? Especially when his voice was that deep. “You sure we can’t go outside? The rain looks nice.”

“Unlike you, I have homework to turn in and these clothes aren’t waterproof.” Lizzy looked over her shoulder and out the window. “Two other superheroes showing up at the same time I get home hosting a Kwamii, too. You think it has anything to with Sparrow?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. She gave you my Miraculous because of how you handled the situation at the zoo, but I think she wanted us to scatter. You know, get heroes all across the country that she knew would be doing the right thing.” Dag peeked out from the zipper, dark blue skin barely visible. “And anyway, I haven’t met any other Kwamiis yet. I would have if they were around here. What’s that sound?” There was a level beep over the school intercom.

“That’s the bell for the end of lunch. Mrs. Richardson awaits.”

“Isn’t she the one who you said…”

“Yes,” Lizzy interrupted. “So I don’t want to give her a chance to do it again.” She stood and got moving, thankful that this time around she remembered to do her homework. After all, it was Friday, and that meant nobody was going to try to wake her up tomorrow. She could go out into the woods after everyone thought she was asleep in bed and actually get some practice with being a hero. She uncharacteristically stayed quiet during her English Literature class, turning in the homework and writing things that looked like class notes. The fact that they were a set of things to test that night escaped everyone in the room but her.

It was odd. The fact that she was distracted and quiet in her last two classes made the day go much more quickly. She wasn’t getting into side discussions with students, or disagreeing with teachers. She insisted to herself that it must be a coincidence.

As usual, the bus home was crowded, but her sisters had the routine down. Lizzy selected a seat near the back of the bus looking out a window. Sarah sat next to her, and Anna in front, which gave her some extra insulation from being on top of everyone else. It was Anna who turned around half way home to ask “are you okay? A bunch of people were saying you’ve been acting weird this afternoon.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just couldn’t eat outside at lunch and it was really noisy.”

“Come on, Liz, you know I don’t believe that. Sisters together, remember? It isn’t the first time it’s been noisy in the cafeteria and it didn’t do this to you.”

Lizzy knew that if her sister hadn’t been sitting in a seat in front of her, Anna would be leaning in with her hands on her hips. It would take more than an excuse this time. “I don’t know. Might still be tired from the New York trip, a lot happened. Seriously, I never thought I’d see so many superheroes in one place!”

Sarah nodded enthusiastically from her seat beside her. “No joke! Superheroes directing traffic and vending hot dogs? It was the coolest thing ever!”

Lizzy shrugged. “Can you imagine having superpowers and using them to sell hot dogs?”

Sarah shrugged right back. “Can you imagine having hot dog superpowers and trying to fight crime with them?”

Lizzy certainly couldn’t, so the rest of the bus ride home passed in silence.

Dinner was the usual chattering, though Pizza Friday was always a favorite at this table. Dad turned his head to the back door, where a certain buzzing could be heard. “The cicadas are loud today, aren’t they? Almost forgot about them while we were away but they’re back in force now!”

Lizzy had already noticed, but there was something wrong. It was way too late in the year for those to appear. The eggs should have been laid and the bugs long since eaten up, they’d been quiet for a bit even before they left on their trip and that had been two weeks ago. It was a good thing she was planning to go out tonight, this sounded like something she needed to look into.

The Friday night movie was good, something older that Mom and Dad picked out about a monster trapping a smart girl in a castle which somehow led to romance, but after that it was time for bed. Or, well, “bed.”

Once the others were asleep, it was time for Lizzy to sneak out. Much easier when she could hear the snores from the others, no need to worry about anyone waking up and spotting her. Or the Kwamii following her. Time to get some spots of her own. “Dag, you ready?”

“Just make sure you have some fish with you, I’m going to be hungry after you’re done practicing.”

As Lizzy walked over to get a baggie with some fish in it for later, she paused. “Wait, aren’t you a whale shark? I thought you didn’t really eat fish.”

“I didn’t see any krill in that refrigerator, Lizzy. Fish will do.” He caught a slice in his cartoonishly large mouth as she ran out the back door. The gate in the fence would have creaked, so she just climbed over it. As soon as she hit the ground on the other side and made sure nobody was looking, she said the words:

“Dag, from the depths!”

Her clothing transformed immediately. The comfortable pajamas she had been wearing to bed were no more. In their place was a dark blue wetsuit, fitting close to her skin but somehow moving with it, which was decorated with lighter blue spots. Across her face came a blue mask, the barrettes that let her talk to Dag got brighter, and a ship’s oar appeared in her right hand. Now she was Deep Blue, Georgia’s latest rookie superheroine.

The first thing she noticed as she stood up was that the angles were wrong. Everything seemed like it was a couple of inches away from where it should have been. It hit her, then. She was taller. At least six inches. “Dag? Is this normal?” The Kwamii didn’t answer. “Oh, right. He’s busy powering this. Guess I’ll test things out now and ask him later.

She leapt out towards the woods, following her ears. The buzzing sound of the cicadas was still going strong, and that most certainly was not normal. It kept getting louder, too. Louder and louder as she tracked it deeper and deeper into the woods, until none of the other nighttime noises were around. She couldn’t hear the breeze or the other animals. It was kind of creepy, like static in her ears. After a while, she saw something else a bit unusual. A light, glowing where none should. It seemed to be coming from up ahead, the same direction as the noise.

There was a sudden treeline. One moment she was in the woods. The next, and she was staring at an electrical substation. Massive transformers stood inside a barbed-wire fence, power lines going in several directions. Heck, one was even headed back the way she came, towards her neighborhood. The glow was coming from the middle of it, and so was the noise. The fence, which would have been an impossible barrier for Lizzy Fischer, was barely even noticeable to Deep Blue as she leapt over it.

She ducked around a metal structure and finally got a look at what was causing everything. The man was tall, broad, dark-haired, and tanned. He would have been WAY bigger than her if not for the magic, but that made up most of the difference. He had on an orange prison jumpsuit, which made Deep Blue think he had escaped from a nearby jail.

He also had his hand out towards the power substation’s coils, the light and sound coming from electricity arcing towards his body.

Deep Blue knew she had to stop this. That electricity was going to thousands of people who needed it, and shouldn’t be grabbed by a supervillain on the way. “Hey! Stop that at once!”

The man looked back at her, grinning wildly. “And what are you going to do about it, little girl? Take that ridiculous costume and go home before you get hurt!”

“No way!” The rookie superheroine took a fighting stance, her oar ready in her right hand. “I know you aren’t supposed to be here. Leave that electricity for the people who need it!”

“Nah, not good enough. I need a lot so that I can do things like this!” He stopped pulling power from the station, paused for a split second, then turned and blasted Deep Blue square in the chest with a bolt of lightning. She…. didn’t exactly enjoy the experience, flying backwards into the fenceline. Thankfully, only the top was barbed wire, and none of it was electrified. Not counting what she just got hit by, of course, that grounded out quickly.

Okay, there’s no way I can get out of the way of lightning. Not without practice. That means I have to go through it. Oh, I hope this works the way Dag said it would… All the Kwamiis made their partners stronger, faster, more agile, and tougher. Dag? Well, the Kwamii of Force said he could do it a bit more than most. She just had to call out one word, and pray the rest could be taken care of inside of five minutes. “Alright, mister, you asked for it. TITANIC!”

The feeling of the magical power flowing into her limbs was electric. In a good way, not like what she had just gotten blasted by. She had only just been getting used to being six inches taller than usual. Now, suddenly, she was six FEET taller than that. She felt like she could take on the world or hold up the sky. For now? She’d settle for this guy in front of her.

When she came stomping back around the corner, the man’s face was priceless. He was looking downwards at where he expected her head to be. What he found was her hip. Lizzy’s mother had always called her “tiny but mighty.” The power of Titanic removed the “tiny” part of that. The now-tree-sized oar slammed into the villain, powered by her magically enhanced muscles and a lot more leverage than she had before. He figured out that it was now his turn to go flying backwards. The silence after all the buzzing, banging, and yelling was shocking, but in that lack of noise she could suddenly hear something else.

There was a thumping in the distance, a helicopter was in the air close by. Its spotlight suddenly shone on the electrical substation, illuminating Deep Blue while the area lights slowly came back up. Very slowly. It looked like a news helicopter, but it was midnight. How did it get here so fast? She tried to shield her eyes from the glare, but figured out that it was a bad idea to do so. With a sudden snap and crackle, the villain blasted her again. He’d apparently gotten back to his feet while she was distracted. This time, though, she didn’t go flying. Either the power just made her tougher, the increase in weight made her harder to toss around, or both. It still hurt, though, and the power was enough to keep her from stepping forward. At least the villain wasn’t attacking the camera crew! She couldn’t get to him, but on the flip side he only had so much power to throw back. At this rate he’d probably run out before she had to transform back.

Then a tendril of electricity funneled to him from the station again. Scratch that, Deep Blue needed a way out of this one FAST or she was going to find out how lightbulbs worked the hard way.

“Elemental! Stop this attack and come quietly, or we do this the hard way. You know what happened the last three times.” It was a woman’s voice, and from the starkly cast shadows stepped a real superheroine. Her bodysuit was light brown, lined with fur. She had a tail at her back and a whip at her side, a mask across her face in the same shade.

The man in front of her turned and sneered. “Tidal! How convenient. Last time I tried fighting your partner with rock, but this time I’ve got electricity! What do you think you’re going to do against that, Miss Water Powers?”

“Distract you while my partner grounds you out.”

“Huh?” Suddenly, a giant pillar of water came slamming down into the supervillain, and the electrical power blasting into Deep Blue was no more. Redirected and absorbed into the earth. Down leapt another hero, a man dressed much like the first. Slipstream. As the water column ended, it revealed the man unconscious and facedown in the mud.

“This is getting old, Elemental. Twice this week.” Slipstream looked at the enormous superheroine standing across from them. “And the second vigilante this week, too. Another rookie, I bet. What do you call yourself?”

“Uh… Deep Blue, sir.” She was still getting the feeling back in her arms after blocking the electric attacks.

The woman, Tidal, stepped forward towards the fallen villain, flipping him over to make sure he could breathe. “Smart name. I like it. Guess it’s my turn to give the speech? Alright. I know you are not on the official rosters. Am I wrong?” Deep Blue shook her head. “In that case, this is your freebie. You decided to do good, and that’s good, now go study the rules and get registered. I’d rather not have to try a takedown on someone who can be over ten feet tall. That work for you?”

“I… yes, it does, ma’am.” Deep Blue did not want to even think about two experienced heroes coming after her. Not for any reason.

“Good. Go get some rest, you have a lot of study and training ahead of you if this is the job you want. Slipstream, you got this guy?”

“Yep, I do.” The man walked over and casually shoulder-slung the villain. “See you at the rendezvous point!”

The two leapt off in different directions. The helicopter crew apparently decided the newsworthy part of the night was over. Deep Blue turned around, picked out the power line that was headed towards her home neighborhood, and got walking. The hard part was trying to not crash into trees or disturb environments, a problem that lasted two more minutes before her power ran out and she was Lizzy again. That made the walk take a lot longer, but at least she wasn’t disturbing diurnal birds in their trees at midnight. The two were quiet, Lizzy feeding Dag some fish to help him recover.

They eventually got back home. She snuck back into bed without waking anyone else up, though it was really close when Anna rolled over as she passed. Entirely too little time later, she was woken up by the smell of breakfast and coffee downstairs. Mom and Dad were up, so that meant they’d be getting her soon. Best to not make them. Slowly, Lizzy made her way to the kitchen. Before she got there, though, she had to pause. Her parents were talking.

“Go figure there was a power outage last night. I get it, but it meant the coffee didn’t brew on time. Pure tragedy right there.” Her dad was the one trying to make jokes. He sounded really tired, but if the coffee was late that would explain it.

“Are you okay, Sam? Last night was busy.” Mom sounded just as tired.

“I’ll be fine, Leigh. Just tired. Try for naps today if the girls let us?”

“Sure, but you know they won’t. Best stop this talk now, I think I hear one walking around.”

That sounded like Lizzy’s cue. “Hey Mom, hey Dad. Good morning.” Lizzy yawned. “Do I smell pancakes?”

Her mom nodded. “You look as tired as we feel. Get your sisters, and after breakfast we’ll try to take it easy. Saturday is good for that.”

Lizzy agreed wholeheartedly. If she had to get the day started, at least it would be a slow one. Those were always good.

I have a secret that nobody knows about me. I’m Deep Blue!