Magnetic Attraction 11: Disaster (1) (Patreon)

Michelle Ponte was a normal Brocktonite woman. She, an overworked office drone, only had an associate degree in taxation, and couldn’t find any more opportunities to advance herself. The city was an ever shrinking job market, and she remained because she was taking care of her five year old brother and disabled parents,  victims of the Empire Eighty-Eight’s rampantly violent racism.

And today, she lost all of that when a bomb went off in the heart of the Boardwalk and spewed fire in all directions. Her home in the Docks near the Boardwalk caught fire within an hour of the eruption, and there was nothing anyone could have done to save an eighty year old building with poor maintenance and a decade long lack of fire alarm.

She sobbed as she knelt in front of her brother’s burnt corpse. His dark skin was now charcoal black. Her parents weren’t any better; disabled as they were, they tried to shield John with their bodies when fire came down on their home from above. It hadn’t worked. 

The only grace in this was that they hadn’t suffocated to death and died quickly when a ton of building material fell right on top of them.

She couldn’t breathe. 

Everything was gone. 

Oh God. Oh God why?

She choked on her tears and snot. Her ruined mascara ran down her face freely, yet she didn’t care. 

Her chest hurt. Oh God, it hurt so much. She wailed in agony.

[Destination]

-VB-

Magnetic Attraction

Chapter 11: Disaster (1)

-VB-

I grimaced while standing on top of a building on the edge of the Boardwalk as Eisenfeld. 

This … this wasn’t what I wanted to create. I wanted to bring down my brother, not cause a massive humanitarian crisis by leaving a bomb to go off.

But I was just greedy enough to act for my own benefits rather than to help the people. 

Here was a disaster not of my making (directly or publicly) that I, as Eisenfeld, could help. By putting all of my effort into helping the people, I would be seen as a hero, regardless of what kind of action I might take later as long as I didn’t go full “murderhobo” on the people themselves or other respected heroes.

It would have been wonderful to make this into a family thing with both Nessa and Jessica, but they were just too well known - and their presence would further cement the stupidology into the more primitive and discriminatory minds. That wouldn’t do. Perhaps after he really made sure that they were no longer associated actively with E88, he might go out with them as capes.

I looked down at the burning streets, where smoldering pieces of shopfronts, molten cars and what I suspected were pieces of Coil’s underground base. 

‘Enough thinking. It’s time to act,’ I thought before pulling the hoodie over my head and keeping it in place with clamps made from iron dust manipulated by my power. I also had iron dust coalesced into a solid, expressionless, and featureless mask.

I jumped down, but it was easy enough to generate artificial buoyancy when I pulled against the iron embedded into my shoes. I floated down gently, observing the ruined street but also feeling out the iron support structures; during construction, many high rises buildings used steel supports like I-beams, and I could manipulate them to do my bidding. 

I touched down on the ground and lifted my hands up. My power rose forth with my will, and the twisted mess of iron beams and bars righted themselves, lifting whatever was attached to and on top of them. 

The world around me groaned as bits and pieces of rubble crumbled down while leaning and broken buildings righted themselves under my direction. 

I felt little bits and pieces of metal move without my direction… and watched as people walked out along with those metals (phones, most likely). Once they realized that they were no longer trapped underneath rubble, people began to run out of the ruined buildings. There were others, however, who couldn’t. 

“Someone help us!” 

“We need EMT! She’s not breathing! Does anyone know how to do CPR!?”

Realizing that a modicum of help was here, people began to call for help fervently. 

I pulled up the iron dust in the ground and air and sent them swirling away into the area, using the iron dust to give me a 3D imagery of the world around me outside of my direct vision. As the iron dust quickly spread out with more to come as I broke apart exposed iron alloys to make more dust, I mapped … about a quarter of the city block around me in detail. Everything beyond the limit became blurry because I lacked the necessary quantity of iron dust. 

Sixty-three people needed help because they were still under rubble or a part of themselves were pinned by rubble with too few iron; that was a lot of people in need of help.

On top of that, I had to deal with the wary denizens now streaming out of their ruined buildings at the center of Downtown. 

Why wasn’t the PRT and the Protectorate here yet? 

“What are you waiting for?!” I shouted at them. “Start helping each other! I can only do so much!”

That got them going. 

“I need some people over by that Wyne Sipper shop,” I said, pointing to one of the shops. “There are three people trapped behind rubble I couldn’t move.” 

There was a bit of hesitation from the people to follow my order. They stared at me, shuffled their feet, and one of them even outright ignored me (the dying man in her arms might have something to do with it). Then they did as I asked. 

It was only after I took control over the disaster effort in this street that PRT pulled up… and they pointed their gun at me.