Wyvern Pt 3 (Patreon)

“But Taylor knows nothing about explosives,” Danny tried to explain, for the third time. “For that matter, I know nothing about explosives. She couldn't have made any kind of bomb.”

The police officer sitting on the other side of the interview table didn't seem to have heard him. “Our kids can surprise us, Mr Hebert,” he stated without any real kind of inflection. “Did you keep books on chemistry or the making of explosives in your house? Did you store chemicals of any sort?” He consulted a list, then handed it over to Danny. “Any of these?”

Danny took it, frowning. “No, we never had books on bomb making,” he replied. “Chemistry books, yeah. She does high school chemistry. As for these chemicals … I think we have drain cleaner, yeah. And detergent.” He put the list on the table. “But anyone could have these chemicals. Someone who knew how to make a bomb. Why are you picking on Taylor in this?”

“Because the roll call post-evacuation indicated several students not present, one of whom is your daughter,” the police officer informed him. “And your daughter's locker is the one that was blown up.”

“So one of the others -”

“The others are, without exception, those with reasonable excuses to be out of school, or those with a regular habit of skipping classes. Your daughter is the only one with anything like a regular attendance record who should have been there, but wasn't.”

“Well, maybe someone else blew her locker up,” Danny suggested. “Did you think of that?”

“Her locker door was blown off of its hinges. We found it embedded in the opposite wall,” the officer stated flatly. “The explosion almost certainly originated within the locker. Does your daughter share her locker combination with anyone else?”

“Emma, maybe?” Danny hazarded. “But she's Taylor's best friend. She wouldn't do something like this to her.”

The police officer made a note. “Last name of this Emma, sir?”

“Uh, Emma Barnes,” Danny supplied. “Her father's name is Alan Barnes. But she wouldn't have done this. Taylor's known her since grade school.”

“Is that with an S or an E-S?” asked the officer.

“B-A-R-N-E-S,” Danny supplied. “Maybe I should ring Alan and ask him if Emma even saw Taylor show up to school today.”

“Leave us to make the enquiries, sir,” the officer reproved him gently. “Now, do you know if your daughter had any problems with anyone else at school? A teacher, perhaps, or another student?”

“I have no idea.” Danny shrugged helplessly. “She never talks about school. We barely talk at all.”

“Perhaps her mother might know more, sir?” suggested the officer.

Danny shook his head, feeling the old pain. “Her mother is dead. She died in a car accident about two and a half years ago.”

“My condolences, sir,” the officer told him automatically. “Has your daughter's behaviour changed recently? Has she exhibited odd habits?”

“I don't know,” Danny told him, feeling shame that he had to confess this. “We really haven't been close, recently.”

<><>

“The sides and top have been peeled back from the force of the explosion; the lockers on either side have suffered catastrophic damage. There appear to be the remains of toxic waste within the locker, and spread on the floor around it.”

Explosives expert James Doherty ceased narrating into the recorder, and leaned down to gingerly pick up a small blackened item between gloved thumb and forefinger. He dropped it into an evidence bag; despite the filter mask, his nose wrinkled from the smell.

“What is it?” asked his assistant, closing the bag carefully.

“Best guess, a used tampon,” Doherty replied. “A bit charred, but still mostly there. There were a lot more of them, I would guess, as well as other similar items, but the explosion destroyed most of them.”

“That would seem to defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?” asked his assistant, whose name Doherty had never bothered to remember; a bright lad, he nevertheless still had a lot to learn about the business.

“That's presuming that the purpose of the explosion was to spread the waste,” Doherty agreed. “But it wasn't.”

“It wasn't?”

“That's what I said,” Doherty stated. “The explosion took place about … here.” He leaned in, putting his gloved fingertip at about chest level, just inside where the locker door had once stood. “Whereas the toxic waste was all down in the bottom of the locker. If the purpose was to spread the crap around, it was about the worse possible location for it.”

“So what was the purpose of the explosion?” asked his assistant. “Lockers don't just explode for no reason.”

“And that's the right question,” Doherty agreed with a nod. “”What did the explosion do, above all else?”

“Blew the locker to hell and gone?”

Doherty allowed himself a slight smile under the mask. “Specifically. What was the one real effect we have here?”

There was a moment of intense cogitation, then his assistant pointed at the door, which had been carefully pried out of the wall, to allow for closer examination. “Blew the door off.”

“So let's go look at the door. Something's been bothering me, and I just realised what.”

They stood side by side, looking at the door. Doherty pointed. “That's where the explosion took place.” It was fairly obvious; the metal had been distorted, the paint scoured down to the metal. Annealing patterns threw back rainbow reflections.

“Right where you said it would be,” his assistant agreed. “So what was bothering you, before?”

Doherty pointed, farther down. “What are those marks?”

Almost hidden, camouflaged by first being blasted off of the locker, then slamming into the wall opposite, several sets of parallel gouges could just barely be seen in the metal. “They look like … scratches.” The assistant paused, frowning. “Shrapnel?”

Doherty shook his head. “No. Shrapnel would have spread directly away from the epicentre. These are overlapping lines, each set parallel in itself, but each set is aligned in a different direction. And there are three in each set. What does that remind you of?”

“I – I'm not sure -”

“Think. Ignore the explosion. Ignore the rest of it. Where have you seen marks like that before?”

The assistant blinked. “Claw marks. There was an animal in the locker?”

“They didn't find a body,” Doherty pointed out. “Human, animal, whatever. Whatever did that was low to the ground. Also … “ He crouched, and touched his gloved fingertips to one set of gouges. They had to spread, just a little, to each touch a separate groove. “Whatever made these wasn't any house cat.”

“So what does this mean?”

Doherty stood, and dusted his hands off. “We wait for the lab results to come back regarding the samples and residues they took in. And if it turns out the way I think it will, we'll be off the case.”

The assistant tilted his head. “Why is that?”

Doherty felt a wry grin twisting his lips under the mask. “Because it'll be the PRT's problem, then. And good luck to them.”

<><>

"Wait right here," commanded Glory Girl. "I'll be right back." She dashed into the kitchen. "Dad," I heard her say, "don't go anywhere. Especially not the living room, okay?"

"Why?" he asked.

"Clothing emergency. Just stay in here, all right?"

I heard a grunt that I assumed to mean assent, then she emerged once more, and dashed up the stairs. Moments later, she reappeared, bearing a huge fluffy pink bathrobe. I stared at it; it looked large enough to use as a hang-glider.

"What?" she asked, her cheeks going nearly as pink as the bathrobe. "I like it.'

"I wasn't going to say a word," I assured her, truthfully enough, and swapped cushion for bathrobe. It covered me; more to the point, it enveloped me. I was covered from neck to ankles in fluffy pink extravagance.

Glory Girl – or Vicky, as she insisted that I call her – took me upstairs and fitted me out in new clothes; or rather, some of the clothes that she was thinking of giving away. A pair of her skinny jeans – not so skinny on my lanky frame – went well with a t-shirt that showed just a little tiny bit of my belly, given that I had a few inches on the teen superhero.

“Well, you're dressed,” she declared with satisfaction as I put a borrowed headband in my hair. “And you're human again. How did you do that, anyway?”

“I'm not sure,” I confessed. “The sofa was so comfortable that I kind of lay down and drifted off. When your aunt cried out, I woke up and I was me.”

“Huh,” she mused; I got the impression that she was a little disappointed that she couldn't show off dragon-me to her sister Panacea, or 'Ames' as she referred to the healer. “Have you tried to change back?”

“Um, nope,” I told her. “Realising I was a dragon was scary enough the first time around.”

“Well, we know you can,” she insisted. “Go on, see if you can change back again.”

Frowning, I concentrated. There seemed to be something there, but I couldn't really reach it. “I guess I'm too comfortable,” I confessed. “I think I changed back to human when I started feeling comfortable and relaxed.”

“Oh,” she replied, and turned away. “I guess then – boo!”

I jumped a little as she threw up her hands at the same time as shouting the word, but nothing else happened.

“It's not exactly something that can happen with a fright,” I told her severely.

“Well, how did it happen, exactly?” she asked.

So I told her; arriving at Winslow, being taunted for being too tall, too skinny, too ugly. Every word striking at the core of my being, even as I tried to ignore them. Arriving at my locker, opening it, being shoved in, locked in. I choked then, and began to cry. Vicky held me, stroked my hair as I sat on her bed.

I was vaguely aware of someone arriving at the doorway to Vicky's room. Vicky's aunt Sarah, by the sound of her voice. She was asking, I thought, about what was going on. Vicky repeated to her what I had said, more or less, and then Sarah went away.

“Hey,” murmured Vicky. “Hey, hey. It's all right.” I felt a warmth enfolding me, a blanket made of pure love and affection. Belatedly, I realised that it was Glory Girl's aura, even as I felt myself calming down.

A tissue was offered to me, and I took it, blowing my nose loudly. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I just … “ I trailed off. You weren't there; I can't even begin to expect you to understand.

“It's all good,” she insisted. “Trigger events are going to hit anyone hard.”

“Trigger what?” I asked, distracted despite myself.

“Trigger events,” she explained cheerfully. “One minute you're boppin' along, smelling the flowers, having a good day. Next thing, bam! Worst day of your life. And that's what causes trigger events. You obviously had one, right there.”

“ … oh.” I peered at her with my blurry eyesight. “Was your trigger event that bad, too?”

“Nope, thank God.” She shook her head with a chuckle, her blonde hair waving back and forth. “I'm second generation. Me and Ames were always going to trigger, and second gens got it really easy. I got fouled in a basketball game, about one second before I was gonna score. The ref didn't even see it. So I got up, grabbed the ball, flew over to their hoop, and jammed it through so hard that I ripped their hoop right off of the backboard. It was only afterward that I realised that I'd triggered.”

“Wow,” I murmured. “That must have surprised the heck out of them.”

“Annoyed the crap out of me, let me tell you,” Vicky confided. “If they'd let me keep that score, we would've won the game.”

I went to smile at the dryness of her tone, but I ended up biting my lip. “Why do people do this sort of thing?” I asked. “Why do they choose to hurt someone, just because they can?”

“I have no idea, Taylor,” Vicky told me solemnly. “But it's because people act that way that I go out and kick ass on a daily basis. If they think it's okay to treat people like that, then it has to be okay for me to treat them that way, right?”

Her tone was so bright, so upbeat, that I smiled involuntarily. “Sure, I guess,” I answered.

She shook her head; again, the golden hair bounced. “None of this 'I guess' bullshit, Taylor. You're a cape now too. You've got to understand the responsibility you've got here.”

“Yeah, great.” I rolled my eyes. “I'm a cape who doesn't know how to change into my powered form. Next up on the news: Taylor Hebert, the girl who turned into a dragon, then forgot how she did it.”

Abruptly, Vicky stood up from the bed. “I refuse to believe that,” she declared, pacing across the room. “I believe in you. I believe that when you think you have to change, then you will. I believe that you're going to change – now!”

And as she turned, shouted, pointed … a wave of dread swept across me.

Too late, I realised what she was doing. Her aura. She's using the aura on me.

Too late, I protested. “Wait -”

<><>

“I'm sorry, who did you say you were?”

“Sarah Pelham,” she repeated patiently. “Lady Photon. Of New Wave. You do know who I am, right?”

“I've heard of you, yes,” he admitted. “And you say you've got news of Taylor? Because I've just spent far too long at the police station, and they've got no idea where she is.”

“I should say so,” she replied with relish. “She's upstairs with my niece Glory Girl right now.”

“Is – is she all right? The police say that there was an explosion -”

“I don't know anything about an explosion,” she replied, wondering what the heck that was about. “But Taylor is fine. A little confused, certainly, but she's not injured in any way.”

“Why does New Wave have her?” he asked next. “Has she committed a crime?”

“Not … exactly,” she replied. “Listen, I can take the phone up to her if you want. Vicky's just giving her something to wear.”

“Yes, please.” A pause. “Uh … what happened to her clothes?”

“I think I'll let her explain that one to you herself,” she prevaricated. “It's … complicated.”

“Oh, god, was she attacked -”

“No, she's perfectly fine. She was not attacked.” She climbed the stairs and started along the corridor. “She can tell you -”

The wave of dread and horror smashed through her, and she nearly dropped the phone. She had only been subjected to it once or twice before, by accident, but she knew exactly what had caused it. At the same time, she heard a reptilian screech, and the tearing of cloth.

Recovering from the aura, she got to the door of Vicky's room and looked inside. There, shaking itself free from the remnants of what had once been a pair of skinny jeans, was the human-sized dragon, resplendent in red-gold scales. Vicky was standing off to the side, her expression jubilant. “Hah!” she declared. “I knew that would -” Turning, she saw Sarah peering through the door. “Oh, hi, Aunt Sarah.” Her 'innocent of all charges' expression needed work.

The dragon turned too; one enormously elongated finger, now forming a wingtip, pointed directly at Vicky. Sarah didn't need any dragon-to-human dictionary to decipher the screech that Taylor gave then: “She did it.”

Sarah sighed and put the phone to her ear again. “Uh, maybe you'd better come over instead. And bring clothes.” 

Part 4